AI Summary
5 min readGabby, a 22-year-old investor at TCG Crypto, got into the space the way many of her generation did: her smartest friends were quitting their jobs to work in crypto during COVID. That was the diligence she needed. But her path started earlier. Growing up selectively mute from ages five to nine, she spent her childhood in digital spaces — RuneScape, Minecraft, Club Penguin, Tumblr — finding community online when she couldn't find it in person. At Stanford, she studied symbolic systems with a concentration in human-computer interaction, working in a virtual reality lab on social computing. She first bought crypto in 2017 but didn't do the work to understand it, so she sold everything when it crashed. It wasn't until early 2021, while investing in consumer startups at Best Summer Venture Partners, that she felt a disconnect: platforms like Cameo, Kickstarter, and Patreon let people build and fund things, but there was no way to collectively own them. That realization, combined with hanging out at the Bright Moments Gallery in LA, pushed her to dive into crypto full time.
The "Smart Friends" Signal and How to Get It Without Friends
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Path into Web3 & Venture** - Gabby shares her journey from selective mutism to online communities, Stanford symbolic systems, and how Twitter became her IV into venture capital.
- 2 (02:20) **The "Smart Friends" Signal** - The hosts discuss using the weekend projects of smart friends as a leading indicator for emerging trends.
- 3 (08:25) **Defining "Work-to-Earn" & StepN** - The conversation shifts to Web3's "work-to-earn" model, using StepN as the primary case study.
- 4 (11:20) **Warning Signs: The Ponzi Problem** - The hosts analyze why StepN's token economy is unsustainable, framing it as a potential Ponzi scheme.
- 5 (14:27) **Recovery Path: Partnerships & Community** - The discussion explores how StepN could become sustainable by bringing external value into the system.
- 6 (16:32) **Web3 Insurance & On-Ramping Users** - The hosts debate the need for insurance to bring the next billion users into crypto.
- 7 (19:24) **NFT Insurance & the Seth Green Case** - Gabby highlights Web3-native insurance companies (Upshot, Abacus) and the Seth Green Bored Ape theft as a real-world example of the need for point-of-sale NFT insurance.
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Show Notes
Web 3.0 is the future, ready or not; are you? In today’s episode, we explain how Twitter increases earning & job potential, the ways Web 3 is revolutionizing the fitness and insurance industries, and why young people need to follow their interests and then double down. Hosts Sahil Bloom and Greg Isenberg are joined by guest Gaby Goldberg, who has become a pioneer in crypto, an expert in Web 3, and one of the earliest investors in The Chernin Group (TCG), all by the age of 23. Today Gaby shares the personal experiences that led her down the crypto rabbit hole, why young professionals are all in on Web 3, and shares the next generations biggest predictions for the future.
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Gaby Goldberg: https://twitter.com/gaby_goldberg
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