Sandy: 0:00

Just think about sushi. Sushi is so sexy, right? Everybody wants to eat sushi now. Even people who don't like sushi want to eat sushi, because it's cool to say I'm going to go eat sushi. But who would go eat dead raw fish?

Joeri: 0:14

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3CMO Stories podcast. My name is Yri Bilost and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm so excited to be joined by Sandy. Hello Sandy, how are you?

Sandy: 0:26

Hello, Joeri, I'm doing great. I actually just came out of Vitalik's keynote and one of the interesting marketing things that I saw him do is he didn't introduce himself, and so many famous people they start out by saying who they are, even even if they're super well-known. He was the first person I've ever seen just take the stage, didn't even care about introducing himself and just jumped right into the technology, which was fascinating.

Joeri: 0:56

Yeah, he seems like a no-nonsense guy. Also. He is who he is. You see what you get, and I love that. When people just start to tell a story, they start with a hook or before they really start to introduce themselves. But now for our listeners, maybe, Sandy, maybe they know you, maybe they don't know you. Actually, guys, Sandy Carter is the CEO of Unstoppable Domains. Second time she comes on our podcast and, Sandy, it has been two years ago already, so maybe can you share with us some of the significant developments in your professional journey since then.

Sandy: 1:31

Yes, we've been doing a few things. First, I'm the founder of Unstoppable Women, of Web3 and AI, and AI in the last two years has just taken off like crazy. So we have been able to train about 55,000 women in the space and continue to grow. We're going to be publicizing our top 100 women of Web3 and AI, and so that space just continues to just take off, and I love all the use cases that AI is bringing, all the power it's bringing to marketing in particular.

Sandy: 2:04

I know some people are worried about it, but I think if you use it correctly, it can only help you in everything you do. Like we started talking about how you use AI to clarify some of the sound on one of your podcasts, right, I'm a big advocate of humans and AI. And then at Unstoppable, we've been, of course, using AI, leveraging it for coding, for documentation, for customer support, for marketing, and, as our company has continued to grow, we also continue to pivot and change. They always say that you find a part at MarketFit and then you have to adapt and change, and that's what we've been doing too, so I've learned a lot from the many pivots we've been through as well.

Joeri: 2:45

By the way, I love the list, the top 100 of unstoppable women. Actually, a lot of them have already been a guest on the show. Yeah, and obviously some of the things you didn't mention, Sandy, but you have written a book the Tiger and the Rabbit and I think we more or less have the same definition of Web3, or at least about those new technologies that they converge, like blockchain, NFT, Metaverse, AI. Yeah, maybe tell us a bit about the concept of your book, because it was a business fable, and how do you come up with a business fable?

Sandy: 3:26

Yeah, it was fascinating. So Wiley saw me telling stories at one of the conferences we were at and they said this technology, if you look at being on chain or blockchain and artificial intelligence, is rather complicated, and so we love the way that you tell stories about it. And so would you write a story, a business fable, about what you're telling people about? Just fill the first half of the book with stories and the second half of the book with frameworks, and so that's what I did.

Sandy: 3:51

The Rabbit and the Tiger is basically a primer on what is blockchain, what is artificial intelligence, what are a lot of the new technologies coming out in very simple terms, with dialogue, which was the hardest area. The hardest part for me to write was the dialogue, and then the second half was the frameworks. The book did really well. It scored number one in the data and AI categories for quite some time, and it also scored number one in the business category, which was fascinating because, while the book is a business book, it really has a lot of tech in it and it just shows you how many more business leaders today are looking for simple ways to understand the technology as well.

Joeri: 4:32

Yeah, I love the way that it is written. It really is easy to read, even if you're not a native English speaker. Also for people that are not techies to understand this, that are not techies to understand this and yet that's a really good fit with the audience of this podcast, because it's also a mix of people, both Web2, if you can call them like that and Web3, of course, interesting or a very important concept I like is the digital identity. Of course, it's still your pinned tweet on your Twitter. Can you explain, maybe for the people that are not aware yet, what it is a digital identity in Web 3, what it means?

Sandy: 5:11

Yeah, so digital identity is essentially your identity online and it's really important because, basically, it represents who you are and, if you think about it from a marketing perspective, it essentially represents your personal brand online. We have something called udme and then if you put in your digital identity, like Sandy for example, you can see my representation of who I am Today. It consists of communities tickets to concerts or events that I've been to, of communities tickets to concerts or events that I've been to. It has in there groups that I belong to. For example, I'm a gamer, so it has several of my gaming tribes in there. So today it's quite fascinating that it has a lot of personal elements. It also has education, so I can see certifications that are in there that make up who I am. So it's like a almost like a LinkedIn for the next generation, but what it's going to become is even more powerful. So if you think about where we might head, one might be to store healthcare records inside of a digital identity. I just met with 100 healthcare startups that are looking to start to do that, and why are they doing that? Healthcare startups that are looking to start to do that and why are they doing that? Most misdiagnosis occur because the doctor doesn't have all the information about you. He or she has a siloed set of information, and by having information that's connected across, like your allergist and your dentist and your general practitioner, etc. Then you can make more holistic diagnosis. That is supposed to really help all of us in the healthcare system, which we know really needs to be revamped. Also, we see things coming like we just did a digital identity for the city of Austin, and Austin has visions of putting like your driver's license, digitizing that, digitizing your birth certificate, your lease, your property title, which I also find quite fascinating.

Sandy: 7:10

I just had a friend. She's from Venezuela and her mother recently passed away. She was looking for her birth certificate. Now she's from Venezuela. The hospital that she was born in was burned down and she called me. She said I don't know how to get my birth certificate. I need a birth certificate. Think about all the different things that you need a birth certificate to get other documents. And so we were just strategizing as we were lamenting that she couldn't find her paper one. What would that be like if that existed inside of your digital identity? So you always had it. You could never lose it. I think those are really powerful concepts of what we could see this become in the future as well.

Joeri: 7:53

And what I love about this is also the simplicity. If I need to explain to people about Web3, they say, oh, it's with wallet addresses and so on. I say no, I have my unstoppable domain name like joeri. x, joeri. nft, joeri. ar, different ones, pergy. Yeah, because that was your talk. Was today about that, some of the things you mentioned about some of the takeaways community is a project, community digital identity is key in that. You talk also about the future is on chain. Maybe you can talk a bit about that.

Sandy: 8:29

Yeah, the first premise is the community is the project and the project is community. I really believe, as we're looking out on the landscape today, that the biggest differentiation you can have is the community that you bring with you. I think back to when I was at Amazon, and while AWS obviously is great technology, what it really captured was the heart and souls of developers. They loved what we did. It almost became like a big tribe. We would do a festival not really even a conference every year, we would have chicken wing eating contest and we'd always try to break one Guinness World Book of Records. So it wasn't just going to learn about the technology, there was culture in there and education all the things that you think about with a community. And so I really do believe that the community is one of the last forms of pure competitive differentiation that you can have, and I think Luca, the CEO of the Igloo company, or Pudgy Penguins, believes that as well, because he talked a lot about how his community it's a strength of his community that's really driving their success as well their success as well.

Sandy: 9:34

The second thing I talked about is digital identity, which we just went over. Digital identity, I think, is important to brands of people. In Web 2, a digital identity was really important for a company. In Web 3, it's really important for a person, so for that, personal branding. And then the last one we're talking about is on-chain. So, if you think about it, do you remember when we used to talk about being online and it was on-line? It really wasn't a big concept, right? So people were like, oh yeah, are you online, on-line? And what I'm seeing now is a convergence to being on-chain, and on-chain started out being on-chain and now it's moved to just like online, where you're just doing.

Sandy: 10:15

On-chain started out being on-chain and now it's moved to just like online, where you're just doing on-chain. There's no hyphen anymore. Why is that significant? As words and terminology change, the importance of those words and terminology change too. For example, as a marketing professional, Web3 today has negative connotation. Being on-chain, which essentially means the same thing has has negative connotation being on chain, which essentially means the same thing. Has a positive connotation because it talks about bringing additional value. Right, what you have right now exist on the blockchain, which brings you extra security, extra programmability, extra transparency, and so there's value there.

Sandy: 10:55

So I think, as this market kind of shifts and turns, on chain will become even more important and I there's value there. So I think as this market kind of shifts and turns, on-chain will become even more important and I bet you're going to hear it first here on your show People will start looking now for on-chain. So we actually introduced on-chain about three months ago. I walked downstairs in this conference and it said coffee on-chain. And then there were sneakers, Nike, tennis shoes and it said put your sneaker on chain. No hyphen on chain. So I think we're going to start to see tokenization or on chain everywhere and everything property, identity, the way that you buy coffee, the way that you declare ownership, and shoes and property will all be quote unquote on chain no hyphen.

Joeri: 11:38

I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Indeed, it's sometimes how you sometimes terms get a bit burnt or maybe negative connotation, because, yeah, people think about Web2, they think about crypto and speculation, but it's a lot more than that you want to add something I just popped in my head.

Sandy: 11:58

I just popped in my head, so I remember when I was a young marketeer and someone said just think about sushi. Sushi is so sexy, right? Everybody wants to eat sushi. Now, even people who don't like sushi want to eat sushi because it's cool to say I'm going to go eat sushi. But who would go eat dead raw fish? And so the name does matter, especially for us as marketeers. How you call things really makes a difference, and I do think that this on-chain word instead of Web3 is really going to be. First of all, it has a lot of value, but secondly, I think it showcases its value in the terminology.

Joeri: 12:35

Yeah, it sounds better actually what it is and people can better can really understand what it is and they know online and then on-chain it just is the next thing. It's the next thing where we go to because the world is evolving so fast. Not so long time ago, the metaverse was then the hyper, then it became with AI ago. What are your feelings about metaverse as a term, because people talking more and more about spatial computing, or? Yeah, I'm curious to hear.

Sandy: 13:07

I think maybe metaverse as a term is burned too. Now the hottest topic is digital twin. So if you think about it, a digital twin is created as a digital replica of something that you are. You can see in the real world. For example, manufacturing facilities use it, so they don't have to build a bunch of equipment or architect out how the floor will be for a manufacturing floor, because they can create a digital twin and then use AI to simulate what's really going to happen.

Sandy: 13:39

I think it's all of the things that we had been talking about with the metaverse or with spatial, but digital twins. Digital twins are everywhere, right, even Apple. If you go into the store to try on an Apple ProVision, you're actually not seeing the Apple store, you're actually seeing a digital twin of the Apple Store. Or you're seeing Alicia Keys seeing as a digital twin, and so I do think that I don't know if digital twin is actually the right word no-transcript, politically correct word today, I think, even more than spatial. But I do believe that there will be a term. Maybe it's 3D internet. I don't know. There will be something that comes for the metaverse. The metaverse don't count it out. They say the metaverse is dead. Long live the metaverse, but I do think the concepts of the metaverse were right and portions of those will come back to play as well.

Joeri: 14:36

Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's my background. Before I was into Web 3.2, marketing was in business intelligence, business analytics. That all has changed a lot. In the beginning, we talked about these I don't know what it was called again but these dashboards and a must-balance scorecard and a performance management and big data and analytics and so many terms, but something Sandy that because a lot is happening for Unstoppable Domains. If I see everything that is posted on Twitter and on LinkedIn and so on, one of the things I'm excited about is Unstoppable Marketplace. Congratulations for that. Yeah, can you explain, maybe for people who are not aware what it is, what it is about?

Sandy: 15:14

Yeah, so we introduced the first application marketplace for on-chain applications, and that was really interesting because we saw marketplaces out there for NFT. Of course, we started one at Amazon before I left, which was a marketplace for a set of programs that ran on AWS, but this is a marketplace for applications that are on-chain, and so it really gives a lot of power and importance to be able to find out what actually is on-chain, and today we have 1,000 applications in there, which is about where we started. When we started the Amazon marketplace, we started with about a thousand applications. We're just in that very beginning phase, but I think it's going to even grow and grow and become much more important as well.

Joeri: 16:03

I mentioned, a lot of exciting things are going on, but what is it at today? Or maybe something that will be launched that you can already mention, or what is it that you're most excited about today?

Sandy: 16:15

So one of the things I'm really excited about, especially from a marketing perspective, are these branded digital identities.

Sandy: 16:23

So today on stage I spoke with Luca Ness, who is the CEO of Igloo or Pudgy Penguins, and we were talking about the power that a dot pudgy brought to his community and continues to bring to his community in terms of branding and driving community value and feeling. And today we have about 20 of these branded digital identities. We just launched one with Austin, the city of Austin. That's very specific to things that are important to citizens and bringing value to that community. We launched one for secretsecret. We did that for an on-chain application that's very confidential and very private, really hoping to bring in more widespread adoption of the use of on-chain, and so I think these branded focused areas are very powerful and will be very important as we move into the future so that communities can rally around them. So it's one of the things I'm most passionate about. We've got about 20 of them today, 25 signed. So we've got a few more announcements to go, but I do see there's a lot of power in it. The second thing I see is when we talked about being on chain, or Web 3 and Web 2, we talked about the two world merging together. Right, because we used to say Web 1 and Web 2, and then it just became the web, because that's what everything was. Two, and then it just became the web, because that's what everything was. I think that this area of digital identity will be the first area to go, not a Web3 digital identity and a Web2 digital identity. It's going to be a digital identity. We're seeing that already with a lot of the dot coms that represent the digital identity of a company being brought on chain. So today, unstoppable brings Sandy on chain. That's tokenized already and I think that's a really powerful movement where we have one area of the business where there won't be any more differentiation between Web 2 and Web 3. It's just going to be a digital identity or just a domain that represents that digital identity. So that's the second thing I'm really excited about.

Sandy: 18:38

And then the third one is artificial intelligence. I see so much potential there. I actually started artificial intelligence at IBM in 2013. I said this other day in a class and one young lady raised her hand and she goes no, I just looked up, openai wasn't formed in 2013.

Sandy: 18:54

I said, oh, sweetheart, I started way before OpenAI, just gave it its moment of time right so it could grow and flourish, and I do think that this AI moment is really important and I think it can be a real game changer. There are some challenges that we need to address around doing it responsibly, without hallucinations, being not having all the unconscious bias that we as humans have today, but I do see a lot of potential there and that's why I'm experimenting with it a lot, using multimodal learning models and trying to make sure that I'm combining the technologies together, because the convergence of AI, being on chain and spatial, or that digital twinning, to me is where the real power is. It's the combination of those, because blockchain or being on chain brings the confidentiality and the transparency, the digital twinning brings the simulation, which I think is needed, and then, of course, artificial intelligence is the intelligence. So for me, it's about that convergence that's going to be really important.

Joeri: 20:00

I'm with you on that. All these conversions, these new technologies, as also my definition of Web3, all these new technologies coming together and it's really exciting, also for my listeners, I imagine. Unfortunately, our time is limited here at ETC Sandy. If people you know they want to learn more about Unstoppable Domains or they want to connect with you, where would you like to send them?

Sandy: 20:22

So I'm still on Twitter, so you can find me at Sandy underscore Carter. I live most of my life on LinkedIn, so you can just find me as Sandy Carter. I'm on Farcaster as well, which is a brand new on-chain version of the social network just Sandy Carter. And basically you can find me on Instagram Sandy Carter, underscore founder, etc. Our website for Unstoppable is unstoppabledomainscom, so if you want to come visit us there, I'd love any questions or any thoughts that you have as well on this and, Joeri, as always, it's so great to see you. Thanks for coming to our session today too.

Joeri: 20:58

Always a pleasure, Sandy, and actually, as my listeners know, there is always a podcast article, there is always blog show notes, and so all the links you mentioned can be found in there. Guys, it was a really pleasure to have Sandy on the show. Thank you, Sandy.

Sandy: 21:16

Thank you so much, Joeri. It's always a pleasure to be here and always a pleasure to talk to your community, which is where your power is as well. So thank you to the community, who's listening in today.

Joeri: 21:26

So, guys, an insightful episode again. Like I said, I'm at HCC, so if you see me, you won't. When you listen to the show, you won't see me, but you will maybe see me at another conference. Be sure to come and say hi If you think this podcast episode is really useful for people around you, and I'm sure it is, be sure to share this podcast episode with them. If you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to do this, and if you haven't given me a review yet, I would love to get five stars from you, because it helps me reach an even bigger audience. Thank you so much for listening and I hope to see you back next time. Take care, bye-bye.