GRTiQ Podcast: 212 Isha Varshney

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Isha Varshney (00:00:17):

In 90% of that form, The Graph was a top contender of infrastructure provider that the protocol depended on, and so I remember like, okay, when we were making the list of top five critical dependencies-

Nick (00:01:01):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Isha Varshney, head of ecosystem at Celo. With roots in India and Kenya, Isha brings a unique global perspective to blockchain adoption in emerging markets. I’m excited to welcome Isha to the podcast, and long time listeners know that I previously featured one of Celo’s founding members, Marek Olszewski, during Episode 131 back in August 2023.

(00:01:28):

After earning her chartered accountancy and working at KPMG in cross-border taxation, Isha founded Wealth Boost Investments to help India’s young professionals with their personal wealth development. Her passion for impact-driven work led her to Oxford Business School where a transformative and chance encounter with Vitalik Buterin’s vision for blockchain technology sparked her journey into web3. Now at Celo, Isha leads ecosystem development for their mobile first blockchain platform, focusing on bringing financial access to emerging markets through stablecoins and innovative payment solutions.

(00:02:02):

During our conversation, Isha shares insights on blockchain adoption and developing economies, the power of community-driven development, her perspectives on The Graph, and several real world impact stories. I started the conversation with Isha by discussing her international background growing up in India and Kenya, and her observations about the surprising enthusiasm for crypto adoption in emerging markets.

Isha Varshney (00:02:26):

Firstly, thank you for having me. I’m really excited about the conversation that we’re going to have today. Quick background on me. I currently live in New York and I’ve lived all over the world. Born in India but grew up in Kenya but then went to boarding school back to India, so just like ping ponging all around the place, and then have studied in the UK and worked a little bit there. So very scattered background, but also some of the best experience that’s available.

Nick (00:02:56):

Isha, one of the things I’ve learned about running this podcast and meeting people from all over the world is these budding web3 crypto communities, and India has always surprised me. It seems like there’s a lot of interest there. And I’m just curious, with your travels and sort of your association, are you surprised about crypto adoption and interest in India?

Isha Varshney (00:03:16):

Actually, not at all. If I think about crypto and product market fit for crypto just in general, I don’t think crypto is made or web3 is … The product market fit isn’t there for the developed world. Product market fit for crypto, in my mind at least, for the technology itself, it’s for emerging markets. And I know India doesn’t really fit in the emerging market squarely, but India is just this place where there’s a ton of developer excitement.

(00:03:42):

I mean, when you think about what is the most exciting career in India, 30 years ago too, it was becoming an engineer and coding. And so web3 is so technology-focused, of course it’s popular in India. And any way in which you can kind of test technology and kind of go hack at it, Indians love that. I mean that’s literally what every boy growing up in India was doing, including my partner to be honest. If you ask him about some of his favorite childhood memories, it’s about breaking stuff and rebuilding it, and technology is a big part of his childhood. So India’s the perfect market for crypto and web3, in my mind.

Nick (00:04:21):

It’s a great take and a lot of my former guests have echoed the same thing, and so it’s been very fun for me as a front row seat to see these communities all across the world gravitating more to the tech, more to the utility than maybe what we see in the United States. When we talk about your youth and as a young person, what were the types of things you were interested in? Did you have any hobbies or interests that you think back on and say, my youth was sort of centered around these things?

Isha Varshney (00:04:48):

Yeah, I had a really interesting childhood, for instance, that we grew up in Kenya, but my parents sent me to boarding school in India and I went to one of the best boarding schools in the country at the time. I was a very introverted child and so earliest memories in my mind are reading a book and that still kind of holds true today. You’ll typically find me reading a book on my couch on anytime I have free.

(00:05:14):

When I went to boarding school, it kind of opened up all this whole world of possibilities. Anything you wanted to learn, anything you wanted to do was kind of available for you right there within this compound, to be honest. I picked up really unique interests and skills. I’m classically trained as an Indian dancer, so I’ve done Bharatanatyam for eight years of my life. I was pretty decent at it. I learned Indian classical music, not something that I do anymore, but also an interesting skill to have, and through the years kind of picked up music and dance was a really big part of how we were raised in school, and so picked up a piano here and just really interesting musical dance instruments.

(00:05:51):

Also, sports were a really big part of just the way we were raised in school and also just at home. My parents were like, every holiday we used to come back home for two months every six months, and so every time we came back my parents were constantly exposing us to new different sports, whether that was golf at eight or nine years old or tennis or squash, and then even in school, we kind of picked up at least one or two sports per year, and so I was actually really big in athletics. I ran short distances like 200 and 400 meters, and I actually medaled under 18 national level in discus throw. Very random thing about me, not something that I would talk about usually.

(00:06:31):

Yeah, very random, but just because school was this really interesting unique place and I really give it a lot of credit for who I am today. It just let you explore whatever you wanted. There were no confines or boundaries to what you could explore. And who knew this girl would pick up the discus of all things! But yeah, I seemed to be good at it and it kind of worked out. They give you any kind of coaching and mentoring you needed and let you do what you wanted with that.

Nick (00:06:57):

Well, that’s a GRT podcast first. I’ve never had a GRTiQ guest before say that they were a specialist or medaled at some point in the discus, so I love you bringing that variety to the show. I want to ask you a question about Kenya then. So a lot of my listeners love travel, they love international travel. Somebody finds themselves there one day. What are the things they got to see or try?

Isha Varshney (00:07:19):

Well, I hope whoever finds themselves there has a lot of time on their hands because Kenya as a country is stunning. When I say stunning, it’s not even, it’s like the top country in my mind in the world. You obviously have the obvious, you have the safaris of the world and you must go to Masai Mara if you have to do safaris, but Kenya has, what people may not know is Kenya has pristine beaches, and so the coastline of Kenya has a couple of towns that I love. There is something called Watamu and Kilifi that are really pristine beaches.

(00:07:51):

Fun fact, the ETH event in Kenya happens on one of these beach towns called Kilifi, and so if you ever find yourself in Kenya and are web3 enthusiast, feel free to kind of check out ETHSafari. It’s an incredible event unlike any other Ethereum event that I’ve ever attended. It happens literally under a baobab tree. And then there’s this beautiful town called Lamu. So the beaches, the coast of Kenya, clearly the safari, and then the Mount Kenya region is also really, really stunning. You have a ton of different national parks in Kenya, so if you find yourself in Kenya, yeah, I’m so excited for you and then ping me on whatever social media and I can send you guys a massive list.

Nick (00:08:29):

That’s great. I appreciate that and I’m sure some listeners will probably take advantage of that. If we turn back sort of your personal story and your story arc, at some point you find yourself at university, what can you tell us about your university years and what you decided to study?

Isha Varshney (00:08:42):

My school was very liberal with how they let us experiment. After 10th grade, you kind of have to pick a stream, and I know most kids kind of pick one stream. And it’s not very regular in the US. In the US you kind of get to experiment similarly, but in India you pick a stream straight out of 10th grade. Our school let us experiment a little bit. For the first six months we were just going around whether we wanted to do sciences, whether we wanted to do what we call commerce, essentially, it’s like finance, or we wanted to do the arts, so think history, geography, philosophy, whatever.

(00:09:13):

And so we kind of experimented a little bit and I think just my brain just really took to finance very naturally. I sat in an accounting class and it just, something clicked in my brain. It just like, oh yeah, all these pieces fit. I never took to something as easily as I did to accounting. That was that. To be honest, my first accounting class, I was hooked. And I know this is not the standard answers. When you think of an accountant, you think of a really boring person, but my brain just loved it. It just felt right. I don’t know how to explain this. Math and accounting just felt right to me.

Nick (00:09:47):

It’s an amazing skill, I’m envious of it, but I’ve known people in my own life that just sort of have that accounting brain and it is something that if you’re tooled to it is incredibly valuable. After university, you went to work at KPMG, so you sort of put that accounting degree to work, is that right?

Isha Varshney (00:10:03):

Yeah, so how it works in India is you do an undergraduate degree and then in addition to an undergraduate degree, I was pursuing a chartered accountancy, and that’s the CPA equivalent of the US. And so for that you need to do three years of internship. It’s literally three-year internship program where you need to do this internship mostly in an audit function, and you do this typically in a big four organization such as KPMG. I was very fortunate, KPMG kind of hired me to do this three-year program. And so I was doing audit for financial services surprisingly at KPMG, so I was auditing banks and financial institutions in India during this three-year period, just because I had to finish this three-year internship for my CA education.

(00:10:48):

And then after this three-year period, you go and give your final exams, and apparently the pass percentage when I was taking the exam, it’s very competitive. It’s like 1.3% of the people that sit to take this exam pass. It’s super competitive. And India, as you know, has a large population and so it’s a really competitive exam. So yeah, I was really fortunate to have cleared that, but yeah, the three-year period is essentially just being an intern. If you ask me what I really learned during this time was people skills, which is great because you’re literally bottom of the pyramid working really hard.

(00:11:24):

I also did this very, I’m an older person I assume, and so in my time you were still printing things. So one of the key skills in my life that I’ve taken from this period of my life is I can take apart and put together any printer in the world because we did so much printing, and as a junior most member of this team, we were constantly printing and the printers were constantly breaking, but that’s just a side story. But that’s a really critical skill because in audit, especially if you’re auditing a financial service institution, the teams are massive. You’re part of a 30,40 person team and being the junior most person there kind of just tells you, it takes a lot of grit and determination to be part of those teams, but also such great learning experience because you’re like, yeah, it’s an excellent learning experience. I could not imagine my life without it because you’re literally doing the worst and the best work of your life, to be honest.

Nick (00:12:19):

But that internship turned into long-term employment. You stayed there and stayed on for a number of years ending in 2015, so there was some draw for you to stay at KPMG and go full-time?

Isha Varshney (00:12:29):

Yeah, the internship automatically translates to a full-time job if you do well. I did three years in audit and then as soon as I cleared my CA exams, I kind of transitioned to taxation ’cause it just felt like a new adventure; I’m always looking for a new adventure. And taxation was really interesting ’cause it was cross-border taxation. It helped you like … It also really links really well to what I do now. It’s helping entities think about a global business and how you set up entity structure across borders. So we were doing a lot of, at that time, India had just opened up those borders to financial investments and financial external companies such as, I’m going to give you examples of things like Costa had just come to India and I’ve worked on that deal and figuring out what are appropriate tax structures for them to enter the country.

(00:13:16):

Also, it was really interesting to do the Costa deal. It was the first time coffee culture was coming to India because we we’re a very tea drinking nation, there’s lots of … and tea drinking not in the tea shop kind of thing. It’s like stalls on the roadside kind of thing. And so this is introducing a different culture through the population and it wasn’t so much just structuring the deal from a financial sense, but also from a what is the culture behind this? How do you bring this culture to a completely new, a different country? How do you translate the culture from Costa as a UK brand,

(00:13:51):

And so how do you translate that culture to the Indian culture? So it was an interesting experience working in M&A at KPMG.

Nick (00:13:58):

I want to ask this question. It’s a very common question I ask on the podcast. Most every guest I meet for the first time, I give them this question, but you went to university, you studied a very specific thing. Now you’re in the work field, you’re doing it professionally. What’s your sense at this point in your life? You’re looking around and saying, Hey, this is where I belong. This is sort of what I wanted to do and it checks all the boxes on what I expected, or are you having a different type of experience?

Isha Varshney (00:14:22):

It depends on what point, because I was at KPMG for many years. It depends on what point. As soon as you clear your CA exams and you’re a full-fledged earning member of society, you’re like, “Oh my god, I’ve made it. It’s great. This is what I wanted to do.” And then you’re like, I have this big job, and you go into work and you meet really important people, especially as a consultant you meet CEOs and CFOs. That’s the kind of contact that you get as opposed to just working at a bottom-rung job.

(00:14:51):

So for a little bit it’s really exciting, but then also your world experience kind of changes. You’re meeting all of these CEOs and CFOs and you’re seeing all of this life outside of your little bubble because when you’re young, you’re in this little bubble and as your exposure increases, you see, oh, okay, there’s also like XYZ, other things that are available to the world that is, I don’t know, new and interesting and stuff that you didn’t think about. And that’s one of the reasons I kind of decided to do an MBA. But early in your career, you’re so excited. I don’t know. I remember my first paycheck. I was so, so excited.

(00:15:25):

But I also think that it’s great, you get to get a ton of exposure and then in that process your world expands and then what you want from the world kind of also expands.

Nick (00:15:37):

Well, let’s talk about going to business school. So with everything you’ve got going on and sort of this great transition into career and your professional life, you decide to go back to graduate school and go to business school in Oxford. What was sort of the decision tree for you and what prompted this consideration?

Isha Varshney (00:15:54):

Yeah, eventually my worldview was kind of expanding. I think just because of where I grew up, having this exposure to having been in Kenya for an early part of my life, my parents were still there, I knew I wanted to do something that was more impact focused. It felt true to who I was and so I wanted to do a little bit more education because I knew that the options available to me after a CA in India were limited. And so I wanted global experience and global exposure, so an MBA just felt like the right next step.

(00:16:24):

And so I went to Oxford specifically because it’s very impact focused. I also knew that that’s a path that I wanted to kind of explore. And so Oxford, I think I’d applied to a bunch of business schools, including some in the US, but Oxford just felt right. It was very impact focused as a school. It also gave you exposure to a lot of emerging markets, which was really important to me because I did want to kind of focus my career in the emerging market space. So Oxford was a really great choice. Also, I mean who doesn’t want to go to Oxford? It’s like a Harry Potter, literally, I’m not kidding, it’s like Harry Potter come alive. Yeah, it was good.

Nick (00:16:59):

I’ve never been to Oxford, but I have this romanticized vision of what that campus is like and sort of its history. Why is it important to you to be involved in something impact focused? It seems like a dumb question on its face because we all sort of fancy ourselves as in it for their greater good, but some people put their money where their mouth is and they devote career and sort of energy to it and others don’t. Why did you?

Isha Varshney (00:17:22):

There’s a long answer and a short answer to this, but let me try and do this in the short way ’cause we just have how much of time we have. Growing up where I grew up and given you see inequality very starkly growing up in Kenya and in India, you see your privilege very easily. I had the privilege of having the best education just because of where I was born. It’s nothing that I did to deserve it. It is just based on the family that I was born to and the fact that they provided access to all of these things. It was really important to me to work or put my energy on a day-to-day basis. I work for eight hours a day. It’s mostly what I do. It’s what most of my energy is spent towards. For me, it was really important to figure out a way to do that in a way that kind of gives back. Even if 5% of what I do kind of translates to impact to just one other person in the world, I think that’s a life well spent.

(00:18:18):

It’s also just how we were raised, I think a big part of our raising. A big part of the Indian culture and I’m Indian, a big part of Indian culture is giving back. It’s very embedded in how you’re raised, it’s embedded on … Our birthdays, for instance, were never gifts for us, it was always going and giving back in some way or shape or form. We were asked, “What do you want for a birthday gift? Do you want to go to the orphanage or do you want to go to …” The options were not a toy. It was like, “How do you want to give back on your birthday?” And that’s just a big part of how we grew up and that was just how I wanted to live my life, I guess. Yeah.

Nick (00:18:54):

So after getting your business degree, am I right in sort of synthesizing your story arc here that you left KPMG and entered into some consulting in different parts of the world?

Isha Varshney (00:19:04):

After I left business school, I was hoping to do an impact investment job and I did a couple of stints with impact investment funds in the UK. I also worked very briefly with the private equity fund based off the UK and that was really good experience ’cause it was very focused finance experience. Did it make my heart happy? Not really. Did it make my bank balance happy? Absolutely. And so it kind of just reinforced this like, okay, I need to do something better with my life and use my energy and brain towards just something better.

(00:19:33):

I actually went home for a holiday while I was working with this private equity fund in the UK. This is around 2017, 2016, ’17. And the fintech revolution was honestly happening rapidly in Kenya and in parts of Africa. And I went back home just for holiday and I was seeing a bunch of my friends that were actually from the US and the UK had moved to Kenya to work for some of these really interesting fintech startups. And when I was chatting with them, I was working for this really great fund in the UK and I was chatting with them and I was like, “What kind of work are you doing?” And they were so excited about the potential of their work and what they were doing on a day-to-day basis, kind of gave me a little bit of FOMO. It was like, “What am I doing sitting in London working for a fund? It’s great, but it’s not this exciting. It’s not like …” They were reshaping financial infrastructure.

(00:20:17):

I took a little bit of a break from my fund. I went on a sabbatical, at the point that I thought it was a sabbatical, and I started consulting for a couple of fintechs in Kenya and that consulting became a longer stretch. I went to work for one of the biggest banks in East Africa and I was part of the first team that I was honestly the first hire for the digital banking unit, and we set up their digital banking product lines and there’s multiple products there now that still exist. And then I did some consulting for a bunch of different fintechs, some lending, yeah, across the spectrum, right?

(00:20:52):

And also, to be honest, this was my first stint with technology or technology-focused businesses, and so it was also a bunch of learning, and so I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself into one specific business. So consulting allowed me to do parts. If in one part I was doing strategy, the other part I could do project management or product management. I was getting to learn a bunch of really different interesting parts of different businesses, which was like an extended MBA, to be honest.

Nick (00:21:22):

Well, you’ve got all this incredible motion going on professionally, educationally, you’re on a mission to kind of do impact-related work. And then in 2019 you co-found Wealth Boost Investments. So you turn your attention away from consulting and become an entrepreneur. That’s pretty remarkable. Talk to us about that shift.

Isha Varshney (00:21:42):

So think of it like LEGO pieces. I had gotten all of these LEGO pieces in place; I had a little bit of strategy experience, how to raise capital for a startup, how to do product management for a startup. So the foundation was there and so I had this foundational base where I was like, okay, now I can actually set up something of my own that is fintech-focused, and so Wealth Boost was essentially a culmination of all of this experience. It was like, okay, now I know how to do all of these different pieces, whether I do them directly or hire people to do it, at least I have the experience to do this now. And that’s how Wealth Boost was born.

(00:22:16):

Again, it was very emerging market focused. It was focused on the retail buyer in India specifically. It was excellent. It was very similar to Wealthfront and I don’t know if you know Wealthfront or Acorn and things like that, it was essentially like saying … So India specifically at that time and even now has a really massive early 20 to early 30 age group that is generating more wealth than five generations previously. They call it the emerging middle class and the upper middle class, but nobody taught them how to invest their money or multiply their money. It’s not something that they’ve seen because there wasn’t enough money in their families or in their culture.

(00:22:57):

And so what we did was we were like, okay, this problem exists. My co-founder came from a traditional finance hedge fund background, and so he was like, I can help automate some of this where you tell me what your risk profile is and we can help you invest in an equity basket that kind of outperforms what you call ETFs, they’re called mutual funds in India, and those kind of outperform mutual funds by not a small delta, by quite a large delta. And we tested this and we went to market and it was really an excellent experience because a 25-year-old is not thinking about their retirement, a 25-year-old is not thinking about their kids’ education, but they should be. It’s actually the time.

(00:23:38):

And in India specifically, there’s a lot of disposable income with this age group because most people in India actually live at home, so they don’t pay for rent, they’re barely paying for food. This is the age where they can invest and they can save because their outflow is so much smaller than their inflow. And so if you are prudent with your money at this point, and if you have great investing strategies in place at this point in your career, you could actually really help grow and multiply wealth substantially. However, if you do it like a 35 or 40, I mean you can still do it, but the habit doesn’t form. We were hoping to have habit formation at that age.

Nick (00:24:18):

So you’ve got all this great education, you’ve got all this great real-life experience out consulting in the world, working at KPMG and all these other things doing really incredible work, and now you’re an entrepreneur, you’re putting all that to work. What’s the first lesson you sort of learned that maybe we would all assume you already knew that, but as an entrepreneur out there working, you’re like, “Oh wow, this is something I didn’t quite know”?

Isha Varshney (00:24:44):

I don’t know if I didn’t know, but what was reinforced to me while being an entrepreneur was wing it. It’s as simple as that. Just wing it. Just do it. It’s not even wing it, just do it. You only fail if you don’t do something, right? That’s just like … Because I think a lot of us, I don’t know about you, but in my background, it was like, “Oh, if it’s not perfect, you don’t want to execute.” Right? You have to have the perfect plan and only then do you execute. And as an entrepreneur, it’s not possible to be perfect. You have 50 million things happening simultaneously. Just do it. It’s literally like, just do it. And then that’s the only way forward. Because you can never predict what happens. 50 different problems come across your desk every single day and there’s stuff that you can predict and there’s a lot that you can’t predict. The only path forward is forward.

Nick (00:25:39):

I love that advice. So now would be a good point I think sort of in your story arc to ask you this question about when did you become first aware then of crypto? So you’re hard at work, you’re working on fintech, you got all this great background, at some point you become aware of crypto. Take us back in time. When was it and what were your first impressions?

Isha Varshney (00:26:00):

So I have an interesting cryptogenesis story. So my cryptogenesis story is I’m at business school and I’m at Oxford, which is one of the best universities in the world, Vitalik actually comes there and he was talking in a room. I happened to be in the room and hearing about web3 and that was the most incredible experience for me because again, you have moments in your life where you’re like, “Oh, this just makes sense. I don’t know why it’s not making sense to the person right next to me, but in my mind this makes sense. So either I’m really smart or really dumb.” And that was one of those experiences for me. And because I was at this amazing prestigious university, I thought I was really dumb, ’cause I was like, “This is making sense to me. Why is this not making sense to the person next to me?” kind of thing.

(00:26:41):

And so I was in that room listening to Vitalik talk about Ethereum and what he wants to do with the technology and it just made so much sense to me. Fun fact, post MBA, when I was looking for jobs, I actually found a job with a web3, it wasn’t called web3, it was called blockchain back then, a blockchain startup. And it was during this ICO time. And so I went to work three days and they’d just done an ICO. The fourth day, and their office was in central London, the fourth day we all go into work and there’s a massive lock on the door and you could not find the founders; they’d just gone, runaway with the money kind of thing. They’d cashed in and run away. And so this is straight out from the MBA. This is also one of the reasons I was like, okay, let me just go back to traditional finance because at least we know that that’s safe.

(00:27:33):

And so that was an interesting story. It happened with me and it actually happened with another classmate of mine from business school. And so I was like, crypto is just a scam, as a lot of people think it is and sometimes rightly so. But at the back of my mind, I was tracking it. I bought some Ethereum and some Bitcoin while I was in business school, forgotten about it, kind of just kept it at the back of my mind. I was like, yeah, whatever, magic bean money. That was what I heard about crypto. But I kind of was tracking it as technology that I was interested in. Not actively tracking it, but yeah, I would go into some blog somewhere and read about what’s the latest, what’s happening. I was on Twitter a little bit. I follow a couple of people that were talking about web3, not too much, but I was kind of tracking what’s happening with technology. So all throughout I was interested, just not willing to put full-time effort into it.

Nick (00:28:28):

If you go back to that room at university and you say you sort have these aha moments or these experiences where you’re thinking either I’m dumb or everybody else around me is dumb, without getting too technical, what was it? What did you see? What was the thing that sort of cut through the room and communicated that this is unique or interesting?

Isha Varshney (00:28:49):

He talked about stablecoins back when stablecoins weren’t a thing. He was talking about money movement and stablecoin and the fact that you could technically move money across borders in seconds. And that was my aha moment because having been, and again I was at business school, I was moving money from different places to the UK for my living and daily expenditure. It would take a week sometimes and it would cost me the earth. And when he said he could move this in seconds, it was just like, oh, this is a no-brainer. If you could move money in seconds, I know so many use cases for this. I know so many people that would be like, oh, we could do taking this little building block and then building on top of it.

(00:29:33):

Again, I’d also worked in consulting, so I had all of this experience about cross-border remittance when you’re setting up entities in India and things like that. So I had all of this really interesting financial background. And so when he talked about the fact that you could move money in seconds, and even though it happens at the back end, the fact that the user can access it in seconds, that to me was a no-brainer. I was like, okay, there’s something really interesting.

(00:29:57):

Also, the fact that he said that you could move money in seconds in dollars without actually having a bank. Disintegration of the financial system, to be honest, was the thing for me that I was like, oh. I was also unhappy with the financial system. I don’t know if you know, but when you move to … Some of the folks that live in the US and the UK do not understand this, but as somebody that had moved from India to the UK, I have no credit history and so I couldn’t do anything in the UK because I didn’t have a credit history to take with me. I was in my late 20s, starting credit scores from zero and having to get stuff on credit because I had to do that. And I’ve done that twice in my life. When I moved to the US I had to build credit history from scratch.

(00:30:41):

The fact that I don’t have to do this with web3 is really incredible to me. You can transfer credit histories. It sounds so simple, but when you have to go through it, it’s really painful. And so the fact that it can dissolve some of these really, I don’t know, manmade blockages, it just makes sense sometimes.

Nick (00:31:01):

Okay, so taking stock of the story here and where you are presently. So you’re at university, you hear that talk from Vitalik, you have a whole bunch of aha moments, you dabble a little bit in an ICO startup type thing in crypto that lasts four days and was probably a learning point for you. You go entrepreneurship, you launch Wealth Boost Investments. At some point you move from entrepreneurship into web3 sort of full-time and you land at Celo. What’s the path you took there and how did you get here?

Isha Varshney (00:31:32):

Yeah, so we were doing Wealth Boost and Wealth Boost was doing really well. We got acquired by another company and I was having a little bit of a personal shift also. So just during COVID, people weren’t saving enough, they were kind of hoarding money and weren’t investing as much. And so we got acquired by another company, which at the time made sense. I’m not sure if I’d redo that decision right now. And so I was also having a personal shift. Because of COVID, I was in a long distance relationship, COVID doesn’t allow for long distance relationships, so we decided to get married and I was moving to the US.

(00:32:03):

So we sold Wealth Boost and I’m in the US and like I said, some of the things that are pain points that are manmade are things like immigration. So in the US I needed to wait a nine-month period before I got the right to work. And so I was in the US, this was pandemic, the market hasn’t opened up as much, so I’m not really going out too much. And so like I mentioned, I was tracking the technology and I was like, okay, what do I do next? I need a new job, I need a new gig. And so I was like, hey, let me go back and see what’s happening there.

(00:32:36):

It’s also an excellent time. I’m nine months, I can’t technically, so I get to explore whatever I want to do. And so this was an excellent time for me to go back and look at anything that interested in me, anything that sparked joy kind of thing. And so I went back and I was looking at web3 and the implications, and at that point it had become web3 from blockchain. So yeah, I went and did … I was listening to a bunch of podcasts. Bankless podcast had just come out at that time or just right before that, so I listened to Bankless every week or every time it came out. Used to listen to Defiant, it was just starting up. So I was listening to all of this and it was really exciting.

(00:33:12):

Aave had literally launched, I think I was like, I went on Aave the first week it launched. And so this is early days of DeFi summer and it was kind of looking at how do I enter this or how do I expose myself to this technology? And at that time, Gitcoin used to run this fellowship program called KERNEL. I joined KERNEL. And to be honest, I think that was a really great soft launch into web3. You got to meet a bunch of builders and founders in web3 during this process, but also everybody was learning about web3. Andy and Vivek that ran that program were also just really good human beings.

(00:33:51):

I can’t explain, that experience was really nice. It was not overwhelming at all. It was very well curated. It’s also a bunch of really nice human beings talking about this technology in a very, they got that this technology has such different implications for everybody that’s touching it. So there was also people that were thinking about emerging markets, but also people that were just launching meme coins, not meme coins at the point, but NFTs at that point. And so it was like a build your own adventure kind of program. You could do whatever you wanted in a way that kind of suited you and your needs.

(00:34:21):

And during this time actually, the third founder of Celo, Sep, came on to KERNEL to about his views on web3. And the way he talked about it, he drew analogy from the Mycenaean network and how everything is connected and how blockchain technology can help connect everything. That to me was like, “Oh my God, I need to work where he’s working.” Sometimes in your life you’re like, “Oh, I want to be exposed to that.” And funnily enough, the team that I ended up joining was also doing the KERNEL program while I was in the same cohort. So I got to meet a bunch of people at Celo during the time.

(00:34:57):

It was just, I say this very often, this job that I got at Celo was like it was made for Isha, it was tailor fit for Isha. Because Celo, and we’ll talk a little bit more about Celo, but one of the theses of Celo is Prosperity for All. We focus on emerging markets, we focus on financial technology for emerging markets, and I had all of this experience in emerging market, I wanted to work in web3 but also kind of contribute towards financial technology in the markets that I was familiar with. And so, like I say, this job was made for me, it’s tailor fit for Isha, which was incredible.

Nick (00:35:34):

So for a long time listeners, they’ll know that I interviewed Marek, one of the other founders of Celo, for Episode 131 and encourage any listeners who want to go back and hear that founder’s journey to tune into that Episode. For listeners that didn’t hear that Marek interview and are still sort of learning about the web3 universe, how would you sort of position Celo? And maybe to kind of kickstart that a little bit, Celo is unique in the sense that it started as an L1; at the time I was interviewing Marek, it was contemplating and putting together a proposal to become an L2 and I think that’s all complete. So that’s an interesting tidbit.

Isha Varshney (00:36:10):

So we’re still not L2, but we’re transitioning soon. We’ve said end of Q1, so we’re almost there. For those that are not familiar, Celo is an emerging Ethereum Layer 2, like you mentioned. The thing that makes it really unique is that we’re a mobile first blockchain network. We are optimized for the mobile. So it’s a very light client where users can interact with the technology from their cell phones, which is how most users in the world interact with technology and the internet. And it’s built for real world because it’s designed to be fast. So we have four second settlement. It’s really low cost, so gas fees on Celo is Subsend and it kind of is built for global payments. It was initially launched as a Layer 1 blockchain. It’s open sourced, it’s community governed. And the first conceptualization of this was crypto’s answers to Venmo. I’m sure a lot of your listeners kind of are familiar with Venmo where it’s just peer-to-peer payment for small transactions.

(00:37:12):

And again, some of the features that I said that it’s fast, it’s low cost and anybody can access it, anybody with a mobile phone can access it. And mainnet has been live, we’ve been on mainnet L1 since April 22nd, 2020, which is actually Earth Day, and it’s a very carbon-neutral blockchain. We also offset. Yeah, like I mentioned, couple of key features, our five-second transaction time, Subsend fee.

(00:37:38):

Another interesting thing that is super unique to Celo is we’re very stablecoin focused. And stablecoins are essentially gas currency. So you can pay gas with stablecoins. So for instance, if you are a wallet holder, you could technically only have one currency, a USDC or USDT or CUSD and that that’s it. You don’t need to go get another token to pay gas. And I know that was very challenging for me the first time I was doing a transaction on chain, I was like, “Oh, why is this transaction not going through? I need another token for gas? What are you talking about?” That doesn’t happen in the real world. And the thesis of Celo is we want to make it as familiar as you are with doing transactions in non-web3. Yeah.

Nick (00:38:23):

You joined Celo in April 2022 as head of DeFi. That makes a ton of sense given all your background in traditional finance and tech. Now you’re working as head of Ecosystem. Talk to us about your new role and the things that you’re sort of prioritizing.

Isha Varshney (00:38:40):

Yeah, I’m very grateful my team kind of let me be head of ecosystem. So currently the team, the ecosystem team at Celo Foundation, we prioritize partnerships, infrastructure, non-infrastructure for the Celo Ecosystem. Like I mentioned, a couple of things that are key for us is emerging market use cases, so we optimize for builders that are building for real world use cases in emerging markets.

(00:39:04):

And then also, like I mentioned, stablecoins are a massive focus area for us and we can speak a little bit more about stablecoins, but yeah, we have multiple stablecoins across multiple currencies in the Ecosystem. The thesis is if you are sitting in an emerging market, what you want to do is potentially store value in a dollar based stablecoin, but when you have to spend that money, you have to spend it in your local currency. And so we are aggregating stablecoins across different currencies so that you have the option of storing value in dollar, but when you want to save or spend, you do it in your local currency, or when you want to take a loan, you want to do it in local currency. And that aspect is really important because you don’t want to take a loan in dollar and have to pay that FX spread. Yeah.

Nick (00:39:51):

Actually, when you think back to sitting in business school meeting and hearing Vitalik and you catch this vision of cross-border payments and stablecoins and you project now to where you are and the things you’re working at Celo, I mean does that sort of complete the loop in terms of that aha moment and the work that you’re doing?

Isha Varshney (00:40:12):

Absolutely. Like I said, this role was made for me. It’s exactly what I wanted to be doing. I don’t think Vitalik talked about stablecoins per se, but the vision for stablecoins was there. He didn’t talk about cross-border payments, but that vision was there. And so it’s essentially, it’s like, “Oh, this technology could do that?” I’m literally doing that as we’re talking today. We’re literally thinking about how do we do remittances cross border? How do stablecoins, do you need regulatory licenses for stablecoins in emerging markets? Because now we are moving from just dollar stablecoins to, for instance, in my Ecosystem you have stablecoins for Kenyan shilling, the Colombian peso, the Philippine peso, and West African franc.

(00:40:51):

And so we’ve kind of shifted the world to what Vitalik was kind of talking about where, yeah, you can get payment in seconds. I do this every day with my, not every day, but I do this with my mom in Kenya pretty often. I’ll send her $5 just because I’m missing her. It’s not anything, it’s not the value, it’s just like, “Hey Mom, look, this is not magic bean money anymore. This is an actual thing and you can actually spend it on, I don’t know, on Uber” or whatever she wants to do with it. But yeah, it’s really interesting to see when she’s on a WhatsApp call with me to see her receive it on her phone and she’s like, “Oh, what are you doing?” So yeah, it’s good to see that come to life.

Nick (00:41:32):

What can you tell us about the Celo Ecosystem and community? I asked this question to Marek as well, but would love to get your perspective on the types of builders that are attracted to such a mission-driven solution like Celo is.

Isha Varshney (00:41:47):

Firstly, I want to say this, it’s one of the best communities in web3, according to me, in my humble opinion. It’s very mission-focused and I don’t think we’ve talked about our mission, but Celo’s mission is Prosperity for All. And so the kind of builders that we attract are builders that are building not for short-term market spikes, and these are builders that are building for real-world use cases in the long term.

(00:42:09):

You will see most of the builders are building really interesting solutions for real-world problems in the geographies that they’re from or in the geographies that they’re exposed to. So some of our communities, I think a very unique feature about the Celo Ecosystem is that we actually have communities across the world and we call them regional DAOs. And so we have a DAO in most parts of the world. So we have an Africa DAO, a Latam DAO, we have a Philippines DAO, a Korea DAO.

(00:42:37):

And the reason we have firstly why we have these is, A, it gives us folks on the ground that can tell us these are the actual problems that the technology needs to solve and gives builders access to local blockers and issues, but I think the other piece of it is sitting in the US, it’s really, really difficult to, even if you have a good product, how the product interacts with the local ecosystem is really difficult to decide by sitting far away. What I think our communities do really well is they help translate a product to local usage really well. And it’s something that I wish more people in web3 kind of focused on, local translation of each product and customization of each product to the local … It’s not even language, it’s just like local behavior is really critical. I think because of our community, we have this really unique network where you get access to some of this local know-how very easily.

Nick (00:43:37):

I mentioned earlier and you corrected me about this move to L2, it was a hot topic when I interviewed Marek and I had a ton of interest in the thoughts that went into that and the strategy tied to it. The update there is what have you learned as someone who’s had first pass at all of these types of moves?

Isha Varshney (00:43:56):

So quick update, the L2 is coming, Baklava, the Testnet is going live on Thursday, February 20th. It’s the final step before the official migration, which will take place end of Q1. And like cLabs, who’s the co-contributor to Celo blockchain, hasn’t given out the actual date yet. It’s fast approaching, just for anybody that’s listening.

(00:44:21):

What have I learned through this process? I’ve learned that technology is more than just … that some of these conversations are more than just the technical aspects. It’s a lot of what is the community around each of the stacks. And I think we were in a really great position. Just to give context to some of your audience, Celo was in unique position where we were actually in existing Layer 1 and we were transitioning to a Layer 2, and we did all of this in a decentralized way where each of these decisions were made by the Celo governance, by the community Celo Ecosystem. And so it was interesting to pick a stack based on community approval. Everything went through community approvals.

(00:45:03):

And so it was interesting, there was a point in time where somebody told me, “Isha, if we have to learn about anything L2, we just go to Celo forum.” Because every single stack had a detailed proposal to the community there. And so you got such detailed … It wasn’t available at that point, right? And so I think what we did really well was make this super transparent and the community got a chance to engage with each of the stack providers, each of the infrastructure providers, and got to take objective decisions based on the information that was provided, which I think, I’m not sure if other chains have done, L2 stacks have done. Yeah.

Nick (00:45:41):

How difficult is it to sort of be responsible for Ecosystem? And I assume some of that is growth in a decentralized wrapper. I mean there’s so many independent variables and you’re supposed to sort of enable all that independence, but yet there’s a mandate at the foundation level, and I presume for your role. How do you sort of navigate that?

Isha Varshney (00:46:02):

When I thought about this from an external perspective, it seems harder than it seems. Like I said, I think Celo attracts a unique type of community and a unique type of builder, which is very mission-oriented. So I don’t think there’s been any point in time where, for instance, the foundation and the community or the foundation and other governance have not seen eye to eye on a specific topic or an issue. I think we’ve been very aligned with how we think Celo should grow and scale. So short answer, not as difficult as it seems. I think just because the mission is very clearly defined by the founders, and the founders do a really good job of translating that mission on a regular basis to the community.

(00:46:42):

We also have a really deep link with the community. So we have monthly calls with the community. The governance process is very streamlined. There’s also a lot of integration with the foundation through the governance process. And again, when I say integration, I don’t mean oversight in any which way. There’s integration in terms of we’re all part of the community because we do service the Celo Ecosystem in broadly. And so there is integration between the governance process and the Celo Foundation. So interestingly enough, not very difficult at all, just because everybody’s really aligned with what we want to do. And yeah, it’s pretty easy.

Nick (00:47:18):

When I had Marek on, I had the opportunity to ask him about The Graph, and as you and I were talking before I pushed record, a lot of my listeners are enthusiastic about web3 data, blockchain data and The Graph. And Marek had some great stories about being in San Francisco, meeting some of the founders over at The Graph and knowing about the mission of The Graph. When you think about Ecosystem and you think about a partnership or support from The Graph ecosystem, how do you think through that and how important is that to your role?

Isha Varshney (00:47:46):

So this is an interesting time for you to ask me this question. Because we’re transitioning to the L2, we have to make sure all the builders have specific dependencies. And the people that they’re dependent on, protocols, infrastructure providers they’re dependent on, are ready for the L2 transition. Because if these infrastructure providers go down, then my protocols go down, then L transitions aren’t successful. And so we ran this survey that said like, “Okay, who are some of the critical infrastructure providers that you guys depend on?” I want to say in every, or in 90% of that form, The Graph was a top contender of infrastructure provider that the protocol depended on.

(00:48:26):

And so I remember, okay, when we were making the list of top five critical dependencies, The Graph was in the top five because without The Graph nothing works. For instance, we asked what are the dashboarding services called Optimus? Also really good friends of mine, they live in New York, so we get to see them very often. I was like, “Hey, top of your mind …” We were in the middle of a meeting and I was like, “First thing, what do you need for the L2?” And the first thing they said, “Has The Graph said yes? If they haven’t said yes, then this all goes down.”

(00:48:56):

And so very, very critical for us, and I know that The Graph will support the L2 transition, but like I said, top five critical dependencies for the Ecosystem is The Graph. So I excited that you’re supporting the L2 transition.

Nick (00:49:11):

It’s an amazing insight there and I appreciate you sharing that. A lot of listeners will find that super interesting. I want to ask you just a couple more questions before I ask you the GRTiQ 10. When you think about the work that you’ve done in emerging markets, your work as a consultant, and you compare it sort to the work that you’re doing now at Celo, is it night and day difference in terms of the impact people who are working in kind of blockchain web3 wrappers can have in emerging markets versus conventional or traditional approaches?

Isha Varshney (00:49:43):

There’s no right answer or wrong answer to this. I don’t know how to answer this in a way that is politically correct, so I’m just giving you my candid answer. Night and day. I think the fact that web3 technology, we are a very agile, just as broad web3 ecosystem, and I’m not talking about Celo, I’m just talking about the broader web3 space. We’re very agile and the agility just inherent to everybody that works in this space. Because everything moves like, they say two minutes in web3 is two years in traditional finance, and it’s actually really true.

(00:50:14):

The impact that’s possible in web3, that’s not possible in traditional finance. So I’m going to give you an example. As soon as I joined Celo, we did this pilot in Kenya about on-chain lending. We were lending very small amounts of money to farmers in Kenya, and this is like the Aave model. There was a protocol in my ecosystem, Nula Market. And so essentially it’s like the employer guaranteed the repayment, but it was like the Aave model. So you put up the employer, put up collateral, you can borrow against that collateral and whatever.

(00:50:45):

The person got disbursement of loan in three minutes. It went on, by the way, not a smartphone, on a feature phone. And for those of you that were not alive during the feature phone age, you had to put USSD codes to get access. But the blockchain worked on these feature phones, which was incredible for me to see. This person in Kenya got this loan in three minutes, boom, done. I go back to this place six months in. My parents live in Kenya, so I go back to Kenya every now and then, and I was like, okay, let me see what happened.

(00:51:20):

I met this man who I had helped access this loan. It was $30, just FYI. It wasn’t a big deal. I live in New York, $30 is not even a meal at some point. We had 99% repayment from that pilot, by the way. I went back and I said, “How was this experience for you?” He told me, “Isha, I sent two of my grandkids to school and I wasn’t being able to send those to school because the harvest that year was delayed, so I wasn’t … So it helped me send two of my grandkids to school.” Which was nothing. And I was like, “Oh, that’s really nice.” Okay, fine. That’s just like a stopgap casual issue. And then he goes, “Come, I want to show you something.”

(00:52:03):

So walked 10 minutes in, we went to this orchard, this little patch of land. He’d planted 38 trees, apple trees, really genetically modified 38 apple trees from the money that we gave him, because he’s like, “After I sent my kids to school, there’s 38 trees.” He said, “Ask me how long an apple tree lasts.” I was like, “How long?” He says, “Over a hundred years. So these apple trees will give my kids for three generations, these apple trees will last for three generations.”

(00:52:33):

He literally picked a tiny apple from one of these tiny apple trees and gave it to me to eat. And I’m not kidding, I just cried. I could not believe. And the income that he projected from these apple trees, these 38 apple trees, it would take him from one level of one class in the financial structure to another class. $30. That’s how much $30 can do. And when you think about all of that, you’re like, “What are you doing? What am I doing with my life?” Right? Three generations from those 38 apple trees.

Nick (00:53:09):

It’s an amazing story. I love it.

Isha Varshney (00:53:10):

I have a picture of the apple ’cause I was like … I sent it back to everybody at Celo and I was like, “We just helped him with three generations of apples.” Stuff we don’t think about. Yeah.

Nick (00:53:23):

Real-world impact. And I love that story. The final question I’m going to ask you then is you’re doing this incredible work, it’s just captured in that story there, the Celo community. I already have high conviction for them. I’ve met Marek, I’ve met you. I love the story. I love the vision. But we belong in an industry that’s very mercurial and we’re recording this at the end of February. And even on the day that we’re recording, the markets are doing crazy things. The storylines are doing crazy things. There’s some salacious headlines. How do you keep your bearings personally as a contributor within this industry when there’s so much noise?

Isha Varshney (00:54:04):

So I’m going to give you a story for this, right? The noise is not all bad. It’s not great, but it’s not all bad. I have friends three years ago when I told them, or two years ago when I told them I’m joining web3, they were like, what is wrong with you? That’s a red bull. Early this year when the president came to office and he launched a token, those same friends were like, “Hey, how do you think we can access this?”

(00:54:28):

And so there’s so much noise, but it’s also helping people onboard. And once they’re onboard, whatever the reason they’ve onboarded, however they’re onboarded, there’s so much good that that can happen once they’ve onboarded. So I’m okay, it can go up and down. It just gives us … They say any PR is good PR, bad or good is good PR. I just think that it’s helping onboard people, all of these weird ups and downs in the market. But also our focus isn’t the developed world. Our focus isn’t the folks that are on Twitter. Our focus is always going to be emerging markets.

(00:55:06):

So we haven’t talked about this, but we actually have a product in the Ecosystem, which is a stablecoin wallet. It’s called Opera MiniPay. So essentially Opera is like a browser; it’s similar to your Chrome or your Safari. It’s one of the biggest browsers on the continent of Africa. They have a few hundred million users. And we installed a stablecoin wallet in this browser, literally embedded a stablecoin wallet on this browser. It gives the people on the continent the option to store value in dollar. And I don’t know if you know this, but the naira kind goes up and down. It went down 40% last year. So it gives this person the chance to store their life savings in dollars, not even their live saving, let’s suppose even their current paycheck in dollars.

(00:55:52):

We launched this last year September, and one and a little bit plus from then where we’ve publicly announced 5 million users that currently use this Opera browser, that store value in dollar denominated currency. So yeah, sure, a meme coin goes up and down and stuff like that, but the number that I’m tracking is this number. The number that I’m tracking is how many people are making launch payment in Nigeria through the MiniPay wallet with a dollar stablecoin on this wallet. That’s the number that I’m tracking. And, yeah, some of them want those tokens. Right? Some of them are like, “Oh my God, when are you giving us these tokens?” We may or may not give them access to some of these ridiculous tokens, but that’s the number that I think we all in the Ecosystem track. How many people are we onboarding to crypto that are net new users?

(00:56:45):

This wallet will go standalone; it’ll come out of the browser and it’ll be like an app. It’s currently accessible to all Android users, and very soon we’ll have an iPhone version of this. So imagine the implications of that where you could do cross border remittances in seconds. The vision of that happening is here. So we’re heads down, focusing on some of this stuff. The other stuff is interesting. If my friends are saying, “How do we buy some of these meme coin tokens?” Sure, I’m happy to help you as long as you’re onboarding to crypto. And then I can show you all of these really interesting cool things where you can send money back to your parents or you can send money back to, I don’t know, to an orphanage somewhere. Yeah, I’m happy to do that to you.

Nick (00:57:25):

Amazing. So, Isha, now we’ve reached a point in the podcast where I’m going to ask you the GRTiQ 10. These are 10 questions I ask each guest every week. And I do it, as I always say, because it allows us to get to know you a little bit better, but I also hope listeners will learn something new, try something different, or achieve more in their own life. So, Isha, are you ready for the GRTiQ 10?

Isha Varshney (00:57:44):

Let’s do it.

Nick (00:57:57):

What book or articles had the most impact on your life?

Isha Varshney (00:58:00):

Ooh, that’s a tough one. I’m a reader, so there’s a ton, but top of mind, I think the book that changed my life is this book called When Breath Becomes Air. I don’t know if you or some of your listeners have-

Nick (00:58:12):

I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it.

Isha Varshney (00:58:13):

… read it. It’s a book written by a neurosurgeon, Paul something, I forget his name. It’s a memoir about his life. And at a very young age, he’s battling cancer, and he literally attempts to answer the question of what makes a life worth living. And that book, it was actually given to me by my then boss when I left KPMG. He kind of just said that, let this be what you track your life’s metrics by. And it’s been something that I’ve kind of really treasured is what I want to do with my life. It’s also, I think the book that I give the most to everybody. So it’s my most gifted book, but I love it. It changed me.

Nick (00:58:51):

Is there a movie or a TV show that you recommend everybody’s got to watch?

Isha Varshney (00:58:55):

I am not really a TV person, but top of mind, Black Mirror, only because I think it shows the impact of technology and society in a dystopian way. Not all of it. It’s got multiple different iterations of how technology can impact our life. I think it’s a great reminder for all of us on how to build technology that can truly benefit technologies. And also it’s a great reminder of what not to do, how it can go really, really wrong. So if you’re listening to this and you haven’t seen Black Mirror, I really recommend just … Some of those Episodes are really freaky, but yeah, go see it.

Nick (00:59:31):

How about this one, Isha? If you could only listen to one music album for the rest of your life, which one do you choose?

Isha Varshney (00:59:36):

That’s a good one. Maybe not an album. I’m a big Afrobeats girls. I grew up in Kenya. I love to dance to it. There is this specific playlist on Spotify, if you have Spotify, called AFRO HEAT. It’s on constant repeat in my house. You’ll see me dancing around to it at any given point of the day. But it’s great playlist, yeah.

Nick (00:59:56):

What’s the best advice someone’s ever given to you?

Isha Varshney (01:00:01):

This one is easy. It’s the 80/20 rule. Especially when I was a founder, a really good friend of mine who’s a previous founder himself told me, “Isha focus on 80/20. That’s it.” And I do that across every aspect of my life where, and for those that are not familiar, the 80/20 rule is 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts. And sometimes we get so bogged down by our long to-do lists and just the tiny details, we forget that actually it’s just 20% that yields the most results. So just like I said, just do the 20% and you technically get 80% of the results.

Nick (01:00:37):

And what’s one thing you’ve learned in your life that you’re not sure other people have learned or know quite yet?

Isha Varshney (01:00:44):

Ooh, that’s a good one. Fun fact. I have done something called Vipassana, which is a 10-day silent meditation retreat. From that I learned the concept of Anicca. It’s a Buddhist concept. It essentially translates to impermanence. There’s three pillars of Buddhism and Anicca is one of them. And it actually means that everything in life, our thoughts, emotions, relationships, the universe itself is constantly changing. So impermanence, everything changes. Nothing is permanent. And just understanding that kind of puts your life into perspective. So a day that you’re stressing about a specific thing, Anicca’s really helpful. It’s like it’s not permanent, whether good or bad, it kind of will always tilt the other side or another side. Yeah.

Nick (01:01:31):

And what’s the best life hack you’ve discovered for yourself?

Isha Varshney (01:01:34):

Ooh, I’m not very good at this, I’m still learning this, but time blocking has been something that I’ve been doing a lot more of. And when I say time blocking, not only for work, but definitely for personal time. In web3, a lot of us are run, run, run, run, run, and we forget to take time out, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve had instances of almost burning out. And so just blocking time for personal time and family time and taking care of yourself, really important. So I’m not good at time blocking. I’m trying. It’s also goal to what I want to do this year.

Nick (01:02:13):

And then based on your own life observations and experiences, what’s the one habit or characteristic that you think best explains how people find success in life?

Isha Varshney (01:02:23):

My experience with life has meant some of the most successful people. I went in to walk into rooms with some of the most successful people that I know and I have this image of what they’d be like and they have all the answers and they’ll be this specific type of person, and they’re really not; they’re just normal, like us. I think they just have courage of conviction and just execute. And I think that’s game-changing I think to me, just having courage of conviction and executing in whichever way possible. Doing it is better than not doing it kind of thing.

Nick (01:02:58):

And then, Isha, the final three questions are complete the sentence type questions. The first one is, the thing that most excites me about the future of web3 is …

Isha Varshney (01:03:07):

I think we’ve already seen so much positive impact, but I think web3 has immense potential. Putting power in the hands of people and the community and making a real difference, I think web3 has so much potential. I’m really excited about what web3 can do in some of the countries that we talked about throughout this podcast. But also, yeah, just giving power back, democratizing access is really, really powerful. So I’m excited to see what comes out of it like two decades down.

Nick (01:03:38):

And complete this sentence. If you’re on X, Twitter, whatever people call it, you should be following …

Isha Varshney (01:03:43):

Celo, @Celo, of course. You should be following Celo. We do some cool work.

Nick (01:03:50):

And lastly, Isha, complete this sentence. I’m happiest when …

Isha Varshney (01:03:55):

I’m happiest when I’m spending time with my family, my friends, and just interacting with lovely humans such as yourself.

Nick (01:04:10):

It’s very kind of you and it’s been a pleasure to get to know you. I really appreciate that you would join the GRTiQ Podcast, share your personal story, which is incredibly impressive. And it’s so fun to meet people who, from my perspective, probably could have gone on and done anything they wanted, and here they are building in web3 and working on an important project like Celo. So a thrill to meet you. If listeners want to stay in touch with you, Isha, follow the things you’re working on, what’s the best way for them to stay in touch?

Isha Varshney (01:04:36):

You can find me on Twitter, on LinkedIn, any other social media, or follow Celo; there’ll be somebody on the team that can get in touch with me. I’m so grateful for you to have me on this podcast. It was such a lovely conversation. Thank you for taking time to chat with me. Yeah, I’m excited to see what else, how this podcast grows into one of the most listened podcasts.