Rino Point studio's PORTFOLIO

Denver Podcast Production

DENVER, COLORADO, USA

Rehash, A web3 In studio Podcast

Onboarding Women to Crypto w/Maggie Love | S7 E9

We filmed, recorded audio, and hosted a live recording experience for Rehash during ETH Denver, delivering a dynamic and professional video podcast for their audience.

Transcript

[0:00] Over the last few years of working in crypto, I've accrued more NFTs and altcoins and random crypto assets than I can count, across more chains than I can remember, and it's always been a struggle to find a single crypto wallet where I can track everything I own. That is, until I discovered Zerian. Zerian Wallet is for everything you own on-chain. Yes, that includes all of your assets across more than 14 different networks. Zerian is giving people the chance to be true owners by making it simple to explore, collect, mint, test, and contribute to the new internet. Go to zerian.io slash download today to take ownership over your on-chain assets available on iOS, Android, and desktop.

[0:42] Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Rehash, a Web3 podcast. I'm your host, Diana Chen, and today we're speaking with Maggie Love, founder of SheFi, about onboarding newcomers to crypto and making this a friendlier space for women and non-binary folks. Shefi is an organization that's empowering professional women and non-binary folks to reinvent their careers in frontier industries like Web3 and AI. They're currently on their 10th cohort and have almost 3,000 members. Maggie has primarily been working on Shefi on a part-time basis outside of her full-time job and just recently went full-time with it, so I'm really excited to see what comes next. I also had the special privilege of recording this episode live in person with Maggie during our rehash event at ETH Denver, and I hope you all feel as inspired after listening to this as I did after speaking with Maggie. Maggie was nominated by Triumph and voted onto the podcast by Triumph, Meg Lister, Iman, Ninti Nick, Themes, David Phelps, Tim Black, and me, Diana Chen. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Maggie. .

[1:57] This is our fourth and final podcast recording of the day live from ETH, Denver. Thank you all for being here. Thank you to the ones who've been here since our very first panel of the day. Props to you for sticking around all day. So for our final panel of the day, we're ending the day on just a really wholesome, inspiring notes with Maggie Love from SheFi. Maggie, I'm so excited to finally have you on the podcast. you are actually the only person today who was voted onto the podcast for this season. And so I'm glad that we're getting to do this recording live in person instead of over Zoom. It's just really good to chat with you finally. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you to everyone who voted me in and voted for me after my name was proposed. And thank you to all my friends in the audience. Many of you I've known for many years. And so it's really wonderful to be surrounded by all of you while I share more about SheFi. Amazing. So I want to start with just like SheFy origins. I've been following the SheFy journey for a while, but I've never actually had a chance to talk to you about it or dive deep into it. So if you don't mind just starting from the beginning and telling us about the origins and then walking us through from then till today. Yeah, so I joined the crypto space full time in 2017.

[3:13] I joined ConsenSys and I'd like to say I've had nine lives in crypto. So I was working on a science fiction storytelling universe. I co-founded a data center company to do Ethereum mining, and those are both, you know, before SheFi. And then I lived through my first bear market in 2018, pretty dark. And in that silence, as 2019 came alive, I started noticing that the first use cases you could actually use on Ethereum were live, which was decentralized finance. And I was at events like ETH Denver in 2019, and I just noticed everyone talking about DeFi, building DeFi on stage, promoting DeFi, happened to be a man. And they'd be like, oh, we're building permissionless and inclusive finance. And I was like, oh, wait, you look like the people that already benefited from traditional finance. And if you're here in 2019, then you're likely benefiting from crypto already. And it didn't look very inclusive to me. And I just... Felt this need to make sure that women were not left behind and that we didn't exacerbate the gender financial gap that already exists. And it took me a while to actually get to SheFi from there, but it was just always in the back of my mind, like, how do I make sure that women are using DeFi and more importantly, have the skills to build DeFi?

[4:30] And I was on a run in the summer and I was just like meditating on this concept and all these words related to decentralized finance and women and how I could get them involved. And I was like, DeFi, SheFi. And I was like, SheFi, that's a very good name. And I like went home, it's never been trademarked. And it really felt like divinely inspired. And so I just decided this was what I was supposed to do. And just started building a simple curriculum around the top DeFi protocols, or the only ones at the time in 2019, which was like Uniswap, Compound, MakerDAO, and maybe Aave, just like really starting to think about how would I do this. And the idea was when we would come together and I would teach them like what's going on under the hood, not just how to do it, but like what is the liquidity pool? What is an automated market maker? Like how do smart contracts facilitate, you know, disintermediated finance? And then we would, as a group, all put our tokens into Compound or all take our first swap on Uniswap.

[5:29] And then we would talk about it. And I thought bringing those two things together, like the education and the actual doing, was really critical to gaining that confidence in the DeFi space and gaining that literacy to hopefully allow women to get hired into these companies that were on the forefront. Now, little did I know that DeFi summer 2020 would happen and my work would go from like five protocols, you know, basically infinity that summer, lots of new concepts. And so that's really the origin story. I just saw something missing. I thought about it very intently. And then it came to me and I don't actually have a finance background, but I was just kind of like, why not me? And yet that's the origin story.

[6:08] Amazing. It's almost better that you don't have a finance background because it's like, we can do this together. And you're probably better at explaining a lot of DeFi concepts to newbies in the space than somebody who was like a finance major in college or something like that. So how did you go about finding that initial community? Because 2019, like I didn't enter in the space until late 2020 after DeFi summer. And even then I felt like there were no women in the space. And there's over the last three years that I've been in crypto, it's been like exponentially better. But back in 2019, I can only imagine how few women were in the space. How did you even go about finding those people, especially like coming out of a bear market where sentiments are low as we all here know having just come out of another bear market how did you go about like finding these women convincing them that there was something here for them and then getting them to take all these actions.

[7:04] Yes. So I was at Consensus at the time. So I posted in the Consensus of Women's Slack, like, would you be interested in joining this? And they were like, yes, because, you know, maybe there were lawyers or operators are working on some other project and just didn't have time to dedicate to it. So I was like, OK, great. And they were my first people saying like, yeah, you're good at teaching. So giving me that confidence. But it was actually Eat Denver 2020. There were we were in Sport Castle and there was like the Kyber booth and there's all these DeFi booths. And I went up to people and I was like, hey, I'm going to build a program and teach women how to use your protocol. Like, do you think that's a good idea? And people were like, yeah, like the community was generally like very positive. And that really gave me the confidence to like push it live. And I actually launched it on April 16th, 2020, like from my friend's one bedroom apartment in lockdown because I saw what was happening in the world. And I knew that, you know, finance was a very sensitive topic for many people, like losing their jobs, but like noticing what the government might do and like how this whole, you know, COVID situation would be handled, you might want to start looking into like alternative finance. And so I published my first post on Medium.

[8:10] And then that year, I during lockdown, I ran a program called A Date with SheFi. And it was because no one was going out. And I just told my friends in New York, and they were allowed to invite their friends. So that was my first non crypto native cohort during COVID. And like people from many companies, finance background, tech background, sisters and cousins. And, you know, I taught my first class becoming a blockchain baddie. And they were like, that was amazing. So I just kept getting that positive reinforcement. And then my third cohort early 2021 was just from a link on Twitter.

[8:45] You know, people weren't even really following Shefi. I was just like, hey, do you want to set up for my course? And then it was 30 people. And from there, Shefi's biggest growth factor has been referrals. So people taking the course, people enjoying the course and growing. And then, you know, those first cohorts were just smaller. And I was like nervous. I didn't want to take too many people in. So I'd kind of keep it to like maybe 50 and then 80. And then by the time Shefi I really expanded was 2022 when the NFT boom really took off. And a lot of people saw a use case they could actually relate to. Yeah. And then be like, well, how do I actually learn? And then like we had to do no marketing. Like it was really peak NFTs, peak women in Web3 stuff. And so like 600 women signed up, started signing up for my cohort. And I had already perfected the course and, you know, how we onboarded people. And, you know, it's a one to many, at least the courses. So I didn't need to worry about like how many people signed up. So instead of trying to like keep it small, I was like, well, let's just rip off the bandaid and see what happens. And from there, I would say word of mouth is still our biggest growth. So like season nine had 172 people that referred new members to SHIFI. What season are you guys on now? 10. This is my 10th time teaching. Yes. Wow. And so each season, how long does it last? What does the curriculum look like at this point did you write all the curriculum yourself by the way.

[10:07] Yes. Well, lockdown, I don't really watch TV. I'm not your girl for culture. I'm on season three of Succession. I don't know who succeeded or whatever the word is.

[10:20] Succeeded. But I just wanted to learn more about DeFi and crypto and I just had this deep urge to understand it and be a part of it. So I just made content during all of lockdown. And so a lot of my main core, like blockchains, wallets, stablecoins, DEXs, lending.

[10:37] It was all like done during lockdown. And then, yeah, as the use cases expanded, my community right in 2021 was like, well, how do I how do I play in this NFT game? And, you know, DAOs happen and like everyone wanted ChiefEye to become a DAO. So like, how do we learn about DAOs? And it's really been like maybe adding a course or two as the use case universe has expanded. And right now it's about three months. And each Each week is a new use case with two classes, an hour and a half, and that builds in time for Q&A and guest lecture and demos as well. So they can actually leave the class and go do the activity. Is it still focused on DeFi or has it expanded to include DAOs and NFTs and other concepts in crypto? It's everything. So it basically starts with like infrastructure the first three weeks. So that's your blockchains, your wallets, your scaling infrastructure. So you can actually bridge your tokens and use these use cases. And then it's DeFi. So that's stable coins, staking, swapping, and lending. And then the last one is consumer, which is the new era. So that's like DAOs and governance and like really a deep dive on governance. And then it's, you know, Web3 Social. And I've even added like an week of AI course because I actually came from IBM Watson.

[11:51] And these tools are also very important for people to know, I think, especially for women who might have been waiting to take that leap to do their own thing. Like AI can be a big supercharger. Are the courses designed for people who have no exposure to crypto and are starting from day one? Or can people who already know something about crypto still benefit?

[12:11] It's mostly designed for people who are new, but like, since I am this nerd, I have like side cars of like, if you want to go deeper, like if you want to know some of the math, or if you want to really get deep into the transaction flow on an optimistic rollup and how that's different than Ethereum, you can go find that in the appendix. And so there is a bit of, you know, more advanced content in there. I always have a section called let's get technical technical. It's let's get physical, physical, you know? And I like tell the woman, like, you're going to sweat. Like, this is going to be a bit more complex. Like, we're going to talk about really how these things work at a bit more of a technical level. But this is not your only time you have to see it. So like, go back, watch the recording, review the materials, do the readings. Because I do think in order to contribute to this space, not just be onboarded, you do have to know some of these more advanced things. And the good thing about having a community around it is that if people are really stuck, someone from the community can sign up to like meet with them one-on-one to really like go through that more advanced concept.

[13:18] I speak from experience when I say that launching a DAO is not easy work. I've spent countless hours trying to figure out how to manage a community, get people to vote on proposals, and figure out how to set everything up on-chain. Tally does all of that hard work for me while providing a full suite of tools for my community to create drafts, collaborate on proposals, incentivize voting, and most importantly, stay safe and secure on-chain while doing it all. Tally is the home of DAO governance. Launch your DAO with Tally at tally.xyz.

[13:54] How did you think about funding from day one?

[13:58] Yes, I self-funded SheFi for the first two years. So I didn't know what it would be. There wasn't a lot of positivity around it when I first launched it in 2020. And that honestly held me back a bit. It's all water under the bridge now. But instead of like going out for grant funding, which I probably should have done, I just want people to learn from my mistakes. I like really was like, well, let me really prove that my course is good and that women want this before I like really go out for funding. And yeah I just want to be honest in case you're a female founder thinking about these things and so I really waited until I felt like I have a great product I have a great community like this is worth something um you know it's not just an idea and so yeah I self-funded it and then I started bringing people on the team so then that got hard because like my paycheck is supposed to I had another job sorry I had another job so that actually allowed me to do this thing where I took my paycheck to pay other people. And I just was like, it's going to come back to me. I've always had that mindset. And then I think in 2022, my first sponsor that was a really no-strings-attached one was the company called Web3 Cloud. And that was the data center company I had co-founded back in 2018 with Advanced Micro Devices. So their daughters were taking it. They saw me doing it on the side. They didn't ask when I was doing it. But they were like, let's give you this check so you can really turn the wheels on or really get...

[15:25] Going. So that was a really great just confidence booster that this like funding women's education was important. And then from there, like I was teaching all these protocols. So I started just targeting the protocols I was teaching and, you know, talking to them about it is like you do commercials and you hope a percentage of those commercials actually use your app. I've already brought the women down the funnel and they are using the app. So it's like a different, if you're marketer, it's like a different way of thinking. And then if you sponsor the scholarships, these women are your affiliates. They're not just using your protocol. They literally write you love letters. Like, thank you so much, Polygon, for sponsoring my seat in cohort seven.

[16:06] And so that's sort of how I was thinking about it. Well, I'm teaching, you know, this technology, like I should go and start hitting up all these people that I've been teaching for free. And really, that was how I started thinking about it. Like it's a content sponsorship, plus depending on the tier, a scholarship sponsorship. And what their protocols are really hoping to get is users and people who become repeated users. And basically in SheFi, if I tell you to do something, they all do it. So it's like a pretty, it's a pretty guaranteed user. So that's what I started doing in 2022. And then, you know, I've added a bunch of stuff since then. So there's more opportunities to support me financially and SheFi financially. I think it's super admirable to want to build out a product, like something and prove that it's valuable before getting funding and I think like what we saw at least in the last bull market is that a lot of projects without even a proof of concept were getting funded just huge huge dollars but do you think that's a mistake that you see a lot of founders especially female founders make is waiting too long before going out and asking for funding for whatever like lack of confidence or just wanting to prove out something before they ask for it or.

[17:16] Whatever other reasons. Totally. I think what I noticed, too, is like a lot of women need permission. And like I've now that person that's like, you can do it. You know, like they need someone kind of to be like a force there that's like reminding them it's OK. And I also just think like there was a couple, you know, there was Meta Cartel, there was a grants in 2020.

[17:37] But like, you know, we have such a rich grant ecosystem now. Like there's so many opportunities that I think overall it's like crypto has made it easier to find non-dilutive funding and i think that's a really important part of this ecosystem because people can feel like they can try these ideas you know without these like crazy pitch decks or these promises to scale to one billion people or like all these things you really have to say to get vc funding so i think over time it's like improved and the other thing too is it's about awareness so you know we have like a group that's focused on making sure people know when grants are happening. And I think that's really helpful too, because there's just so much information out there. And there's always been so much information. And I think also like women have families and hobbies. And it's a different profile than someone who wants to like be in the discord all day to like maybe make an extra buck on a token. So I think there's like a, you really have to make sure they know the opportunities are there.

[18:33] Because there's not full time degen. So I think that's a part of it too. But yeah, I would just be like go out there try to get funding apply for all the grants don't let your and like I only shared the story in the beginning because I was the one who held myself back still like it doesn't matter what anybody on Twitter thought like I was the one who decided to internalize that and have it stunt me so it's not anybody else but me so it's like don't get in your own way yeah no for sure how speaking of Twitter how do you deal with all the feedback from Twitter like most recently I mean I've the funniest thing most recently was first of all congrats on your engagement you're recently engaged or married engaged engaged recently engaged and you posted a photo on twitter from the engagement and it got quote tweeted and something to the effect of like can we just focus on building and not post these things or something like that what was airdrop season it was even more important than building it's it's airdrop season like get this you know garbage off my timeline you've got important things yeah and it was all over twitter and i I mean, it's like funny, right? It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. But I'm sure you've gotten your fair share of trolls and just like mean comments along the way as well. How do you deal with all of that? Well, now I joke that I have been on crypto Twitter since 2017, so you can't hurt me.

[19:48] But I do think like, yeah, I think at first it just felt so like public and it felt, I think the hard thing about Twitter, and we see this with like the retroactive public goods funding, it's like we're now not sitting with people and asking them like, what are you actually building? What has it actually done? You're reading something and you're just, like reacting to it. And I think that's really interesting because what I had dealt with was people who had not sat with me, asked me questions, knew anything about what I was doing, just like read maybe my Medium article or a tweet and just like decided that that was enough to be like, this is a terrible idea. And so I could separate myself from it a bit because they weren't the people who had taken my course. And like that feedback matters, not people from Twitter. So I think you just have to realize that so many people on Twitter are just doing, you know.

[20:39] Social media has taught us to take the very top surface level, spend five seconds scanning it, and then thinking that you can be an expert on what is going on and providing an opinion. And so I think in a lot of ways, it was like a big growth moment as well, because I decided to not let that actually stop me from doing what I was doing. But yeah, now I'm just kind of like, if you sit and you go through my course and you're in my community and you're really struggling or having a bad time, like I want to hear your feedback. Like I want to make my offering better. I want to make the community better. But if you're someone on Twitter and you don't engage with me at all, but you think you read something and therefore you get to be telling me how to do what I do, like I don't care. And like the airdrop people, the DGens, all of that comes with these bull markets. So you just have to like laugh about it. And yeah, Twitter has helped me build my resilience for sure. Gives you thick skin for sure. Because it's one thing to say like these people don't matter. They don't know you. What they say like literally doesn't matter. But it's another thing when it actually happens to you in the moment to not let it affect you. You know, like until it's happening to you, you're like, just don't let it affect you. Like they don't even know you. You can think logically about it. But when it does hit you, it like hits you hard. Yeah, I deleted Twitter when that like when it first happened, I was just like, I don't think anything good is going to come from me watching this. So I might as well see the replay tomorrow. I've had to go private once or twice, too, for the same reason.

[22:00] So when it comes to onboarding, what have you seen to be some of the most effective strategies for teaching newcomers to the space and onboarding them to crypto?

[22:10] Yeah, one of the most effective strategies is really trying to think of like, What is crypto made up in language that already exists as a concept in someone's head already? Right. So like a lot of analogies or a lot of like descriptions, like stable coins is an easy example. Like, why does the US dollar need to equal one dollar? You go to Sephora, you only bring $50 cash. You know, you're getting your $50 of product. Two hours later, the dollars fell to 50 cents. Like, what do you leave behind? And like, you're like, Sephora, leaving things behind, I could never, you know, I kind of talk about layer twos as completing a book report for Ethereum. So they do all the transactions. They summarize that for Ethereum. They send it to Ethereum and Ethereum is the teacher and is like, yeah, that's good. I accept. So just like it's a game for me to always be thinking about, like, how can I make this inaccessible analogy? I think that's really helpful. And like I said, the next piece is doing the activities.

[23:03] Like we all know you send a transaction and you're like, I really hope I didn't fat finger the address and my money is going to go to someone else now. And I think those moments are really important just to keep gaining that confidence. Like your money showed up where it was supposed to show up. You completed a swap. You even staked. We did a partnership with Oval to teach them how to do like distributed validator technology staking. So they like downloaded command lines and like, you know, yeah, it is advanced. But like a lot of people were engaged and a lot of people wanted to learn how to do it. And like a subset of them went on to actually run nodes together. But it's really those workshops. It's those hands-on experiences.

[23:43] Because really, you know, until consumer crypto solved all of our problems, this stuff is still a bit difficult to use. And I think, once again, my goal is not onboarding, it's creating contributors. So it is really about getting, you know, the hands-on experience.

[23:59] Yeah. How much time do you spend with all the members one-on-one going over things versus in like teaching a class? Yeah. So I can't really spend time with people one-on-one anymore. Like this next cohort coming up is 500 women. So I already am in the community a lot as my new community manager had been. Politely said, like maybe take a step back in some ways. But what we have is we have a program called Guiding Lights, kind of a plan like Beacon and, you know, Ethereum language. And it's women who take in the course are women who joined SheFi, but we're more advanced. And so they don't need the course. And they're like, I'm willing if someone is stuck to spend 30 minutes with them on Zoom. So we have a form that you fill out if you get stuck. And then we ping the Guiding Lights and they go, yep, I can teach someone how to bridge their tokens. I can teach someone how to get their ledger hooked up or get a transaction from A to B. And so we really try to, now that the community is large, to have that community support.

[24:57] And we have like an activity support channel in our Discord where there's always people just responding like, hey, I'm stuck here. Oh, have you tried to do this? And so really now we're trying to push that to the community because it's why we built community. Like I could have just built a course and just been done with people after they took it, but I very intentionally built a community around it. Yeah, I think that ongoing support is really necessary so people don't just learn it and then not know how to apply it and then don't have that support. So I think that support is really important too. I know your community consists of people from all over the world.

[25:31] Talk a little bit about that experience because I can imagine that it makes things more challenging to teach because people are coming from such different backgrounds and perspectives and you're constantly trying to think about the best way to teach a new concept to somebody and it can be you might have to teach the same concept 20 different ways to people from different parts of the world but I can also imagine that it makes it a more fulfilling experience for all the members because they're getting to you know also hear the different perspectives of other people that come from different backgrounds as them and think about DeFi and think about like different concepts in crypto in ways that they wouldn't necessarily have come up with on their own but how has that experience been yeah first of all it's like everything about shefi is like not what i could have imagined when i did it so like you know you have this idea and you're like i'm going to see if like 15 women want to learn about defi and like now people from like cameroon are joining your zoom calls and you're just like this is it's honestly unbelievable and it's like a little emotional every time a new cohort starts because the first class were like where are you you know gming from and it's like i'm gming from Ghana. I'm GMing from Taipei. I'm GMing from London. I'm GMing from San Francisco. I'm GMing from Mexico City. And it's like, wow.

[26:46] And it's definitely a challenge that like I'm an English first speaker. And there is not many ways to like replicate me and teachers yet in multiple languages, like definitely one day. But that's also an area where I'm like, AI is going to be amazing. And even Zoom now, you can like say like the speaker is speaking in English and I speak in, you know, Mandarin or something. And I'm pretty sure it translates the subtitles. But I know it's not perfect. And I'm like, always thinking about that. But yeah, I think that a good thing about.

[27:17] What we do is we try to provide like local telegram groups and we have chapter leads in those local telegram groups. So women will get together, you know, if they're like native Spanish speakers and LATAM and they'll like go off and like make sure they can talk about the concepts in Spanish and help each other learn or, you know, like in other places. So we are trying to decentralize the community efforts around people meeting while they're in the cohort and having buddies and all of that. So I think it helps, but it's definitely not perfect.

[27:47] And I'm really grateful that there are women who wanted to volunteer and be like, I'll make sure my community in my area feels like they are, you know, staying up to speed on everything. Yeah. Have you seen like little regional cohorts form within She5?

[28:01] Like everybody in Mexico City, you know, gathers together and kind of supports each other in their native language and everybody in different regions that speak the same language gather together and support each other so that work kind of doesn't all fall on your shoulders and the community takes it upon themselves to help out other people yes and it's and it's really interesting to like be in every single region group chat and also just notice the differences in like the community styles in different countries like the the Turkish women are so active and like always getting together and like the women in Africa are really big on sharing a lot. And like someplace in the US, it's just like quieter, like the LA channel is a bit quieter. And I'm like, this is interesting. Like, I wonder if it's like almost cultural, the way community exists in all these different countries, like is manifesting on this virtual platform. So I think that's like been an interesting insight. But yeah, either they'll get together where they are, or a lot of companies send like the women to SheFi. So they'll start like study groups within their company. Or if they're like, friends will take it and be like me and my friend would go meet at a coffee shop in Portland every Saturday morning and like go through all this stuff. And I do think that's like a big part of it. A lot of people do sign up with like another woman. And so whether it's through like the new bonds they make in the local region or just people from a different relationship, people will get together and like go through the content.

[29:26] Compared to most of my friends in Web3, I'm not the most online person, and with how fast things move in this space, it can be really challenging to keep up with the newest projects and what's trending. That's why I love Forage, a community-curated front page for launches shaping on-chain culture. A Forage launch page combines a press release and a commemorative mint into a sleek single page where they garner support in the form of mint. Projects receiving more mints are bumped to the top of the page, which means I can finally stop doom-scrolling or worrying about missing an important launch and simply check Forage to stay up to date on what's happening on-chain. And as an added bonus, Forage uses protocol rewards so supporters receive a referral reward each time someone mints through their referral link. Go to forage.xyz to get started today.

[30:18] One thing that I guess is like I'm curious about your take on it is in crypto we see a lot of like even at ETH Denver panels where it's like women in DeFi women in this women in that on the one hand I'm glad that people are conscious of this at least and like consciously trying to put women on panels and stuff like that I think it was last year or a couple years ago at ETH Denver they wanted at least one woman like I got asked to be on all these panels because they just needed a female yes on the panels I was like I don't even know anything about this topic like why am I being asked to speak on this panel like just because I'm a woman so when are we going to do you think shift away from that and just make it like experts in defi like experts in this space and have women represented on each of these panels instead of having to call out like how do you feel about that like do you do you think it's great that these things exist or are you kind of like tired of it and ready for us to move off of it too yeah so the interesting thing about shefi is it's never been about being a woman in web3 it's just women who want to learn about blockchain and every time we have a speaker come in it's about them being an expert in sharing and of course like when you bring a group of people together they're going to ask like how have you found it being a woman in xyz and like getting a job and so i'm never going to be like don't talk about that. But I've never like myself hosted a like women in X event. I just try to be like, these are all women presenting or non binary.

[31:46] And they are telling you about something they've done. That's amazing.

[31:50] And I think I really, I do struggle with it because I'm like, I'm this champion of women in this space. But I'm like, at the same time, I'm like, I've done a lot of things, founded a couple companies, I've built a really large community without a token, I have a product and so I do get a little tired of it and I think the intention is obviously the intention is super well-meaning but I think it's kind of like a lack of creativity.

[32:13] And I think, you know, while I do feel that way, there are probably women who do really want to be on those panels and just like want to get their name out there. So if it is a platform to get people more exposure who are really looking for that in some way, I think it's great, but it's not for me anymore. I think when I was first like hustling for She-Fi a lot, I did think every speaking opportunity is a good one. But now I'm like, hey, thank you so much for asking me. Here's some of the things I've done. And here's some of my literacies. If this is of interest to you, like happy to do the panel. If it's more focused on Women in Web 3, I hope, you know, you find someone that like fits this panel. So I do think from big conferences, it probably shouldn't exist anymore because I think it's more of a lack of creativity. But I think, you know, some people are really just trying to make sure that those spaces exist and that's the way they want to showcase it. So I'm like, not for me, but like great and hope you find people that are excited about that opportunity. Moving forward, what do you have in store for SheFi? anything new? I mean, continuing to get bigger and bigger cohorts, obviously. But I know over time, your strategy has like you guys have been doing a lot more in person events recently. And so that's been a shift in the strategy. Is that going to continue? Do you have more new ideas in the pipeline that you can share? I'm an Enneagram seven. So if you know about the Enneagram, I'm just an ideas factory. So don't come to me with ideas. I will say yes.

[33:35] But yeah, so SheFi has really evolved from that core cohort experience to like noticing the importance of in-person events and seeing all these mantles and being like wait it's last year like it's 2023 there's plenty of women doing badass shit here let's rival these conferences so you know women-led conferences that are super engaging and yeah really fun so we just did one in denver we're going to be doing it in brussels in seoul in singapore in bangkok and in nairobi for eat safari and some of those are like partnered where we have a like contingent of women there that are like, I really want Eat Safari to have a SheFi component because they took the course. So that's exciting. And some of them like all be going everywhere. So that's really fun. So we really expanded into the event space. We've also expanded our career efforts. So we have a freelance recruiter we're working with, who's going to help women get jobs, give once a month sessions on how to get ready for those jobs, and really be that liaison between SheFi and the companies.

[34:32] And also I've expanded my content into teaching corporate. So I'm teaching a very well-known financial institution. We haven't like officially signed everything, so I'm not gonna say that, for the second year in a row, which is really exciting. And a couple companies are looking to license my content now because the content itself isn't like overly women. Like there's memes and there's some explainers that might- geared towards a feminine audience, but men know what Sephora is, right? So they're going to use it to onboard all their new employees. So there's a lot of irons in the fire right now, which is really exciting to just see that expansion and that continued affirmation that this is something a lot of different types of people need. Yeah, absolutely. I can't wait to see how it expands. I really think the institutional adoption is key. We had on the last panel, someone mentioned that institutional adoption is going to be necessary for crypto to like really reach the mainstream or reach some sort of escape velocity to like infiltrate into normies. Totally.

[35:34] So institutions leading the charge, that is top signal, I would say. And it's great that you're part of that and that you're seeing that and getting into that space too. Yeah, it's been really awesome. And just seeing those types of more professional institutional women, like loving it and like wanting to do DFI. So it's going to be a really exciting year. And like the last thing is like I'm full time SheFi now. So for the past, since I started SheFi in 2019, I always had something else going on. But I'm like fully dedicated to it. I'm growing my team. I hired a community manager. I'm looking for a COO. If anybody listening here loves operating, I can do it, but it's not my strong suit. And yeah, I'll be really focusing on like new growth strategies and teaching. So it's going to be a really incredible year and it feels really good to be like, if I could do SheFi with half of my resources, now I have my full resources and a team, it's only going to get better. That's incredible. I don't think I realized that you were part-time until recently. When did you go full-time? Last August. Okay. Wow. That's awesome. I can't wait to see what you do with SheFi. Tell people where they can check out SheFi if any women are listening that want to get that education or just join the community. Honestly, I think the community component is.

[36:46] Equally as valuable, if not, honestly, more valuable than the education, because the education now is out there, you know, like we've reached a time where there are resources, you still have to kind of dig and look and like know what's good and what's not, but they're out there. But the community component, I think is really the invaluable piece that is a lot harder to find if you're just one person like new to the space, and you don't know where to start. Yes. And the community component is like our jobs channel is always popping off. People are like, hey, can you help me? Can you look at my resume? Oh, you posted a job. Oh, you work there. And it's just like you're seeing constantly like the community value and like really helping women navigate this space professionally. So the community is a huge component. If you want to find us, www.shefi.org. On Twitter, we're she underscore underscore fi.

[37:36] On Instagram, we're shefi.crypto. And those are really your main channels. And from there, you'll find like our newsletter and all the other, as in crypto, we're on a million platforms, all the other million platforms you can find us on. So definitely start at the website. And if you do have any questions, you can email social at shefi.org. And someone from my team will respond to you. So don't hesitate to reach out. And then where can people find you personally too? Yes, I'm mostly addicted to Twitter. So you can find me at Maggie, M-A-G-G-I-E, love, L-O-V-E, one word, Maggie love, underscore on Twitter. And yeah, if you have any questions, you know, feel free to shoot me a DM.

[38:17] Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Maggie, for joining us. Thank you to our live studio audience for sticking around until this late. I know we're over time quite a bit. So we'll wrap up here and get everybody on to the parties of the evening. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, of course. Thanks, Maggie.

[38:39] Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Rehash. Rehash is hosted, produced, and edited by me, Diana Chen, and sponsored by Zerian, Tally, and Quest. Rehash is also supported by our community of NFT holders who curate our guest lineup each season. To get involved, head over to our website at rehashweb3.xyz and collect this episode as an NFT. Anyone who collects an episode becomes part of the rehash community and will be able to nominate guests for future seasons. Collectors will also be able to tune into our recordings live at pleaser.house.com.

[39:11] Music.


Create Engaging Content

Let us help you create top-quality videos and podcasts – faster, better, and without the technical hassles.
Contact Us