What’s Next For Move-to-Earn Pioneer Stepn?

foreign [Music] gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a full sun current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novik's growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and advisory services for more information visit www.navic.com now let's jump into the episode hello and welcome to the navic gaming podcast I'm your host nickovori today we are covering one of the pioneers of the web 3 gaming space who popularized and blew up the move to earn category we are of course talking about stepan I find Satoshi labs steppen was one of the very first web3 mobile apps available through the regular old app stores and tapped into various very web 2 Technologies on

your mobile device just like any other Fitness or gaming app might do but step and innovated by also incorporating some deep web3 elements like their nft sneakers that are worn by users in order to earn their cryptocurrency GMT while walking or running and then Steppin absolutely exploded in popularity in q1 and early Q2 of 2022 with their nft sneakers selling for hundreds of dollars each and the implied market cap of GMT exceeding tens of billions of dollars but it wasn't just hypothetical crypto speculation Steppin made real money too with 26 million in operating profit in q1 of 2022 and a whopping 123 million in operating profit in Q2 2022 and of course then crypto winter set in so those numbers will probably come down a little bit um but at Peak steppen had 3 million Mau 800 000 Dau and this is despite the fact that onboarding into the web 3 elements in particular of the app was challenging to say the least and I should know I was a user of the product

um so we're fast forwarding now a couple of uh to a couple weeks ago when a headline uh in the news caught my attention and the headline said something like stepan becomes first ever blockchain gaming app to secure Apple pay integration and so this presumably means there is no more need for complicated transactions involving wallets and crypto or remembering seed phrases uh all the friction that you know we know from web3 and presumably now buying nfts is just an in-app purchase away just like for any other mobile app and as longtime listeners of this podcast will know uh I am a huge believer that for mainstream adoption of web 3 we as an industry need a couple of things to to happen firstly we need to integrate with our existing mobile devices and fit into our existing daily habits and secondly we need web3 transactions to be as seamless as making iaps are currently so when I saw that step and headline I knew I had to have them on the Pod to talk about the journey and how this latest move opens up the market for not just their product but web3 more broadly and so to talk

about all things stepping on the show today we have shitty mangani the COO Chief Operating Officer of stepan Welcome to the Pod thank you it's a pleasure to be here and what a lovely comprehensive introduction there fantastic well thank you for that and with that introduction out of the way let's get right into it um and so let's start first especially with guests such as yourself uh always really interested to hear about the journey into web3 and you have a very unique background at least among the folks that we've had on this pod you have a very deep marketing background with giant multinational corporations including PepsiCo um and so far you're the only guest we've had on this pod who has sold biscuits in India and cookies uh ironically enough in the UK where they're typically called biscuits so that had to be a little confused so I have to start with this critical question and I hope you don't mind a little levity to start the show off what is the difference between biscuits and cookies [Music]

soft dough whereas biscuits Are Hard Dough so um which makes cookies slightly heavier whereas biscuits are more fluffier than cookies yeah that's primarily the difference aha so I always thought it was just the UK versus us thing but it is actually a formulation difference between the two the two part there are two distinct products cookies and biscuits absolutely and the products in the US and the UK are also completely different what we call as biscuits in the U.S are actually very different from biscuits oh that's right of course it's Southern you know uh chicken and biscuits right of course oh goodness meat um all right well we could derail the show and go deep on biscuits cookies and the various Regional differences but here we're here to talk about Steppin so um after that kind of lighter note we started on um let's talk about your background so you joined steppen um at the height of the crazy growth period which was I believe February 2022. you initially joined as Chief marketing officer um and then since then you've taken on the CEO role tell us more about your journey from uh the web 2 very web 2

world of marketing biscuits and cookies for large multinational corporations to becoming first Chief marketing officer and then Chief Operating Officer of a pioneering web 3 move to earn startup company well it's been quite a journey to be honest of it so going back I'm an engineer and an MBA started my career in India in Blue Chip world of marketing so [Music] um did prestigious citizens in media as well as fmcg then moved to us with PepsiCo then actually came to Europe worked across Portugal France Germany Italy um France and then finally about seven eight years ago came to UK it took me across various cutting-edge Technologies right from 3D printing of food to when the digital marketing was taking off so we were sat outside at 3am and doing Billboards and then over to digital marketing I come from a time when about two percent of marketing

budget and I'm talking about annual marketing budgets off 12 million dollars two percent of that would go to now where 2025 and in some cases 30 35 goal so I've covered that Arc um yeah and then the book got me so I set up my own shop um started a startup based on AI tracking of posture in Fitness so basically using computer vision and AI we could track the posture for remote workouts that was my foray into using my engineering routes into Fitness World um we did a project with UK so we got awarded by UK government where we um used this technology for older senior adults which actually led me down this Rabbit Hole of data privacy and security so in dealing with this population age group who were so vulnerable and so

apprehensive about their data usage it completely opened my eyes to privacy in a way that I hadn't been exposed before um so this was around 2021 which is when blockchain crypto was in its own high Bull Run for different reasons and I started looking into the technology first uh and just like everybody first people go in for price and then they get sucked into technology pretty much similar thing happened with me and then I started looking at applications that I could potentially use for my own startup in this space which married Fitness with how you leveraged economics for user growth as well as data transparency to the users and data control to the users meanwhile I stole my startup came across step in and talked to the founders was completely sold onto Vision it was the

it was a small app we were in test flight phase we were moving on to a mobile app um and long story short we I joined the team it was um probably the craziest decision of my life as you said coming from a well-established Circle completely outside my comfort zone my family thought I was hitting midlife crisis or something in hindsight the best decision I ever made it made me work slog 20 I was in a day because we work across 14 time zones and and crypto never sleeps right so uh we worked hard toilet hard but it was right of a lifestyle last time boy and yeah as far as CMO to CEO um I I often joke that I'm the chief janitor officer to be honest when you work in a startup and such a lean starter with very few people you pretty much do everything you're the one who is also printing the invoice and you're the

ones in signing the invoice so titles uh be on a point don't matter fantastic journey I yeah I always like to ask these questions because everybody's journey is a a little different or sometimes wildly different but everybody always has that moment you know that aha moment where they're like oh wow you come to it with price that was my journey too I got in in 2016 and speculated on a bunch of icos back in those days and it was all about price but at the same time it was also about uh identifying that oh there's some transformational technology here um it's not quite ready for Prime Time certainly wasn't in 2016 2017. um but uh you know it's now kind of coming into its own so very similar journey and I always love to hear how that Journey you know impacted folks who come in and then truly buy into the vision of the technology so um so that brings nicely to so that's your background tell us more about step in itself um so obviously uh the the companies well yeah you tell you tell me the story I'm not going to tell it back to you I'd

love to hear about also about the founders um I haven't seen much about them um in the Press I don't know if they're very private um or they just uh don't do a lot of press for whatever reason but I'd love to hear the step in origin story and hear more about the founders who I believe are Australian or at least we're based in Australia yes sure would love to uh the step in is owned by parent Studio which is called as fine Satoshi Labs essentially that's the parent Studio that is um maker of Steppin or also makers of our own nft exchange called more and also makers of our own decentralized exchange called doll which is already number one and so on so yon and Jerry are the co-founders of FSL two of my most favorite people now um insanely awesome human beings com competent intelligence smart have got extensive experience both in blockchain and gaming so they come with complementary skill set and personalities as well

um the Jerry is very well worth in product and deck side of things with a very keen business sense of gaming Market he is made and sold several of gaming um applications himself John comes with a deep background in blockchain and crypto so um once again um he's well entrenched in the industry so about late 2021 I would say around October November time this was backdrop of remember covid people in isolation there were also Australian bushfires both of them are based in Australia there was loneliness isolation um and they were thinking how do we get people outside in a way that contributes positively to the environment while using incentive mechanism in blockchain to make it a habit so several brainstorms happened um initially they were thinking about

this game of goal called Fine Satoshi which is actually the bearing company's name where you would just go and find Satoshi but it then begin to to technical you mentioned onboarding I mean that was even more esoteric for web3 and they wanted to democratize like my mom their dad could play right um that was the dream so after a few iterations steppen was born um that's how Stephen came about to be and we'll never look back we've driven this from a couple of thousand daily active users to Millions fantastic I love the story um fun side note here if you'll you and listeners will indulge um so I actually had this exact same idea the step and idea during the pandemic as well um and to to prove it I can tell you that I actually registered hot steps so I called it hotstep hotstep.com I actually own that domain uh never got around to launching it um but that's why I've been following stepping so closely over over the years is because um this literal idea of in fact there was a there was an existing app which

I'm sure you're very well familiar with called I think it's called is it called sweatcoin um I forget what the name of the app is it but anyway they they reward you and so I had nothing to do with crypto I did predates crypto by quite a long way and I think it's actually a UK based app but it rewards you for for moving um and taking steps um and so yeah so this this idea came to me as well during the the pandemic um and uh I love that steppen executed on it and I've been you know kind of following you guys um on this journey ever since um I'm just very curious to hear the reason I didn't pursue this idea it was because it's a you know it's a hard Market to crack I mean mobile apps in general are hard but with the kind of web3 elements and the reward mechanism which obviously are appealing um but very hard to jump through all those Hoops tell me a little bit about what made step and explode in popularity back in those those days you know late 2021 early 2022 Beyond just the speculation piece because obviously we all know that a lot of crypto Bull Run was driven by speculation that's totally fine there's nothing wrong with that um but there is there was something more about stepan that really I think

appealed at a deeper level Beyond just the speculation piece so I'm just curious to hear what do you trace that explosion in popularity to how did you become the def you know defining move to earn app of that era yeah I mean it's as you as you know like success is many fathers face to think back and and trace it to several points but at best what we can offer is our own analysis and thinking um so the the way my mental model works is it it is attributed to of course two things that we did and continue to do really well and that is product and Community honestly nothing else Beyond these two things matter I can and I have in bathtubs done very very complicated Excel sheets and business models and strategies but ultimately it boils down to these two things now within and and they go hand in hand right product and Community Building you

keep your ears close to the ground you keep listening to the community keep iterating on their feedback till it gets to a point that what your product is not just a good web 3 product it is a good product right people don't care if it's a good Factory product people just looking for a app game Fitness thing to play that it happens to be web 3 is by the way right today we don't sit in Marvel or wow how good is electricity as a technology no but electricity literally is the fundamental thing building block on which everything is built correct so um the moment web3 becomes the electricity that's when the app works but the app on its own has to stand it can't be just a Discord server with thousands of people going slightly deeper into what we did probably right in making it a good product in community was building it on blockchain which led us to achieve four things Beyond speculation as you say so the

first one was that the users get rewarded this means just more incentives to stay fit right Fitness is an unsolved problem to date to date right I I worked in a Fitness business before of my own and that's where I come from the biggest problem in Fitness is retention it's not trials you promise that you will lose five kilos in the next month you will get 500 signups right there and then the problem is how do you retain these 500 people when the weight loss doesn't kick in in the third month for retention to happen there is only and only one thing that will drive it that is results and results will happen when there is a habit and habit will happen when there are accountability or incentives this is why for some people Jim's work this is why for some people instructors work because there's some mechanism of accountability there however incentivism mechanism hasn't been explored yet blockchain gives us a way to tangibly

materialize that the second part is ownership right ownership and selling of in-game assets which is nfts in real life with no friction I think this everybody gets the thirdest economics at that time we cracked it pretty well which ensures Supply demand and Democratic Democratic participation and last but not the least and this is what web3 enables everybody to do a lot of projects do this well is Network effects which is how we ensure that we bring millions of users onto web3 so yeah in summary product community and building using blockchain world to our advantage yeah I mean you were one of the the apps you know products in general that did a really nice job in the onboarding piece you had this this uh virtuous flywheel um obviously drove a lot of price speculation um uh as as well I'm curious to hear how do you go then beyond that um that piece obviously so you you put out some

numbers um which I would have done too if I had numbers like this you know you had 123 million in Q2 2022 operating profit I don't know exactly how you you measure that I'm presume you're not an audited entity but nonetheless whatever the actual number is it's a very big number um so quick note on how did you how did you what was your business model like how did you make all that money um obviously selling nfts um you know GMT is presumably part of that um but then how do you how do you stain that over the longer term you haven't put out numbers since Q2 of 2022 we're obviously the crypto winter totally understand um how do you kind of keep that virtuous flywheel going that you you really crack the tokenomics right like and you're right to Pat yourselves on the back that that was a very very effective model and you were one of the best to do it at the time um how do you sustain that over the long period uh when it's not so much about the price uh speculation piece sure so there are two parts to your question a how did we do it in the first place um the economics and B how do we sustain

it right so a is very simple um it's very straightforward there is a platform fee of two percent um there's royalty fear four percent that goes back to the nft creators and there's six percent fee on shoe minting it's pretty much straightforward and detailed in a white paper that's the economics of um how we did it in the first place the second part which is sustainability um I mean three months into three months into our our launch people question if we'll be around a year and a half not all not only are we surviving but we're thriving our community is still strong you just need to look at our Twitter our Discord to know um how strong and viable we still are right um in terms of an ecosystem in terms of how do we add value back to our community we're now building an ecosystem

using Steppin as an onboarding vehicle but then building a utility around it so like I mentioned imagine if FSL is at the center of the solar system our plan is to have many consumer facing applications outside so stepping is one of them the best known so these are consumer-centric applications we will be launching more games and more apps in future step in ISM lifestyle space there is nothing that stops us from launching application in the social space as well this becomes the consumer facing application portfolio along with this front end we're building a robust back-end just infrastructure to support this onboarding by which I mean once a user is on board and onto step in they've got many needs like swaps maybe like trading nfts maybe like maybe launching their own nft projects and this is why we're also built um a decks of our own like I said already number one on Solana but also on multi-chain Serbia scene ethereum we to

support nft trades we launched our own nft Marketplace and launch pad so that is uh more uh again multi-chain on ethereum and Solana so um all of the value capture happens back to GMT so whether it's GMC mining in step in whether it's one percent liquidity fee on decks or whether it's voting and minting on more um to to be some is to be soon to be launched applications all of the value capture happens back to GMT yeah so um this ensures that not only is it a win-win for a community and the ecosystem but it also ensures that we are our our ecosystem keeps growing hence benefiting community in the long run so I love that Vision actually so GMT becomes essentially the the glue that keeps the entire portfolio products

together you're you're envisioning GMT as the single token uh currency glue lubricant whatever analogy you want to use um and you're trying to make sure that the value capture happens all in this one token regardless of what the different products are in the portfolio whether they be Fitness related gaming related social um you know Financial related with the decks and so on is that is it a fair understanding of of how you're envisioning it that's absolutely right yes oh fantastic okay great um to to kind of build this out uh you raised a fairly modest five million uh seed ground this was I think in 2020 2021 give or take that time frame um and as far as I can tell you haven't raised anything since you may not have needed to raise with with all that operating profit um are there any plans to raise more to kind of build out this this bigger Vision obviously Beyond just the step-in product but the you know the the portfolio products that you're alluding to here yes of course

of course it should be very very very um pay close attention to because some of these projects will be huge huge uh when the ball comes around of course nfad by or um but our attempt um in building continues and of course Beyond step-in we've got more door but there's something very exciting which maybe I'm not allowed to say at this moment but I can tease um it's going to be something absolutely amazing big that people accept expect from the makers of Steppin so something in that direction that people would absolutely want to participate in the early rounds um coming very soon we're going to be launching an official campaign around it around [Music] in a few weeks from now yeah oh exciting stuff um we'll get into kind of roadmap items a little bit later in this in this

episode but uh nice nice tease there for for later on um so let's it's taken us a while to get here but I did want to get the kind of the foundational piece of you know you and step in and your your kind of overall goals and where you are now as a product and as a company but let's get to the news that initially caused me to reach out to you um and that is that press release you put around uh integration with with Apple pay um and as I said in my intro I'm a huge believer um that web3 really won't have its mass Market moment until transactions are you know as easy as they are right now with IAP just a thumb print or you know face ID or click of the little button on the side away uh where you don't need to have wallets and Seed phrases and all this friction um uh you know that that we know exists in web3 so uh tell me a little bit about how this Apple pay integration went down of what was the thinking behind this uh you've said you know this is your have to you know hundreds of millions of users not you know just millions or hundreds of thousands of users

um and so I want to hear your thought process on um how this went with apple um you've put in the press or your press releases that Apple was a supportive partner in this so this is something that clearly took some doing because obviously Apple hasn't been super supportive necessarily of all crypto and web 3 Integrations so I'm very curious and I know our listeners are extremely curious to hear how did you do this uh how long did it take you know just as much detail as you have on um you know step in integrating you know iaps nfts crypto with Apple pay as simple as any other app out there yeah this is something we consider as a massive massive massive thing for us like you rightly pointed out this is something that it was also definitely not an overnight success we've been at it for months it's two parts right to your question again why did we do this like what was the end game plan um and second uh how did we do it right so so I think Y is very simple right our

vision mission has been absolutely singular minded focus of mass adoption period we want to grow we want this app to to reach to the users Beyond just core web3 fraternity totally we've seen that happen that has been part of that group flywheel that you talked about earlier I mean as we speak there are events that happen in Miami Australia Japan Korea Taiwan UK um and and there's so many cities I'm forgetting like it's unbelievable and these by the way these events are not something that we sponsor these are events that Community hold together and when you go to these events Nico what you will see so heartening to see is now it's not just crypto Bros but their spouses um their mom and dads their friends there are men with push pram in their babies their dogs it's a wholesome

complete experience and there are people who are onboarded by other people admittedly because yes the onboarding is complex but there are people who are opening their first um blockchain wallet there are people who are buying their first nfts there are people who are experiencing the power of crypto for the first time and there are people who just are absolutely delighted that they walked for a mile and there was some money in their account right so to experience this power that blockchain can give you in such a tangible way is a unique unique experience and absolutely heartening for any founder Builder to see right this is something that this is an experience feeling momentum Vision whatever you may call that this is what we want to see amplify and grow magnet for so that is a long answer to your why this is important to us um but very obvious for us um for this if if we have to work harder

if we have to compromise on economics if we have to make things work we will do it so that's a singular Focus in terms of how we did it um I remember you know when when we got listed as an app on app store iOS App Store I used to get a ton of questions around the same thing like how did you get listed on App Store because I wish there was a secret that I could share so do our listeners so do our listeners I wish there was a medium article I could write three secrets to getting Apple listing that secret is working hard on Apple's feedback number two having an organic community and number three showing them or demonstrating that in a quantifiable manner with data so whatever your backend is um Apple loves data Apple loves

Community Apple loves organic traction obviously there their Market Gap is bigger than the next two companies combined which is Amazon and um and which is Amazon and Facebook combined right so they're they're market cap is bigger than UK's GDP for that matter and when you achieve that volume that size you have a duty to your users you have a reputation to take care of so it is to an extent understandable why they are cautiously skeptical about the space having said that given our experience once you've got users user feedback a good product a good Community they keep telling you they keep giving you directions and it is up to your willingness to work on that feedback like I said it didn't happen in a day

but Rome wasn't built in a day we were singularly focused on that attempt and no matter how many months it took us how many weeks it took us we kept working I I I'd be lying if I said it was a smooth Road or we were happy all the time or we knew this this was going to happen or there was Bobby knew that there was light of light at the end of tunnel and um I'm glad it worked out yeah no congratulations on that and I I agree it's a it's a big moment um arguably you know maybe one of the Watershed one of the few watershed moments on the path to mass-market adoption of of you know crypto nfts blockchain Technologies web three more broadly um is you know getting into the Walled Garden of Apple and Google um and becoming part of that daily habit that we already have which is whipping out our phone 26 times a day or whatever probably more than that actually um and uh using our devices for whatever we're using it for whether it be for Fitness or for gaming or you know Finance doesn't really matter um now I want to hear a little bit about

how I haven't had a chance to actually um use the new Apple pay integration and I will absolutely do it after this this this podcast records um how does it work with uh in conjunction with the crypto components the web three components that you have right now like how was what's the user Journey inside the app now for somebody who doesn't care doesn't even know about crypto or blockchain or you know web3 or wallets or seed phrases and is blissfully in a way aware of all those weird and wonderful things wonderful so very simple from an iOS store on to open the app the app will prompt you to purchase an nft sneaker the way to do that is just like you would make any other purchase on any other app you double click on the side button go to Apple pay and just like that you choose your sneaker and you pay using Apple pay and a system that we've invented called Sparks dense box is equal to one US Dollars all the sneaker prices are

available in Sparks Once A Sparks are like any virtual credits all the gamers are used to that right to appoint virtual credits virtual currency whatever you might want to call it once you've purchased enough Sparks or enough credits you can purchase an nft sneaker once you've got that nft sneaker you just play the game which is you walk outside walk job or run and just like that you earn our in-app currency which is GMT or GST and if I want to use the the existing way of buying the nft synchronously if I want to use my saw or my BSC I can still do that the the two co-exist you have an option to go to our Marketplace and Dot step in.com of course that option is available to each and every user um and um the option to not use a Marketplace and and use apple pays also there now got it okay um so obviously this will come so this you know big opening of the funnel

obviously that's the obvious Pro of of doing this um now obviously this comes with cons as well um you have to you know integrate with Apple pay um that's you following the rules that Apple imposes upon you um and then obviously there is a class of web3 purists um who don't like the idea of playing an essentialized world you know web3 is all about decentralization and it's not about you know being buying things with apple um with Apple's you know IAP or you know following Google's rules so I want to hear a little bit about how you guys think about the pros and the cons here um with with Apple pay um again the pros are obvious in terms of opening up the top of the funnel but the cons you know confusion potentially you know different paths for users obviously the 30 tax um I want to hear a little bit about how you think about those things um both practically which is the 30 tax really mostly but also philosophically right thinking about what does it mean

to play by these giant companies centralized rules when web3 really or one of the aspects of web3 is all about decentralization and this kind of ethos around um uh you know what web3 really stands for um which is kind of the opposite of what Apple and Google often stand for yeah yeah it's a great great question Nico to be honest and the philosophical side as you mentioned is even more interesting there's a saying that goes right to change a system you've got to work within the system if you're outside of it it's just commentary if we've got to really believe that we want to change things that we want people to experience what this change is about we've got to First make them use it that means we've got to take the app to somebody who hasn't experienced

crypto blockchain for what it is and just by patting ourselves on the back I think that's not going to happen right so if you've got to play by some rules where we can get to some users for them to then do word of mouth it's not like we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing on putting up a billboard I've done that that's not the rulebook that we're playing with the only rulebook that we're playing with is on adoption an organic adoption to build a community which then becomes our ambassadors which then takes the app as well as the benefit of web 3 outside so um I can speak for hours on this but it simply boils down to adoption yeah that's that's a great answer and that's a very honest answer um and I think that's the realistic answer I'm with you you're preaching to the choir here um I like to think of myself as a

realist and not necessarily get too tied up and in the philosophical arguments around decentralization and you know what crypto can stand for if you take it to the extreme but uh if you take it to the extreme you know it's never going to get Mass market adoption so I respect that answer and I uh I happen to agree with you um now I'm gonna come to something which I found quite curious which kind of goes a little bit against this adoption piece um it's not antithetical to it but it was curious to me that you chose to use this language so very pointedly in the press release and all the way through your history um as a company and as an app as a product um you've called step in a blockchain gaming app right I'm using quotes here um that was it just in this recent press release and you're not even calling it a blockchain fitness app um and you are pointedly using the word blockchain in there which of course isn't particularly Mass Market um so I'm very curious to hear how are you thinking about stepping the product

um not not the company necessarily but step in the product is it a fitness app is it a gaming app is it a web 3 app does it need that blockchain language around it um very interested to hear your thoughts on on how you think about yourselves because you don't put out a press release I put out press releases in the past as well you don't put out a press release without thinking about every single word that you put in there and you put in the phrase blockchain gaming app so that's a conscious Choice very curious to hear your thoughts around that and you're the marketing person too so um particularly extra interested to hear so you're right about the both the things a it was stopped through b we actually wanted to put simply blockchain app however legal wasn't sure if we can defend that we're the first blockchain app although I think we are but just to be on the safe side we wanted to make sure that where the first blockchain Fitness lifestyle slash gaming app to do this which we are definitely in terms of just being absolutely specifically clear on who how we think what we are we're definitely a

blockchain app we're very proud of it so no qualms there sure lifestyle is a broader term right which captures ethos of Fitness of gaming but but really what does that mean we're not a fashion lab we're not promoting fashion we're promoting a big lifestyle so yes to a certain audience we could be a fitness app but I I don't agree this is contrary to the adoption theory in fact it is very very much aligned to the adoption Theory because what adoption Theory or the hypothesis and adoption is that most likely and nobody has the right or wrong answer but most likely Mass adoption would come from two big angles one is financialization so which is what we see in defy your farming etc etc and the second is gaming slash entertainment which is where metaverse and games have a role to play um yes Fitness can be a part of that so we've made Fitness in a gamified way right so it's not it's not fitness app

in the strictest sense of the word which is for example sweatcoin is but then we all know how it worked out right so um we even when you make a fitness app and again I I say this because I have experienced both the good and bad side of it fitness app has to be incentivized slash accountable slash gamified in a way that it becomes a habit that the user keeps coming back that there are users here even in a bear Market in an industry where capitulation is at its peak we have we we added thousands of users every single day that's something to be hugely massively proud of and we are and that happens when the incentives are aligned when the people keep coming back when people get results um and that happens because we have done Fitness in a gamified way so there's no way that we can ignore the gamification part of it in fact if there are people I just called as full of game strategies like people would um discuss amongst themselves what to use games um gems for what's the utility of our

lower level germs to high level germs and strategizing for the game so that's something that is very core core to our both community and the product so it's definitely not not something that we would ignore but yes we can speak to each and every audience differently so to hardcore Fitness Enthusiast wear a fitness app to a hardcore gamer we are a gaming app whatever works for them into a web 3 crypto bro you're a blockchain app so absolutely absolutely okay great um I like that honestly and leaning into it it's actually it's gone a little bit out of fashion I think I'm I'm sure you're aware of this uh you know a lot of developers that certainly but we talked on the on the Pod here um you know even if they're web3 developers they're leaning away from using that language um because it's a little bit not fashionable right now because we're in a bear market and they're just kind of leaning into hey we're a game doesn't matter if we use blockchain Technologies or we have web3l elements we're just a game first and foremost and I do like the fact that you are open and honest and proud of the fact that you are a

blockchain app um and that is part of who you are as a company um and that's part of what made us successful to be honest it's very simple of course it's going to exists outside the blockchain once again there are many players who exist outside the blockchain that does not give them the uniqueness of incentive distribution or transparency that blockchain offers and we're a blockchain app who also do off-chain metrics by the way so we're very well experienced both technically and community device in both Realms and I'm saying that blockchain is essential and crucial and Central to the success so there's absolutely nothing not to be proud of about it love it perfect um okay slightly different tack here so um you mentioned at the start uh that you're a fully distributed team your Founders are in Australia you I believe you're in the UK 14 time zones um how big is the team at the moment are you able to share a little bit about um uh what kind of composition is it you know your your park fitness fart part blockchain part gaming

um what kinds of folks do you have working um and where and how many yeah we're slightly careful about sharing details of Team personal details Etc given the space that we're in but we're a very healthy team somewhere between um 80 200 people strong um it comprises mainly on two sides so one is our Tech and engineering and Dev team which is absolutely top of the class best in the world a combination of best AI Engineers do machine learning Engineers to blockchain developers to gaming Developers uh and not to mention UI ux in the design front um and then the second biggest component is the marketing and the BD uh and the community side of it so um that includes our business and operations team mostly perfect now that's a perfect segue actually into my next question which is I've seen quite a few and I'm sure I'm missing some here I'm only got two that I'm going to reference here but you've

you've done quite a few Partnerships um even from the very beginning even when you were quite small um with sneaker Brands um with sports teams I believe you've got a partnership with Atletico Madrid so not just any old sports team but you know one of the biggest European Giants out there um what are you doing with these Partnerships um I I obviously understand and I think all of our listeners do that you're trying to push the brand forward you're trying to you know kind of make step in more visible in that mass-market environment um but uh how do you pick these Partners how have you been able to do some of these Partnerships even early on I think you had um was it Asics or Adidas I can't remember which one it was but it was one of the sneaker big sneaker brands that you partnered with way back in 2021 you know 2022 when you were just getting started right you hadn't yet blown up so very interested to hear how are you Landing these Partnerships and what is the goal with these Partnerships um that you've got in the works right now yeah firstly you've done your

homework really well Nico I must say um secondly it's absolutely remarkable how we pull these off to be honest full marks to the team um yes we are a growing Challenger brand it is absolutely not easy to get these top tier um names to partner with us but we're also very very very focused that we only want to work with the best again the logic being adoption uh crypto already suffers from massive credibility issues and the only way to reach to the user segment is to work with the best names whether it's Apple whether it's assets whether it's ATM we think we deserve it if anybody wants to dip in the dose of blockchain waters if anybody wants access to real users in an organic manner our brand is one of the best out there as simple as that especially in the lifestyle fitness Sports Athletics space so that's partly the answer to how we

are doing it and why we are doing it in terms of how we use these brands or what we do so that's like how and why in terms of what we do with them is a mix of real and um virtual books right so with Asics for example we started with a Genesis collection of Asic themed sneakers and and that was a massive hit like we launched on binance Launchpad with 2000 sneakers and there were 190 000 stickers so absolute runaway success then we did a run-up to that so it was not enough one-off partnership at breakpoint I think last year we attached a real world utility again one of the pioneering things to happen is faces completely broken breakpoint we attached um a real sneaker real world sneaker drop to the nft holders so that was something massive the utility to nfts right so the digital sneakers that gets you moving better than real life sneaker that was the first utility of step in

sneakers and this was second so that's another criteria similarly with ATM analytical partnership we launched several offline perks to a co-branded sneaker holders right from visiting the matches to getting merged still getting exclusive giveaways we also launched uh during the World Cup we launched with Javier the Argentinian coach coach we also launched with Coast initial which is a very famous IP in Japan and there was a massive success in in Japanese Community our co-founder also visited there so we listened to the community what gets them excited we look for brands that will help Elevate and push our adoption agenda as well as benefit our community and we look for utility in both real and offline world yeah I've been very impressed I was very impressed even from the very beginning how you were able to land these you know especially

blockchain web 3 is it was trendy at the time but it was still very risky for these big Brands to get involved and I was just kind of Blown Away by how big these names were they were able to work with and continue to work with now so good I'll see you guys for for pulling that off as a startup company I've tried to do these in the past and I know they're not easy and they can take a very long time to to um to come to fruition okay I think um I I know you've got hopefully you can share a little bit more of the teas uh that you you uh teased earlier in this episode um want to talk a little bit about what's next on the snap and road map um I love the kind of the big Vision that you have which is GMT is the the glue the lubricant that you know keeps this whole ecosystem going we've talked a lot about step in the app you know because it's the biggest product that you have right now where I think so at least um probably the most important one in your portfolio um but what are you working on next what products are kind of coming down on the roadmap and um where are you taking the overall portfolio of products not just stepping the product but the overall portfolio

being the makers are stepping there's one and that they do really well which is a mix of games on the chain here's a hint wink wink for people who are looking for the next best thing from our stable um it's going to be announced in a few weeks from now the best thing to keep track would be an early participant in whatever we have to offer is to keep track of our Discord and Twitter so check out our Twitter handles um starts with the letter G it ends with the letter O and beyond that there's not much I can review this is the besties right now so stay tuned start with the G ends with an O It's like a Wordle clue so we had Jonathan Knight who I used to work with at Zinga he's the GM of games at New York Times so he and I geeked out over wordal strategies G and O all right all right listeners well we'll we'll uh we'll speculate wildly um on this and

and see what we can uh uncover using our our sleuthing skills on the internet um all right final question not related to Stepping at all um you've alluded to this you know we're in a bear Market we're still in the middle of a crypto winter um you know how do you see that impacting web 3 gaming in particular we are a gaming podcast after all and I know you see yourselves as a as a gaming um app or gamified Fitness at very least um where do you see the market going uh how are you guys thinking about it internally uh at stepanet finds Satoshi Labs by the way you haven't found Satoshi right yet ongoing project I presume I think the world will know when we do the world would know when you find him okay all right or her or you know them could be all kinds of things okay so yeah so what do you think about the crypto winter how are you guys thinking about building in a bear Market um and where do you see the market going what are the catalysts that we need as an industry for more and I don't we don't need another Bull Run we just you know we just need the crypto winter to

end in the bear Market to kind of correct itself because it has gone too far I think in that extreme sure but um if you're a builder especially if you're a builder in this space the way to there could be two ways to get it well one way is oh my God everything is down from here what do we do how do we survive this could be a potential second way to look at this which is that this is the time when all the unhealthy Capital gets washed out when the visitors are gone when the noise is less because otherwise Bull Run just delays your product Market fit and if you have to tank you tank send six months down the line this is the time when noise is less you really can build with focus and if you build and survive in this period you know you're for sure more than an average success when the ball comes around in terms of what will get there and what could be the Catalyst I think blockchain is a technology has been around so

proving that we will be around is a very very low bar it's stable Stakes I think anybody who's discussing that is missing the point possibly should study a little bit more right so it's not about survival but it's it's more like what gets us to the next users billion users and so on and so forth right um the technology is fundamental right so the three big use cases that we all know is One Financial access and capital allocation especially in the unboundable second composability and programmability meaning faster and cheaper apps this is where um gaming also by the way comes in experience in web 3 that is unparalleled and then the line between web doing three at least in terms of experience in the

graphics disappears the third is tokenization which is sort of the co-op kind of model which allows users to participate and be part of your project success in a way that cannot happen in web 2. right kickstarters and stuff have tried somewhat successfully patreon um and as this Creator economy booms as more and more cutting-edge Tech comes with AI and metaverse as more and more people take charge of their own destiny like AI enables you to be a one-man Army right you have thousands of people at your disposal with AI and once that kind of thing takes over tokenization allows you to build your own community in a way that was impossible before which is what we call as a cold start problem right you don't no longer need to raise funds with a 16z you don't need 10 million dollars to do advertising you can build your own community and blockchain allows that to happen right so these use cases are

going nowhere Financial access composability and tokenization are building your community so as long as we can build in these realms according to our skill sets according to what we know best at FSL for sure we know how to build an ecosystem we know how to build a product we know how to build a community and when I say we know how to build a product I don't mean that lightly it's not easy to build products in web 2 web 3 web one web zero whatever when you build product it encompasses a lot of things um we know how gaming works we have blockchain works so that is the intersection we'll keep on playing and that is what we will keep building for love the answer yeah great products ultimately that's what it boils down so you need to make something that people want to use doesn't matter how cool the technology is um if you can't make something with the technology that people actually either want to use or need to use well you've got nothing right and so um you've obviously showed step and has obviously shown that people are absolutely

prepared and willing and not just prepared and willing but eager to make Fitness gamified Fitness a a daily habit um in a way that you're right you know with the non-web three components of something like a sweatcoin or many of the other imitators out there they can't do so um well thank you so much this uh this about wraps up my kind of line of questioning here uh thank you so much for coming on the Pod today um I we love having pioneers of web3 on the Pod whether they be in gaming or otherwise and I personally at least and I know our many our listeners know that you know step in is very much one of those web three Pioneers you've shown the way uh for a lot of Developers for what is possible um and uh I I thank you for that and I applaud your team your Founders um and everybody uh involved in building that great product uh and now hopefully with the Apple pay integration making it that much easier to use and that much more accessible to folks who aren't prepared to jump through all those hoops and uh

suffer all that friction that exists in web3 so 50 thank you so much for being on the Pod today thank you so much Nico for your kind words and love talking to you have a good day and a big thank you as always to all of our listeners we'll be back next week with more interviews more insights and more analysis from the weird and wonderful world of web3 until next time friends stay crypto curious and feel free to send questions guest recommendations and comments to me my email is Nico navic dot Co and you can find me on Twitter at nicothefin DMS are always open and we'll always have show notes um below with links to many of the things that we discussed today thank you if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast navic dot Co or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what novik has to offer make sure to check out our

website www.navik.com there you can sign up for the number one games industry newsletter navic digest or contact us to learn about our wide-ranging Consulting and advisory Services again that is www.navik.com thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode