CV Summit Recap

This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers. 

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Brian Shields, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Hey everybody. Welcome to the future @ work Podcast. I'm Brian shields. I'm here with my co founder and partner Alex Ford-Carther. Hey Alex, what are we gonna talk about today?

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Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

So today we are going to be chatting about the CV summit and our recent trip over to Zug and

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Shields  

Switzerland. Excellent. Yeah. Always a great time in Switzerland.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, so just so for those who don't know, one of our investors, the CBBC, they typically throw an annual summit for just kind of crypto enthusiasts and kind of just folks within their, their network in the community. But this year, they did something a little bit different.

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Shields  

Yeah, no, it was really cool. So like, this was my third CV Summit. So I'd actually that's the first time we met all those guys in person was I think, 2017 on November 2017, maybe when they're 2018 18. It was 2018. In November, it was CV summit we met Yeah, Nikolai Lucas. And a lot of these guys started here. And what that what they're starting to kind of kick off in the Krypto Valley and Zook, and they launched the CV labs incubation program. And then we ended up participating in batch one of that, and we got to know a lot of people over in Switzerland and meet with a lot of other founders in the blockchain space. And we stayed in touch with a lot of them over the past few years during COVID, and everything like that, and like watching everyone cheering them on from the sidelines, was really cool. But the CB summit this year coming off of the pandemic, and doing like kind of like the virtual and online type versions for a bit, was getting everyone back together. And now that CB Vc as a fund is actually kind of grown and scaled up their operation over the past few years, they were able to add in a full day to the summit specifically for the kind of friends and family with the portfolio companies. So it was really cool for us. Because, you know, we knew the other companies from like the batch one of the incubation program, but that was only like the 10 companies and we all got to like live together in Switzerland and work together and get to know everyone really well. But now, you know, we just met another, you know, 25 different founders from other portfolio companies from across Europe, the US and Africa that they've invested in a lot of them doing like really, really cool stuff. So I mean, the the work that, you know, often Lucas and David had been doing in terms of the investment portfolio of there has been pretty impressive.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, I think, on one of their slides, I think their portfolios up to like 52 companies

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Shields  

to 55, I don't even know. But yeah, I've been moving at quite a clip, it's been impressive.

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Ford-Carther  

And so for our experience, and it was a little bit different for some of the other groups because batch one was pre COVID. So we were living there breathing there, we really absorbed kind of Switzerland and in crypto Valley and kind of made it a nice home for us for a while. Some of the other groups were remote, but their recent, most recent batch, which I think just graduated as part of the summit was they were also local versus virtual. So we kind of got to talk to different founders and kind of hear some of their different experiences through the program. And it was nice kind of being OG and

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Shields  

yeah, oh, yeah. Like we've been here a bit like, but it was cool. Like, yeah, it was, like you said, it was kind of like, you felt like the upperclassmen a little bit. Yeah, that's not to say that, like our company is bigger or stronger, or whatever than anyone else's, because some of these guys have scaled up very quickly and very impressive. But at the same time, it was like, it was always the first time here, like, I'll tell you where to eat, like, we got a good place to, like, we're gonna go here for dinner. And that's always fun. And then also, like some of the people that we've seen them kind of just staff up on their own operation, like, you know, they, they they rolled out into, you know, the, the CD labs program into Dubai with crypto Oasis, you know, they've got the CV lab, South Africa going on in Cape Town, and seeing what you're getting in the team down there have done has been pretty impressive.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, that was pretty cool to see, because they've been talking about, you know, the African footprint for a while. And obviously, crypto and, you know, is a huge opportunity within Africa. So they made a an investment to kind of move a branch of CB labs down there. So, you know, they've got quite a quite a crude on they're doing some cool stuff. And so

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Shields  

I think it's one of the things like, you know, you and I've, we've talked a lot for years about like, I'm basically can Africa superpole. And like I was telling them, like, I think you guys are doing this 100% Right. And like, just like we saw what they were doing back in 2018 in terms of like moving into crypto like this, then being bullish on Africa and moving down there. Like I think just like on a global macro level, like what's going on, just like you saw African economy kind of like leapfrog terrestrial internet and like broadband like and going right to like mobile commerce. I think you're seeing the same thing with crypto, like there's no euro for Africa, like there's, I think that there's going to be a big push for kind of like a Bitcoin standard developing there and like, continuing to develop the crypto ecosystem in Africa from Cape Town, but then also branching into some of the other markets down there where there's like really good technical talent and like strong economies and like some of these other countries. I think it's gonna be fascinating to watch what they accomplish over the next few years. Yeah,

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Ford-Carther  

one of the groups that was in our batch, I think it was math for money. Um, their founders were both from from South Africa and made the trek up to Switzerland and just being able to kind of chat with them, you know, a few years ago about kind of what they were doing, but then just gonna get in a general sense of what what that ecosystem was back in 2019, and kind of seeing it really start to grow and expand. I think, you know, we we've always had an eye on Africa. And we'd love to open operations over there, too.

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Shields  

Oh, yeah. That sounds great. Sounds like there might be a CV summit in Africa in coming up in March, I think so, six months away might be worth, you know, planning a trip down there.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah. So just generally speaking, like, what was your just general takeaway from the conference?

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Shields  

Yeah, I mean, like, there's no better place to spend crypto winter than summers in Switzerland. It's kind of what I've learned over the past, you know, five years is that, you know, the innovation just continues, you know, builders build, you know, the, the pikers, leaving everyone who's just, you know, you know, right, and retail waves is in and out. And I think that's what we saw from the beginning. In terms of the crypto culture in Switzerland, it was It wasn't Burning Man, it was professionalized like these are these are bankers, and they know what they're doing. And like, they're, they want to build businesses, they understand decentralization in a way that I don't think Americans typically do. And I think that's because of the nature of the international culture within Switzerland, specifically, with like, all the non government organizations that are based out out of there, specifically in Geneva, but also like in Zurich, you know, it's not uncommon for businesses who have, you know, board members from all over the world operating in different countries and like having, you know, different subsidiaries and stuff like that. I think that that is one of the benefits for crypto businesses to you know, you know, operate with a footprint in Switzerland, we've certainly found a benefit to that. And I think that it's given us a global perspective, that, you know, companies that are just you know, building in the Midwest or in New York or San Francisco don't necessarily get, I think that it's, it's really beneficial for anyone building in the crypto space to really kind of get out of your backyard and expand your horizons.

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Ford-Carther  

For the listeners who don't necessarily know about kind of maybe quote unquote, Krypto Valley, like, what why is where they get the name from? And yeah, you know, what, what's the history?

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Shields  

There's a really good book out there by Camilla Russo called the infinite machine that actually talks about the founding of Aetherium. And the initial team like it was like photonic, and these guys all ended up going out to like Lubin, and Hopkinson and all these guys ended up going out to Duke and working with I think mme was the law firm down there. But they basically had to be like, okay, like, what is Bitcoin? What is a theory? I'm like, how do we do an ICO? And what does this look like? Are we setting up a foundation or a for profit thing or whatever, and they basically set up shop there, they had they rented this house, they called the spaceship and like, they all like live there is basically like a hacker house in Switzerland. And, you know, I mean, if anyone's looking for a place to have a hacker house in Switzerland, like we could talk about life, and Lucerne, which is a little outside of the Krypto Valley, and that connects canceled over but that's where we stayed this time because we stayed before and to get we stayed in Zurich. And so we want to spend a little bit more time over in the in the neighborhood canceling certain this time. So maybe we can talk about life in Lucerne about the place that we had, because that was a bit of a spaceship in itself.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, no, definitely. So just to give some context. So Shields, I flew over but then Vladimir, our product lead drove in stayed with us and then our head of marketing. He flew over to he was headed over to another blockchain conference stopped by so it was kind of the four of us just hanging out, getting a lot of work done, but just kind of you know, being in Lucerne, which is a is a jewel box when it comes so you're basically overlooking the lake and then the mounds are in the background and like everything's just quiet and quiet museum

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Shields  

that's kind of like this modernist building, but it fits in perfectly like it's like a flat with the horizon then you've got like the Kapil Berceuse, like the oldest wooden bridge in in Europe, and it's like over there on the river, got mount coladas up there. And like we hiked mount politesse during the CV labs program a few years you weren't gonna do that this

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Ford-Carther  

time. Definitely wasn't gonna do that this

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Shields  

time. Live to jetlag this year. But yeah, let me his girlfriend, like took the dog up there. He has a great town. Like if you're going to Krypto Valley, you know, definitely spend time and too but you know, if you're gonna, you know, stay, you can look, you know, stay either in lodestar in or over it. Yeah.

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Ford-Carther  

Well, geez, maybe kind of because you've been switched on a few times, you kind of talked about between Zurich, the UK and Lucerne, and some of maybe the surrounding cities, if you're looking at going there and then actually spending time in, in crypto valley to kind of immerse yourself into into the ecosystem. What would your plan be?

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Shields  

Yeah, no, I mean, I would hit all of them. I mean, like, honestly, like, I think that everyone should spend time in Switzerland. Like you said, I've been there several times. It's a it's a great place to do business. It's a great place to operate international businesses, but it's also a great place to vacation. I mean, I've been there with my family like I know you're gonna be going there with your family. And it's easy getting out. You find his RV flying to Geneva, the two major airports, but zoo itself it's like a 30,000 person town. It's quiet. It's super peaceful, it's calm, it's a lake, you know, on a lake with the mountains in the background, good schools, good businesses. But then it's you know, it's a half hour commute. So it's like a lot of people live in Lucerne a lot of people live in Zurich. And Zurich is certainly a larger city, it's in, you know, the most international city. Lucerne is a little quieter, but it's, you know, you're closer to the mountains. But then if once you get beyond that you can you can go all over the place and like, you know, if you want to, you want to take some good travel photos, go to Switzerland, there's not a bad angle in the country, right? So everything's gonna look good.

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Ford-Carther  

So specifically, and obviously, CB, DC, is there, the CV Summit, kind of maybe let's break down those three days that we were there. So the first day was, we talked about the Friends and Family Day, bunch of different startup pitches. And you know, I don't know, some of these companies aren't even startups anymore. They're, you know, a couple,

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Shields  

a couple of multimillion dollar rounds in there. Exactly. So pay attention should look at some of these guys.

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Ford-Carther  

So I think I think generally speaking, that was to two or three panels that day, and I would say I think they had 2525 of their 52 portfolio companies where they're pitching. So there was one man pitches that we we partook in and some of the other companies, and then the next day, was kind of a typical general conference schedule where you had the main kind of stage and theatres, but with, you know, speakers and panelists and whatnot, so kind of maybe talk about their friends and family day, and then maybe we'll jump into some of the takeaways from the bigger conference.

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Shields  

Yeah, sure. Like other friends and family day, it was definitely like, you know, kind of getting the overall update of everything that they'd been doing, we got to see introductions from some of the new team members on the CVC team, that have continued to kind of build and grow this operation, met a lot of the other investors in their fund as well. So the LPS were there as long as, as well, as you know, obviously, the founders of these different companies that you said, you know, two dozen or so that were from all over the world, you know, all over the world. So it's just awesome to see and like getting everyone together is great. And I know that meant a lot to your the entire team there to see just how successful everyone's been

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Ford-Carther  

one of the things that they did, I don't know if it's typical, some of the other conferences, but they had an app that they set up specifically to allow kind of engagement between the the attendees. So a lot of it was geared towards, like investor introductions. So we were able to probably secure five to 10 different meetings with potential investor groups or partners. They did it in a way where you booked the meeting and excessive efficiency. Yeah. And then like they had a table number, and you went to the table at a certain time and chatted up and I think they did a great job of

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Shields  

really, lord knows I played with enough conference. Yeah, and

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Ford-Carther  

it wasn't, it wasn't overkill, but it was enough to spur those conversations and get that engagement going, especially, you know, for some of us folks that came from out of town that might not have had some of those initial relationships. But I think, you know, between our investor group, David and Lucas, they kind of made sure we talked to the right people and the app that they set up, I think it was, generally speaking a great, great experience for us and, and a good opportunity to kind of expand our story and tell what we're doing. But also see if there was some people that are interested in in kind of helping us grow. Well, not

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Shields  

only that, it was great to be there, you know, in Lucerne with with Sergio with Vladimir Vladimir, his girlfriend and his dog chopper. But yeah, no, I mean, just in general was great. You know, I'm sure we'll bring on Sergio will bring on Vladimir will talk with both of them. And we'll chat a little bit more about our experience over there together. But yeah, just all told, you know, CV summit as always a great experience. It's been really good connections I think a lot of people are interested in in sprinter and what we've been building, so it's been really interesting to see them. Yeah, maybe we'll bring some of those people on as guests further on down the road.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, one of the things that so like, your first one was in 2018, right? Yes. And so now four years later, I don't know how much you remember. 20 You seem to have a pretty good memory. What do you think from a, like a panelist or like just a topics statement, then versus now? Like,

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Shields  

yeah, what's one of the things that was really cool this time was, you know, it's NF T's. It's digital art. Right. So they they had a really cool exhibition hall in the casino theater and to which is not like a casino the way we think of it as an American, you know, but it's like, you know, the auditorium, theater and everything. There's really cool, really good, you know, awesome digital art. They had some Metaverse stuff going on a couple of the portfolio companies or Metaverse companies. And you know, they're doing like YouTube for the metaverse is like really cool stuff. And be able to kind of experience some of that and see that see the NFT art but also some real world physical installations with digital counterparts was pretty interesting. And then again, just in general, the past few years, like the professionalization of you know, of defy and of, you know, kind of like, you know, you know, just take taking crypto seriously right? It's like there's a difference between the people it's like, you get crypto crypto folks on Twitter crypto folks on discord in crypto folks on Bloomberg, right like There's a different crowd out there. And I think Switzerland, as you know, kind of has a way of being involved in all of that. And I think it's really interesting to see from a cultural perspective.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, I would say like, just my thought on that is, like, early on 2018, we were first over there it was, it was a lot of regulatory, like, How is this all gonna work?

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Shields  

They figured it out,

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Ford-Carther  

they figured it out. So now it's more like utility, like, what are we gonna build? Like, how can we like, how can we how can we actually use this technology? Yeah,

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Shields  

and how can we use these technologies, you know, an interconnection fashion between, you know, layer one, layer two solutions, building bridges, multi Chain Solutions, I think like a lot of the stuff that's going on in terms of like custody is really, really interesting. And I do think that, you know, there's still big problems and crypto. And volatility I actually don't think is one of them. Like, I think that these problems are being solved. And they're being solved by people who are building actual solutions using Blockchain as the underlying technology to solve the problems for the people operating within the space, where it's not like blockchain is the solution. But blockchain is the tool that helps you build the solution.

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Ford-Carther  

One of the things we failed to mention, but I always want to give a shout out to CB lab and Cbc because they always do a good job of kind of creating these relaxed mixer environments. So after the friends and family, we all went over back to CB labs. And they had that which they typically do, they've got like, kind of this outdoor courtyard. Awesome. And so space track Yeah, they had a food truck that these hamburgers that they were, I mean, you know, I've had some good hamburgers and, you know, being in Chicago OSHA on the best burgers in the world. This food truck had incredible hamburger. And so just, you know, but saying line? Yeah, exactly. So but just being able to kind of stand in line and, and kind of in that relaxed environment, talking to some of the other founders. You know, I think we were, I met some a bunch of people from from batch four, because I think they finished just finished up. So a lot of them were kind of scared. So they're still sticking around, you know, got got to catch up with a couple of the people that were in, in our batch. And then, you know, from there we were, I was able to kind of make some connections. And I think we're all talking about getting in a telegram group for, for getting out to Lisbon later for the next conference, and so like being able to just use that as a platform not only to meet meet investors, but to kind of talk to other some of the other founders in the batch, which I mean, we've talked about, like, you don't necessarily, you know, if you're growing a business, like your heads down, and kind of, you know, unless you're kind of on Twitter, like just chatting with other founders, like not necessarily something you really get to do all the time. So being able to kind of just be in that same environment and kind of talk about their experience going through the incubation program, and kind of their just experience growing and building their own companies. I think it was a good opportunity for us and just shout out to see labs again for for creating that environment.

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Shields  

Yeah, I think it's rare. I mean, it's almost like a Field House environment, right, where it's like, we're all running our own races, but we're on the same team. And like, it was really cool. Like, I think that, like you said, everyone's got different products. Everyone's got different verticals that they're operating in, within within, but kind of like getting that friends and family environment together was really something unique. And I do think they do a really good job with that.

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Ford-Carther  

Oh, anything else you kind of want to touch on or kind of wrap up from CV Summit?

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Shields  

Oh, I mean, it's always a good time. Looking forward to the next one. Like I said, if they're gonna be doing one on Cape Town, we'll be there and otherwise, we'll see him in Switzerland soon. Sweet.

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Ford-Carther  

All right, well, we're gonna wrap for our little CV summit recap. We'll have some more information on that. Coming up, you can actually check out kind of a little bit of our story on our seat on CB labs and our experience there on our website sprinter IO. Follow us at sprinter Dow and jump into discord when you get a chance and kind of we got some alpha coming up. So we'll be able to kind of share a little bit of that and kind of some of the stuff that we've been working on so make sure you join the discord and follow us on our social awesome

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