Ep 81: Building a cute, educational & interactive NFT platform for Web3 beginners | Mai Akiyoshi (CEO & Co-Founder, Curious Addys' Trading Club)

It’s time to meet our 5th #Web3 #NFT guest on STIMY!


Mai Akiyoshi is a Silicon Valley engineer from Japan who has had
a rather unconventional route littered with what one might
conventionally consider to be “failures”.


And it all began… with Mai applying for a sales position at a
Japanese company. 


The company decided unilaterally that they would train her up as
a software engineer instead and it proved to be really difficult.
She was consistently at the bottom of her cohort, but still made
it through the training and… got into the most technically
demanding department of the company, where she was treated like
an alien!


Mai then got into a startup by accident - applying for a position
she had no prior qualifications in, and even tried to rescind her
application! That position eventually led her to the States,
where she met Ben Yu (her co-founder & partner) through
Nuseir of Nasdaily/Nas Academy and where her Web3 journey
began. 


Now, Mai is the CEO and co-founder of Curious Addys, a Web3
startup building the best educational platform and community for
newcomers to Web3 while celebrating ADHD. She is building
ember.help, a platform where anyone can ask questions on Web3 and
get guaranteed answers from experts. 


If you’re interested in all things Web3/thriving despite all the
difficulties that life throws at you, then this is definitely the
episode for you.





Highlights:


2:32 Growing up in Japan

4:35 Being diagnosed with ADHD

5:55 Being influenced by her grandparents, who founded their
own company after World War II

7:02 Wanting to go to the US

8:27 Applying for a sales position & becoming a software
engineer

10:02 Japan’s shaming culture

11:29 Feeling like she’d landed on an alien planet 

12:24 Moving to a new startup, Logbar

14:18 Moving to the US

15:03 How Nuseir of Nas Academy introduced her to Ben Yu
& is the “mother” of Curious Addys

16:56 Studying at App Academy 

19:19 Becoming the senior software engineer at Gusto

21:55 How Mai first entered the Web3 space

22:51 Why Ethereum is so interesting

23:37 Meeting Zeneca & helping him with his smart
contract 

24:47 Starting a Tamagochi education platform?

26:54 Why NFTs are here to stay

28:23 NFTs are the best way to bootstrap a community

29:32 The vision behind Curious Addys’ Trading Club:
Education, Cute, NFTs

32:07 Why an octopus for a mascot?

33:56 The early days of building Curious Addys

36:01 Finding her founding team members

37:24 Maintaining the right values as the community grows

39:28 100% refund policy

40:15 Why release only 5,000 in the initial launch

40:51 How they promoted Curious Addys’ Trading Club

42:02 Building partnerships 

42:59 The type of products under Curious Addys’ Trading Club

44:39 What is Ember?

47:03 NFT portfolio tracker 

50:12 Reading smart contracts

52:35 Mai’s favourite NFT 

53:53 What Mai believes in that most people don’t in the
crypto space

54:15 Biggest mistake Mai has done in the Web3 space

55:03 How to spot NFT/crypto scams






Show notes:
www.sothisismywhy.com/81         





 Sign up for the weekly STIMY newsletter:
https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/ebf231f605 





🪙 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sothisismywhy