An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Don’t be afraid of failures and don’t lie to yourself about when you have failed. Embrace that failure as a new notch on your belt in terms of knowing what not to do and directing you on a narrower path that is more certain to be successful. Don’t try to hang on to something that’s failing and let it go as fast as possible and move on to the next thing. For example, the original vision for Curios was to not only be for digital collectibles, but also physical collectibles. We realized that the two don’t mesh well, so we pivoted to only focus on digital assets.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Grant Powell.
Grant Powell is the Founder of Curios, professional numismatist, and an ex-Googler. An expert in developing some of the most innovative technologies and digital products, some of Grant’s highlights include the first-ever live streaming platform for YouTube (for concerts such as U2, Alicia Keys, Coachella) and the first-ever application to integrate with Spotify’s web API for matching people based on their similar tastes in music. Grant is knowledgeable in a wide range of programming languages as well as being an expert in design and artistic direction.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I’ve been a technologist since forever, 20 plus years now and as far back as the days when we used to have things such as “interactive agencies.” I started almost entirely self-taught and was able to get an internship early on at a company called Vision Art Interactive. Ever since then, I have been addicted to not just technology, but turning technologies into viable products that people enjoy using. I’ve incubated and launched several startups over the years, including Curiously (not to be confused with Curios), which is a music dating app and was the first app to ever integrate with Spotify’s Web API. I also built the first ever peer-to-peer lending platform called YouPawn, and the first ever live streaming experiences for YouTube –
which featured Alicia Keys, Bonnaroo, Coachella, Paul McCartney and many more live performances.
I am also a very serious collector and numismatist. In fact, I am the number one numismatist in the U.S. on Google searches (look it up). As a collector, I was very excited to learn about NFTs, and the ability to collect digital things. but, I was dismayed at how difficult it was. So I decided to build my own platform that would make it easier for people to create, sell, buy, and collect NFTS. That’s why I started Curios.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Our purpose is to drive mass adoption. We want anyone and everyone to be able to participate in Web3, blockchain and NFT experiences. It seems in this industry; people prioritize things such as the illusion of decentralization over inclusion and ease of use. Everything that we are building is for the purpose of lowering the barrier to entry, and making it easier for people to either create, or integrate them into their business, or invest in them.
We were one of the first ever NFT platforms to accept fiat or credit card payments as a means of purchasing NFTs and storing those NFTs in custody wallets so that users don’t have to go through the extremely complicated process of setting up their own crypto wallet. Many people pushed back on our implementation of these technologies initially, and now it seems literally every software or platform in our space is doing the same.
Ultimately, the most disruptive thing that we are doing is our vision itself — our vision of making things easy. One of our most disruptive features is our multi chain support. Using our simple web back end, anyone with zero knowledge of programming or blockchain can create / mint NFTs across six different blockchains in a matter of minutes. Our most powerful tool that anyone can use is our REST API which, for example, enables anyone who understands basic programming to be able to mint NFTs across the same blockchains with one simple API call. There is no other platform in the world who can offer that.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I’ve been doing this a long time and one of the blessings I’ve experienced in growing Curios, compared to the other startups I’ve been involved in, is that we have made very few mistakes.
I guess you might call it a mistake that we used to pitch potential customers on things that we had not built yet and our vision of those things were often half-baked. For example, we used to talk about “private blockchain” functionality and how that was an important feature of our platform. And what’s funny is that I don’t even think a private blockchain is really a thing. Or maybe it is, by someone’s definition, but certainly not something in the that way we were pitching it. In the long run, I don’t think this was a mistake, as it was valuable for us to be constantly pushing out new visions for features that we intended to build into our application; whether or not you stick with those initial visions does not matter. In fact, much of what you originally envisioned for your company will not happen — you will pivot, and that is good.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I’m always amazed by how much people are willing to help. And oftentimes, they ask nothing in return. We would have nothing if it wasn’t for our incredible advisors, mentors, and investors!
Jenny Fielding (co-founder of The Fund, and former managing director of Techstars NY) has been a guiding light for us since day one. In the world of tech startups these days, it’s not just about the technology — you need to make sure that you are building a product for the future. Jenny has seen hundreds, probably thousands of company ideas over her tenure in the startup world, and she knows exactly which things you need to focus on to build for success. There is no replacement for her level of experience and her lending us that experience has helped us stay focused and has largely contributed to our success to date. Jenny was the one who nudged me into the NFT space.
Dan Rice (co-founder and CTO of Bling Financial) is not only a technology genius, but an incredible problem solver. He has this uncanny ability to look at problems and situations from multiple perspectives, and offer a way forward that is unprecedented, efficient, and will ultimately leads to winning. Dan and I chat regularly and about once every three months, he’ll just drop a golden nugget of an idea into my brain that will lead to a great path of success. One time Dan even joined an early sales call with us to answer technical questions that we were uncertain about — we won the pitch!
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
It’s true that disruption is not always positive. However, you can’t have the good without the bad. Disruption is necessary and we must endure the downsides of bad disruption in order to be able to reap the benefits of good disruption. It’s hard to know what type of disruption will be bad until it has occurred, as hindsight is always 20/20. Instead of asking whether you’re doing “good” disruption or “bad” disruption, try asking yourself “What problem are you solving?” One of the classic mistakes by startups is that they’re creating a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. If you are disrupting something, make sure you are doing it with the intention of solving an actual problem that does in fact…exist!
Can you share three of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Make your first dollar! One of the biggest reasons why we were able to raise money fast at a good valuation is because we have revenue and traction. But even more important is the fact that by pursuing that first dollar, you’re getting over the hump of building something that someone is willing to pay for. And that is a critical validator.
Progress, not perfection — many people will spend months or years envisioning what their product could be and want to have the perfect vision before they start building their product. I do the opposite. I start writing code and when my face is in the mud because what we built was built completely wrong, then I know with certainty exactly how it should have been built…and then I go rebuild it that way. If you were able to look at the past version of our website, it was embarrassing! Even our current website has a lot of room for improvement, but I don’t care. I could spend six months perfecting the next version but by the time I launch it, it will be outdated and irrelevant, and we will have to start the process again. Take baby steps to always improve and iterate infinitely.
Fail fast — this is a popular and important one. Don’t be afraid of failures and don’t lie to yourself about when you have failed. Embrace that failure as a new notch on your belt in terms of knowing what not to do and directing you on a narrower path that is more certain to be successful. Don’t try to hang on to something that’s failing and let it go as fast as possible and move on to the next thing. For example, the original vision for Curios was to not only be for digital collectibles, but also physical collectibles. We realized that the two don’t mesh well, so we pivoted to only focus on digital assets.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Oh man, there is so much to do! As a Web3 suite of tools, our toolbox is never full. There are new tools that will be needed that we can’t even imagine yet, and I really look forward to building them in the future!
The way we are shaking things up is by bringing back democratization to digital assets. The future of blockchain, NFTs, metaverse, etc. is inclusive, easy to use, and open.
I often describe an NFT marketplace or a metaverse as a “walled garden.” Each of these walled gardens can only operate within itself. They often have their own currency, their own information format and any asset that you buy or collect within their ecosystem is stuck there — and cannot be taken anywhere else. We’re working on building open protocols that would create interoperability between each of these ecosystems so that digital assets could move freely — thereby significantly increasing their value and utility. So far everyone is telling us this can’t be done, and I think they are wrong.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
I don’t have a book or podcast specifically that I would recommend. However, I do believe that it is paramount that you are always reading, listening, absorbing, and learning. But don’t always take what you read or hear as truth. You must take everything with a grain of salt and formulate your own ideas and paths forward. It will be these unique ideas and approaches of your own that will differentiate you from everybody else, and lead to your success.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch! It makes me cringe when I hear people talking about something as if it’s already happened when I know in fact that there are a lot of ways in which this thing could not happen. Even something as simple as selling a house — if someone has made you an offer on your house, it is far from a done deal. Don’t bank on it.
One example of this for Curios is that we way overestimated our growth predictions initially and signed up for some services that we needed to use and ended up paying a huge amount of money up front in order to get a discount on a high-volume implementation. When that growth did not happen, we ultimately spent money for nothing. Lesson learned. In simple terms, consider licensing something monthly instead of paying for an annual license at a discount. You may find out after a couple months that you no longer need that thing.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Of all the problems in the world, the one thing that keeps me up at night is the destruction of our own planet. We need to protect nature and one idea that I have for that is to continue to build vertical cities instead of horizontal cities. If we can centralize humans into smaller regions, we can limit our impact on the rest of the world and leave nature alone to flourish. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for innovation in the way of building efficient, highly populated, vertical cities. Have at it!
How can our readers follow you online?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantpowell
https://www.twitter.com/grantpowell
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Meet The Disruptors: Grant Powell Of Curios On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
