Ep. 53 - We don't need infrastructure, we need consumer facing apps w. Riqi, co-founder @ Paras, Arkana & Akoma

Wild User Interviews Podcast (Wuipod)

Riqi is the co-founder of Paras, Arkana and Akoma and one of the five NEAR Community Treasury Trustees. This podcast was recorded in person, at the Paras HQ in Jakarta on September 4, 2023.

This is a wide ranging, wholesome, at time hilarious conversation where you can see Riqi and AVB become best friends in real time while talking about:

* The Origins of Paras: to elevate NFTs beyond digital art.
* The Origins of Akoma and why they had to rebrand from Paras Comics
* Growing Akoma into 100s thousands of users in Indonesia. Considerations when looking for a web3 ecosystem to deploy to transition that project.
* Best selling comics art on Akoma - local ghost stories! And plans for regional expansion.
* Insights on growing and scaling an organisation internationally from Indonesia - easier to hire engineers than marketing or BD?
* Paras approach to hiring and training engineers - bearish on fully remote.
* State of web3 - community, growth, challenges & opportunities.
* Introduction to Arkana: membership and rewards platform with 100s of thousands of users.
* Quirky business ideas - thinking outside of the box on fun, engaging consumer applications that can have mass appeal.
* Best explanation of technical concepts ('explain it to me like I'm six') such as Zero Balance accounts, Meta Transactions, and other NEAR Protocol primitives.
* And more...!

Resources
Paras - OG Marketplace on NEAR: https://paras.id
Arkana - https://arkana.gg
Akoma - https://akoma.xyz

Follow on Socials
Riqi - https://twitter.com/hdriqi
Paras - https://twitter.com/ParasHQ
Arkana - https://twitter.com/ArkanaHQ
Akoma - https://twitter.com/AkomaLabs

AVB - https://twitter.com/avbNear
Wuipod - https://twitter.com/wuipod

Wuipod is also available on all major podcasting platforms for streaming.