DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY OF THE BITCOIN-FOR-BUSINESS QUICK START GUIDE

This free, 27-page resource includes:

• Six ways ANY business can benefit from Bitcoin
• Some of the best Bitcoin-only businesses to partner with
• Key Bitcoin concepts for people getting started

Car Gonzalez is the Co-founder and CEO of PlebLab, a Bitcoin hackerspace and community accelerator in Austin, Texas. Previously, he produced content at TFTC with Marty Bent and remains a key leader in Austin's Bitcoin community.

🌐 CONNECT WITH CAR

• 𝕏  X: @PlebLab on Twitter
• 🌍 Website: Car's Website
• 📺 YouTube: Car on YouTube

🌐 CONNECT WITH JOSH

• 𝕏  X:@joshuafriedeman
• 🔗 LinkedIn:@joshuafriedeman
• 📺 YouTube:@joshuafriedeman

TAKEAWAYS

• Car emphasizes the importance of intentional recruitment to build a strong community at PlebLab.
• Building on Bitcoin is incredibly challenging, requiring dedication and resilience from developers.
• The Top Builder competition at PlebLab fosters innovation and showcases promising Bitcoin startups.
• Car recruits builders based on their passion for solving complex problems in Bitcoin.
• PlebLab aims to help founders succeed through mentorship and community support in Austin.
• The intersection of Bitcoin and AI presents exciting opportunities for future startups.

SHOW PARTNERS

Mentioned in this episode:

Velas Commerce: Biz Tech Meets Bitcoin

Strong Wealth: Wealth Management for Bitcoiners, by Bitcoiners

DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY OF THE BITCOIN-FOR-BUSINESS QUICK START GUIDE

I'm always on the lookout for a really outstanding builder to recruit to Austin.

Like, I will go out of my way to make sure to recruit them.

I've been doing it for four years now, so it's more of a kind of like, do they remind me of someone or something that I've seen before?

And like, and that's what I'm kind of looking for.

And so there's two people right now that I'm thinking of that I'm trying to recruit to Austin to come build their company here because I want them in Plub Lab.

I look at it more like really trying to be intentional about the people that you want inside the lab and not trying to gather everybody.

Like, I'm just trying to gather the best.

If you're not trying to do something like, incredibly epic or incredibly outside the box, or like, if you're not trying to punch above your weight, basically, then you probably should go somewhere else.

Welcome to the Business Bitcoinization show.

The show dedicated to helping you enrich your life and grow your business with bitcoin, the hardest money on planet Earth.

I'm your host, Josh Friedemann, and our guest today is Carl Car Gonzalez, who is the CEO of Pleblab, which is a hackerspace based in Austin.

If you don't know about Pleblab, you've probably at least heard about some of the businesses that either got their start there or reached escape velocity because of what Car and his team are doing.

We're going to get to our interview with Car right after this.

Car, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks.

So I'd like to start off every single interview with a few questions that help us to get to know you a little bit better and give us some insight for our own lives.

Are you ready for these?

Yeah, let's do it.

Question number one.

When and how did you first learn about bitcoin?

It was probably when I was working at this company called a Small Orange.

It was like a web design company.

And then it got bought out, I think by hostgator.

But yeah, it was like this small little boutique thing.

And we would do these standups every other day.

And there is this stand up one day.

And you know how these standups kind of teeter off if they don't kind of wrangle in pretty fast.

And anyway, they shut him down almost immediately.

And I pinged him later just in chat.

And it was like, hey, what is this bitcoin thing you're talking about?

Because I had heard about it before and it was like my second time.

And after that he shot me over the Andreas interview with Joe Rogan.

And then I listened to that and then that was when I got it.

So this is kind of an off topic question, not one of the initial five, but when would you anticipate the next bitcoin focused Joe Rogan interview to happen?

Do you have any predictions on that?

I don't know.

I think it's.

He probably gets.

I would imagine he probably gets asked that question all the time.

There was a time when Club Lab was on the other side of 6th street and we went to a comedy show and we saw Joe Rogan and there were some bitcoiners around him at that I.

That I saw at that time.

And I was thinking, I was like, whoa, is this going to happen?

And it never did.

But that was like probably like two years ago, I want to say, or maybe three years ago.

Forget how long ago.

So I think it's going to happen at some point.

I think, I think off the top of my head.

You'd need a Parker there for sure.

You would need a Marty Ben and then you would probably need like a Jimmy Song for technical stuff.

I think that would.

Do you think it would be an Austin person just because that's where Joe Rogan is?

I think it would be an Austin.

I think it would definitely be an Austin thing.

Like it would have to be, but I know, I think it's going to happen at some point.

Maybe this cycle.

We'll see.

Cool.

Well, question number two is what's an insight or fact about bitcoin that you wish everyone understood just how hard it.

Is to build on it?

I think that's just not appreciated enough.

I think from the sidelines you can kind of get.

You can kind of like bang your.

Bang your fist and be upset with some companies or developers that are trying to push updates or trying to push code or trying to do commit, you know what I mean?

And I used to be one of those guys on the sidelines complaining about things.

And then when you finally get behind the curtain and you start spending time with these people, developers and founders and builders, you start realizing they're dedicating their lives to building on bitcoin and some of them are not getting paid.

I think that would be one thing I would wish to dispel on people is how hard it is to build on bitcoin.

And a lot of these people are actually doing it for mission and nothing else.

Well, I'm sure we're going to get into that a good bit more as we talk about pleblab.

But question number three is what's the bitcoin resource you most recommend to other people?

I think the Jameson Lopp one is pretty well defined.

We try to do our own version of that called pleb book.com and because I would get.

People would ask me all the time like in meetups, like, where do I go?

Where do I go if I want to do a bit test or if I like, where do I go if I want to get started, like.

And I would.

I never had an answer.

But outside of ours I would say Jameson Lopp is like pretty.

If you go to his like his page, he has like a full on like a small little Wikipedia of like all the different types of like accelerators, all the different types of business bit devs, like everything.

It's the best resource.

I think that's lop.net right?

I think so, yeah.

Yeah.

And what would be the pleblob one that people could go to if they wanted to check that out?

Yeah, pleb book.com and we're also looking for people that want to push some code on there.

So if you want to help out to get that resource filled out.

Because it's been about a year since we've actually updated it, so open to that too as well.

Well, so the next question takes us out of bitcoin that is beyond Bitcoin.

What's a resource, tool or idea that's been helpful to you or your work recently?

So yeah, we're going through this new cycle, right.

And I think there's been a lot of up.

There's been a lot of things that we've been putting off as far as like either software or as far as like a camera or gear or audio or stuff like that.

And lately I've been kind of going down the rabbit hole of like trying to find out what's the latest things I need to upgrade.

Because it's like, you know, and I think just talking to people, I think talking to people inside the lab and the people around me about like what gear they're using, like what software they're using, like what operating system, stuff like that.

Just cause I'm.

It's time for upgrades.

That's what I would say is just the people around me or the Austin bitcoin community.

And now we have our final, what we call our arbitrary but insightful question.

And it's this.

As a general life principle.

Is ADV better to ask why or why not?

I think why?

Yeah, it's better to ask why.

It's better to ask why is that?

And then dive into the reasons for it.

Because even some things that appear to be wrong or misinterpreted from the outside looking in, you kind of understand there's a whole sort of hierarchy of things that are going on behind the scenes that, that you just aren't able to see.

Just on the surface, I would say the why.

Well, Carl, we're here today to talk about pleblab.

I'm guessing that a number of people listening to this podcast on a regular basis have heard about Pleblab before.

But there may be some people who run across this podcast who have no idea who you are or what you're doing.

And even those who do know may not really know what's happening.

I've had the opportunity to visit Pleblob once, once before and see some of the other things you guys are doing, like your top builder competition.

I think we're going to be talking about all those things today, but just could you give a brief overview of who you are and what you're about?

Yeah.

My name is Car.

I started a Plub.

Wow.

With a group of friends in 21.

We were just some plebs that wanted to help our friends who were doing companies and developers, you know.

And so we were able to get a small little space here at this like co working space downtown and we just kind of got an office and from there we started pleblam.

And almost immediately we like, we just, we just blew up just naturally over overnight.

Because Austin was just on fire at that time as far as people moving here.

It still is, but at that time it was also new because this was right after the Bukele announcement and stuff like that.

So we hadn't seen that sort of like, like bitcoin standard.

Hey, everybody's moving this direction.

But yeah, we were a part of that in the.

Shortly after that we helped some companies raise money and then my co founder at the time, Kyle, also pursued a raise as well too.

And so we raised a little small pre seed to do an accelerator, a bitcoin accelerator.

At the time we really didn't know what we were doing.

I think now we're a lot more formalized and we understand the ins and outs of it and we're much better equipped to help these founders and builders come into Club Lab and get some sort of success.

And whether that's like through grants or through like getting a pre seed or even if they just want to build their project from the ground up, just as a bitcoin business, we want to help them do that.

And so that's what we.

That's primarily I dedicate my life to, is helping these people get to success in whatever form that is.

And that's what we've been doing.

So if you go to our website, pleblab.dev, there's a whole group of people that are part of this community, this builder community, this founder community, and they all help out with this kind of growing thing that's evolving.

I think you've talked to Oliver from G, and he's somebody new in our accelerator that we're helping with building out his company.

It's been a blast.

Yeah, the interview with Oliver was really interesting and it was before he had made some of his announcements.

We did talk a little bit about how he's creating Pokemon Go of bitcoin education.

That came up in the interview without him specifically mentioning it, but he was dropping some hints that led us to open that up as at least a portion of our discussion.

What are some other brands or projects that people might recognize that have either started in Pleblab or come to Pleblab and flourished from where you guys are?

Yeah, I think our most famous one is probably Zaprite because that was something that John had moved over to, from Canada to Pleblab in Austin and 21 and myself and everybody in the lab were a part of helping him shape and build Zap.

Right.

And credit to him because at the time I didn't see the vision like the way he did.

And that just goes to show you that like, like sometimes as a founder, as a builder, you really have to stick hard with how you see things and how you see the world and just build towards it.

But yeah, I would say he's probably the most prominent one.

And then after that would probably be like Stacker News.

And that's Keon, one of my best friends that's building that.

And that's a really cool.

I love that site.

It's one of my favorite sites to visit every day.

It's like Reddit for bitcoin, but they pay you in sats.

And then the other one after that is Oshi, which is another friend of mine, Michael, who's doing Oshi Rewards and all that kind of stuff.

And since then we've had people that have come Through Open Agents is one.

It's like an AI company.

We have somebody named Jim who's doing Cascader and Problem right now.

It's an AI company.

Bit escrow is another kind of like multisig escrow contract of a sort that they're building.

It's very, very, very high, high tech.

And then, and then we've also had like nifty from base 58 build out her company inside of Publab for the past year.

She just recently left, but it was great to see her go from like literally nothing to now she's like killing it as far as like her, her company.

That's really cool.

Who else?

Yeah, it's.

It's a pretty big.

It's a pretty big group of, of startups and founders and Yopacky is another company that we've also helped through our accelerator that has gone on to do amazing things and they're about to launch or I think they just launched their Loteria app in Mexico and hopefully an exchange here before the end of the year.

We'll see.

Well, it's really interesting to hear all of those names.

Hopefully that will give listeners an idea of how influential Pleblab is.

Because I interviewed Tristan when it was still lightning escrow.

Now they're bit escrow.

Michael was one of the first guys I got to know in the bitcoin ecosystem and we've become friends since then.

I've interviewed him a couple times in the show.

Same thing with John from Zapright.

Interviewed him twice and just had Will Cole on a few weeks ago.

So there are a lot of things coming out of Pleblab.

One of the things you mentioned is that John McGill of Zapright actually moved down to Austin from Canada.

I'm curious how often you've seen that.

I've talked with a number of people who moved to Austin specifically for the bitcoin community.

How many people have come to Pleblab from other places just so they can have that startup culture and kind of that co working space and other builders around them.

Yeah, I think I want to see almost everybody, almost everybody in Club Lab besides me that has moved to Austin for Club Lab or for to build.

I think the last one that we've had is probably Oliver was already here trying to think who's the last one?

Probably Nifty was the last one because she moved from Houston to Austin.

Maybe her I would probably say her, but no, that's.

I have this saying inside the lab is ABR is always be recruiting.

And so I'm like, I'm always on the lookout for a really outstanding builder to recruit to Austin.

Like, I will go out of my way to make sure to recruit them, because to me, I really see this thing as, like, it's really hard to build on Bitcoin.

And I was saying that earlier, and you're looking for a certain type of skill sets, a certain type of personality type, and a certain type of person.

And so when you're trying to recruit people, you're trying to find if they fall into all these categories.

And I really don't have it formalized.

It's more of a.

I've been doing it for four years now.

So it's more of a kind of like, do they remind me of someone or something that I've seen before?

And, like.

And that's what I'm kind of looking for.

And so there's two people right now that I'm thinking of that I'm trying to recruit to Austin to come build their company here because I want them in Plub Lab.

So it's kind of like that.

I look at it more like really, really trying to be intentional about the people that you want inside the lab and not trying to gather everybody.

Like, I'm just trying to gather the best.

Like, you know, we have the saying inside of Pleblab, like, if it's.

If it's mediocre, you probably shouldn't be here.

Like, you probably should go do it somewhere else.

And that's not, like, to be, like.

Like, rude or anything.

It just means, like, we have a certain standard here, and it has to fall in that standard.

And so the bar is really high.

And so if you're not trying to do something, like, incredibly epic or incredibly outside the box, or like, if you're not trying to punch above your weight, basically, then you probably should go somewhere else.

And.

Yeah, and I don't feel bad about saying it's like, it's.

It's just.

It's just who we are because of the people that have come through before us, and they've kind of set the standard as far as what can be accomplished inside of the lab.

So you've mentioned a couple times that bitcoin is hard to build on.

I'm wondering if you could kind of explain that a little bit more because, you know, I'm not a highly technical person at all.

And I think a lot of people in bitcoin aren't.

And so it's easy to take things for granted and to say, hey, why don't we have this thing?

Why don't we have this thing?

Without really knowing what we're talking about.

So getting kind of a behind the scenes perspective from you, I think would be really valuable.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is just trying to generate revenue right inside of this kind of.

It was a little bit different before the whole Biden Harris administration.

And I say that because they came in with the whole choke point 2.0 and they really kind of pushed a lot of builders in bitcoin to do things the hard way, which is like the non custodial way.

And before you would have this custodial model of where like sats can basically think of it kind of like a spigot, right?

Like there's like a spigot of bitcoin and like where is that spigot?

It's right with the miners.

Right.

And so when you have these custodial services, you're able to run like a, like a hose from these miners directly into your kind of think of Stacker news, right?

So he's able to run a host directly from the spigot of bitcoin into his kind of platform.

And then like there's a fountain of sats that are just coming out.

Same thing with fountain is another.

But it's.

But during that time it was a very like sats were flowing so it was much easier to do.

There was much more revenue that could be achieved doing things that way.

But it was all custodial.

So the Biden Harris administration came in and they just got pretty much got rid of that almost overnight with the whole, with Phoenix left and there's a ton of companies that have left because of that.

And so the non custodial part is kind of where we're at now.

It's like now you have to build everything in a non custodial way.

There's different types of companies that are trying to do this through like Mints or through like E Cash or through some other type of like layer of bitcoin, whether it's like liquid or whatever, but that requires them to hold your bitcoin.

And that's as you know, as I know like and that doesn't go well throughout history whenever people do that, like holding your bitcoin.

So that's not an option, at least from the way I see it, to generate revenue.

So it, it really comes down to the revenue part in bitcoin.

You have to find something that.

Because bitcoin is entirely open source, so it's doesn't need a middleman, so you really can't make.

It's very hard for you to make money in bitcoin.

That also falls into the ethos of it as well too.

Right.

Because you, Josh, you can say, well, why am I going to pay you car if I can just send it directly to them?

That makes no sense.

And that's what we're trying to get rid of as bitcoiners.

I think the hardest part about building on bitcoin is the revenue.

And then, and then once you figure out that part, then you have to figure out, like the whole tech layer and like building on lightning, which is extremely hard.

And then there's that.

So then there's all the technical stuff that you have to figure out too, as well.

So that's why when we were talking about earlier, it's like, who are you looking for?

I'm looking for somebody who loves.

Enjoys pain pretty much.

It's like, is there somebody who enjoys hitting themselves over the head over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and willing to get back up every single time and still march on towards mission?

And that's what you're trying to find in a builder or a founder, especially in bitcoin, because it's so easy to fold right when things get tough.

But as bitcoin founders, most of them have true grit when it comes to building formation and also trying to generate revenue.

That's why whenever I think I see people like Will from, like, fold or like, even, even Parker and Will Cole from, like, when they were doing Unchained or Joe from Unchained, like, it's like, wow, like they, they were able to generate revenue, like, and they figured it out.

And so that's why I'm saying it's like really, really, really, really hard.

So most of the easiest ways to generate revenue is through exchanges, which is why you see, like, companies like Yopacky going in that direction.

Same thing with Zap, right?

Is payments.

So they're very modular, so they're able to charge a subscription, which I think is still.

They should be charging more, but I hope that will come in time.

And same thing with Snacker News.

They're charging, like, territory fees and they're making money off this community that they build.

So once you figure out that part, it becomes a little bit more manageable as far as, like, expectations and what you can kind of start planning For.

So I'm curious here.

Is it that people are building things that replace something in the fiat system and people don't feel a need for what's being created yet, they don't need to switch and so they're not willing to pay for it?

Or do you see this being an issue no matter what in the bitcoin space when people are trying to figure out how they're going to make revenue with their bitcoin project?

Yeah.

So let me think of an example.

Okay, this is a perfect example.

So, like, you know, you probably use Fountain before for your podcast, right?

You could use Spotify or you could use Apple Podcasts or some other podcast, but you use Fountain.

I would imagine you use that because you're able to generate sats on that platform and they make it really easy for you to have a wallet and to shoot it out every month once it passes a certain limit.

And so you're able to generate all these SATs.

Well, with that, Oliver's or not Oliver, Oscar is able to make some sort of revenue from that as well, too.

You know, it's smaller, it's tinier, but over time it'll grow because he has that on his balance sheet.

And I think when you're looking at stuff that people will pour it over, they really need a reason.

And I think this is where, like, I think there's this kind of.

I think there's this kind of rewards boom that's going to be happening again.

Because I think what we're seeing now is a lot of these, you know, the Z generation, I guess, Generation Z, the Zoomer generation, like, they're.

Their mind is very short, like, attention span is very short.

So they need like dopamine hits and they need all sorts of, like, kind of.

There needs to be more than just what me or you probably need to get something out of as a service.

And this is where when I think of like, G, I'm thinking like, okay, they're going to have this like, Pokemon Go product that's going to be able to give them that dopamine hit, but also have the rewards built in, but also allow them to buy a bitcoin at some point.

And when you think of that, that's like automatically revenue that's going to come through that if he's able to execute on all these kind of milestones that he has set forth in front of him.

And that's where I think when you're thinking of building a bitcoin project or building a bitcoin company, you need to really think long and hard about how you're going to generate revenue and if there's a slice of that ecosystem that you can kind of pull from.

And I think when I think of G, it's completely obvious that Pokemon Go is a successful product.

But like what would a bitcoin version of that look like?

It would be incredibly, it would be incredibly addicting and it would probably be incredibly addicting to a lot of really young people excluding ourselves or maybe we'd play with it too.

But the, it would probably be from anywhere between 18 to 40 or 18 to 35 of that kind of, that age gap that would probably play it.

So that's where, when I think of like stuff like that, it's, it's, it's, it's important to really set expectations and milestones that, that you want to check off that are in front of you for making revenue.

And I think you need to deliver to the customer, the client, exactly what, exactly what they expect from that.

Right.

We were talking about Fountain earlier and so you're expecting sats from this podcast and you're expecting sats every month from Fountain and that's the agreed upon contract that you have, the social contract that you have with them.

And I think as long as that is in enforced and is therefore in front of you, I think you will continue to use Fountain and probably stay away from using Spotify or like some other podcast.

I appreciate that explanation.

Now one of the things you have been doing and you've been.

I don't know if this is a way to vet projects or what exactly, but the Top Builder competition seems to be fairly successful in bringing attention and interest to Pleblab.

I don't know exactly how many of these you've done.

I know there was one last spring, then more recently I think you had one as well.

But what, what, what's Top Builder?

How did it come about and how has that been as far as helping to bring people and interest to pleblab?

Yeah, so there was, there was a guy who worked at Wolf, his name was Brian.

Shout Out Brian.

Amazing guy.

The whole team there is great.

And we were talking about, hey, like what would like, we want to help you guys, let's do something together.

And I was like, cool.

I was like, if you guys sponsor it, we're down.

And so at the time we were kind of batting through this, like maybe we should do a hackathon.

But I was like, eh, hackathons.

Like I don't think you get most for your bang for your buck.

With hackathons, I think there probably could be a better way.

And I don't know if it was my idea or his idea.

I forget whose idea it was, but it was like, hey, let's just do like Top Chef style for bitcoin builders.

And there's one thing about bitcoiners and you know this, we're very competitive people.

We love making bets, we love that kind of thing and we love pain for the most part.

I think the way I initially pitched it was like, oh, let's just do like a Top Chef for bitcoin and then see how that plays out.

And we'll try to find the best people to come in and compete.

And then every round we'll cut them in half and then until we get to the top five and then we'll fly them to Austin and then they'll present in front of everybody and then we'll have some judges and then they'll pick the Top Builder.

It's like really simple.

And so that's where the idea came from.

It was really successful last year.

I think CNBC covered it.

It was like a whole big thing here in Austin.

It was awesome.

I was very proud that we as a team at Club Lab, we were able to pull it off.

This year we're going to be doing another Top Builder Season 2 and it's going to be sponsored by timestamp.

So Arman, who is this legendary bitcoiner online, I won't dox him, but he decided that he's also similar minded.

Like the people in Plub Lab, he wants to be building for the builders.

He wants to have this options for them to go and raise money even when things are tight during a bear market.

So he created Type Stamp to allow people to crowd raise, which has never been created before for the bitcoin space.

It's in the Fiat space, but it's not in the bitcoin space.

And so we're going to partner with them this year to do Top Builder Season 2.

And yeah, and right now I'm in the process of putting it all together right now.

You can go to the website, actually you go to topbuilder.dev read through all the stuff and you can actually, if you complete that type form, I'll be reaching out to you and see if you kind of fall into the guidelines of being a team inside of Top Builder.

Because I think last year we had like 9,009 or 10,000 different views and then we had like over 72 applicants, I think it was.

And then I got them down to like 32 teams.

And then.

Yeah, and then from there we had Yopaki 1.

Yopaki won top Builder last year.

That's what the judges voted and I thought it went great.

And I think there's also a bitcoin prize at the end.

But not only that, it's like you get in, you get like an eight week basically kind of like you basically get thrown inside the Club Lab community.

And then from there it's just like, boom, your startup just accelerates or your project accelerates.

And then you're also getting help from people inside the lab, like a lot of our network and people that we know.

And then before you know it, you're like full on building this bitcoin company and you're like, well, what happened?

And so that's, for me is always the fun part is seeing these people transform themselves from going like, hey, I think I can do this, to actually getting their first raise.

And it's like, whoa.

And last year was really special because we had some really good teams that I really didn't want to cut.

But, like, seeing where they are now with their companies, it's like super bullish for bitcoin because these are such new ideas that I don't think would have gotten created without Top Builder.

Because hackathons are good, but they're only good for like a weekend.

And it's very rare that they'll continue going.

But I think you need a competition in bitcoin that gets people going.

And because I would firmly believe that in order to get hyper bitcoinization, we need more bitcoin companies.

Like, we need more bitcoin businesses.

And until we have more of these, I don't think we get to have a bitcoinization anytime soon.

I think we tried in the early days of Austin to get people who had businesses to accept bitcoin, but I think it's much easier just to build companies and businesses around bitcoin.

Not easier, but it's.

It's a.

It's faster as far as like the timeframe.

And what was the event in Mexico City?

I know Oliver was talking about that when I interviewed him.

Was that Top Builder or just a separate event that was happening down there?

Yeah.

So we did.

We do two Startup Days a year.

So Startup Day is the one that takes place here in March.

And we, we do the Tom Builder competition and the one in the spring.

So during March and then we do another one in the fall or in the summer.

And that was the one that we did in Mexico City.

And so that one was really special because a lot of the people that we had, I would say probably like five or the six startups that were presenting that day were from Top Builder.

And I think we probably, I think there was like three maybe that I had recruited throughout the year to participate in Startup Day because I felt like they had a project that people probably should take a look at.

So we did our best to present the 9, 8 best potential startups in bitcoin to everybody and say, hey, this is our grade.

This is what we think are the most interesting builders right now.

Here they go, here they are.

And so that's what we did in Mexico City.

I think next year we probably won't do it in Mexico City.

It was so hard to do another an event like that, not only because of the language barrier and everything, but it was just like extremely difficult.

And it would have probably been better situated doing it in America.

But I think it looked great online and I think there's more people asking about it, I think than what they would have in America.

But I mean, I don't know.

I think next year, I haven't really thought that long about what we're going to do for the summer Startup Day, but I would imagine it'll be in America maybe, I don't know, maybe Nashville.

We'll see.

I don't know.

I'm still thinking through where we could do it.

Maybe we can do it at the bitcoin park.

I think that would be kind of cool.

So I guess the last question before we get any final thoughts from you is do you see any areas right now where you feel like people should be building with bitcoin, like business opportunities you see out there that you wish people would tackle, but where there's no current great, like definitive answer yet.

I think there's some really cool things on that could probably be achieved through the non custodial stuff.

And I mean this like in like kind of what, what Phoenix is doing with, with their stuff in.

I think because they pulled out of the US so I think there's a gap there in the United States to do something similar and, and I don't know of anybody doing that right now.

There probably is somebody doing it.

Maybe it's, it's probably more open source.

But as far as a business, I don't see a similar business model inside the US that kind of fits the same thing because I think that would.

That would be really interesting.

And I would imagine it's just because the amount of capital that it would take to do something like that, I would imagine that's probably why that's the only thing that really sticks out.

I think the.

I think the most interesting things that I've seen so far that I think could.

Could be really interesting to see how they play out is the whole AI stuff.

I think that bitcoin AI adjacent stuff is like, really interesting.

But it.

Right now it feels like we have Jim and Cascader, who's doing his startup here.

And I think the thing that I see that hasn't been cracked yet is that kind of sprinkler system that we were talking about.

I think once we crack that on the AI bitcoin side, and then I think there could be significant gains like you would see never before.

And the.

So when I think of that, I think of like, Jim and Cascader, what he's doing, because I think eventually he's just gonna figure it out because he.

They build so fast on that side.

And even with Christopher David, who's doing like, open agents and stuff like that, like, they build so fast that it's in their favor for them to figure it out, like, rather quickly.

And so when they do figure it out, I think that'll open the kind of the window for everybody, and then everybody's going to come in and copy it and be like, yo, like, hey, we're also going to do that too.

And that's just normal startup stuff that you see all the time.

So I think the AI stuff is really interesting, but it's like, it's going to be some time.

But I think once they do figure it out, it's going to be like, wow, that was so right in front of you.

Very cool.

Well, hopefully we'll see some of that in the near future.

But yeah, a lot of this is happening behind the scenes and then all of a sudden it explodes out like, I feel like, I mean, Zapright.

I interviewed John probably within the first 15 or 20 episodes of this podcast.

And then it wasn't until last year where everyone started talking about Zapright.

And right now there are things being built during the last year or so that we're not going to hear about for another year or two.

But it's exciting to know that you guys are there making sure that builders have a place for themselves to build and to kind of share ideas with other people.

Do you have any final thoughts before we finish up today's interview?

As well as places where you'd like for people to go if they want to keep up with Pleblab.

Yeah, I just want to thank you, Josh, for everything that you do in bitcoin.

I don't think you get enough credit.

Like you said, you've been very.

What you do about getting the word out for these startups is like exactly what they need.

Like, they really need the practice, but they also need the push to have them to keep going because it's very, like, it's a very good feeling to be able to talk about yourself and what you're building.

And so like, yeah, thank you for that because I think what you're doing with your podcast is exceptional.

And like you said, you have the proof of work to prove it that, hey, you're following closely too, so you know exactly what going on in the ecosystem.

So, yeah, I just want to say thanks for that and like, if there's anybody out there who's interested in building a bitcoin company, come find me in Austin or shoot me an email.

Car club lab.

And yeah, let's talk because I want to help you get to success and I think we can.

It's a bull run.

It's like not.

It's the best time to build a bitcoin company.

I mean, there's great times to build a bitcoin company, but there's like really great times.

And during a bull run is like a really great time to build a bitcoin company.

And there's so many problems that could get solved.

And if you have a.

If you have a great idea and you think you can achieve it even if you're non technical.

That's how we met Francisco.

Like he was non technical, had a great idea, had like the network to pull it off, was persistent, had the work ethic, had everything else.

Didn't have a developer, didn't know how to code.

He came to Pleb Lab and within a year found his co founder and then now he's building a bitcoin exchange for Mexico.

That's how easy it is within two years.

So I would say if you're interested, come find me in Plublab and we'd love to help you get to success.

Yeah, sounds good.

Well, Carr, thank you so much for your time today.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you, Josh.

Well, friends, it's a wrap.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Business Bitcoinization Show.

If you want to reach out to either me or car, you can find those links down in the show notes, Be sure to check out the Top Builder competition as well.

As always, keep building, keep growing, and until next time, keep living and leading.

If you would like to support the show, you can listen on the Fountain app and either stream chats as you listen or send a boost.

And if you include a note with that boost, I'll be sure to read it on the show.