Episode 12 – Building the Next Big Thing: JR’s Vision for Webssey and Decentralized Social Media

Leon (00:00):

Hey, my name’s Leon.

Pablo (00:01):

I’m Pablo.

Leon (00:02):

Join us on the Boost today where we’re interviewing CEO and founder JR with Webssey. So I know we’ve been talking a lot, I’ve been mentoring you, I’ve been talking to Pablo about Webssey, about your journey and just everything. So I’ve got a little bit of context. I think Pablo, the nice part will be able to ask from an outsider’s perspective, but I want to dive into how you got into the technology space, how you became a technical founder, and just a little bit about your background, if you can share that with us.

JR (00:43):

Definitely. I think it’s a really long story. I mean, when people ask me what made you do this, it’s not like your typical story where I graduated from Harvard and I came from an affluential family. None of that jagger I guess, but I grew up in South Texas, Laredo, it’s a pretty small town maybe last time I checked around less than 400,000 people as of 2023 or 2024, very few options in the tech side. They’re more for border patrol, nursing, teaching. It’s a very small town in that sense, and it’s a little bit underdeveloped, but what really got me into what I’m doing effectively is video games. I’m a hardcore gamer.

Leon (01:32):

I love that.

JR (01:33):

So for me, I was doing pre-engineering in my old university in TU, but they didn’t have coding and I didn’t like pre-engineering as much as I thought I did. So I took a small aptitude exam or something from their career counseling or something, and turns out game design was up there on my top five. So I did some research and I’m like, Hey, this is cool. I can learn how to make games and play games all the time. That’s not exactly what happened. What was that?

Leon (02:09):

Every kid’s dream

JR (02:10):

It is until you learn how difficult it is to make games and the kind of talent and skills you need on top of programming. And I learned that the hard way. When I came to San Antonio in 2017, I started learning how to code in Java in C sharp and C, and then later on I picked up JavaScript where I started to make games on a browser and it was a pain in the ass. But what got me into what I’m doing right now with Webssey, which by the way it’s a social finance application where people can invest in individuals or talented individuals. You can invest in stocks, so effectively like the Robinhood of social media, but for crypto, there’s a very similar product that’s doing what we’re doing, but they’re more on the traditional finance sector. Where we are on new, which is crypto, it’s called Human IPO.

(03:06):

You can always look it up and Human IPO is making it so people can IPO themselves and you can invest in them, but for us it’s the ICO route or initial coin offer instead of initial public offer. So the thing that got me into crypto was in 2020, the pandemic happened. I mean, gas was a lot cheaper than it is now, but the thing that really got me interested in this is that we were all so connected digitally more than ever before, and we’ve kind of never left that. If anything, we’re still just as connected, but we’re still here in person, if anything. So I wanted to build a product that could enhance that and at some point I would’ve built my own social platform, but it’s kind of like climbing a giant mountain if you’re going to build your own social platform, because it’s a very saturated and very monolithic, the biggest companies are just monopolies. So it’s a really competitive and difficult market to break into or so I’ve learned. So I wanted to add a twist to it, but because I didn’t know back then how in 2020 I decided to just put that on the back burner until Bitcoin started trending maybe early 2021 or late 2020, and then it reached a new all time high of $69,000. Yes. So because of that, I got really, well, I was interested in Bitcoin back in 2018, but I never did enough.

Leon (04:38):

What was the interesting part beside, I know you touched on the little part of us all being interconnected, and that is a hundred percent a belief of mine, but what was the interesting part of the crypto, especially as it was coming up in 2020 and 2021, it was more of a store of value than a utility, and I liked the way that you’re heading is trying to make crypto and trying to utilize these blockchains as a tool that enables a business versus a store of wealth or a currency exchange.

JR (05:15):

Yes. I don’t think the best, well, the technology is what initially drew me into it because it effectively empowers global economy in a permissionless way, which means you don’t need to go through a central authority to maybe get access to funds in a permission way. What makes it permissionless is that, hey, if you have the technical background, if you have maybe some understanding on crypto, you can partake in the global crypto economy just by running an instance of the program or what I did was when Ethereum was mineable and still was in 2021, I built a Ethereum miner, made about $10,000 in profit from the machine that I made. So that was what really got me into it. But

Leon (06:02):

Did you buy the parts or did you buy a prebuilt, like a Bobcat or how did you do that part?

JR (06:07):

Oh, I built it myself full on.

Leon (06:09):

I guess that’s your engineering background, a little bit of the putting it together and everything a little bit.

JR (06:15):

So I’m more on the software more than the hardware, but I mean, I built my own gaming pc, so I’m like, well, it’s just a computer, so I’ll just get the parts. I went on Google and I searched what are some of the specs or requirements for the machine? I bought it, I got my stimulus check and that’s where it all went. So I don’t recommend taking risks financially like that, but for me, I have a high tolerance. So that’s what I did. And also because it’s a really exciting thing like blockchain, crypto, I genuinely love and have so much interest in this realm because it just solves a lot of the financial problems that we’re seeing in the world, which is right now the main reason why I’m doing what I’m doing at wesc. Whereas first it started with the technical and then the money, and now it’s the overall mission and vision of the world. Does that make sense?

Pablo (07:06):

Makes a lot of sense. I mean obviously, and I’ll talk from a standpoint of cultural, so you’re from Loredo and in Laredo there’s obviously a very high Hispanic population being border city, right? To Mexico and for example in El Salvador, Bitcoin’s already an accepted currency at a national level, the first in the world to do so. And so I completely understand that dynamic of the economic impact that Bitcoin can have, particularly for underserved communities and populations and people that have generally been boxed out from lots of industries. Now as emergent opportunities are coming up for these different economies, do you see technologies like this becoming more adopted throughout not just the world, but maybe specifically in Latin America? Do you see this also offering people that maybe have a phone, have the ability to start a social media profile and are very good content creators now turning it into a model of monetization?

Leon (08:27):

I think we touched on that a little bit, right? I think in the inside baseball, the background is when he was first going is the app. I told him, I was like, Hey, I think your other big market is these emerging markets. But the one thing that as you’re talking about your background, I didn’t even think about it. There’s still markets in the United States that are emerging. There’s a lot of these border towns, there’s a lot of rural areas that are emerging even there. But I do remember touching on that a little bit. So it’s kind of full circle on your background and then just you bringing it that way.

Pablo (09:05):

So is democratizing opportunity.

JR (09:07):

It really is. I mean, the fact that makes Bitcoin, for example, so powerful and so popular is that it democratizes money. You don’t need to go to a centralized entity to get money or to get access to your funds, nor do you need to sign all these different permissions if you’re withdrawing so much money. Because I think if you go to a bank and you withdraw at least $10,000, you need to sign a notice to the government saying, Hey, I’m withdrawing this much money. You can do that easily and permissionlessly on your phone as of 2024. What makes it democratic in my opinion, not politically, but the concept is that if you’re, you’re building your own, let’s say server, because Bitcoin right now is proof of work, which means you run a computer, kind of like how I did mine with Ethereum at the time, just to validate the network and partake, you’re effectively building a service for the network and you get rewarded with Bitcoin because you’re validating the network. Being able to contribute like that at any point at any time, in my opinion, is very powerful. No other financial technology till this date has been able to do that. And we’re early because I’m not sure if you knew this, but kind of going back to your point about technologies being adopted, not just for me, but I’m sure you guys already know what Apple tap to pay is or pay with Apple Pay, if you guys saw the Worldwide Developer conference, like last week or so, they unveiled tap pay in cash or tap to cashers.

Leon (10:46):

I saw that you can tap two phones together and you transfer money through Apple Pay instantaneously or something.

JR (10:52):

Yes. And they’re using the XRP.

Leon (10:54):

Oh, really?

JR (10:56):

They’re using XRP the protocol to allow that seamless transition. So we’re already seeing it with Apple. The fact

Leon (11:03):

That’s a huge shift in the adoption of it too. And I like again, using these as tool sets versus just like a store of wealth or a currency. I know XRP’s, I think sole purpose was for borderless currency exchange. I think pre SEC and everything was MoneyGram. I believe they were going to allow you to transfer money effortlessly between the border, and that was a huge thing. But definitely knowing that now kind of opened my eyes even further of like, wow, this trillion dollar company, I think they’re trillion dollars.

JR (11:44):

Yeah, they’re the third most valuable company in the world. They’re

Leon (11:47):

Adopting a protocol like that that’s very validating for everybody. It’s rising all ships.

JR (11:52):

Yeah, I mean, just go to Google, go to the Google bar, search Apple XRP, and you’re going to find all these results. I think the most, I guess for lack of better word, I’m losing it. The most established crypto newsletters like Binance or CoinDesk, they already have articles written on that. So when you search Apple XRP, I mean you’ll find those results. So this is what’s surprising is I learned that Apple had made an agreement or partnership with XRP since 2013, if I’m not mistaken. And the fact that we’re starting to see that now, to see all this now is really powerful. Webssey, we’re using the diesel blockchain. Diesel is short for decentralized social, which its whole purpose is to build decentralized social applications on the blockchain, which you could never do that before. Diesel came in in 2021, its first product was called Big Cloud, and Big cloud was really just, it was really popular celebrities like Logan Paul, Wiz Khalifa, I think even Doja Cat, if I’m not mistaken, the Kranz Esteem Brothers were really big on Twitter or ex, they’re all there, or they all signed up at the time.

(13:22):

There were some issues at the time because people were having their own creator coins or their own ICOs without permission, but that was just a marketing move, which I think was in hindsight really smart on the diesel protocol to do. But some people didn’t like it and people are calling it a scam, which I mean, we’ve come a long way since then. Right now we have apps like Webssey who are building on it. One of our friends and partners from Amsterdam, they’re called the social world. They’re bringing this protocol to less developed nations in the world like the Philippines, even Switzerland, even though they’re more developed, they’re just making connection, making it easy to connect to the protocol from all around the world.

Leon (14:05):

It feels a lot like the early internet days. I was quite young growing up. I did a lot of video games, played a lot of that stuff. My parents had those old gateway white cow looking PCs. Those were great dial up, but the internet was still a very early, it was a AOL, Netscape, all of that. AOL. Yeah, everyone kind of doubted the internet. Everyone kind of was skeptical. I remember my parents don’t talk to strangers. The chats are there. a lot of that feels like crypto. It is really the wild, wild west still. But the interesting part is I’ve got the app on my phone and I believe it’s the HubSpot marketing, CMO, or is it the CEO? esh? Yeah, esh.

JR (14:57):

She’s on the protocol, which Webssey, we’re making it easier for people to use it, to use the protocol, but under smartphones right now, there’s other two apps, a few other apps who are doing that, but we have a good amount of traction, so we’re trying to be up there as well with other popular apps.

Pablo (15:15):

I think one of the interesting thing is in terms of world technology adoption, the technology globally that’s been adopted across the world and different economic strata is, and still probably for the near term will continue to be phones. So the fact that you can use your portable device for business, personal content creation now, financial transactions, being able to now send money to somebody in a completely different time zone and doing it real time, established companies on currency exchange conversion, we will call you out. Western Union or MoneyGram or any of these companies that charge a pretty high percentage. I mean they’re really, I consider it extortion for smaller economies, people that don’t have a lot of money and they’re receiving that money, that chunk hurts. So these platforms that are allowing for immediate transaction without any intermediaries, that’s part of that democratization that I was talking about.

(16:34):

It’s like, okay, well if my hard earned money is supposed to go now, support a family that it might be my family might be extended relatives, it could be friends of friends, it could be, could be anything. It could be a nonprofit donations. Any of those transactions are going to be cut apart. You are going to take a percentage out and then you’re missing out on a significant amount of revenue. It could be 20-25% in some instances. So that’s a ton for doing what exactly the platform and maintaining those platforms doesn’t cost that much money. Exactly. So it’s all profit driven. There’s not really, anyway, my point is, and believe me, I’m all about business, but there’s in my opinion, a degree of acceptable business. And then there is just predation exactly like Leon said. So I feel like what you’re talking about is just speaks volumes to me. And also just talking to you about the early internet. I do remember the loud squeal

Leon (17:45):

Modems. I have vague memories of those, but I’m sure you’ve got a little bit more.

Pablo (17:50):

I still remember getting my email for the first time. I was like, oh, it’s such a big deal.

Leon (17:55):

That’s why the app, and I want you to explain it a little bit more definitely is really cool. I think the ability to have your own coin make money on uploads, and we’ve talked about this, is we need to be putting our podcast on these other alternative platforms that are not just the main big ones that collect your data. They really bully us in a lot of ways. If the video’s not long enough, we don’t really get as much reach. There’s a lot of those things that are controlled that I think you are starting to talk about. And I like that spin because when we were early on, I was like, the big worry is like, man, social media is such a

Pablo (18:42):

Pickle

Leon (18:43):

And it’s also a very hated thing right now. Nobody loves it. Yeah, nobody really loves it. Nobody really hates it. It’s just an in-between of, it’s funny, everyone says it’s a terrible thing and then they’re tweeting it out. So if you want to pitch the app to us again one more time, and then I’d love to hear the features that you’re kind of building out and what that’s going to do and kind of change in what you’re building for the diesel network.

JR (19:17):

Definitely. So before I do that, I just want to clarify because you and I first met in the incubator program in quarter one of this year, and I was trying to figure out how should I position this app? Should it be a messaging app? Kind of like what I was trying to build at the time was a iMessage, but for crypto where you can do everything crypto, but message people around the world individually, that completely has, we threw that out the window because it just didn’t make sense for us at the time. And now what we’re selling it as is imagine you have a Coinbase wallet or a crypto wallet of any sort, or a meta mask, for lack of better word. What if you could add a social feed to it, and what if you could, instead of buy cryptos, you can buy people’s, you can invest in people effectively.

(20:10):

They have their own coin. When you sign up, it’s Webssey, you download the app, you can either log in either through Diesel Identity, which is our product market fit. You can either connect your own meta mask or you can connect with Google. If you’re crypto literate, for lack of better word, you log in. And what we do all in-house is we connect you to the diesel protocol or blockchain, for lack of a better word, and you can immediately create your own account. You do a little capture just to make sure you’re not a bot. And in doing so, you get some crypto right off the bat. So what to tell people is there’s no other social app that’s paying you just to sign up because we’re sending you enough crypto for you to get started. You update your profile, you can start engaging with people, and you can even earn for your content in the form of crypto, we call ’em diamonds in the diesel blockchain, people can invest me with creator coins, and I mean think of it like Patreon, but for crypto, mine is the subscriptions.

(21:14):

That’s a feature that we’re actually working on as we speak. Some of the features that we also plan to release in maybe the next year to three years is online subscriptions right now or online subscriptions, write articles and blogs and eventually live streaming. Live streaming, yes. That one’s new because we long since abandoned the messaging version of it, we’re now kind of positioning ourselves into social media, but we’re also, well, aside from the social media features, which I just said, we’re also going to be adding investing features such as enhanced graphs on people’s coin, how much they progressed since they first logged into the app, up until whatever the day is. We’re also going to give them, for example, if you go to Robinhood or some other trading app like Charles Schwab as well, when you open a stock, you can see news or updates from the company. You can see shareholder meetings or all

Leon (22:22):

The financial data in the news and anything interesting that will help you invest. Right,

JR (22:28):

Exactly. So that’s something we also want to do.

Pablo (22:31):

It’s almost like a ticker, something like that,

JR (22:33):

Like a ticker.

Pablo (22:34):

We just shows performance things as are happening and things like that. Yeah,

JR (22:38):

Yeah. So moving more into the investing side of things, because another thing that would help us to do that, or that’s motivating us to do that is a lot of other apps in crypto in the diesel blockchain are not doing that. So we want to enhance double down on creator coins and kind of just help people get access to fundings. Right now, we are doing everything we can to comply with Finon, something that passed down, last one I think was FIT 21, which is financial innovation technology of the 21st century, a bill that just passed House of Representatives. So we’re hoping that that’ll give us a much more clear guideline how to comply with the law so that way instead of onboarding, I said product market fit being the diesel blockchain, which is 4 million people, there’s estimated, there’s an estimated 560 million people who own crypto worldwide as part of our total addressable market. We’re hoping that once this matures a little bit more, that we will effectively onboard all people who own social media, which is probably almost 3 billion, 5 billion around that point. So kind of mixing both markets into our product.

Pablo (23:57):

Now, just for a layman investor, someone like myself, if I wanted to then convert coins that I have and to use Webssey and being able to participate, so it’s not just signing up and getting the coins, but converting coins that I already have that are just sitting and I feel like there’s so much more opportunity, what would that process look like?

JR (24:18):

Yep. So when you say coins, do you mean

Pablo (24:20):

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Ethereum, something like that? If I wanted to say convert it to diesel and use Webssey to start participating on your platform, definitely. What would that look like?

JR (24:33):

Definitely. So if you’re, first of all, if you’re ever using another coin, you’re going to want to swap it to the native currency of the app, which is diesel as of right now. You can do that in Coinbase. You can do that in a decentralized exchange. So if you want to switch Bitcoin or Ethereum to our app, you’re going to want to use a decentralized exchange, like hero swap. Hero swap is a exchange that diesel used, or you can use Coinbase if you already have an account there, you swap your coin from whatever, it’s that you have to diesel, you can copy your public key and then you can send it to our app. You can put in our app, and then you can send yourself diesel, which it’ll take maybe a few seconds. That’s the other beauty in traditional finance, it takes one or three business days, move your money around,

Pablo (25:20):

But here it’s And not on holidays. Exactly.

JR (25:23):

So you bring your assets or your diesel, and it functions more as a coin in our app because you are using your pennies and your dollars for investing in people. So let’s say Leon has an account on Wey, and his creator coin is worth maybe a dollar. You have like five diesel, you can put $2, and if he sets a royalty of 10%, then he’s going to keep 20 cents out of the $2 that you invested and you have your holdings. And because you’re investing in him, his asset’s going to go up in value in any other asset. When people sell, it goes down in value. So it still operates as an asset, but the beauty is that you’re directly investing in his success because the model that we operated is that, let’s say Michael Jackson had an accountant, Webssey, if he was early in his career before he passed, yeah, his coin would probably be worth maybe two to $3 up until his success being the king of pop, it could potentially be worth hundreds of dollars. So your initial investment can speculatively go up in value. So maybe the Boost, if the Boost had an account there right now, your coin could be worth a few dollars, but in the long term, if it becomes the Joe Rogan podcast or something,

(26:47):

It would potentially go up in value as well.

Leon (26:49):

I really like that approach in the end, because I see it on social media a lot. I see somebody on, they’ve got a ton of potential. They’re very charismatic. There’s something about them that I’m like, man, this person’s going somewhere. And the Patreons, there’s a bunch of ways to subscribe, but the benefits are, they’re always like, lackluster, get some T-shirts. Maybe you get some meetings with ’em, you get something, but there’s no monetary value of you’re investing in this person. And that’s where I love that appeal because there’s a few set of people that I’m like, wow, I would give some sort of monthly subscription or reinvest and say, man, every month I’m going to put $20 in because this person is really popping off. I love their content, and it’s a support method, but it’s an investment method. And I think a lot of people that do crypto end up skewing that in that way, where they’re thinking a little bit more business mindedly and they’re saying, this person’s an investment. This person’s a growth area. And I like that. And just like the people on the app, some of them are very heavy crypto hitters, and I’m like, I love those folks because I’m like, man, they see a new technology. They’re maybe a little off the rocker, but I like that. I’m like, okay. They’re very heavy risk driven too.

Pablo (28:16):

Well, there’s the other thing too is if you really think about it, we’re already investing in content, but we don’t realize it, right? We’re investing in Netflix, we’re investing in Disney. It’s a

Leon (28:30):

Good way to put it.

Pablo (28:31):

But the thing is, is we don’t necessarily feel personal connection to maybe we have a personal connection to a show, but not to the creator. If I really support your content and I give you a, that doesn’t necessarily translate, and in the end doesn’t translate directly to you because it’s up to the platform to determine how much would you earn. Definitely. And they change those terms all the time.

Leon (29:01):

I think the prime example is the TikTok one. Granted, it might be banned soon enough possibly, but their creator fund, you have to be more than a minute. They set the values, they’re not transparent because it’s a blockchain. Everything should in theory, be very transparent or it really is, okay,

JR (29:21):

So if you go to your app, to the app and you go to a profile and you open view activity out of the, there’s a button there that has three dots, kind of like a menu. You press it, you can see an individual’s activity, which we’ve had feedback that some people don’t like that they can see everyone’s activity. But I mean that’s part of our KYC as well. And that’s also,

Pablo (29:45):

I’m sorry, that’s the transparency you’re talking about too.

JR (29:47):

Exactly. And that’s another core feature from the diesel blockchain. And effectively on crypto, it’s transparent. People say that Bitcoin is for criminals and that people always use it. I think it’s much easier to get away with crime when you use cash, because cash, you can just, not financial advice or anything, but just wash it, wash it or something. With crypto, you can see a ledger of all the historical transactions since day one. And with Diesel and with Webssey, we believe in that principle. We believe that hey, people should be able to see what is happening behind the scenes in this person’s social activity, whether they’re investing in individual. So you can effectively, if you have the right data and the right engineers, you can create some sort of inside trading tracker on Webssey on top of the diesel blockchain. But yeah, you can effectively see what activity people are doing in the app.

Leon (30:46):

I love it. So as we come to a close

JR (30:49):

For sure.

Leon (30:51):

How can people, can they download the app or how do they get started in the space with your app? With Webssey,

JR (30:58):

Definitely. I don’t like to sell a product to people who are not interested in crypto, but if for those who are interested and you maybe know what Bitcoin or Ethereum is, you can just go to Webssey.com or go to Android and go to Webssey and you’ll fund the app for Apple we have in TestFlight, because we’re still working to release the app. But yeah, if you go to Webssey.com, you’ll find a link there that says Download, and you can try it out now.

Leon (31:29):

It’s amazing. Well, I really appreciate coming on and I am enjoying the app, and I’m going to make sure we get the boost on it at some point. I’ll talk to you, the mechanics of it, make sure we do it right, and then I think that’s it, right?

Pablo (31:45):

No, I mean, I feel like you, you’re leading technology and I feel like the ability to make monetizing creativity, which right now is really controlled by very large conglomerate platforms. So the fact that you’re creating something that is really democratizing that process for revenue generation, and frankly, I mean, I feel like it has a lot of potential because you’re not keeping the technology away from people. If you have a phone and you’re able to download the app and you’re able to start creating content and promoting it, I feel like that’s going to be offering lots, not only opportunity, but I think also a lot of potential eyeballs that are going to want to be on the platform because if people are making money on it, creating it, there’s going to be surge of really interesting content to be made.

JR (32:42):

Absolutely. And the last thing I’ll say, if we’re still good with time, is if you go to Twitter or Facebook or any other traditional social media, you’re kind of tied to their algorithm. Any changes that happens into the platform, you have no control. That’s just the reality. And instead of you being the user, you’re the product as well with their targeted marketing or targeted ads. But for Webssey, we give you the power. Part of the democratization is that people can own their social graph. They’re importing their accounts. All 30 million people who use Meta Mask right now and all 40, I’m sorry, 4 million people who have a diesel account, they can import their account and we just as a business, take transactions. So we have a pretty stable business model and our technology behind it’s pretty people like it because we’re being transparent with them. So I’m really excited to continue working on this and to see what the future holds.

Leon (33:40):

Well, I’m excited to see it officially on the app store one day. Once you get through those hurdles, it’s live on the Android Play play store. It is Android. Amazing. We’ll put those links in the show. Thank you. And then maybe we can even get a QR code or something. But thank you for listening. You guys can visit the Boost fm, subscribe and follow, and we’ll see you on the next episode. See

Pablo (34:04):

You next time.