Ep 81: Building a cute, educational & interactive NFT platform for Web3 beginners | Mai Akiyoshi (CEO & Co-Founder, Curious Addys' Trading Club)

What this episode covers

It’s time to meet our 5th #Web3 #NFT guest on STIMY! Mai Akiyoshi is a Silicon Valley engineer from Japan who has had a rather unconventional route littered with what one might conventionally consider to be “failures”. And it all began… with Mai applying for a sales position at a Japanese company. The company decided unilaterally that they would train her up as a software engineer instead and it proved to be really difficult. She was consistently at the bottom of her cohort, but still made it through the training and… got into the most technically demanding department of the company, where she was treated like an alien! Mai then got into a startup by accident - applying for a position she had no prior qualifications in, and even tried to rescind her application! That position eventually led her to the States, where she met Ben Yu (her co-founder & partner) through Nuseir of Nasdaily/Nas Academy and where her Web3 journey began. Now, Mai is the CEO and co-founder of Curious Addys, a Web3 startup building the best educational platform and community for newcomers to Web3 while celebrating ADHD. She is building ember.help, a platform where anyone can ask questions on Web3 and get guaranteed answers from experts. If you’re interested in all things Web3/thriving despite all the difficulties that life throws at you, then this is definitely the episode for you. Highlights: 2:32 Growing up in Japan 4:35 Being diagnosed with ADHD 5:55 Being influenced by her grandparents, who founded their own company after World War II 7:02 Wanting to go to the US 8:27 Applying for a sales position & becoming a software engineer 10:02 Japan’s shaming culture 11:29 Feeling like she’d landed on an alien planet 12:24 Moving to a new startup, Logbar 14:18 Moving to the US 15:03 How Nuseir of Nas Academy introduced her to Ben Yu & is the “mother” of Curious Addys 16:56 Studying at App Academy 19:19 Becoming the senior software engineer at Gusto 21:55 How Mai first entered the Web3 space 22:51 Why Ethereum is so interesting 23:37 Meeting Zeneca & helping him with his smart contract 24:47 Starting a Tamagochi education platform? 26:54 Why NFTs are here to stay 28:23 NFTs are the best way to bootstrap a community 29:32 The vision behind Curious Addys’ Trading Club: Education, Cute, NFTs 32:07 Why an octopus for a mascot? 33:56 The early days of building Curious Addys 36:01 Finding her founding team members 37:24 Maintaining the right values as the community grows 39:28 100% refund policy 40:15 Why release only 5,000 in the initial launch 40:51 How they promoted Curious Addys’ Trading Club 42:02 Building partnerships 42:59 The type of products under Curious Addys’ Trading Club 44:39 What is Ember? 47:03 NFT portfolio tracker 50:12 Reading smart contracts 52:35 Mai’s favourite NFT 53:53 What Mai believes in that most people don’t in the crypto space 54:15 Biggest mistake Mai has done in the Web3 space 55:03 How to spot NFT/crypto scams 📍Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/81 💌 Sign up for the weekly STIMY newsletter: https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/ebf231f605 🪙 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sothisismywhy