POW With Jorge Schnura

Jorge Schnura is the co-founder and CEO of Turing Capital and Unlockd.

Turing Capital is an asset management firm offering financial products to gain exposure to digital assets.

And Unlockd is a DeFi protocol that allows you to earn compounding yield and borrow instantly against your NFTs at the lowest interest rates on the market with the safest loans.

  What were you doing before Web3?

Before Web3, I’ve been a serial entrepreneur – I’ve started three startups.

The first one was Tyba, a jobs marketplace that became the largest for startups and tech companies in Europe.

We sold that in 2015, after which I started an AI company called source{d}, where we analyzed big amounts of source code through machine learning for large corporations and gave them insights into their software development lifecycle.

After that, I started an esports business called MAD Lions, which has become one of the largest brands in esports worldwide. We merged with a Canadian company called Overactive Media, and we took it public to the stock market in 2021.

And after that, I went into crypto.

How did you get into Web3?

I got into Web3 or crypto initially in 2012. I bought my first amount of Bitcoin just to test it out and to buy a bagel at a restaurant. And that’s how I first paid with crypto ever.

Then, I’ve been on and off until 2021, when we started building Unlockd.

What was your first crypto or NFT project?

The first crypto I bought was Bitcoin in 2012. I was more recently onboarded to the NFT ecosystem and bought an Omnimorph.

How would you explain what you do to someone outside of Web3?

The way I would explain it would be: in crypto, NFTs are the same as ownership certificates for unique assets; things that are different one from the other like one house is different from another.

And we basically accept those ownership certificates —those NFTs— as collateral to take out loans.So it’s a lending protocol where you can use illiquid and non-fungible or unique assets as collateral to borrow crypto.

Which creator or thought leader do you enjoy learning from?

I mostly listen to the Bankless guys because I always find that they’re a perfect balance of diving into deep topics while making it enjoyable.

They’re always bringing on board great guests related to topics that are very trendy. What I also like is that they’re humble enough not to take too much time out of their guests by expressing their own opinions.

What is the biggest highlight of your career so far?

This is actually hard to define because every highlight is important when you compare it to the situation you’re in.

The first time you raise from investors is a huge highlight because it’s something you’ve never done before. The first time you sell a company, the first time you buy another company… when we IPO’d Overactive Media, that was huge as well.

The latest is when we deployed Unlockd on the Ethereum mainnet. I don’t think there’s any one moment I’d define as THE highlight of my career.

What is important to me is that as time passes, we keep doing things that become highlights. And then the next one, and the next one… You always go up and to the right and keep doing new things that you’re proud of, things that you haven’t done before.

What tech or crypto trend are you watching this year?

I think this year is going to be very interesting. The fact that we had a crash in 2022 and a bear market means that many of the people who were draining the energy out of the ecosystem with quick cash grabs and all sorts of scams are out.

So people are focused on building: it’s definitely going to be a very productive year.

I think the main trend or breakthrough is going to be zero-knowledge roll-ups. It’s a technological advancement that will be as impactful as blockchain itself.

I also think multiparty computation is a technology that’s going to bring crypto closer to mainstream because it’s going to simplify the user experience and allow for very simple and secure ways to manage a wallet. MPC has existed for some time, but 2023 might be its breakthrough year.

What advice would you give someone starting out in web3?

I would say that it’s important to focus on your product and not on thinking about your token, your tokenomics, and so on.

I would also advise avoiding creating fake incentives to use your protocol that are not generating real value. You need to have people using your protocol because it’s useful, not because you’re giving out some sort of artificial incentive that is unproductive.

And then I would say that it’s extremely important to stay very nimble and frugal because you now see crypto startups wasting a lot of money. Running a tight ship where you are not overspending versus your competition is going to allow you to last longer and to survive bear markets.

If you could do a TEDtalk on any topic, what would it be?

Well, I have actually done a TED talk, and it was about the true reality of starting a startup.

I talked about how from the outside when we look at entrepreneurs, we always kind of just see a steady path from starting at a basement to a big success.

But we don’t really see how tough it is psychologically, how most super successful startups have had a bunch of times in their lifetime where they were an inch away from going bankrupt and failing.

And I think it’s an interesting topic because I think people only see the glamour behind being an entrepreneur, but it also has a lot of dark sides, and you need to be prepared for that.

What is the one thing you would bring if you were stuck on a deserted island?

If I could only bring one thing, I would definitely bring a Kindle loaded with thousands and thousands of books.

At the end of the day, there are physical things on the island I could use to build stuff, but I’d need something that helps me go back to the world as I knew it and allows me to grow intellectually simultaneously.

I’m choosing books and not a tablet with movies because you can fit many more books on a Kindle than you can fit movies on a tablet, so I would have more entertainment for many more years.