Turning Ideas Into New Realities | Entrepreneur Stories

The times today are both befuddling and exciting, with entrepreneurs cooking up algorithms that make yesterday's sci-fi look like yesterday's news. Let's meet these digital pioneers who are crazy enough to think they can change the world and just smart enough to actually do it.

Just your your name. Okay, give us your name.

Just say hi.

I'm you know an intro for the show and two lines about your company.

Coming all the way from one of Kazakhstan's growing IT hotspots, Alex Shigay is changing the game with Idos Games.

Actually, I really like to play games since I was maybe like three or four years old. I started from Dendy, then Sega, then personal computer. And like lots of times my mom would get angry because like I play a lot during the nights and sometimes like I was like missing my school. And working in Eidos Games is like making a childhood dream come true. Because, like, my relatives and mom always saying, like, why are you playing so much? And, like, it doesn't bring you anything, like, just wasting your time. And now people can play our games and, like, actually earn tokens. And, like, that's one of those, like, biggest ideas that we're, like, now making, giving to the world. So, first of all, Being a gaming startup in Kazakhstan, it is already a challenge because nobody like even heard about gaming studio that is like located in Kazakhstan. And we were talking with VC or any other guys who are also in gaming industry. Like as I told, like nobody knows, like sometimes they don't know even where Kazakhstan is. And also from the very beginning, Like me and my founder, Idos, have no— hadn't any background like in big gaming studios or companies like Google, like Meta, or any others. That's why we understood from the very beginning that we should make a good product that will make growth from month to month. And like by showing your product, by showing the traction, you will have like good network and like the whole authority for the whole Kazakhstan. Uh, hi everyone, my name is Alex. I'm the CEO and co-founder at IDOS Games. We are creating an ecosystem platform for mobile play-to-earn products like games and applications.

IDOS Games achieves international recognition by prioritizing product excellence, gameplay, user experience, and community engagement.

The first time we felt like we did something like really valuable when we were participating in the worldwide competition called Unicorn Battle. We were the first gaming project from Kazakhstan that passed the Central Asia. After that, we were participating worldwide, and after the competition, we were like, we took the second place. We were Silver Unicorns. And our advisor who's going to in the future just reached out to us on LinkedIn and we said, some Mike Fisher is writing to you. Who is it? And when we checked his portfolio, where did he work? All our team liked Fortnite. We are super fans of this game and we saw that Mike Fisher was the head of publishing of this big company. Also, he worked in Sega and Square Enix and all, like, I think maybe half of the games that you know were made by the companies where Mike worked. And that's why we were like super proud that this kind of like this person writes to you and wants to work with you. And we said like, Hey, we can, like, if this guy writes to us on his own, like, we can change the world. Yeah. So during the Digital Bridge Forum, we have met a little guy who said, hey, you are Eidos Games. I love your game. We were like super pleased. And when his mom came from the corner, he said, oh, you're the Eidos Games. And my son is super addicted at your games. He likes— in the future, he wants to be a game developer. And my heart was like— I don't know my feelings. I was super like an emotional bomb and it just blew up. And I think for that kind of feedback, we are doing the whole stuff because we want to make like a big point, uh, in game development. Like, people should know, like, there are lots of talents in Kazakhstan. And according to moms, like, uh, if the— your, like, child wants to play, I know that sometimes, like, they do more than they're allowed, but anyhow, like, it's, it's kind of good. I have learned that super rich, like, Billionaires are also people with whom you can just go and talk. They're like, I don't know, maybe it's only Mr. Tim Draper, but during conversation with him, I was like totally inspired about how he— about his vision for this world and the pledge of the whole Draper University. I remember it since our online course, I understood what, what the meaning of each word of it, and I'm so grateful.

As Eidos Games continues to push the boundaries of gaming excellence, the studio is poised for a bright future. With a growing portfolio of hit games and a loyal community of players, it is set to become A major player in the global gaming industry.

And if you win, if you end up making it back into the semifinals through viewer voting, and then you win $1 million from Tim Draper, how is that going to make you feel?

I would say awesome, because we've been doing this stuff for about like 3 years, and We really want to help students, talents, to make really good, interesting games because there is no life without fun. And we want to make more people to give these funny things to each other. We've made about tens of thousands of iterations to make our games good. We are like Thomas Edison, who was making like the electricity lamp. You know, he said that, I know 10,000 varieties how to do wrong and only one how to do like good. And that's what's like about Eidos Games.

Full name, your company's name, and then also, you know, quick, um, sort of like one-sentence description of what your company does.

With BitGrit, Kazuya Sagi-Nawa is bridging the AI gap, providing a comprehensive platform that fosters innovation, creativity, and progress.

When I'm a high school student, I met our ex-patent engineer division leader in Hitachi. Hitachi is another Japanese big company, and I learned from the IP from him. In that time, I think current world is developed by engineers, in my feeling. That's why I want to support more, and I feel respect for for the engineer. 2017 is before the AI, how to say, AI is not so major compared to now. In that time, I focusing data science and AI, AI is only on the computer, on the computer only, and Web3 can trace entire process. That's why we focusing. Entire patent supports AI and data science support. We focusing there. My name is Kazuya Sagiwara, and we from BitGrid. BitGrid is mainly 2 parts. One is a data scientist community, and other side is an algorithm library. And we want to provide this algorithm library to everyone. And that means we want to say AI for everyone. Yeah.

Bitgrib enables data scientists to share and utilize algorithms, fostering human-AI collaboration and driving innovation.

My first job is working in Canon, that is a camera maker in Japan, and my part is intellectual property engineer. And I discuss with the engineer every day and making the patent. And but in that time, sometimes patent is a very long journey to profit back to the engineer. And in that time, I feeling I want to help engineer more directly. And in 2016, I saw the blockchain technology. In China, they already using the Bitcoin or Ethereum or something. In that time, I learn smart contract itself, and I want to use this smart contract or feature to patent-related business. That's why I starting Bitgrid or and quit the Canon. Yeah, our platform have a data scientist community. And also we have a Web3-related part. We need to more, how to say, we need to be more famous for the data science layer and also Web3 layer. Mr. Tim has a lot of knowledge for Web3 and he has trust from the Web3 people.

With Bitgrid at the forefront, tomorrow's innovations will be shaped by the limitless potential of human-AI synergy.

So what would you actually do with the million dollars right now if you got that prize money?

Yeah, mainly 2 things. One is using other bots, this kind of Web3 other bots. And second one is we hiring more engineers inside. Because our algorithm library is needed to be developed. Actually, I'm very happy to focus on my project because I love working and I love work itself is not correct. I love to support engineers or how to say, yeah, I want to support engineers. In that perspective, my Current projects are directly related to the engineer support. In that time, yeah, sometimes I feel hard. Hard work is sometimes hard, but basically I'm very happy to work on my project.

Yeah. So, uh, let's just start with an introduction. Your name, your company, and then kind of an elevator pitch, like a short snippet, broad strokes about what you're working on.

From the heart of Paris, Alexandre Roubaud is part of the team at Bitstack, making Bitcoin accessible to all through a platform that's redefining the future Of digital currency investment.

Originally, I'm from the south of France, so a small town called Aix-en-Provence. I grew up, grew up there for almost 17 years, and I was lucky to have always been in international school, so studied in English, always with the objective to move abroad and study abroad. So then after my diploma, I moved to McGill in Montreal, Canada, where I spent actually eight years. And where I met my now co-founder, Kabir. I was in business school, he was in engineering school. And we actually met because we both had this common interest for Bitcoin. So we stumbled upon Bitcoin at different kind of technological meetups where people were chatting about new technologies. And so I learned about Bitcoin and I started a Bitcoin startup actually while studying at McGill, which was financed by McGill University. And my now co-founder Kabir was at the time the first person to start the Bitcoin Blockchain Club at McGill. I've learned about Bitcoin in 2016, so I spent a lot of years just studying it on my own free time. In parallel to that, I really understood while working at this company what, you know, how important helping people put money aside was and, you know, the whole personal finance topic. And Bitcoin's value proposition was really interesting to me because for the first time, we had this very hard asset class that has basically a fixed supply. So we know there was zero Bitcoin with a very predictable issuance up until 21 million Bitcoin, and there will never be no more. And so I thought, if we help people put money aside, but that money basically depreciates in value and people lose purchasing power over time, That's another issue. So my observation was the problem is double-sided. Is A, how do we help people save and help them save to achieve their financial goals? So hi, my name is Alexandre Roubaud. I'm one of the two co-founders of Bitstack and CEO. We're on a mission to democratize Bitcoin here in Europe by building the easiest to use, most trusted, and most secure platform to save and invest in Bitcoin.

Bitstack. Is a user-friendly platform for saving and investing in Bitcoin, providing a secure way to build wealth and protect purchasing power.

So we started this company in 2021 after this new regulation was voted. So we were one, actually one of the first few companies to in France be regulated by basically the equivalent of the SEC. So the Financial Markets Authority here in France. Once we did that, we raised our first round. We raised €1 million to launch the product and acquire our first customers. And, you know, fast forward almost 2 years later, we've now helped over 75,000 people in France save over €35 million in Bitcoin. So we're super excited about the journey that's just actually just getting started. Just last year, we went through Y Combinator in San Francisco. So they've been investors and partners from the very early days, and we're pretty excited about what's coming next. I know Tim is a big fan of Bitcoin. If I'm not mistaken, he is a very big Bitcoin holder. He bought in 2014 a lot of Bitcoin to the US government, in fact. And he's been verbally very— a big promoter of Bitcoin. I think he understands very well Bitcoin's value proposition, how it can be this sound money that redefines society and improves the lives of many people. So there's this feeling that we share these values, that we are very aligned on how impactful Bitcoin can be and where it can bring us. So that would be exciting to work with him and chat about Bitcoin and where we see the future go.

As a pioneer in the European Bitcoin savings space, Bitstack is excited to build on its momentum, expand its reach, and unlock new opportunities for its users.

What would a million-dollar investment do for your company right now?

The goal is to accelerate what we're already doing. A million dollars would help us accelerate our mission of democratizing Bitcoin here in Europe. The goal is to just accelerate what we're already doing, whether that's hiring extremely bright team members, investing in acquiring more users. We already have over 75,000 users who've already bought Bitcoin on the platform, but how can we bring that to hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions of users on the platform and basically invest in product development as well? What we've done is working really well, but What other Bitcoin products can we build for our users so they can drive value out of the app? You kind of have to learn to manage your emotions because you're on this constant roller coaster of, we're doing great, this is going to go very far, to, oh, now the challenges are very hard, this might not go anywhere. And it can be very draining personally if you don't know how to manage these emotions. I think those are the 2 areas where you have to grow. And I think one of the key solutions is to have a very strong co-founder so that you can kind of lay your head on their shoulders. So I've been lucky to have a co-founder and we've been kind of working and helping each other grow.

All right, so, um, let's start out with an intro, just like your full name, your company name, and like kind of an elevator pitch, just like sort of the simplest, broadest version of what you're working on.

From the thriving city of Austin, Matt Harris and Arkatar are transforming the creator economy with a platform that prioritizes people over algorithms, empowering meaningful connections and collaborations.

So my, my career before being an entrepreneur was actually all on the investing side of the table. So I spent about a decade in later-stage private equity investing in, you know, bigger companies that have free cash flow and EBITDA, mainly in the industrial space. And then I spent the last 3 years Investing in, from 2020 to 2023, investing in pre-seed, seed, and Series A startups, mainly as a deep tech investor. So like a lot of dual-use stuff, a lot of outer space stuff. I would couch us as we're approaching our seed round, which, so to me, pre-seed is like team and a dream, and seed is, you know, team and a product and a couple users or customers. And so we're right there at the seed stage. And so we've got a 30-person team. That is all over the world. So we're fully remote. We're headquartered here in Austin. That's where most of our team members are. And we are looking to, you know, we have a core group of users that started using the product, and we're looking to get ready to scale that into the market.

Cool.

My name is Matt Harris. I'm the CEO and co-founder of a startup called Arcatar, and we are making it so that creator communities can have trusted, cross-platform, human-only relationships. What we're doing on the data side, I think, is fairly unique in that we're doing 2 things. One is we're building in mechanisms to give permission and consent across platforms. So if you read all the regulations that have rolled out, like GDPR and CCPA, and I think about 60% of the world, like I think 14 US states, have rolled out these data privacy laws, and the common language across all these things is permissioning and consent. People have to give you permission and consent it to you in order for you to use their data. And there's no way to do that today. There's actually— there's no way to do it at scale. And so that's where we come in on the data side. We're creating one spot where you can give your permissions and your consents across all the platforms and get paid for that, is the idea. And the second thing that we're doing is really, really hard. And it's really what I meant when I said what we're doing is really big and hard. is that the thing that's missing from the data security landscape is legal standing to own things in the digital world. And that is— and that's why, you know, because we don't have any legal standing in the digital world, like you in the physical world is not— you're not connected to yourself in the digital world legally.

Arketar empowers individuals to control their digital identity, manage permissions and consent, and own their data, revolutionizing data security.

The thing that really made it, the moment that really stuck out to me that I kind of crossed over the threshold was when I was talking to my wife about this. And we started dating when we were super young. We started dating when we were 14, and we've known each other since we were 10. And I was talking to her about it. And, you know, I've spent 15 years at some of the best investment companies in the world, and people think of me, and I think I think of myself, you know, as a, you know, sort of white-shoe finance guy. But I was talking to her and telling her about the opportunity, and she basically said, like, isn't this what you wanted to do when you were a kid? Like, isn't this what you talked about when you were 15? And that was like kind of an eye-opening moment that like, this is what I want to do, you know? This is what I've always wanted to do. But the Draper organization is really big on entrepreneurs being superheroes. And they're really encouraging of failure. And so those are the two things that I think pre-seed and seed founders need the most is connections and encouragement.

As Arkataar continues to pioneer the future of data ownership and consent, it's poised to unlock a new era of digital autonomy, empowerment, and innovation.

What would a million-dollar investment mean?

A million-dollar investment for us would basically mean that we can get our first 2 products fully into the market and scaling, and we could be on our way to totally changing the relationship that every person, business, government, and bot has with their digital identities, relationships, content, and assets. And so we could do a lot with $2 million, both to make our investors a lot of money and make the world a better place. I think people that knew me when I was younger, uh, that knew me like in middle school and high school, would see me now and they'd be like, makes sense, uh, that is, that is right where I thought Matt would be. He would be, uh, he'd have a family, uh, and, uh, and he'd be running some company trying to do something crazy. Um, and then anybody that met me after my early 20s, kind of after I got into the professional world is shocked that I would do anything this crazy and stick with it for this long, even though I've had to make a good amount of sacrifices already. And so I think the, you know, early college, high school version of me would look at me now and be like, yeah, that's what your goals were, so you did it. And would be proud and would have no idea how hard it is.