It's time to meet our 5th guest on STIMY for Web3 and NFT, Mai Akiyoshi!

Mai is a Silicon Valley engineer from Japan who took an unconventional route littered with what one might consider to be “failures”.

It all began when Mai applied for a sales position at a Japanese company.

The company decided unilaterally that they would train her up as a software engineer instead, and it proved to be really difficult. She was consistently at the bottom of her cohort, but still made it through the training and got into the most technically demanding department of the company, where she was treated like an alien!

Mai then got into a startup by accident, applying for a position she had no prior qualifications in and even tried to rescind her application! That position eventually led her to the States, where she met Ben Yu, her co-founder, and partner, through Nuseir of Nasdaily/Nas Academy, and where her Web3 journey began. Now, Mai is the CEO and co-founder of Curious Addys, a Web3 startup building the best educational platform and community for newcomers to Web3 while celebrating ADHD.

She is building ember.help, a platform where anyone can ask questions on Web3 and get guaranteed answers from experts. If you’re interested in all things Web3/thriving despite all the difficulties that life throws at you, then this is definitely the episode for you.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:32 Growing up in Japan
4:35 Being diagnosed with ADHD
5:55 Being influenced by her grandparents, who founded their own company after World War II
7:02 Wanting to go to the US
8:27 Applying for a sales position & becoming a software engineer
10:02 Japan’s shaming culture
11:29 Feeling like she’d landed on an alien planet
12:24 Moving to a new startup, Logbar
14:18 Moving to the US
15:03 How Nuseir of Nas Academy introduced her to Ben Yu & is the “mother” of Curious Addys
16:56 Studying at App Academy
19:19 Becoming the senior software engineer at Gusto
21:55 How Mai first entered the Web3 space
22:51 Why Ethereum is so interesting
23:37 Meeting Zeneca & helping him with his smart contract
24:47 Starting a Tamagochi education platform?
26:54 Why NFTs are here to stay
28:23 NFTs are the best way to bootstrap a community
29:32 The vision behind Curious Addys’ Trading Club: Education, Cute, NFTs
32:07 Why an octopus for a mascot?
33:56 The early days of building Curious Addys
36:01 Finding her founding team members
37:24 Maintaining the right values as the community grows
39:28 100% refund policy
40:15 Why release only 5,000 in the initial launch
40:51 How they promoted Curious Addys’ Trading Club
42:02 Building partnerships
42:59 The type of products under Curious Addys’ Trading Club
44:39 What is Ember?
47:03 NFT portfolio tracker
50:12 Reading smart contracts
52:35 Mai’s favourite NFT
53:53 What Mai believes in that most people don’t in the crypto space
54:15 Biggest mistake Mai has done in the Web3 space
55:03 How to spot NFT/crypto scams

🎙️Show notes/transcript for this episode: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/81

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WHO AM I:
I'm Ling Yah, a Malaysian lawyer & host/producer of the So This Is My Why, where I interview inspiring people about how they found their why, and their blueprint for turning that why into a reality. I’ve interviewed Olympians, Michelin-starred chefs, top entrepreneurs, VC founders, Hollywood actresses, and more.

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⌨️ I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment below or email me at sothisismywhy(at)gmail.com