Zachary Jordan on Goodbit's bitcoin and blockchain education platform

0:20of information on good bit if you could tell us exactly what is good but and what was the vision for you and your team when you started the project yeah I'd say in a nutshell good bit is an education platform for the general public and when I was a student at Brown my co-founders and I had been involved our currency for a couple of years we're actually relative newcomers to the

0:43space relative to people who've been here since the very beginning and when we were first getting involved with blockchain and cryptocurrency it was very difficult for us to really get a handle on what everything was how it worked how were we able to really trust the technology and get our hands on some really quality information and so we started looking around to see if

1:03there were any sites that really provided high quality pre information to people and you know we ended up dredging reddit and we're all over YouTube and there's you know there's there's there's information that's dispersed but it's really siloed in different areas all over the internet and that's a problem if you're just someone who has five to ten minutes and you want to learn what

1:21bitcoin is or you want to learn what blockchain is and you don't really know where to start or where to go the other problem was a lot of these educational sites used very technical language so if you're just your normal person which most of us are we were when we start at the now and everyone's there at some point you're really not interested in those super deep technical details and

1:40to be honest they're not relevant at first so we wanted to create the platform that would allow people to really have access to that high quality information for free we wanted to turn all in one place the other thing that we noticed that was missing from this face were videos that were really professionally well made I guess you could say so you have all kinds of

2:01interviewers like yourself that do a great job of exposing new projects that are working on things but in terms of just rate you know down to details information on the very very basics most companies too just don't have the budget for it or the intro doing it because that's not their main focus right and so we decided to make it ours so hopefully we can provide the

2:20information for those companies and for the general public so that you guys don't have to put in that effort yourselves that's great sack and yeah there's definitely a lot of confusion about where to find the proper information and to do it concisely because it can be very complex when you get into Bitcoin and there are steps you need to sort of learn the fundamentals first

2:43so are you guys mainly targeting people that you know this is day one with Bitcoin or do you also provide a little bit of intermediate and advanced information yeah yeah of course so our bread and butter is our 101 series which is takes you through Bitcoin blockchain everything that you would need to know to get started and that's really targeted at beginners that's

3:02water-cooler talk that's everything that you need to get started we also have a ton of in-depth information on our site as well though so we have in-depth articles on everything from mining to cryptographic hash functions breaking down math really diving into the technical details as well I would say that we're mainly targeting you know the majority of people and those people

3:21haven't heard much beyond Oh Bitcoin had this huge price bomb is it real I'm not really sure what even is blockchain how does that relate to Bitcoin is that a technology or is Bitcoin the same thing is blockchain so that's that's really our main focus and that's mostly because I think that the vast majority of people really haven't become involved with this

3:41space yet it's still small and it's growing rapidly but a lot of times all people hear about is the price action and that's because it drives interest in this space but I think that for this entire space to really expand and for the technology to be recognized for its true potential you have to have educated people right so for example when the internet first came along you don't have

4:02to know how the internet works but you have to be able to know what it's capable of how you use it and why that matters and why it's relevant to your life and so that's really what we focus on we also really pride ourselves on the language style that we use so we speak all in plain English it's very colloquial you'll see in our videos we're wearing just a standard

4:19button-down you know we try to be you know the person that yeah a friend that you met who knows a little bit and isn't trying to talk down to anyone we're just providing simple straightforward information so that you can make your own decisions on what you think is the right thing yeah that's a great analogy analogy Jack sak and so as you mentioned a lot of

4:38people get into the industry through seeing the prices and the markets going up yet you guys talk a lot about the fundamentals are you going to expand into markets technical analysis or talking about specific blockchain projects are you going to stick to just how the networks work yes so we actually have a whole section on our site about investing and our whole thesis on that

5:02is don't invest unless first of all you know the basic tenants of investing so we're talking do your own research right do your due diligence understand what you should really be looking for and then the second of all you know you should really understand the technology before you put any money into it right I think that was a big problem and that's

5:22why I think in a lot of ways sometimes well the blockchain industry gets a bad rep because people you know they hear about this crazy price action they invest without knowing what they're getting themselves into and then a lot of times they get burned that was actually one of the main drivers behind you know the importance of this project and one of the main reasons that we

5:39decided to take this on is we saw that too many people have the wrong impression because they weren't really sure how to get started safely so we have a whole section on our website that details how to safely do your background research what are the important factors you should be looking for and then you know some details about how to invest safely if you want to we're not trying

5:59to push anyone to invest in the space but the tools are there for them we actually have custom-built and interactive tools to help people pick for example the best exchanges for them depending on what they're interested in and also the best wallis to safely store their funds once they've purchased that if they choose to so we've expanded into that and additionally right now our main

6:19focus in terms of content has been on pushing out lots and lots of video content and so we do that in the form of you know maybe more intensive five to ten minute videos on the basics and the fundamentals and then we focus on smaller one two to three minute videos on for example individual coins individual protocols perhaps details about certain types of investing

6:42stuff like that coins versus tokens more due diligence things so we are not financial advisors but we do want to make sure that everyone out there has the opportunity to get themselves a kind of a quality education that they will need to make educated decisions that's great Zach and I really appreciate high quality video content there definitely needs to be more of that in the scene

7:02and a lot of people are finding that searching through video is becoming the number one way to learn more information now so that's really great to hear that you guys have got on top of that I'd love to hear a little bit more about good bits partners and investors so far in the project yeah so we came out to California from Brown University kind of because we were so interested in the

7:26project we just dropped everything came out to California and started working on the project so initially we were bootstrapping and we managed to get ourselves involved in the crypto community it is still pretty small I find and some of the people we met were give us fantastic advice and eventually became advisors and investors so are our main investors right now our Jeremy

7:49Gardner and I'm a newsie of Austin ventures and Jeremy is famous for his crypto castle which he I believe he just started anyone in Miami as well so he's had a fantastic treasure trove of knowledge and he actually was able to really help us out through his blockchain education network which was a consortium of college Bitcoin and blockchain clubs that work together to

8:10support each other and they've been very supportive of us and then in terms of partnerships we were looking at partnering with a lot of a lot of companies in the space so as I mentioned education just really isn't the main focus for a lot of companies in the space nor should it be right you guys are busy building out the technical infrastructure for things that will

8:29totally change the world so a lot of times there isn't the budget there isn't the time there isn't a priority to really focus on the education so what we do is we offer our content to these companies to use to help educate their audiences which is ultimately good for everyone so we are working with a market cap right now and we have a couple of other partnerships in the pipeline that

8:49I wants to be too until they totally materialize but we really would like to integrate our content into other people's websites and outlets such that they have the opportunity to really educate their audiences and something that I don't think I'm interested earlier that's actually really important is that everything we do is for free right when we came out and we started this project

9:08we were actually a non-profit originally so we were in the process of being housed underneath the blockchain education networks 501 C 3 structure so we're currently a public benefit corporation and all of the information that we provide for people is totally for free no strings attached and you know there's no ads on our side or anything and so people often ask okay

9:29well how are you guys making any money and the answer is one generous viewers and people who believe in the blockchain space to impact investors who believe that by investing in our company they're investing in space as a whole and three we have affiliation links for products and services that we can thoroughly vet and use ourselves so we don't recommend anything that we don't

9:50actually personally use yeah that's great and I was just going to touch on revenue models and creating a sustainable business and it's great to have all this information for free because that is should how it should be but at the same time you realize that you need to create a sustainable business and the people that are pushing out this content delivering this value

10:08need to sustain their lives as well so currently you guys are working with affiliate networks there's a lot of hardware wallets exchanges buys and sells on which have opportunities for your company to make money do you see that as a sustainable business in itself or do you expand into additional revenue models as you continue to grow well we considered gated content options but we

10:35decided ultimately that would decrease the trust that our viewers and our readers that our listeners have in us so we've decided to state a course with that model we are very very frugal in our expenditures so we actually have a very very low burn rate we basically put every dollar that we have into producing this video content and so that allows us to really push out a lot

10:57so I mean in the future we have dozens and dozens of the videos backlog that are in post-production right now we write regular vlogs we and that newsletters so it's written and video content on all all manner of different topics and we push that out on a regular basis and we actually have enough logs for at least the next year to come at this point and I'm sure there

11:18will be you know we'll be making more as time goes on with also where we're working primarily with those affiliate networks but also with our impact investors who understand that what they're doing is making an investment not only you know kind of a philanthropic investments in the space but they're also making a very real economic investment because the more

11:38people that are involved in a space that directly correlates to perhaps there are other investments as well so for example I'm awesome ventures who is our main investing partner you know we're part of their portfolio but if you look at their other blockchain company portfolio those are all people who need lots and lots of users using their platform so the more

11:58people we can get involved in the space number one the more safe and stable the space will become number two the better all these companies that are that are working within the space will be doing as well so it's really a it's a cyclical positive feedback loop in that sense and we're hoping that we can really build that kind of trust with people so right

12:17now what we're really focusing on is getting getting this content which is totally free it's high-quality it makes perfect sense it's in English right no gobbledygook you could give it to your grandma she would understand it we actually use that as a test we gave it to our grandma's and we want to put it in front of as many eyes as possible so we are really excited about the

12:38opportunity to work with a number of companies and publications to really get this out there and in front of as many eyes as as we can that's great Zach and as you continue to expand are you also looking for more strategic partnerships investors or team members or just more publications well absolutely I think our main focus at this point is strategic

12:59partnerships for sure I think that of course you know it's the more the more money we have the more we can pump in SU SEO so that people who are googling things like Bitcoin come across us and not some scam website right but also in addition to that you know we're really looking for these companies already have a user base that maybe hasn't been fully converted yet so a lot

13:22of people for example might download a wallet app and never quite use it because they aren't a hundred percent sold on it yet and so taking the existing people that have heard about the Bitcoin and blockchain space and the whole space to the whole cryptocurrency and to making those people and turning them into true members of the community rather than an

13:42auxilary members of the community is really where a lot of that opportunity lasts we're totally in the market for Tsukiji partnerships and we're you know we're very excited to be working with coin market kappa they've been an excellent partner as well that's great to hear and if there are partners that are looking to get involved with good bit or just people looking to learn more

13:59information what's the best way for them to get involved yeah well we put out videos every single week at good bit on YouTube so please subscribe check those out and then we're on twitter at good bit 101 and our website is www.seannal.com mining on cryptographic hash functions we have beginner stuff

14:32and everything is video based so if you want if you only have five minutes this is the place for you amazing I'll leave those links in the description box below thanks so much for your time today Zak it's been a pleasure learning about good bit and let's follow up in the near future as you continue to grow thanks so much Ashton