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Richard Carthon Of The Edge Of Company - Pioneering The Future Of Web3 Tech And Culture
Welcome to a brand-new chapter of The Edge of NFT podcast! We’re thrilled to introduce our new host, Crypto Current CEO Richard Carthon, as he takes the reins of this cutting-edge show and leads us into the fascinating world of NFTs with a fresh perspective. In his first episode with us, Richard shares his passion for blockchain technology, digital art, and the limitless potential of NFTs. As an NFT enthusiast and tech aficionado, he brings a wealth of knowledge and a deep curiosity to the show. With the rapidly evolving landscape of blockchain and NFTs, we’re excited to explore groundbreaking projects, game-changing innovations, and insightful interviews with top creators, collectors, and industry experts. Richard’s vision for the podcast is to delve into the untapped possibilities of NFTs, uncovering their impact on art, gaming, entertainment, and beyond. Join in and share in this excitement!
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Richard Carthon Of The Edge Of Company - Pioneering The Future Of Web3 Tech And Culture
This is Richard Carthon, your new host of the show. This episode talks about my journey into the world of all things Web3. Join me as we help you on your journey to learning more about all things Web3.
Stay tuned for this episode. Learn how our guest and our newest co-host’s first step into AI immediately took a twist and inspired his passion for blockchain technology, plus how slinging in chocolate bars as a young man led to our guest’s stellar sales skills.
**Also, learn how Snoop Dogg joined a $20 million Series A funding round for music NFT Platform Sound.xyz. It’s official. You can now dive into the captivating world of artificial intelligence with this show. Join us as we explore the frontiers of AI and its impact on our lives. Subscribe now on your favorite platform and follow us on Twitter at @EdgeOf_AI and LinkedIn for exciting updates and insights. You can also visit our new website at **EdgeOfAI.xyz.
Our guest is our newest host. We are featuring Richard Carthon, our newest host of the show and a key member of the Edge Of Team. Richard has gained notoriety for his collaborative approach to challenging the existing practices of startups, small businesses, and established firms. He has an extensive background in media, producing over 300 episodes on his previous podcast, and his claim to fame started when he scored a touchdown in the movie, The Longshots, back in 2008. He has had a curiosity in media ever since. Richard’s listeners have described him as authentic, lively, and knowledgeable. Richard, what’s going on? Welcome to the show.
What’s up, everybody? I’m glad to be a part of this. We can now dive a little bit deeper and you all can learn a little bit more about me as we keep learning more about all these other movers and shakers in the world of Web3. Glad to be here.
I’m sure folks have been reading this show learning about your passion for sports and gaming and your unique perspective in the space and wondering, “Who is this guy?”
I get to get a little deeper insight into a little bit of that. I’m pumped to be able to share some of that with you all.
It’s been amazing working with you for years. You have been such a key member of this squad and you are so multifaceted. It’s great to have you around. I know I’m going to learn some things about you now as well.
It’s been a lot of fun. I’m good about work to get done, but still plenty more to get done. It’s been a lot of fun to meet all of the amazing people still in this space no matter what’s going on, and we still have a lot of awesome people to meet as well.
There’s a lot more wood to chop. Speaking of chopping wood, which is such the quintessential cliché around being an entrepreneur, it fits the bill. You have been a serial entrepreneur with a pretty unique beginning to your career, and this is one area I’m curious to learn more about. How did all this Richard Carthon media business get started?
I went to college at Tulane University. I was a dual sport athlete. For most of my life, I thought I was either going to be a doctor or a lawyer. In freshman year, I discovered I didn’t like Math and Science. I said, “We are going to be a lawyer.” In my junior year, I started to learn about entrepreneurship. I started my first startup and built a website and even built a mobile app. It was a lot of fun. It was a part of me that I never knew was there. It sparked my curiosity. Going into my senior year, I had my first startup that I would be able to raise money for and got into law school. I was trying to decide if I should do that or do I pursue this passion. I was like, “Let’s see how it plays out.”
I was able to start my first job as a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch doing wealth management, but then I was also able to do my startup, which at the time was a calendar application that I called Follow My Account. I was able to raise some money for it about six months into the job and decided, “I’m going to go all in. Let’s see what happens.”
I was able to hire my first employee, go through the whole thing, and I was able to go through some accelerators in New Orleans and it was awesome. I got to a point where I had to make a critical decision about how I extend my runway because I found my product market fit, but I needed to raise more money to build those parts to then turn into a SaaS model because, originally, it was a B2C, but I turned into B2B.
I went from trying to like, “Do I get a ton of users?” Eventually, I monetize it to, “I have a little bit of users. They are willing to spend money on it. Let’s flip the switch and turn that on.” From doing that, I took myself off of payroll and fortunately had to let go of my employee and started doing some fundraising in the background while I started a job in AI as a sales rep. That’s how I first learned about crypto. That was a very untraditional way of getting into entrepreneurship but then also learning about what would become my future passion.
Part of entrepreneurship that is so difficult is they don’t tell you the part where you only have so many chess moves on the board. You might be able to go back 1 move but you can’t go back 10 moves. Sometimes at the end of the day, despite that effort to keep persistent and curious, you can run on a chess move.
There are a lot of great lessons that you probably learned that can apply to any company. It goes to this lean startup mentality that we always talk about on the show. It’s so important, Web3 especially, where you get these companies with these massive visions and roadmaps. Do they have product market fit yet? Have they discovered who their true customers are?
It’s a hard one. Blissful ignorance can bring you a long way to be persistent enough to want to keep figuring things out and saying, “No matter where it goes, I will keep finding a solution to keep things going.” There’s a lot of good in that, but I also think it’s good as you learn core lessons to be able to move faster or get the help that you need or discover how you can pivot faster and everything else. Pivot was a big word that I learned in the course what it means to be an entrepreneur. I have experienced burnout before and know what that means too. It’s good to work hard. It’s good to have a vision of where you are going, but it is also good to, every once in a while, take a step back, breathe the moment, and then be reenergized and get back after it.
It is cool how you intersected with AI and blockchain early in your career and made me reflect on some elements of my career. We are starting this new show, which you probably know about if you have been reading the show or checking us out on social. Before I even got into blockchain, I was doing geospatial data intelligence work for the government when I started my first business with Jeff and some other guys.
We ended up creating an algorithm around how you serve people high-quality meals and a creative rotation where they don’t get bored. There’s an interesting juxtaposition between AI and blockchain. They are different paths to similar goals around operational efficiency and proving transparency but also protecting privacy, but at the same time, they do intersect for a lot of people over the years and now they are both on fire. I’m super curious how that plays out in the next few years, which is one reason we have these two shows.
When I pivoted and started working at this AI company, the first day on the job, the boss said, “What do you know about Bitcoin and Ethereum?” I said, “What is that?” He said, “Those are cryptocurrencies.” I said, “What is that?” He said, “Look into it.” I did. I went down the rabbit hole and immediately became immersed and thought that this was my internet moment. This is my opportunity to get in the front of this new innovative technology that’s going to transform.
My first love was Ethereum. It made sense to me. It was a platform and language that things would be built on top of these decentralized apps, these gaps, and all this stuff. You started having all these terms that started coming up that I had no idea what any of them meant, but I wanted to learn. I started to go online and a lot of the information at the time. This is 2018 at the top of the market before that first crash where Bitcoin was at $19,000 and Ethereum was at $1,800 and Ripple was at $2.
We know what happens next. What’s interesting about that moment was all the information online was either super technical or how to get rich quickly. Nothing was trying to break things down, make it very simple, and help your common person be able to see what’s going on. I wanted to learn and I wanted to help other people learn on my journey. I created a podcast called Crypto Current that I ran for a few years with over 300 episodes. The whole idea was to boost the gap between people who do nothing with thought leaders.
The Edge Of NFT: All the information online was either super technical or how to get rich quick. Nothing was trying to break things down, make it very simple, and help your common person be able to see what’s going on.
On that journey, I was able to make so many amazing connections. I have learned a ton and then be able to educate people along the way. It has opened a lot of doors to other things within the Web3 blockchain space. To your point, things have come full circle. I started in AI. I got passionate about blockchain and now going back into AI, getting even deeper into it. It’s all very synergistic and lets me know that going down this path was the right way and where I was meant to be.
There’s a lot I can relate to. That’s one reason why you have been such a great fit for the culture here at Edge Of Company. You skimmed past over 300 episodes of a show as someone who’s been podcasting. We have done 250-plus episodes. This one is probably around 260 if I’m not mistaken. That’s a heck of a lot of media training or on-the-job training that you got. It’s interesting how it led you to do some event stuff and now become here. I’m curious if there are any special episodes of this show that stood out for you as career-defining moments or were enlightening in some way that impacted your journey.
I will point to two. The very first one that impacted me was I interviewed Yan Pritzker who’s the CTO of Swan Bitcoin. They were very young at the beginning of their journey and they are huge now. They have their conference and all this stuff. He was breaking down why Bitcoin is so important and revolutionary and why it’s a strong consideration to have some diversification into it.
He told me a story about how unfortunately his grandmother was around the Holocaust times, ended up leaving, surviving, and then going over to the States. When that happened, the only value that she had to think of was jewelry, and then the guards took it from her. When she got to America, she had nothing and had to build it up. If something like Bitcoin existed, being able to know a seed phrase and have it be in a place, you don’t even have to physically have a drive on. You are able to go anywhere in the world, remember your phrase, and now all your wealth can go with you. That’s that generational wealth that stuck with me. It was the first time I started considering the diversification of Bitcoin, what that means, and how that can evolve. That was impactful for me.
Another cool opportunity was speaking with ShapeShift when they announced that they were going to be the first DAO organization. That was such a fun conversation. It was this new thing DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organization what it means and all those things. He was able to break that down for me explaining how the company was going in that direction.
I got a real keen interest in that and started getting more involved with DAOs. I live in Austin, Texas. I’m now part of the ATX DAO. I started to participate in that and understand that DAOs are the new age LLCs and how that can impact the future of the world. It’s been a lot of fun discovering and learning about so much innovation happening in this space early as things are being built and then starting to see where things ultimately land and end up.
Austin has a great ecosystem and glad to have you on the ground there, having eyes on what’s going on in that part of the world where I’m holding down the fort in Venice. Not a bad spot either. When did NFTs cross your paradigm and what was that like?
I have been in this space since 2018. I started to educate and do all this stuff. When everyone’s ears perked up, everyone wanted to learn information. It was in 2001 when the NFT started to take over. This is early 2021. I have aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends hitting me up, “What is an NFT? I know you are in crypto and all that. That sounds cool. Tell me about NFTs.”
It was that a-ha moment of we always talk about what is that intersection between bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3. That first moment for me was when I started to see, “This is happening with NFTs.” I know enough about NFTs. I heard about them from a good friend of mine. Shout-out to Blockchain Wayne. He is the one who introduced me to Josh and the Edge Of Team. One of the first episodes I had was him talking about NFTs.
I knew about this back in late 2018 or early 2019 but didn’t pay a lot of mind and attention. I should have missed out on that one, but it reinvigorated the need to be able to learn more about this. I started digging more into this and getting more involved in some different communities and everything else. When we eventually met, I was deeper along my NFT journey and there are a lot of synergies between the immense space, NFTs, Web3, and being able to expand all that. There was a ton of synergies in wanting to come, participate, and be a part of the Edge Of Team.
You were trying to figure out what was next for your journey and you didn’t take the decision to join our team lightly. It was a big decision on our side too because we care a lot about the DNA of this company. Every member of the squad not only integrates with that DNA but helps us evolve that DNA over time. I’m curious. Why us?
The Edge Of Team is doing a lot of awesome things. I did an event back in 2019 in New Orleans introducing Web3 to that local community. When I came to Austin in 2020, I knew I wanted to do an event, but COVID happened. I then decided, “Let’s do one in 2022.” The end of 2022 was rougher conditions. A lot of big things started happening such as SBF and everything else going on. Timing is always impeccable, but I knew that I liked events. I knew that I enjoyed being able to bring people together and have them both be educated network and overall have a good time. I enjoy that process and I wanted to learn how to scale that up.
I also wanted to see how I could grow to the next phase and what it means to be a larger media company. I was starting to go through this and starting to process a lot of it. Shout-out to Wayne. I met him at a conference and was walking him through my thinking and everything else. He was like, “I got someone great to introduce you to.” He talked about Josh. He is like, “They are looking for some help. They are getting ready to do NFT LA, which is now rebranded to Outer Edge LA. They need some support and I’m happy to make an intro.” I did and we have been working together since. It’s been great to see one being able to pull off that event in general.
It was awesome getting to see or meet all the different people. We get to go and have a lot of cool experiences between getting to go to places like November, being able to go to consensus, and our event. We still have more places to go later this 2023. It’s amazing to keep meeting these people building now during the hardest time to be building during this bear market. The bear markets are tough. You see here what people are made of. Also, knowing that surviving this moment where the seeds that we are planting are going to bear such great fruit and trees once we get on the other side of this, and I feel good about that.
The Edge Of NFT: Surviving this moment, the seeds that we’re planting are going just bear such great fruit once we get on the other side of this.
I’m looking forward to our upcoming trip to Seoul, Korea for Korea Blockchain Week and then we will be heading over to TOKEN2049. If you are reading and you are going to be on the ground in one of those places, drop us a note. Let’s meet up. Let’s figure out some ways to collaborate. Let’s build in this builder’s market together. Let’s eat some good Korean food or Korean barbecue. I’m all about that.
I’m pumped for it. We are going to eat good and see some new stuff. Even when we go out to Singapore, it would be cool to see that culture as well. Those are some fun things ahead.
Let’s get people a little glimpse at least behind the scenes at what’s going on in the Edge Of Company. We are a team and everyone touches a little bit of everything. It’s the Web3 way. We have been helping get this show off the ground, which by the time folks read this we will have officially launched. That’s an exciting milestone for us. What else have been cooking up?
As Josh said, it was a big decision to decide to launch another podcast in conjunction with everything else we are doing. There is a lot of work going into that and continue to expand it. That was a good focus. Also, looking within the organization itself. During various times, you have to become creative and scrappy and figure out efficient ways to get a lot done.
We have been doing a lot of things within our brand and figuring out how to update our branding content. Also, figuring out from an internal org how to maximize the amount of goods and helpful tools that we can give to our end readers. Ultimately, all the information, things, and content that we are creating is for you, the end reader or end user, so how do we keep amplifying that? How do we keep making sure that we are growing that community and providing the things that you care about and that you love and that you keep coming back and reading us for?
It is finding those key things, amplifying them, and then how I help make the process to get there a little bit more efficient. On top of that, looking at our big major event, what the future of that looks like. What are some cool partnerships that we can put together? What are some strategic things the people that we can be working with keep putting on such amazing content and doing more things like Twitter Spaces? We did one that went extremely well. Shout-out to everybody that came and visited us on that.
Let’s do it.
I can sling some chocolate.
I sold a package for Edge Of.
What are you going to do next after the show?
Sure.
Important Links
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@EdgeOf_AI - Twitter
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LinkedIn - Edge Of AI Podcast
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Richard Carthon - Twitter
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Spotify - Edge of NFT Podcast
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iTunes - Edge of NFT Podcast