Hi frens,

I’m Srijith Padmesh, a 3rd Year engineering student from India; I also can’t code and am a newcomer to web3.

I wanted to immortalize my journey into Web3; Mirror seemed just the right place.

Web3 has been crazy so far; I hope to take you through my ride so far, taking it back from:

Web3 then was all just a scam to me. Currencies that the government didn’t back, people buying JPEGs for the millions, and the lack of understanding kept me away from the web3 world.

It was a fine day when I heard the news that a startup from my university had raised over 2 million USD that operated in the web3 space. I’ve always been a startup enthusiast. So, the enthusiastic me could not resist the temptation to research the startup, and voila, I found Polkadex.

Polkadex, in simple terms, is a decentralized exchange that provides the advantages of both the common centralized and decentralized exchanges. They operate on the Polkadot Network.

This was around the same time my obsession to get a Venture Capital (VC) internship peaked. So I decided, why not start a newsletter and write an investment thesis on cool startups that I can find and build an online portfolio for myself. Thus, I wrote my first piece on something web3 related.

I will share my article here another day, but for now, after writing, my web3 world has gotten quiet again. It was a one-time thing, and web3 went to the back of my priorities.

In November, I decided to start having a digital presence. I chose to start with Twitter, the best decision I ever made. Through Twitter, I found Bernie, who was back then with a few hundred followers, writing a series of threads called “WTF is Web3,” where he broke down various terms like Blockchain, NFTs, etc in the most straightforward manner possible,

After reading his threads, I got the basics of the Web3 world and the potential it held. My brain just clicked, and I decided to explore the web3 world further. Then through Bernie, I found:

Odyssey DAO was an initiative started to onboard the next million people onto web3. They simplified all sorts of web3 terms from NFTs to DeFi through simple, organized, and short learning paths.

Bernie worked as a growth lead on the project, and both Bernie and Odyssey DAO were crucial to my first learnings in Web3, getting the fundamentals straight and forming a base to dive deeper into the space.

Like I found Bernie, I found Questbook through their founder’s tweets. He’d broken down blockchain in a way to explain to grandparents, and that sparked enough curiosity in me to check the Questbook community out. Oh, am I so glad that I did!

I, a dude with no coding skills and barely any web3 knowledge, decided to put out a web3 idea I found after reading a complaint on Twitter. There was an issue where bots, scalpers were buying tickets of shows and reselling them for sky-high prices, making it unaffordable for fans. My brain did some calculations and thought, why don’t people start using Soulbound (non-transferable) NFTs as a ticket. That way, bots, and scalpers lose the incentive to buy the NFTs since they can’t resell them.

I posted this idea on the #ideas text channel of Questbook’s discord server for fun and thought, this will be one of the other million ideas of mine that never get implemented. In came Raj Karia, a legend. He just told me to build it. The thing is, I can’t code, and so when I mentioned that, he set up a community event for me to present the idea.

In the community event, I presented the idea to a group of folks who had seen and were intrigued by my idea and patiently listened to my ramblings. The craziest part was that they were all “let’s build it," which was the start of an unbelievable journey.

A group of 10 strangers, Anupam, Sweta, Avi, Ishan, Rochak, Rohan, Surya, Katti, Gaurang, and I, decided to change how the entertainment + content industry worked through the use of web3. This is the Web3 feeling, all remote, strangers, ambitious people building a project they believe in together.

I’d always been an ideator. I had plenty of great ideas, plans, ambitions, but that was it. Everything started and ended in my head. I was always dependent on someone else to build my ideas out, which was ingrained in my head that I couldn’t build.

TPF NC changed that.

TPF NC was a no-code cohort run by Kavir Kaycee, who helped us learn, build and ship products using no-code tools. I joined a group of like-minded people who wanted to build their own products and launch. I learned a variety of no-code tools, the infinite building possibilities using them, and I actually built and launched a product within 5 weeks.

This was a game-changer for me. My mentality completely shifted with this. TPF did not help me directly with the Web3 world, but it helped me form a builder mentality, and that’s the essential mindset in web3.

Through joining TPF NC and being active on Twitter, I found out about Louis Pereira’s initiative called the Halfdaybuild. It was a simple, free initiative where people joined in to learn, build, and ship products over 12 hours.

Through the initiative, I met several amazing people, great builders, writers, and designers who’ve been very supportive in and out of the program. With every product I built in the program, the more inhibitions I lost in terms of building in public, sharing in public, and supporting others.

Back again to Questbook.

Questbook was trying to change from a learning platform and enter into the world of web3 grants. For the pivot, they needed to research a list of grants out there already. They’d requested contributors to take the research proposals up and rewarded 0.01 eth or equivalent questbook tokens as awards.

I see rewards; I work, lol. The research first helped me learn a lot more about the web3 world by spending hours on end that I spent on communities, websites, discord servers to write about the grants.

Also, this was the start of my obsession with bounties. I submitted over 5 proposals, and being the crazy guy I am; I chose to get tokens that still don’t exist over the 0.05 Eth, only because I love Questbook already.

I have my eye on Layer3 and Superteam bounties now.

A web3 onboarding university entirely run by the students (holders of the NFTs). I got introduced to this project by Louis Pereira, and I instantly fell in love with the project. The community was super kind, supportive, and genuine in their interest. Unlike Hype projects, the people here were all fully immersed in the project for its values over the floor prices, and I loved that.

I got in early and bagged a Paladin NFT, and I’m also getting a free one for my referrals into the community. I’ve also joined in as an Ed-content Contributor, so do keep a lookout for the project. There are still about 6000 NFTs left, and I’d recommend getting in as early as possible.

Finally, I got my internship. I had been desperate for internships since October.

Out of curiosity, randomness, and luck, I messaged another of my College Seniors Ramees, a founding product team member of Dehidden.

Dehidden is building a complete no-code visual-based utility app store for all things NFTs. The startup seemed so interesting and exciting, and I’d just asked for fun if they needed anyone at the startup. One thing led to another, and I’m currently a Project Manager at Dehidden.

Within three weeks, I managed two large projects from scratch to end. From day one, I was hands-on with everything. Managing clients, devs, designers, stakeholders, and more. It was one hell of a crazy and rewarding journey.

Ofcourse, none of it would be possible without the kickass team I’m a part of. I met people like Sangeet, Srivatsan, Dhruva, Shlok, Shaswat, Abhishek, Dattaraj, Mitesh, Nishith, etc. It’s a team that’ll change the entire web3 space, and I can’t be more proud to be a part of them. We’ve only started, with so many successful projects already launched and even more down coming up down the line.

But what was crazier than that was

My life goal for 3 years was to get that VC internship. I idolized VC firms, and after seeing students my age getting internships in top VC firms, I was like, why not me.

I applied to over 30 VC firms, got through for 3 interviews, and got rejected 4 times. That’s when I decided to build a portfolio where it became hard for VC firms to reject me, so I started my newsletter. I kept writing articles on startups, built my investment thesis, and I kept applying.

One thing that helped me keep going was Atomic Habits; I read it at the right time, which helped me keep going regardless of short-term results and focus on long-term goals.

Eventually, I got a fantastic offer from a fantastic VC firm with my ideal role. And I rejected it. I rejected it for an early-stage web3 firm without even an alpha product to launch, but again, I am crazy. Whether it was a wise decision or not is something only time will tell.

But one thing I’m sure of is I’ve made decisions based on having no regrets. Screw logic; my heart needs to be content at the end of the day, so I took the startup plunge over my dream career.

I’ve had a rollercoaster of 5 months that have shaped what I am today.

Thank you for listening to my monologue. I have so much more to say, but I shall not bore you further.

I wanted to start my web3 content journey through Mirror. My vision is to help web3 newcomers learn about web3 from its fundamentals, so I’ll be sharing educational content, research, and thoughts around the web3 ecosystem through my web3 journey.

Thanks for reading.

There’s so much more to do, people to meet, and things to build; goodbye for now.

WAGMI