123: Top 20 Countdown

Top 20 Countdown: Week 3

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in cooperation with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s episode is the third of several highlight shows where we are taking a look back at our top 20 favorite interviews and conversations of all time. Today’s featured guests are:

• Brandon Curry, Founding Partner of Moonbase Market
• Sam Abbassi, Developer Relations at Algorand

Some key points from Brandon at Moonbase Market:

• The tremendous growth of E-sports, building a career as an E-sports athlete
• Venture capital’s interest in E-gaming
• South Korea’s dominant role in E-sports
• What draws people to watch E-sports
• The high-level of performance and dedication required to be a world-class E-sports athlete
• Similarities to other world-class athletes, like Lebron James and other NBA stars
• Building a business as an advertising platform
• Building a viewer base
• The importance of gaming to a generation that grew up on it, and used it to help find and establish friendships
• The power of gaming to build community
• Listen or watch Brandon’s full episode here

Some key points from Sam at Algorand:

• The difference between blockchain and cryptocurrency
• Blockchain as the underlying technology of all cryptocurrencies
• The beginning of blockchain: anarchists hunting for economic freedom
• Being in the early days of blockchain infrastructure; the ideas of what is possible outstrip the capabilities at the moment
• The power of combining science, technology, and art
• How to get started as a blockchain developer: start on Ethereum
• Crypto-kitties; the value of digital scarcity
• Resources for learning about blockchain: CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, and others
• Blockchain opportunities still to come
• Listen or watch Sam’s full episode here