By Alli and Regan

About Fem3 Voices

Earlier this year, Newstand published Alli's article, "Fem3." The piece outlined the importance of including women and nonbinary (NB) individuals in building the foundations of Web3. "Fem3'' argued that we all can, and should, commit to onboarding and retaining more diverse talent and voices into this space. That commitment includes uplifting successful women and NB-led projects, work, and perspectives. This series, "Fem3 Voices," aims to do just that.

This interview series highlights the voices of powerful women and NB players in the web3 ecosystem. Each interview will be recorded on Twitter Spaces and accompanied by a subsequent article on Alli and Regan's mirror pages.

Last week we spoke with Diana Chen. Diana is the founder of Rehash: a web3 podcast–the first podcast DAO.

Diana’s Journey into Web3

In her past life, Diana practiced as an attorney before quitting to explore and travel the world in 2017. While traveling, she started a travel blog, but found it difficult to make income as a content creator in the web2 world. Eventually, she found a fully remote content marketing agency that helped B2B businesses start their own podcast. While working there, she was inspired to start her first podcast “Startup Happy Hour,” which highlighted the stories of founders, executives, designers, and developers at web2 companies. At the time, the founder of Unstoppable Domains found her podcast and hired the marketing agency she worked for to help start the UD podcast. After a bit, he asked Diana if she would be interested in working for them full time. Back then, Diana didn’t know much about crypto or web3–it was a risky move to make, but she was confident enough to take the jump, and as she says, “the rest is history.”

Rehash: Web3’s First Podcast DAO

After spending some time with the team at Unstoppable Domains, Diana went on to work at Rabbithole on their company podcast. Early into 2022 with over 150 web3 or crypto related podcast episodes under her belt, Diana started to reflect on her work: “I had always been doing it for somebody else, like I didn’t own any of the podcasts that I had been working on for the last year and a half.” Rather than recording her own content, she had always been making it for somebody else. She knew that “one thing Web3 is severely lacking is good content,” and she knew she had experience building content, and further, community around said content. The missing piece was ownership, which is part of what inspired her to build Rehash: Web3’s first Podcast DAO.

Diana envisioned a podcast produced and owned by its contributors and listeners– members of the DAO could vote on what guests to bring on, what the structure of the conversations should be, what questions to ask guests, etc. She wanted to create a more structured and on-chain way for sourcing podcast content, and formulating strong community and ownership over the content being created. In April of 2022, she officially launched RehashDAO’s crowdfund. Diana raised almost 30 ETH, with each donor receiving the opportunity to nominate and vote on their “favorite guests, topics, and other aspects of the pod” in return for their contribution.”

Season 1 of Rehash was pre-recorded with Diana + guests that she invited after crowdsourcing ideas from her twitter community. There are 12 incredible episodes that you can find here. DAO members are currently finishing up voting on over 41 proposals submitted for season 2 guests on the pod. Eventually, Diana hopes that Rehash can become a larger web3 content and media brand for any content creator to be able to start their project within. She hopes members eventually propose and vote on new projects, and that Rehash can become a vibrant ecosystem of community-owned, community-driven, high quality content and creativity.

Three Core Values of Rehash

Diana is using the lessons she gleaned from her previous roles to create a clearly defined set of values for Rehash– she believes establishing cohesive values is an integral first step for all founders and leaders.

As a DAO focused on content, she believes Rehash will face the same challenges many DAOs across the ecosystem face (onboarding, governance, legality, etc. to name a few), in addition to content-specific challenges. Diana does not have all the solutions, but she believes she can marry autonomy and guidance by having the guide rails be three established core values, which are as follows:

Diversity: If you had to immediately name 10 people in the web3 space who are influential, who would you pick? Diana believes most people will list white men. Although she says this is no one's fault, she is building Rehash to make a conscious effort to include diverse guests and “build a version of the web that serves everyone around the world.”

Diana specifically spoke toward this value of “diversity” and building a version of the web that serves everyone in relation to her experience as a woman in the space. Having worked in web3 for a substantial period of time, Diana is no stranger to the challenges that many women and other diverse groups face: “I think for a lot of women in this space, it’s hard to say no because you want to take every opportunity you’re presented with since a lot of women feel like they’re not presented with all the same opportunities guys are.” Ultimately, she feels people must protect themselves and their mental health first and foremost, and in building Rehash she aims to create a community and space that allows for, and supports that– both for herself and others.

Gray-Scale: People, especially in Web3, think in extremes, but nothing in life is black or white. Rehash is interested in “discussing the nuances of different arguments, and not interested in labeling or putting everyone–and everything–into a box.”

Shape the Future: Diana echoes the sentiment in this space that we are indeed early, and “our actions have a much bigger impact on web3 than in web2.” We all play an integral role in shaping the future.

Diana believes that by clearly defining values early as a DAO or project,  “the right people will just come to you.”

Closing

Diana and her vision for Rehash are just getting started, and this article just barely taps the surface of the incredible ideas, insights, and wisdom she shared. If you want to listen to the whole interview, you can find the recording here. If you want to keep up with Diana, you can follow her on her personal Twitter here and the Rehash DAO Twitter here.

Alli is the Director of Education of Events at Variant Fund, a first-check crypto fund investing in the ownership economy.

Regan just graduated from USC and now is joining Opyn as an Associate of Community & Research

If you have suggestions for future interviewees, feedback, questions, etc. please DM us!

By Alli and Regan

About Fem3 Voices

Earlier this year, Newstand published Alli's article, "Fem3." The piece outlined the importance of including women and nonbinary (NB) individuals in building the foundations of Web3. "Fem3'' argued that we all can, and should, commit to onboarding and retaining more diverse talent and voices into this space. That commitment includes uplifting successful women and NB-led projects, work, and perspectives. This series, "Fem3 Voices," aims to do just that.

This interview series highlights the voices of powerful women and NB players in the web3 ecosystem. Each interview will be recorded on Twitter Spaces and accompanied by a subsequent article on Alli and Regan's mirror pages.

Last week we spoke with Diana Chen. Diana is the founder of Rehash: a web3 podcast–the first podcast DAO.

Diana’s Journey into Web3

In her past life, Diana practiced as an attorney before quitting to explore and travel the world in 2017. While traveling, she started a travel blog, but found it difficult to make income as a content creator in the web2 world. Eventually, she found a fully remote content marketing agency that helped B2B businesses start their own podcast. While working there, she was inspired to start her first podcast “Startup Happy Hour,” which highlighted the stories of founders, executives, designers, and developers at web2 companies. At the time, the founder of Unstoppable Domains found her podcast and hired the marketing agency she worked for to help start the UD podcast. After a bit, he asked Diana if she would be interested in working for them full time. Back then, Diana didn’t know much about crypto or web3–it was a risky move to make, but she was confident enough to take the jump, and as she says, “the rest is history.”

Rehash: Web3’s First Podcast DAO

After spending some time with the team at Unstoppable Domains, Diana went on to work at Rabbithole on their company podcast. Early into 2022 with over 150 web3 or crypto related podcast episodes under her belt, Diana started to reflect on her work: “I had always been doing it for somebody else, like I didn’t own any of the podcasts that I had been working on for the last year and a half.” Rather than recording her own content, she had always been making it for somebody else. She knew that “one thing Web3 is severely lacking is good content,” and she knew she had experience building content, and further, community around said content. The missing piece was ownership, which is part of what inspired her to build Rehash: Web3’s first Podcast DAO.

Diana envisioned a podcast produced and owned by its contributors and listeners– members of the DAO could vote on what guests to bring on, what the structure of the conversations should be, what questions to ask guests, etc. She wanted to create a more structured and on-chain way for sourcing podcast content, and formulating strong community and ownership over the content being created. In April of 2022, she officially launched RehashDAO’s crowdfund. Diana raised almost 30 ETH, with each donor receiving the opportunity to nominate and vote on their “favorite guests, topics, and other aspects of the pod” in return for their contribution.”

Season 1 of Rehash was pre-recorded with Diana + guests that she invited after crowdsourcing ideas from her twitter community. There are 12 incredible episodes that you can find here. DAO members are currently finishing up voting on over 41 proposals submitted for season 2 guests on the pod. Eventually, Diana hopes that Rehash can become a larger web3 content and media brand for any content creator to be able to start their project within. She hopes members eventually propose and vote on new projects, and that Rehash can become a vibrant ecosystem of community-owned, community-driven, high quality content and creativity.

Three Core Values of Rehash

Diana is using the lessons she gleaned from her previous roles to create a clearly defined set of values for Rehash– she believes establishing cohesive values is an integral first step for all founders and leaders.

As a DAO focused on content, she believes Rehash will face the same challenges many DAOs across the ecosystem face (onboarding, governance, legality, etc. to name a few), in addition to content-specific challenges. Diana does not have all the solutions, but she believes she can marry autonomy and guidance by having the guide rails be three established core values, which are as follows:

Diversity: If you had to immediately name 10 people in the web3 space who are influential, who would you pick? Diana believes most people will list white men. Although she says this is no one's fault, she is building Rehash to make a conscious effort to include diverse guests and “build a version of the web that serves everyone around the world.”

Diana specifically spoke toward this value of “diversity” and building a version of the web that serves everyone in relation to her experience as a woman in the space. Having worked in web3 for a substantial period of time, Diana is no stranger to the challenges that many women and other diverse groups face: “I think for a lot of women in this space, it’s hard to say no because you want to take every opportunity you’re presented with since a lot of women feel like they’re not presented with all the same opportunities guys are.” Ultimately, she feels people must protect themselves and their mental health first and foremost, and in building Rehash she aims to create a community and space that allows for, and supports that– both for herself and others.

Gray-Scale: People, especially in Web3, think in extremes, but nothing in life is black or white. Rehash is interested in “discussing the nuances of different arguments, and not interested in labeling or putting everyone–and everything–into a box.”

Shape the Future: Diana echoes the sentiment in this space that we are indeed early, and “our actions have a much bigger impact on web3 than in web2.” We all play an integral role in shaping the future.

Diana believes that by clearly defining values early as a DAO or project,  “the right people will just come to you.”

Closing

Diana and her vision for Rehash are just getting started, and this article just barely taps the surface of the incredible ideas, insights, and wisdom she shared. If you want to listen to the whole interview, you can find the recording here. If you want to keep up with Diana, you can follow her on her personal Twitter here and the Rehash DAO Twitter here.

Alli is the Director of Education of Events at Variant Fund, a first-check crypto fund investing in the ownership economy.

Regan just graduated from USC and now is joining Opyn as an Associate of Community & Research

If you have suggestions for future interviewees, feedback, questions, etc. please DM us!