Welcome to Boostly Podcast Episode 412. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I talked about how Web 3.0 will affect the hospitality industry.
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Timestamp
00:00 Start
1:00 Why Web 3.0 and Digital Currency
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Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
I like people, I like communities, and I don't like companies. Even if I work in companies, and I have a company, I mean, I find that people are better together when they are between amongst friends or communities, and they tend to be like the company environment tends to take not the best out to people. That's the answer your question like, Why? Why I like this, I think it's like, part of my character. And it's just I'm just naturally drawn to things which can be done together as people. And I also like to do things on my own. So as I was saying before, but I think is right, we should repeat this. I see the internet. So the new thing in humanities, just 25 by 25 years old. And he's going to be with us for a long time, I guess, has already gone through to us. So the web one is the 95 2005 period, more or less. And let's forget before 95 was really, really just for nerds. And that period you could you know, do a website, sell some stuff online, even get some direct bookings. It goes peer to peer people interact with people through a website, right. So the internet was a way for people to find each other and transact a little bit that was not real money exchange, no paper on and stuff came at the end of this cycle. And that was amazing for me personally, because I could build my own business, I could travel, I had my booking platform, like Airbnb, but before Airbnb small scale. And so for me, in my life, the internet, made it you know, opened the possibility to not have a job and go to an office but travel the world. So basically, it was life changing, right?
And then 2005 And say, now we have the, you know, the big companies came in big investments, startups first and then they grow into monopolies very often. And that that's not a nice period for me. I mean, it's been great for the entire it's been great as a consumer, it is great as a consumer. We are in a platform clubhouse, we use Facebook use Amazon, Google, Airbnb, this is beautiful from the user point of view, right? But from a mater point of view, from an entrepreneur point of view. I don't know. There's this narrative in which you build a startup and you become the next big thing. But statistically, this is not going to happen. Statistically, if you do a startup is going to fail, or it's going to become like, they call them zombie companies. And it's a horrible way to call them because a company is something we just you know, works. Why do you have a start-up to monopoly? Narrative, you have to make it big or go home, right? I never liked this thing. And I really understood it. And of course, my own experience was bad because I basically lost my business. I had to reinvent myself open a startup and then work on the platforms, be on Airbnb on booking etc. And maybe because I, my previous experience was so good. I had the feeling very early on that that that was not gonna end well. When you gave all the power to a law firm and this platform is a company which is driven by profit. And profit itself is not a bad thing, but the dynamic is money machines. So these corporations have their to make money. And then they share the money with the people working in the company and with investors, right? So this kind of hierarchical structure, investors first users later, doesn't end well for the user, especially for the supply side, right? In our case, this has been, like very apparent at the beginning of COVID, when Airbnb decided that our money wasn't our money. And he gave it back to the they gave it back to the host to the guests. Right. And, and that's not the worst part. The worst part is that we do not own anything on the internet today.
Web two is the web where we are renting, we are all renting the only thing we own, the only asset we actually own is the domain name, right. Any other accounts, we have a line as a business, or b&b booking, Amazon, whatever we have, is for rent for renting means that can be taken away from us anyway. Or it can become ineffective because of an algorithm change. If you are a YouTuber, and YouTube decides that your content is no good, you go from 10,000 visits to the age of zero, or maybe even the platform, right? If if a customer in Airbnb, the size of your co2 detector is a camera and you're spying on them. Airbnb may close your account without even going through due process, right? So we are renting. And it's been fine for a while, you know, it always starts very nicely because they attract the supply side, they need host so also treated very well. And then the fight becomes about the guests. And we've seen this happening the last four or five years, when it's been clear to all of us that we were not anymore as a supply side, we're not treated as well as before, and the guest was the one that was like, on top stage, right. And that means lower margins for us, it means less security, etc, etc. Which is fine. I mean, I'm not I'm not we're waiting and crying about this business, you want to do it good. Otherwise, stay home and get a job right and personally that but that I want to give a positive spin on this, it's going to get back better for us. Because we will we are entrepreneurs, we want to do things, we're going to create things we want to work with people. But you know, we want to do this. Also because want to be free. And especially in the vacation rental space. Freedom is an important fact, right? It's a noncorporate or, like less corporate and other industries is more friendly. If you go to a conference, you're not going to be with no suit and ties, you can talk to everyone like you know, the top guys are going to be very friendly to you. I imagined in Wall Street or in a Finance Conference, it's going to have superstars. So the freedom part human human human part of our industry speaks for, you know what we actually want from this, this job basically, right? We don't want only to make money, we want to be in a nice environment, right?
And so web 3 is great for us. Because it's the internet of communities, the web of communities, right. And by community, I mean that we as entrepreneurs can decide to build something like Airbnb, like booking like any other huge company, and actually succeed this time. And I won't get into knowing the mechanics of this, but basically, because of cryptocurrencies we can coordinate better, is much cheaper and faster to coordinate, right. And I'm experiencing this with our project trips, we build a very big community right now is going really fast. No one is paid. There's no managers, there's no salaries, but we are providing value to each other. Right. And you're learning to at the same time, so the platform is going to be just the last thing on top of it. Right the booking platform and so it's great news for all of us.
The one thing I have to say it's very hard to explain. It was really hard to explain the Internet to somebody who had never been online. Right? Because they would ask you, what can you do on the internet? Why you can look at a webpage? It's like a newspaper, right? Yeah. What's on the screen? Right? Okay. You get an email. Emails, right, right. It's like a fax. Very hard to explain. You have to experience the web to understand it. And for the web three is the same thing. You can read books you can follow. YouTubers, you can listen to what I'm saying today. It's not gonna really help. You have to go online, download a wallet, get some crypto $10 $100 I'm not talking about investments here. right just get some crypto and start playing with it
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