Ajay: 0:00

I often say in our space that, hey, if you've got the followers right, those followers are going to convert to holders. Those holders are then going to throw money at the project, which is volume. That volume converts to market cap. The rest is history.

Joeri: 0:14

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and I am here at NFC Summit, slash, MEMECON, slash, different other conferences, and I'm joined by AJ. How are you, man? I'm good, my friend. How are you? It's so good to see you. I met him like. It seems that we know each other for ages already. It does. It's already from not yesterday, but the day before evening. You know we met each other. We were on the same panel yesterday. Aj, tell us what brings you here.

Ajay: 0:47

So I'm here from Los Angeles. I flew in particularly for the MemeCon conference, hoping to meet awesome individuals like Yuri. I'm here representing Shitcoin. We are a 68-day-old project, now approaching 70 days now, which is forever in the world of memes. Um, we've been through all the shit you can imagine, um, hence why we're called shitcoin. We're a community that is open to um people that have been rugged, people that have been burned, people that want want a hug right, come and join us. Um, I'm a real face, a real name. Um. There's not many mean projects or communities that um, that have that um, and I think that's what makes us real. My goal here is to make like-minded people that share that same vision. Um, and I want to do cross community um spaces and talks, and I think that's how we grow communities right, that's how we grow projects I'm a big believer in um.

Ajay: 1:44

Hey, if you're in the crypto space, you're not just married to one project. Let's be realistic. We all talk about that. Every community says just buy my token, just buy my token. I want everyone to buy a shit coin, but I also want them to be smart and diversify their investments. Right, um, there's nothing wrong with being um part of multiple tribes or multiple communities. Right? It's how dedicated and convicted you are and the ones that you are in.

Joeri: 2:08

Absolutely Like it's, more like it's for yourself. You want not to put all your eggs in one basket. You know, in investments they say like you know, like I don't know if I say it in English, but like a good father, a good house father, you take care of your family. You should care for investments too, for your coins, you know. But I'm wondering okay, you're now in shitcoin, but can you take us a bit back? How do you get involved in this project? How do you get involved in crypto?

Ajay: 2:38

Yeah, absolutely Okay. So I've been in the video game space for about 25 years, mainly on the recruiting side. So I love working with people and that's my passion, you know, call me, do a video call, I'm not a texting person. So, having built that networking community, I got into crypto about eight, 10 years ago Bitcoin, ethereum, altcoins, you know, projects and tokens that are more on the retail side.

Ajay: 3:03

But I was fascinated, I think towards the end of last year, with the mean space. Um, not just fascinated but also cautious. Right, it's a very delicate, delicate space to step into, right, um, with the fear of being tripped up. It's fast moving, it's quick. Um, everything they say about being in the trenches, that's exactly what it is you're in the trenches, you're covered in shit all the time. Right, you've got to. You're going to come out of it and find the projects that you want.

Ajay: 3:27

So back in january this year, I I did my first step into a memes went in, went in bold and got burned got heavily, heavily burned, I think. Vine, vine coin was the project back then. Um, I learned a lot about what communities mean, the importance of communities, more so with means than with any other project that I've ever been in and really realizing the importance of what a frontman or a docs dev is right. Yes, there's some projects that don't have that and they have other means to bring the community together, but in the meme space in particular, I think what we see are lots and lots of projects 99% of projects that are not designed to really build community. They're designed to pump and dump as a uniting. So, having gone through other projects and really gauging how these individuals work that are leading these projects, I got involved in a project called Shitcoin, which was an eye-opener for me and, I think, for a lot of people in this community, because what we saw was an individual that put his face to a project and, as we know, in memes that's really done. Not just a face, but a name, a location this is where I live Videos of him in person, which I think attracted a massive, massive audience, and it was wonderful to see this project really quickly from start.

Ajay: 4:50

From day one it's shown up to 6.2 million, and to me, that was an opportunity. I was like right, this is something I want to be involved in. This is this is powerful, right? Um, and I reached out to this individual. I've pestered him. Okay, every platform possible.

Ajay: 5:03

I was like james is called himself, so j, I need, I need to be talking on this space. This is so I feel the power, I feel the energy here, um, and he eventually got back to me, um, and invited me into his spaces and, um, you know, I think from the first space I felt that connection with the rest of the community, I think more than what he might've even felt for himself. And what was interesting is, over the course of the three weeks that followed that you know I'd get individual messages from people from the community are like wow, I only bought into this project because of you, not because of James or anything else. You bring a lot of energy and discussion and good talking points in our spaces. It's kind of long story short. At some point, when there were red flags which community doesn't see, we're blinded, right? We?

Ajay: 5:49

blinded that shiny object and we were blinded by what's going on in the background. It was a Friday afternoon shut down, the X account closed down, the website disconnected, everything and the price just went brutal. We knew what happened right Next day community, we did the spaces and they elevated me and wanted me to do the community takeover. We put a small team together. We did the community takeover. We bought that price back up again, or the market cap back up again, from around 40,000, 50,000, where I believe we went to 200,000. We're back around the 150 mark right now. So we're playing around that. There's no liquidity in the market at the moment. But what was awesome was is that community was so supportive of what we're doing and held right. Um, and I don't talk about holding, I don't talk about price I talk about community.

Ajay: 6:36

This is about community. It has to be driven by people. Um, and here I am. They sent me here to me. That's powerful. We're a hundred thousand something, a market cap project, and there aren't many of those around here at this meme space, and I've gotten to know a lot of people, I've gotten to know me and I hope this, I hope this podcast reaches a lot of people, and especially our community and beyond that, they do understand that this is a real project and we're here to revive it. We're here to take this to the masses. I believe in tried and tested paths and, hey, fartcoin has made the path for us. We're going to follow that. If they can cross that billion dollar mark, we can. I'm all about names, and this is the name that I think will resonate with a lot of people. Our slogan is there's two coins, there's Bitcoin and then there's shitcoin. We are the ultimate shitcoin.

Joeri: 7:28

I love the energy also that you bring If people, if you're not listening to it, are not seeing it. I like AJ with his energy. We are directly matching with energy. I also love the fact that you say you get a lot of no and then one yes and then you fully go for it. I love the fact you mentioned it's a real project, but it's also a real community, because this is really powerful. If you can, how many? This is the first story I hear that a community is like that, or doesn't feel good, or is falling apart. It doesn't fall apart Because it's really, really living and it's coming, I would say, stronger than ever. I mean. So what is now next for you? So now you're here today you have been speaking, yeah. What is in the pipeline, what is on the horizon? Yeah.

Ajay: 8:16

So these last two days here at this meme conference. I cannot stress how much I've learned. Anybody in this space that thinks they can do this behind their desk or at home and do it remotely yeah, you might be lucky, but get out there. There are conferences, there are events. You've got to meet like-minded people. You've got to meet people that share your same vision. What's enlightening to me with this particular event is that I have met those people. There are others that genuinely want to run projects with ethics right and really focus on what made civilizations right.

Ajay: 8:49

We all started off from a small community that grew and grew and grew right, and that's what's on the roadmap here. Let's not forget that everything starts with growth and an audience and sharing a vision and a message and then building on that. I often say in our space that hey, if you've got the followers right, those followers are going to convert to holders. Those holders are then going to throw money at the project, which is volume. That volume converts to market cap. The rest is history. But you've got to follow those steps. You can't jump from trying to build an audience to trying to increase that price without doing all the hard work, without being in the trenches without assuring your community that, guys, this is real right, we're here for the long run, right, this isn't a pump and dump, and I think that's what's next is more of these, more getting out there.

Ajay: 9:38

I've had to change my life. I've had to really focus on what I'm doing for this project. Um, I develop games. I work with a game studio. Fortunately, I have a team that's able to continue with that and allow me to get out there and really sell this project and bring the community together. So, yeah, if you ask me, what's next? Growth, growth, community, community, community. Nothing else matters. Everything else will come as a result of that.

Joeri: 11:12

So you mentioned gaming. Is there an experience or lessons learned from the gaming experience that you now bring with you? Yes, or lessons learned from the gaming experience that you now bring with you?

Ajay: 11:18

in the web series. Yeah, a lot of stuff actually. I've got ideas just popping out of my head. Right, we've met some awesome people here, like Bananas and Guys. Right, for example, they validated to me the importance of, and something I was thinking about several months ago was predictive gaming. It's given me great ideas about what we can do in terms of features. Right, we're not just a project.

Ajay: 11:41

I think If you look at Floki, I always refer to Floki and their leader, sabre. I thought they had one of the most amazing marketing campaigns and they're doing stuff now, which isn't just well, we have a project. They're building stuff the Valhalla project, the games, the features on their website, guys, all of that's going to come. If, guys, all of that's going to come. If people from our communities listen to this, people from outside our community listen to this, baby steps. Right, I see a lot of projects trying to do everything all at once. It doesn't work. Pick something, do it right, move on to the next one. So that's what I want to share is this is relatively new to me, but bringing all the experiences I've had in terms of building teams, working with different communities and different groups, it's all come together to this right now and it's exciting, it really is exciting.

Joeri: 12:24

I love what you're telling me. When life, you know, makes happen that things come together, like for me. Before I was into Web3, I had a business intelligence company, I was at an investment club and then I was into digital marketing, social media marketing, it all comes together for me, like you know, it all makes sense. The next step and uh, yeah, doing a lot of lessons, uh, with us, of course, so you like me a lot of energy. What is now excite? What excites you the most? These days.

Ajay: 12:54

I'm gonna tell you what excites me about this guy, right because, he's making it all about me, but we wouldn't be here if we didn't have a connection right? So one of the first things that you showed me when I met you and I think you mentioned it earlier was you opened his phone and it says something about if somebody says no to me 99 times, I'm not going to listen. And the minute he said that I'm going um step back a bit. In 1996 I came here for the first time. I came to the usa for the first time, um. I'm in portugal right now at the conference. But I came to usa for the first time, um, and I sold encyclopedias door to door for for three and a half months and I made a shitload of money and it was an eye-opener for me.

Ajay: 13:34

And one of the things I remember the sales training course, which was in nashville was an individual got up on stage and said um, I believe he was a um insurance salesperson. I forget his name, but he was telling a story about um, how he's knocking door and selling insurances back in the day. And um, he had this one follow-up visit, um, and he happened to be with his wife and he was in his car driving to wherever they're going. And he said to his wife let wife and he was in his car driving to wherever they were going. And he said to his wife let me just stop and talk to this family who I said I would revisit. And his wife came with him and knocked on the door and he said I sold the insurance. And when we got back to the car it took about 45 minutes to get the sale.

Ajay: 14:14

My wife looked at me and she said I don't believe you. You're like. I stood there behind you embarrassed because the family you were talking to, they said no 99 times and you just ignore them. It went over your head. But the minute they said yes, you jumped all over them and you got that signature on the paper and to me that was so powerful. And there are times when a no is a no and you'll know it. You'll know it right. But it's really important when you're selling something, when you're pitching something, when you really have conviction in the product that you stand behind and you know it's going to make somebody's life better that you ignore those no's Because you know you're helping them out. You want them to step over the line where they understand that the yes is wow. I'm so glad this person pushed me to say yes. That really connected me. There aren't many people who live by that philosophy. When you showed me that, I was like dude, this is the universe. This doesn't happen for a reason, you know.

Joeri: 15:09

Yeah that's exciting to me. Well, exciting to me that you have, like we are matching really the energy, and actually someone who also matches his energy is Gary Vee actually Gary.

Ajay: 15:18

Vee.

Joeri: 15:19

It came from him, the 99. And what he always says is consistency. You know you need to be consistent and not give up directly, right and like. Also with my podcast. I told a story that I was starting my podcast from zero. Like me being a Belgian guy with a Belgian accent, people around me would say, why would you do that? Or with your Dutch accent or Belgian accent. But I kept continuing, continuing, continuing, and then you have that one day that you get a message was an email actually to my website that Coindesk reached out to me because they were listening to the podcast and they said we want to work with you, we want to sponsor you. So you see, just continuing, doing an effort, believing in it and, you know, doing it passionately, doing, you know, with your heart, like it works.

Ajay: 16:05

Um it does your, and there's nothing wrong with your accent. You know I'm I moved to los angeles 26 years ago. I still have an english accent and I love it, and I love that we live in a diversified world now where we're beginning to hear different accents and appreciate them, and they're not oh my God, where's this person from? But rather oh my God, you speak such beautiful English and your accent puts a little twist to it and it's soothing and it's refreshing, and let's embrace it and that's how we stand out.

Joeri: 16:29

You Absolutely. That's impressive and that's how we stand out. You know, when you go to the US, like the same thing for me, like I'm in these communities with a lot of Americans and in marketing, and then when they hear my voice, you know they don't need to see my face. Oh, it's Yuri, yeah, yeah yeah.

Joeri: 16:46

Another one is, of course, like we don't pronounce your name, so my name is a quite specific name, a Belgian name, jury Witterer. That's always a big question. How do you pronounce your name? It creates directly a connection. Yeah, talking about energy, what are the vibes you're feeling here right now, at NFC, at the summit, at the conference? Because you know you have to read it goes up, it goes down. You get a lot of people, sometimes a bit less, you know they lose a bit of courage because they see how the market is evolving. And what is your feeling about the vibes here and in general about Web3?

Ajay: 17:21

Everybody asks me they've asked you as well. We've heard this where do you see meme coins? Where do you see the meme space? Yeah, and you know, if you've been in crypto for a while, you kind of follow the money, right, and you wait for these cycles, right, let's wait for that Bitcoin index to drop and then the money flows into Ethereum and it falls into altcoins. And I think last year you know the community was talking about. Right now we've got AI coins and you know meme coins are still moving to the bottom and it's AI first, and I think what memes have done since pump, not pump, especially this in the last six months is really separated themselves from the other batch, right, yeah, I think the money's still going to flow into us, but I think, regardless of whether that happens or not, memes has its own life. It's like las vegas. This is the las vegas, the casino, the biggest casino. Yeah, you could play in, and when they say the trenches, it really is the trenches, it's down and the biggest casino you could play in. And when they say the trenches, it really is the trenches. It's down and dirty, it's rough. You've got to be thick-skinned to play in this game and I think for the last couple of months.

Ajay: 18:21

You know, with the new administration in the US and the super cycle not coming as everybody had expected, I think there's no doubt there is a cycle coming. There is going to be that full run. We're going to see it. But what excites me is the potential that memes have to exist outside that cycle because it's fast moving. There's new communities being generated every day and that's exciting is that, dude, if I want a community around the love of glass bottles, I can build one, and I know there's not just me in the world that loves glass bottles. I don't love glass bottles. I can build one, and I know there's not just me in the world that loves glass bottles. I don't love glass bottles, by the way, but I'm just using that as an example. That, to me, is powerful is the ability to bring together communities that have a passion for something where it doesn't matter if you're an obscure person that has a specific niche that only interests you. I promise you there's 20,000, 30,000 other people in the world that have that same interest as well. We're human, right. We're all connected. That's what's exciting to me, and something else that was said yesterday as well.

Ajay: 19:22

I believe it was David from Lo-Fi, I think he was on stage. Great speaker, david, if you're listening, I really enjoyed your talks. You shared some amazing data on how small the meme market is in comparison to the rest of the crypto world. Right, but the money being extracted from this, or the money running through here, is comparatively larger than in every other space, and the growth that this specific meme industry is going to experience is going to be tenfold over the next five years. It's tenfold, a hundredfold.

Ajay: 19:55

I believe that, to me, is exciting. We're still early. I believe everybody that's here today, we're the early comers, we're the ones who've just put our foot in, and I really hope to see a lot of these faces around next year, the year after right, and new people coming into this industry learning from us. Right, right, I want to be on stage next year again talking and sharing my experiences, because there is a lot to there is a lot to learn. I mean, I believe what I've learned in the last six months compared to everything I've learned, learned in the last 25 years, it's 25 years condensed into six months. That's what the crypto world is. It's fast moving. You know that absolutely.

Joeri: 20:31

Yeah, it goes so fast and um. But interesting also is yeah, of course, you mentioned ai and everyone is now involved in I looking at ai, at crypto. Sometimes they still look a bit even at ai too, and they are a bit scared of what this is all about, but still people are using it. But with crypto and with meme tokens, people that are looking from the Web2 side of things they are looking at what is this weird kind of thing? But how do you explain this to your neighbor when they see this? What are you doing actually? What is your business? And how does it all make sense to someone who isn't in the space? What would you?

Ajay: 21:10

say to them so, guys, this has to be driven by passion, right? Yes, a lot of people are driven by money and there should be money in here. Right, we're all here to make coffees, but I want to do it ethically, right? You know, you can always take good stuff from bad people as well, right?

Ajay: 21:26

The previous dev for this project used to say and this is one of the things we bought into is like, guys, I'm not here to rug you. We need to build this project to 500 million. We need to build it to a billion dollar market cap, because if you took $20,000 out that month to pay for your bills, it's not going to affect the charts. It's like an ATM at that point. And it's like Bitcoin. Right, if you went out and took out your 10 Bitcoin today, or 20 Bitcoin today, it's not even going to move that needle. And that's how communities need to be thinking. Right. It's very easy to think about just yourself and say, right, as soon as it hits that 200 million market cap, I'm going to cash out. But guess what you've done? You've fucked up the market for everybody else. You've fucked up your charts for everybody else, but your community has conviction and belief and you guys are genuinely married to why you bought into that project. Well then, hang around, give it your all you know. That, I think, is really important.

Joeri: 22:18

Yeah, and like we discussed yesterday on the panel and what you were explaining, do we see some faces, real faces, real humans?

Ajay: 22:27

Yes, let's make it real, guys. You know and I'm not saying this for the people that are looking to invest in crypto projects or shitcoin or any project but make it real. They're buying to the projects where you know who is run by. You can see a team behind them. I didn't answer the question. I think you asked me something about AI earlier and I'm glad you touched on that. I think there's about to be a massive explosion with ai run projects in our space. We I said this yesterday on the panel I I was blown away by fat fella yeah, fat fella season.

Ajay: 23:00

Um, you know, I think they were the first people to come in, or the first group to come in and really create content. That um drew attention. I have people like, wow, look at this, I can't believe this is 100 percent ai, um, and I mean a few others that have dabbled with that. But I think there's about to be an explosion of content driven tokens, yeah, and that appeal to people's. They're making memes come alive, right. They. They're making memes come alive in a story. I think that's about to explode, um, with ai tools now being able to generate that media a lot quicker and a lot more appropriately, right, if I use you as an AI character. I'm going to use you in the next day. It's not going to be somebody that looks like you. I think that's what's going to make things different. The world's about to change. We're going through that change right now, right, and that's going to trickle into the crypto, the meme space, as that happens.

Joeri: 23:53

Yeah, I love when it all comes together.

Joeri: 23:55

Even if it's scary for people and then you know all these two technologies. It's not about you know to be scared about because it's there. You know you cannot hide it, you cannot close your eyes for it. Like teenagers are using AI already all the time. So AI is there. Crypto is there Also, it's present. You know what's happening everywhere around the world that crypto will more and more be used as money, as we can call it, or the real money. So, yes, a lot of wisdom in this podcast episode. Aj, is there one final message that you would like to bring?

Ajay: 24:29

Yeah, yeah, only because I'm a parent and I know you are as well, and I hope this appeals to the people that aren't parents as well.

Ajay: 24:38

Right, because I think we owe it to the world to give back, right? So, whether you give back to your kids or you give back to the next generation, let's embrace this world we're in. We have the tools now to pretty much do anything, to get creative at home. Anybody can. The level, the playing fields are level, whether you want to make a movie, whether you want to make a TV show, whether you want to start a new marketing business, guys, the tools that are available today are the tools that are going to shape the world we live in. And even and we use movies as an example even if you're a famous movie director and a filmmaker, right, you have to realize that you have to start using these tools because, if you don't guess what, somebody else that doesn't have your experience is going to be able to generate something which is far more compelling than what you've been working on for the last 25 years, 50 years of your career. So step up your game, learn these new tools, embrace them, because they're not going away, indeed.

Joeri: 25:34

Um, like as as I heard J Jensen say, it's not that AI will replace jobs, will replace people, but if you are not using AI, then you will be replaced by someone who does use AI. Yes absolutely so. That's the guy from NVIDIA that I was referring to. Fully agree. So such a pleasure to have you on the show man. Thank you, man. The pleasure to have you on the show man, thank you man, the pleasure is to be here.

Ajay: 25:54

Thank you, look forward to doing more guys.

Joeri: 25:57

What an amazing episode recorded here in Lisbon at NFC Summit. If you like this episode, be sure to share it with people around you. As I always say, if you haven't given me a review yet, also, this is a really good time to do this, because if you give me these five stars, I will reach an even bigger audience. If you haven't subscribed yet, also do this right away so that you don't miss any of the future episodes. And, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care, awesome thanks, man.