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From Apple & Uber to Creating a Multi-Billion Dollar Wallet Industry | Magic Labs Documentary

EO35:29Added Aug 31, 2026

Sean Li and Jaemin Jin founded Magic Labs. Today, they've onboarded 50M+ wallets and 200,000 developers, and raised $80M+ in funding from top-tier investors,...

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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Transcript format

  1. Intro

  2. 00:00A big lesson that I learned at Apple while I was there was the obsession with detail. There was like a great sense of
  3. 00:06ownership and craftsmanship. Everyone deeply cared about making it right. Also, when it came to design, building,
  4. 00:12and shipping, there was so much thought put into it. When you build a product, it's not just to solve a problem. It's
  5. 00:18almost like storytelling. It's a message. Great storytelling is really about that wow factor. If you're talking
  6. 00:25about from a product standpoint, you want to identify what the wow factor is and show that to your users as quickly
  7. 00:34as possible. And that's like kind of part of reason why like Steve Jobs were very obsessed about the computers saying
  8. 00:40hello. Whenever you're developing a product, you're kind of almost telling a message to the world what you're about.
  9. 00:47So yes, the best UI is an abstraction of the UI that doesn't need to prompt you
  10. 00:53for login, that doesn't need to prompt you for approvals. It should just happen automatically. Our ultimate goal for
  11. 00:59magic is making technology feel invisible. One thing that I would say has expanded is we're now not just
  12. 01:05thinking about humans, we're also thinking about AI agents. You're able to trust that AI agent is making the right decisions and right actions even while
  13. 01:12you're asleep. Hi. Hi everyone. Uh, my name is Sean. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Magic

  14. Founder & Magic Labs

  15. 01:19Labs. We are on a mission to make crypto more accessible to everyday people. We
  16. 01:24were known for inventing the first embedded wallet. To date, we have onboarded over 50 million wallets and
  17. 01:32200,000 developers across various breakout crypto applications like Poly
  18. 01:37Market, Helium, Immutable Wallet Connect to enterprises like Naver and Forbes,
  19. 01:43but also getting reinvestment from PayPal ventures that at the time we were able to raise over $80 million in
  20. 01:50funding throughout this whole period. Magic is also the developers behind the Newton protocol, which is the world's
  21. 01:56first policy protocol to help secure and on board hundreds and trillions of new
  22. 02:01assets on chain across AI, institutional crypto and beyond. Our vision is to
  23. 02:07upgrade the trust infrastructure in the world and help billions of users move on chain.
  24. 02:16[Music] I was fortunate enough to have a

  25. From Jazz Dreamer to 50M Wallets

  26. 02:23computer very early on. Kind of over the years was just really interested in the computer. Um played a lot of games and
  27. 02:30eventually was very interested uh in Starcraft but at the same time I was
  28. 02:36very uh very interested in music. Uh I thought that was what I was going to do. I really love playing jazz music. I
  29. 02:43played the saxophone. So I talked to my dad and as a Asian parent, he found a
  30. 02:48very clever way to convince me. He was like, "Hey Sean, if you do software
  31. 02:53engineering, you only need to work one job and play music on the side." And I'm like, "Oh, that sounds great. I like
  32. 02:59computer. Jazz is kind of like creating uh uh music, art. Uh why don't I learn
  33. 03:05building and creating for real in school?" So we applied to uh the waterl
  34. 03:10software engineering program and uh luckily I got in that's how I went on
  35. 03:15the journey to um to truly like learn to build things but at the same time waterlue has a very uh strong startup
  36. 03:23culture. It was a super great environment where you can learn from each other you can learn from your
  37. 03:28seniors. So I was like very involved in that culture with the previous uh co-founders. Uh the project was out
  38. 03:35kitematic. We went through a lot actually like we went through just so
  39. 03:40many like ups and downs uh from working on kitematic. When we uh launched the
  40. 03:46Dropbox for your code kind of product, we we got like 20,000 developers in one
  41. 03:52month and it was growing really really fast. We had to raise money. We applied
  42. 03:57to Y Combinator and we actually got a recommendation there. But after we
  43. 04:02pitched, we were rejected from Y Combinator. So we actually had to like ramp down the service is to keep it
  44. 04:09running. Pretty challenging time. Um we're just like kind of new grads at like our our most desperate moments. you
  45. 04:16know, we got an opportunity uh from Lightseed Ventures to come to the Silicon Valley for a summer and they
  46. 04:23kind of sponsored the whole summer and so we came and they got all these great
  47. 04:28mentors uh to teach us like how to build not only how to build but to sell as
  48. 04:33well. Essentially from that process we were able to iterate on kitematic. We
  49. 04:41were able to get the requirement from actual uh devops people at companies who
  50. 04:47actually just wanted to run docker for their team locally on the computer. And at the time Docker is not very smooth
  51. 04:54like you can't really run it locally on Mac or Windows that easily. So we saw an opportunity. We brought the server
  52. 05:01software down to a local desktop environment so that like you don't have to pay the server cost and then we open
  53. 05:07sourced it to get maximum distribution. And so we launched Kitematic. It essentially took off and we were able to
  54. 05:14get interest from investors who gave us term sheets and also uh companies like
  55. 05:19Docker who reached out who wanted uh to acquire us as well. I would say the most important part of
  56. 05:27the journey was where you end up is never originally expect. Progress is not
  57. 05:33a very uh linear process. It's actually a lot like art. You know, the more
  58. 05:39you're like super super focused on one very specific outcome, you're kind of
  59. 05:44blocking yourself out of all different kinds of possibilities. But you also can't like get swayed too much. you want
  60. 05:51to commit to to some kind of like mission, right? Like like for example, for us, it was like we really want to
  61. 05:58make it easy to build software. Just something like that. But with that mission, how you get there is very
  62. 06:03flexible. Uh it's never like 100% clear, right? And you're also at the same time
  63. 06:09dealing with a rapidly evolving environment at the same time as like your own customer need and your own
  64. 06:15company's limitations, right? They say these things like uh like artists work with constraints, right? So you're like
  65. 06:22there's all these constraints and and changes and I think diamonds come from the friction right that you are dealing
  66. 06:29with in this process just over the course of this many years just building
  67. 06:340ero to one again and again. It's really getting the groove of this. So, so, so
  68. 06:39when I hit like a friction point, I'm actually like excited because it kind of becomes an opportunity for you to find
  69. 06:47the truth that others wouldn't be able to see. So, definitely like a big part of the lesson that I've learned over the
  70. 06:53years. We were able to work very very closely with uh the founder uh of Docker
  71. 07:00learning about decentralized technology at the time. uh by working with him, we we were talking about IPFS
  72. 07:07when like I didn't even know about like Ethereum. I was like what the hell is Ethereum and I was googling under under
  73. 07:14the the table. Uh after that just something about it really stuck with me. I went to uh some Berkeley meetups where
  74. 07:21I met a lot of the OG like web 3 folks and they were talking about all these like use cases that like blockchain can
  75. 07:28enable. Honestly, like it kind of felt like a renaissance where people are in these like I don't know coffee shops,
  76. 07:34bars just talking about like really cool ideas and these were like really big ideas, right? It's like moving finance
  77. 07:41on chain like how it's going to change governance, how it's going to change uh music, uh art, like everything I I
  78. 07:48wanted. Super interesting from an infrastructure perspective, but also from a use case perspective. It kind of
  79. 07:56showed me that blockchain is more than just cryptocurrencies like you can buy and trade and transact but also these
  80. 08:03use cases, right? So that's when I saw the vision. Yeah. I got like goosebumps
  81. 08:08everywhere. I remember calling my mom. He's like, "Oh, I'm going to do this. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I
  82. 08:14have to be in this space." So Sean and I go way back. We actually both graduated in the same program
  83. 08:21called software engineering from Waterlue. Sean graduated 2 years ahead of me. We first both uh went off in our
  84. 08:26own direction. He sold the startup Kitematic to Docker and his product is now known as Docker Desktop. And for me,
  85. 08:32I joined Uber early in 2015 when the team was still very small and I got to ride through the hyper growth phase. So
  86. 08:37both of us dabbled into Ethereum around 2016 and or uh 2017. And for me, I heard
  87. 08:43about Ethereum when I was uh just about graduating uh university and I heard this guy named Vitalik and I heard this
  88. 08:50word Ethereum and he's creating this new blockchain called Ethereum and at the time I only knew about Bitcoin. So it
  89. 08:55really got me interested in looking more into technology and what I liked about that was for me Bitcoin was more about
  90. 09:01just a value transfer and at the time it was really fast. Now it's more considered as like a digital gold but
  91. 09:06with Ethereum it was adding logic into the blockchain. So imagine there's no middleman and uh you can pretty much
  92. 09:13peer-to-peer not just transfer value but actually add logic to it. Any form of contract whether that agree on a
  93. 09:19contract on real estate when you sell like assets tied to let's say prediction market that's all can be facilitated
  94. 09:26through Ethereum. I got interested into that. And then for Sean I remember he told me that he was trying out a couple
  95. 09:31projects on Ethereum and he noticed that it was really hard to onboard new users. And for me, when I tried out Ethereum, I
  96. 09:38saw the potential of technology, but also I noticed the broken user experience as well. Funnily enough, we
  97. 09:44actually got to know that we both had seen the same painpoint. We actually reconnected in person. So that was in
  98. 09:502018. Uh we met at a arcade bar in San Francisco called uh Coinop and it it
  99. 09:55started as casual drinks and then became more like a 5-hour deep conversation. We kept circling back to one question. Why
  100. 10:02hasn't anyone tackled in simplifying onboarding in blockchain? Why hasn't anyone tried building a very easy login
  101. 10:09with email? And that's the moment when it clicked. That was a solution to the fundamental problem of blockchain uh
  102. 10:14with the broken user experience. So we built the conviction there and we decided to team up and start magical
  103. 10:20apps. At Apple, I worked on a couple things.

  104. Apple’s Perfectionism vs. Startup Reality

  105. 10:26One was integrating Apple Maps into Siri. The other one was uh directly working on the tokenization pipeline. A
  106. 10:33big lesson that I learned at Apple while I was there, the obsession with detail and especially it being spread through
  107. 10:39the leaders like Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and Johnny I. Couple things that I noticed was there was like a great sense
  108. 10:46of ownership and craftsmanship. Everyone deeply cared about making it right. Also, when it came to design, building
  109. 10:52and shipping, there was so much thought put into it. At Apple, every task or every idea that we had, we approached it
  110. 10:59with perfectionistic mindset. When I started Magic with Sean and all the times we're building along the way, one
  111. 11:05thing that I realized was perfection takes time. There's no way you can get it right as a small company going from 0
  112. 11:10to one to come out with a product that's perfect. I don't think anyone in the world can do that. When it came to zero to one, we focused on shipping fast,
  113. 11:17getting the product out so that we can get user feedback. And we focused on really leaning into their feedback, but
  114. 11:22also trusting our intuition of what the next stage of the product can be. So after multiple and multiple iterations,
  115. 11:28that's when I started to kind of slip in certain parts that we can perfect. And also um with a lot of user feedback, you
  116. 11:34see these patterns where it helps you build confidence on investing in certain features to make it very perfect. So my
  117. 11:40overall lesson is it's something that should always stay with you, but it's very important to find the right time and find the right opportunity to
  118. 11:46practice that profession. Before magic came into the scene, the only people that could use blockchain
  119. 11:52was crypto enthusiasts or technologists. At the time, I would say using a blockchain kind of felt like trying to
  120. 11:58assemble IKEA furniture without any instructions given to you. You had all these unfamiliar parts and at every step
  121. 12:04along the way, you have to figure out on the fly. It was so confusing that most people had given up even before
  122. 12:09finishing a setup. And for example, like uh in crypto, you have to first download a browser extension and then you have to
  123. 12:16write down the seed phrase and also figure out how to store that safely. Also, you had to read and sign these
  124. 12:22unreadable blockchain messages without really knowing what you're agreeing to. On top of that, there are gas fees and
  125. 12:27there are more and more blockchain jargon. Uh it was definitely overwhelming. And where magic came in, we came up with a very simplified
  126. 12:33onboarding solution. login with email, phone number and and social login. What we did was we took blockchain that was
  127. 12:38powerful but yet it was inaccessible and we made it feel familiar, seamless and secure. So the biggest reason to why
  128. 12:45people didn't do that at the time because the de facto standard was using browser extensions and there were a lot
  129. 12:52of dogmatic sort of sentiment web 3 space where as an end user you have to
  130. 12:58manage your private key 100%. By like writing it down and like burying it like
  131. 13:04a pirate treasure right that was kind of where the space was at just from like a
  132. 13:10sentiment perspective. uh we saw the opportunity is that there's a lot of frustration from users from developers
  133. 13:18from having to deal with this dogma but the vocal minority was like really
  134. 13:24pushing the full decentralization narrative. What we were working on was
  135. 13:29extremely controversial at the time and we actually got like a lot of like uh
  136. 13:34heat on Twitter at the time for even doing this or even like thinking about doing this. So I think that naturally
  137. 13:42deterred people from working on this. Also at the time because people were deterred from doing this, they assumed
  138. 13:49that there's no other way to build a non-custodial uh key management solution
  139. 13:55because they haven't like really looked into the solution in the first place. They say, "Oh, it's very difficult.
  140. 14:00People are not going to want this anyway. People want decentralization." Whereas for me it's like hey can we do
  141. 14:06more on the technical part so we can actually get the best of both worlds. We can both offer web two style login but
  142. 14:14also web3 style like non-custodialness went down the rabbit hole to solve this
  143. 14:21specific problem because we also noticed in our like sales calls a lot of the DAP
  144. 14:26developers were asking hey how is it non-custodial if it's too centralized it's too risky we don't want that so we
  145. 14:34actually had to solve this problem and this showed up in like investor conversations as well all of that
  146. 14:39pressure actually forced us to solve the problem because we were already on the
  147. 14:45path to solve this. We were able to kind of invent the first non-custodial key management patent called delegated key
  148. 14:51management and we ended up like filing a patent for it. So actually that
  149. 14:56technology was a key factor to how we were able to complete our seed round. Um because at the time there was like these
  150. 15:03huge like crypto exchange hacks really scared the investors around investing in any kind of centralized key management
  151. 15:09solution. But we were able to kind of bring this new innovative tech which made a huge difference and that's how we
  152. 15:15were able to grow very quickly early on because it strikes the best balance in
  153. 15:21both worlds instead of like kind of leveraging fully smart contract wallets
  154. 15:26at the time which didn't scale super well or like super centralized solutions which had a lot of friction in terms of
  155. 15:33adoption. So that's how we were able to um really get to where we were.
  156. 15:39The Bitcoin blood bath continues as the cryptocurrency is stuck below 6,000. Can crypto traders expect more new lows over
  157. 15:45the weekend. Bitcoin falling below $6,000 overnight amid a broader cryptocurrency bloodbath.
  158. 15:51Now slightly off those lows, we're seeing Bitcoin futures trading near their lowest levels of the year. However, so yeah, in 2018, the crypto market had
  159. 15:58completely taken a downturn. I remember uh crypto was being called a scam from media headlines. ACS had pulled back and
  160. 16:05the ICO bubble had burst. Definitely the people that are left over in the space were the true believers of crypto and
  161. 16:12the true uh builders of crypto and we're definitely one of them. For us uh even though the market had completely taken a
  162. 16:18downturn, we saw an opportunity to solve a real fundamental problem and that was the broken user experience. Sean and
  163. 16:25myself, we weren't discouraged at all. That's something that we truly believed in that needed to be solved. And at the
  164. 16:30same time uh for me at Apple I learned that user experience is actually everything and someone in the space had
  165. 16:36to jump in and really start from backwards as in start from the user experience and back towards a uh
  166. 16:42blockchain technology. And we felt like we're the right people to be able to tackle that. Uh we jumped on it, founded Magic Labs, pursued our vision of making
  167. 16:48blockchain accessible.

  168. One Month of Runway: Innovation Pulled from the Brink

  169. 17:01There are multiple times that I doubted and Sean doubted as well if we were taking the right path. There was one time when we had only one month of
  170. 17:07runway. We did doubt if we were taking the right path because if we were then we probably wouldn't have ended up with
  171. 17:13only one month of runway. uh we're pretty much close to running out of money and closing down our startup. So
  172. 17:20that's the time I doubted. At the time there are actually not many people left in the space. So no one told us to quit.
  173. 17:26As I said, people had written crypto off. A lot of pulled out. There are not many builders left in the space. It was
  174. 17:31more about just growing with the community of builders that were left over and we're all true believers of
  175. 17:37crypto. For myself and Shawn, we just felt this great responsibility of
  176. 17:42needing to deliver the solutions so that at least even if it's an experiment, it can be tried out on the blockchain and
  177. 17:49show to other developers, but also show the world that there is this seamless onboarding solution that can be tried
  178. 17:54out. And luckily, it worked out. But even if that hadn't worked out, I don't think Sean and myself would have quit because we just loved working on
  179. 18:01everything related to crypto and uh we fundamentally believed in the technology to keep me not distracted from that
  180. 18:08thought. I continued to uh talk to our customers and partners and I knew that they really enjoyed using our product
  181. 18:15and they enjoyed being our customer. So that really helped me not be too distracted the runway problem. At the
  182. 18:21same time, we felt like it was very important to be transparent with our team. At that time, we had a team size
  183. 18:26of probably 8 to 10. They're all working very hard, super motivated, and really loved working together with them. And we
  184. 18:32let them know that there could be a chance that we may not be able to process payroll for the next month or two. But it's our focus to ensure that
  185. 18:39we uh extend our runway. I think for me, I I believe in it so much. If Ethereum died, then my company
  186. 18:46dies too. So, I just built as hard as I could. it keeps going and keeps raising
  187. 18:51money. Fortunately, like we were able to close with like close to a month of runway left. I have to make sure to take
  188. 18:57a loan. So, the money hit the bank without running out. But at the same time, I was still hiring. I was still
  189. 19:04trying to find a new office space. Back then, we were like in person in SF. I think for me, it's like just keep
  190. 19:10pushing until the last the last minute, right? Kind kind of thing. And cuz like I I did I did hear the Docker story too.
  191. 19:17It's like they were very close to running out and then the founder created Docker as an open- source alternative
  192. 19:23and then launched at Pyon. It was a huge success. So really just turned the company around. So I kind of believe in
  193. 19:28those those very special uh moments and yeah for me I I kept going both I
  194. 19:34believe in the space but also just from what I seen heard that I should just keep going. Yeah. at the time because
  195. 19:40the space was really small. There wasn't a lot of competitors who have who had as much as adoption as we did. A lot of our
  196. 19:49barrier was talking to VCs who are not really bought into the web 3 vision like
  197. 19:54most investors at the time. It just couldn't work. No matter how many developers or dabs that we on boarded,
  198. 20:01it wouldn't convince them. But there fortunately still a lot of investors who kind of share that vision and excitement
  199. 20:07for the space who really see the saw the value in us. Uh when you resonate from
  200. 20:13like a fundamental level in terms of vision and belief and they like the team
  201. 20:18they like the technology and you're also like kind of a leader in the category
  202. 20:24then naturally like an investment will work out. Like it was a really tough time for me where where where I had to
  203. 20:30like really really learn to fundra. Yeah. Like that seed round later was so
  204. 20:35much different from the preede round uh earlier on just in terms of difficulty
  205. 20:40especially in a in a bare market right and actually like we had so many competitors at the time after we started
  206. 20:48and after the bare market there's like only a couple left. Yeah. I think that was the the reason uh I didn't know that
  207. 20:55we were going to be working with enterprises at first but I think it was really important to be very secure and
  208. 21:02and follow like compliance procedures. So we were actually the first embedded wallet who ever achieved the sock 2 type
  209. 21:08two compliance very very early on uh even though we weren't really working
  210. 21:14with enterprises at the time and that standard actually paved the way to us uh
  211. 21:19starting to talk to enterprises because when we mentioned that we have it as a startup like they're they're impressed
  212. 21:25right that we're able to achieve that and hold that standard even till today we are the most compliant embed wallet
  213. 21:32solution with both socks type 2 and ISO right uh standard which is like a payment compliance standard. So I would
  214. 21:39say that's the baseline right that's that's kind of like a hard requirement to be able to work with enterprises but
  215. 21:46also over the years we were able to develop a lot of use cases really well-known success stories like poly
  216. 21:52market helium Immutable able to get Macy's Mattel and eventually led up to
  217. 21:59neighbor but also getting reinvestment from PayPal ventures that at the time with the PayPal ventures round we were
  218. 22:05able to raise uh over $80 million in funding throughout this whole period.
  219. 22:10And at the time we were um working with uh over 30 million wallets and now we're
  220. 22:16like over 50 million over 100,000 developers now like over 200,000. Yeah.
  221. 22:21That was like a great moment for us to like capture the market opportunity uh at the time. Yeah. And definitely that
  222. 22:29gave us a a very a lot of resource right for us to capture the market there. Yeah.
  223. 22:36I spend probably the most amount of time with Sean uh having known him for for a long time uh during our uh days at
  224. 22:43Docker. You know, sat down together and he kind of walked me through the broader vision of what he was building. It
  225. 22:49immediately struck a chord with me in that consumers began to embrace uh
  226. 22:55everything that is web 3, real solutions, real financial services tools
  227. 23:00uh that can make all of our financial lives much easier. uh his vision really captured what I think was the ultimate
  228. 23:07identity problem. And I think Magic's vision at the time was to allow people to complete that journey or that
  229. 23:14migration without having to ask the users change their behaviors or adopt new behaviors. They don't have to go to
  230. 23:21MetaMask, sign up for account, memorize the 20 keyphrases, promptly forget them
  231. 23:262 minutes later. All you have to do is use your original login and what they do is they spin up a crypto wallet for you
  232. 23:33on the back end that allows you to connect naturally sort of natively to all the web 3 services. We talk about
  233. 23:39what's the easiest adoption or way of adoption. It's when you don't have to do it anything differently and that's why I
  234. 23:46think early on they were able to grow the number of users or number of identity as they manage to the millions
  235. 23:52sort of scale that they were able to achieve at the time and that I think spoke volumes about how important that
  236. 23:58user experience design is for that mass adoption of web 3.

  237. Beyond the Numbers: What Makes Investors Truly Believe in Founders

  238. 24:08Having conviction is important and the conviction comes from a few places,
  239. 24:14right? One, do you believe that the market is large enough? They're attacking a big enough problem. And of
  240. 24:20course, having the numbers that Magic had early on definitely gave us
  241. 24:25confidence that this is tapping into a large enough problem. Enough people need access to this. and two uh like you
  242. 24:33alluded to earlier is there a technical differentiation or a a product
  243. 24:38differentiation from the competitors and I think the growth that it demonstrated
  244. 24:43uh the early customer buyins that they uh were able to get uh showed us that
  245. 24:48there is a good amount of technical differentiation like I mentioned having your own private key management and getting into some of the more specific
  246. 24:54features which I won't bore you with is is important right the nitty-gritty sometimes do win deals win customers.
  247. 25:01Just like your UX design really matters, right? The little things, one extra step in terms of authentication will probably
  248. 25:08result in incremental but and a significant amount of drop off in conversion rates. So, I think paying
  249. 25:14attention to all of those little details, whether it's the feature design, UX design, all really matter a
  250. 25:20whole lot. Ultimately, it also comes down to the founder or the founders themselves. one, do you really believe
  251. 25:27they're serious about building what they're building? Like I mentioned earlier, you know, when the market
  252. 25:33turns, tourists tend to leave, right? And the true believers, the true builders will stay because they're
  253. 25:39committed to doing this. That sort of grit, that sort of personal conviction that they demonstrated uh was also a
  254. 25:46critical part in terms of getting me conviction ultimately. That's probably the three biggest things, right? You
  255. 25:52look at overall size of the opportunity, whether they have the right to play or
  256. 25:57the right to win, but ultimately are the right people, right? You can bet on the right horse, but is it the right jockey?
  257. 26:03So, I think those three things kind of really converged on magic that made me invest in them.
  258. 26:10The most important principle when it comes to making decisions between tech and UX is finding that right balance
  259. 26:16between user experience and technology. I think it really comes down to customer obsession. And this is one thing I
  260. 26:23learned at Apple, right? Um, every design, every step of building and shipping, there was just so much
  261. 26:30attention that was uh attention to detail that was put into it. But more importantly, people just really cared
  262. 26:36about uh the user experience and their customers. It's more like when they're feeling the pain, you're feeling more
  263. 26:42pain yourself. You know, how do you react to that? You go about solving, right? When you build a product, it's
  264. 26:48not just to solve a problem. It's like, of course, like it's got to solve a problem, but it's almost like
  265. 26:55storytelling. It's a message. That is kind of like the soul of the product.
  266. 27:00When I think about storytelling and how a founder can get great at storytelling, kind of why I I really gravitate to
  267. 27:07naming the company magic, too. It's like a magic show, right? It's kind of like a
  268. 27:13performance. Like if you just like showed everybody exactly how the magic works, then like it won't be like, you
  269. 27:20know, magical. Great storytelling is really about that wow factor. If you're talking about from
  270. 27:27a product standpoint, you want to identify what the wow factor is and show that to your users as quickly as
  271. 27:35possible and like make that a goal.

  272. Building the ‘Perfect’ User Experience Philosophy in the Age of AI

  273. 27:43back to kind of the philosophy right around technology being invisible. I do envision a future where people can truly
  274. 27:51focus on what they really want to do. Like they're not just dealing with the manual things like it would just be yeah
  275. 27:58fully integrated in my day-to-day life in a way that's really really simulous.
  276. 28:04Maybe there's going to be like new hardware that you can kind of talk to, right? payment, identity,
  277. 28:09authentication, those things should be ambient. They should happen in the background without us having to intervene. Fully autonomous agents
  278. 28:15should be able to do things without us having to constantly look over the shoulder. So yes, the best UI is an
  279. 28:21abstraction of the UI that doesn't need to prompt you for login, that doesn't
  280. 28:27need to prompt you for approvals. It should just happen automatically. In some ways, you see, you know, we're in
  281. 28:34San Francisco, right? We see Whimos running around. We see Tesla robo taxis
  282. 28:40being being uh tested. I don't know if anyone had had experience with riding in one lately. Uh I remember my first Whimo
  283. 28:47trip a while back. You know, the initial 2 minutes I was a little I was a little nervous. Here I am sitting in this car
  284. 28:53with an empty driver's seat taking me through the busy streets of San Francisco, which pretty challenging for
  285. 28:59me as a driver. Now there's this thing that's taking me around. But quickly I began to really just look out the window
  286. 29:05looking at a street and and got back on my phone. I completely forgot I was being driven around by AI. And that's
  287. 29:13sort of the becoming ambient or abstraction moment that happened for me
  288. 29:18when it comes to self-driving. The best technology J will put it the best UI is
  289. 29:23no UI is an abstraction. is because you've designed the experience, you've designed the tech to be so good, so
  290. 29:30secure, so seamless that users forgot that it exists. So I think yes, absolutely that philosophy will continue
  291. 29:37to guide development not just within web 3 but also within AI going forward.
  292. 29:51We're now living through a great emergency. AI agents are becoming better. So that's how magic unit will
  293. 29:57play a key role in this uh ecosystem. Thank you.
  294. 30:02[Applause] Our ultimate goal for magic is making technology feel invisible. Sean and my
  295. 30:09vision still hasn't changed to this day and we continue to believe in our vision being realized. One thing that I would
  296. 30:15say has expanded is we're now not just thinking about humans, we're also thinking about AI agents. In five years
  297. 30:21from now, what we see is it'll be your AI agents or multiple AI agents pretty much managing your money, managing your
  298. 30:27contracts, booking travels, and doing all the daily activities that you do today, being fully automated through AI
  299. 30:33agents. But Newton will ensure that they operate within the guardrails that you have set. You're able to trust that AI
  300. 30:38agent is making the right decisions and right actions even while you're asleep. like magic already solved onboarding
  301. 30:44with crypto and with AI we see crypto being the main rails for the agentic AI
  302. 30:50and that's where mutant comes in. So mutant is a trust layer that acts as a policy engine defining and enforcing
  303. 30:57programmable rules such that users and AI agents can safely and autonomously interact with blockchains. So think of
  304. 31:03mutant as system on your phone. So you get to control apps that can access your location and use your camera and send
  305. 31:10notifications etc. So with Newton, you're able to set these permissions. Just trust that AI will be able to
  306. 31:16safely interact with blockchains on behalf of you. I would say my biggest learning was that

  307. The Greatest Risk Is Not Taking Action

  308. 31:22um progress is not linear. I always like to make this like battlefield analogy.
  309. 31:27You're like fighting a campaign, right? And you don't really know too much about the landscape. There's a lot of like fog
  310. 31:34of war. You know, in Starcraft, you don't really see, right, the map until you kind of explore it. All you see is
  311. 31:39this hill, right, that you can get on top of. So maybe you get on top of the
  312. 31:45hill, you can see more. Like you can remove some fog of war and see more. It's like, oh, maybe this is not the
  313. 31:52right hill. I need to go there. And then you go there and then it's like a little bit higher and you can see more
  314. 31:58visibility into this landscape. But if you don't take any actions to explore
  315. 32:04this fog of war, then maybe you get crushed, right? like you don't really know what's going on. So inaction is
  316. 32:11actually not an option. So you have to like constantly keep going, keep exploring, keep learning, keep
  317. 32:16iterating, keep pivoting. Sometimes it feels like 180. Sometimes if Yeah, it
  318. 32:22just feels it's like a very chaotic and unpredictable process. Where you end up is never where you start. And most of
  319. 32:29the greatest companies have gone like through a lot of these very drastic pivots, right? So I think that would be
  320. 32:36the biggest advice. Kind of think of it from that perspective. Commit to your mission, right? Commit to what you
  321. 32:43believe in your principles, but extremely flexible on your strategy and
  322. 32:48and approach. I think that should be like the right balance. Yeah. If I could go back,
  323. 32:54I would tell myself to really stress test how deeply I care about the problem that I'm solving and how badly I want to
  324. 33:01own my own destiny. Because the truth is when it comes to startups, there will be a lot of pain. When I had joined, I was
  325. 33:08just excited about building cool stuff and I did not know that I was going to go through so much pain. But what really
  326. 33:13kept me to here and I know that I'll stick it through until the end is and how much I care about the vision and the
  327. 33:18problem that we're looking to solve. The other part that I would tell myself is you got to be really obsessed uh with the problem and you got to be obsessed
  328. 33:25with building what matters. If you're not obsessed, then it'll be really hard to make it through. It's like a roller
  329. 33:30coaster where there will be highs when you feel amazing, but there will be a lot more lows where it'll feel brutal.
  330. 33:35So, if you have other goals, you're trying to make money doing a startup, I would advise not to do that. It really
  331. 33:41has to be something that you're so passionate about that you would wake up every day thinking about it. It's not just a job. Like, it has to become your
  332. 33:48life. So, it is big commitment. It's not for me to scare people, but it's also for me to just let people know that it's
  333. 33:54going to be a long journey, but I can guarantee that it's worth it. Yeah, the truth is like a person's
  334. 34:01personal motivation should evolve right over the course of years. Yes, like I
  335. 34:07think my excitement about the future of web 3, steady drum beat, right? That pushes me forward. But just in terms of
  336. 34:14sometimes, you know, when things get difficult, there's all these like personal motivations that come in play, right? When I first started, I tried to
  337. 34:21remind myself uh why I got in like I wanted to develop these skill sets, make more impact. I want to grow to be a
  338. 34:27leader. I want to learn how to work with other people better. So in the beginning that motivates me and then later on were
  339. 34:34pioneers for embedded wallet. Uh I want to take it as a new challenge to see if I can create a second album right with
  340. 34:42Newton protocol. So I I took that as a as a personal challenge as well and we
  341. 34:47were able to to deliver on that too and to me that's like very fulfilling right uh personally and I think you know as we
  342. 34:54continue to grow and and evolve we're going to find like other motivations as well but yeah like those are just a few
  343. 35:01examples and there's just so much more along the way. Yeah.
  344. 35:08[Music]