Przemek Kowalczyk: 0:00

You need to convince users that your product has meaningful value in their everyday lives. And that can deliver value here and now, regardless of the technology that relies on.

Joeri Billast: 0:16

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories Podcast. My name is Joeri Billast. I'm your podcast host. And today I'm joined by Przemek. How are you? Thank you, Joeri. So I'm very good. Thank you. I'm very nice to be here with you. Great to have you. I often have guests from all over the world with difficult names, so I try to pronounce your name in the right way. If you don't know Przemek, Przemek Kowalczyk, he's the co-founder and CEO of Ramp Network. He spent the last eight years building one of the key bridges between Fiat and Web3 with a background in physics, analytics, and product dealership. Przemek has helped make crypto onboarding faster, simpler, and more trusted for millions. So for me, that's a really exciting project that you're.

Przemek Kowalczyk: 1:07

Thank you for the introduction. Thank you.

Joeri Billast: 1:10

So, Przemek, how did your background in physics and agent-based modeling shape the way you think about user behavior in Rev3 today?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 1:20

It's a very interesting question. Indeed, I studied physics and computer science when I was younger. And thinking as a physicist, you usually try to find models and ways to describe behaviors. This very nicely translates to product development and product management. Because think about what the users are doing, how to categorize your behaviors and shape the journey to make the most sense.

Joeri Billast: 1:51

And so I'm curious what early insights convinced you that crypto onboarding was the real bottleneck to mainstream adoption?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 2:07

I joined a crypto startup. It was 2017, early 2017, or maybe even 16, I don't remember. And it was built by one of my colleagues from uni. And we've been trying to build a web free startup back then. It was a lending market for retail customers. I was doing there a bit of like business strategy, a bit of product development. And one of the key bottlenecks for this product to take off, was like there were three main elements why this product couldn't take off. So back in the days, we lacked good wallets for people to store the fans. We lacked stable currency, cryptocurrency, so we only had very volatile Ethereum and Bitcoin. Stable coins were not yet a thing. And the third thing, which was the for us the biggest bottleneck, was lack of easy bridges between Piat and crypto. When we put the product in the hands of our users, they couldn't access it because they didn't have crypto on their hands in their wallets. And this was the initial insight for us, my co-founder, who worked there with me in the startup, that this is the key missing piece for crypto to take off. And after unfortunately the startup failed, we decided with Shimon, my co-founder, to open RAMP because we believe that this was the key missing piece in the crypto ecosystem.

Joeri Billast: 3:34

Let's talk a bit further about RAMP. You just became micro-authorized across the EU. Explain perhaps a bit more what that means. And what does this moment actually unlock for builders and users that maybe most people don't think about?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 3:51

You probably heard about different regulations in different countries that regulate the crypto ecosystem. And in the US, for example, the Hergenious Act. And in Europe, European Union introduced MICA a few years ago. And now it becomes something everyone who wants to take part in the crypto ecosystem as a bridge between fiat and crypto, you need to be authorized. Before each country had its own rules. Now we have one overarching framework. To be frank, it's uh it's a lot of work to get Micah authorized. We spent an entire year preparing for this. We need to hire a team in islands just to get it done. And of course, for us, it's a lot of work, a lot of resource spent. But what it gives to users is gives some of confirmation stamp from the regulators that we are conducting our processes appropriately and that we are in not in any way and or form gonna, for example, do anything naughty towards the users. And so that's the what this gives to from the user perspective. But also for the business, it gives us the ability to have one unified approach to the entire European Union instead of trying to understand different regulatory regimes across the continent.

Joeri Billast: 5:23

Another aspect that's important for users in crypto is trust. I hear it every day that people have thoughts that they are not sure. What signals matter most when people decide to buy or sell crypto through a platform, in your opinion?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 5:39

I guess trust is the one that the thing that it's very important. So a few they are looking for is a brand they recognize, something that looks serious and responsible, something that works very well. Different cases when products simply do not work, they put your money at risk. It cannot be the case if you are building a financial service. That's why also I think for the place where we are operating, so this bridge between fiat and crypto, the regulatory start of approval can make users more to trust more the services they're using.

Joeri Billast: 6:21

Yeah. Regulatory, of course, that it makes things complex. How do you actually you want to ship simple product experience at scale, but you have this regulatory complexity? How do you balance all that? Yeah, it's hard.

Przemek Kowalczyk: 6:34

To be frank, it's hard because when you are then you need to let regulator know about what you're doing shorthand before you even launch. And it makes it complex because product teams always want to push immediately to production, but sometimes it's not possible. What works for us is to create fine, defined spaces where the regulatory approval is necessary or where it's not. And then the product managers can better understand what initial process they need to go through to get entire business a green light to do a particular feature. So first they need to understand where it lies, in which in the bucket of that needs approval or not. And then we have predefined ways of handling those features that require regulatory scrutiny. Balancing regulatory complexity product, speed of product development is always hard. Product managers always want to push features to production as soon as possible, as it should be, because you always want to get user feedback fast. But it's not always possible in the regulated world. Sometimes you need to ask for approval. And that's the case for financial services. So there are features that require this approval or the additional legal green lighting. We have predefined pathways within the component. If the product manager believes that such a product or such a feature requires additional approval, then it goes through the compliance and legal team to as a conversation to get to the point where we are ready to launch.

Joeri Billast: 8:13

Interesting. All these complexities that are there, I think you are mid-ramp in more than 150 countries already. So makes it even more complex. Are there some patterns that you see in these different markets that enter Web3? Or maybe what does that mean for you for your strategies?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 8:34

So I covered the words. So the first one is EU and UK. There's also US and also the global south, which is South America and Africa markets. And for all of those, you need different strategies. Users have different behavioral patterns, they have different preferences. For example, in Europe, people are wanting to use some local payment methods. In US, it's cards. And in the other countries, also different. We have subsidiaries in US, UK, Ireland, Poland, and Brazil just to handle this legal complexity of those different countries.

Joeri Billast: 9:36

That is the importance of the UX. Probably many farmers still underestimate the power of smooth fiat to crypt the UX. What have you learned about where this friction really hides?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 9:48

So, first there is a lot of friction. The friction is in two main steps. So the first step is to get we call it QIC, so identified and authorized. And so you usually when you use Crypto OnRamp or Crypto Exchange, you usually need to provide your ID or password to show who you are and if it's required, right? Because to be frank, it's just additional step for a user. So they don't want to do it because it makes it harder to get to the endpoint that you want to get to. So you can be smart about it. You can require either everything or just things that are necessary. So you can go here, you can, you know, so you can take the simplest approach from the component perspective or the user perspective. And you need to be smart about it, how you how you do it. And the second point of complexity, so the second friction point, is at the payment stage. So as I already mentioned, user patterns differ depending on the country. And they have the user have different preferences. So, for example, some of the users want to use cards, some of the time wants to use local payment methods. Cards are e-requisitors, so you have so they work generally around the world, but they also are very old technology. Some people even would say ancient in the today's looking from the to-date perspective. And they sometimes work, sometimes sometimes it doesn't. Some banks that issue cards have better systems and or and some banks have worse systems. So some banks basically reject all the transactions that are done by cards to buy crypto. And to play around those different mechanisms and to try to get users to use payment methods that actually work, it's another big friction point, another complexity that we focus on.

Joeri Billast: 11:47

Lots of complexities to solve. The product on itself, you see, it's really amazing, but then you see all the complexities that you're solving. People probably have no idea what's behind. Now you mentioned the ancient. Let's look at the next generation of wallets, payment flows. So let's look a bit at the future. What shifts do you expect in our users to interact with digital assets?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 12:11

So, my biggest wish, the entire ecosystem, is that people will start that people will start using stable coins at maps begins there. And we already see a beginning of it. Stable coins become, they're gonna become a transfer layer for the entire money movements across the world. Um right now it's much easier to send stable coins from country like some countries in Africa to South America, then it's easier to send a direct bio transfer. And this is already true. The Remi Times market is being completely transformed by stable coins today, and it's gonna continue even more. I think we'll be surprised the same way how we are surprised by the unit of AI today, that at some point you will everyone is gonna be using that actually underneath have stable coins that work on the blockchain rails. It's gonna be just faster and less expensive than it was before.

Joeri Billast: 13:13

Stable coins is a hot topic these days, but also the topic is always you know in which direction the market is going. You know, you have all these market cycles, not if you are on crypto Twitter, a lot of discussions going on. And you have been building RAM through multiple market cycles. So I'm curious to hear from you what leadership lesson that you learned because you had to build during uncertainty.

Przemek Kowalczyk: 13:39

I think we went through three different cycles uh markets and bear markets. After those years building in crypto, what I learned is that you need to be prepared for uncertainty and for things to happen. At like next week, a major exchange can crash, like FTX, for example, did years ago, and then the entire market is gonna sink. And all the excitement is gonna disappear. I think the major lesson is that you always need to prepare for that. You always have enough cash and funding to go longer than that initial optimistic plan assumes. So that's one lesson. Another lesson is that you always need to have backups on the vendor side. So if you're building a product and you're relying on this one particular service that you're using, this can be some payment processor or even service that you used to send emails to users. The usual needs to have backups because at some point someone can decide that they don't want to work with crypto services any longer. And you need to be prepared for situations that you need to switch from one meet to another?

Joeri Billast: 14:49

Maybe a bit more difficult question. I don't know, but you didn't mention people can see it in the show notes that you also have another company advocacy. So you invest in early teams to advocally and community platforms like I think it warshow. What trades signal that a founder will navigate the coming wave of regulation and adoption? It's true.

Przemek Kowalczyk: 15:13

I'm thinking a bit of Android investing myself, not the adult that you mentioned. I think what I'm looking at founders, uh young founders especially, is ambition. So the passion towards the problem they are trying to solve. If you have ambition and passion, then usually everything else fits into place. Uh quite often, if you are just starting and you have a very big problem that you're trying to solve, you are not trying to solve it with the first attempt. So you maybe your first solution is not gonna work, and you will need to pivot. And that's usually the majority of the cases. It was very rarely that you find the right solution to the problem at the first try, at the first attempt. And that was this is also the that was the case for us. We started with the same, we were trying to solve the same problem, which is the crypto onboarding, but we were trying to solve in a different way. More decentralized, we are trying to build more on the also on the open banking rails, and that started to to that started back in the days. Uh and this approach was was not the right one. And then we pivoted a bit in how we're approaching the same problem, uh we're trying to solve the same problem but with different means, and it succeeded. So it's always a bit, but it wouldn't be it wouldn't happen if we wouldn't have the passion toward the problem and the ambition to go further and stretch ourselves and try to attempt this more than just one perspective.

Joeri Billast: 16:44

Yeah, passion mindset, really important. I feel of what we do, and we are also passionate about it and really want to make a difference. Now, pivoting, every entrepreneur, founder needs to pivot. You could redesign the entire ramp and off-ramp experience from zero today. What would remain and what would be completely different?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 17:09

So I think the key difference in how I would approach it today would be to dealt with with partners from day one. When we started, it was very hard to convince anyone to the vision of on-ramping uh back in the days. You had um separate experience in the form of fully non-custodial wallets, and you have also crypto exchanges. And if you want to send money from the crypto exchange to the wallet, you would you would do it as a withdrawal from the exchange. And uh to shift the paradigm and to build in on-ramping flows into wallets, crypto wallets, was something that was quite hard to convince wallets to do. They didn't see the value in it at the beginning. Today it's different. Today you can very easily uh find a design partner and try to build with them uh the best experience that we can get for them. Um and I think this would be the better approach today compared to years ago.

Joeri Billast: 18:11

Yeah, but now the situation is different, of course, because in Web3 and crypto things are moving so fast, and we are always talking about onboarding the next millions of users in Web3. So I would ask you, because we are coming at the end of this podcast episode, what is one strategic blind spot that Web3 founders, Web3 marketers still have when it comes to onboarding the next 100 million users and how can they correct it?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 18:40

The one perspective or mistake for the product and service to be used by millions, it needs to be useful. When we talk with users, we cannot be speaking about, for example, non-custody only the terms of the values that we believe everyone should use because it's better. In everyday people's lives, it's very hard to care about those things. Uh you need to convince users that your product has meaningful value in their everyday lives and that it can deliver value here and now regardless of the technology it relies on. And I think for many years the mistake of marketing in Web3 products was relying too much on the value set, like decentralization, uh even maybe privacy when those things are important, but the first thing that is the most important for the user is this product actually solves my problem. And I think that's what we should all be focused on building new products or services in Web3. Is this product or service actually? Solving user problem.

Joeri Billast: 20:02

Absolutely fully agree. Maybe you heard I've written this book, The Future CMO. I also talk about how CMOs of the future should look at things. It comes from many conversations I had. People in Web3 love to talk about the technology, but is it actually solving a problem? It's not about the tech, but it's about the experience, also, I would say. So what is experience that people have when they go to ramp? And it's not about all the technology behind it. Well, Jack, we are coming at the end of this podcast episode. If people want to do more about you or they want to find out, want to learn more about Ramp, where would you like me to send them?

Przemek Kowalczyk: 20:45

We are on X or Twitter and every other social networks that you can think about. Amazing.

Joeri Billast: 20:54

As my listeners know, there are always show notes, so everything you mentioned, the links and social media accounts, will be found in there. Also, if people want to read after listening to the podcast episode, go check out the show notes. Yes, Przemek, it was a real pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. What an amazing episode. Check out Trump Network for sure. Because in these days, check out the stablecon story. Crypto is moving so fast these days. So I'm sure this episode will be useful for people around you. Share this episode with them. If you're not yet following the show, this is a good moment to hit the subscribe button. If you haven't given me a review yet, if you give me these 5 stars, it will help me reach an even bigger audience. And of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.