Why I had to build a non-blockchain based product

My career, for better or worse, has now largely been hitched to the Web3 movement. And I’m ok with that. I love the promises of Web3, despite its misappropriation by racists and trolls at times. My first foray into the blockchain and Web3 world was with Graphite. It was something of a hit. Because of Graphite, I got to travel and give talks in places like Berlin, Oslo, London, and New York. I had articles written about me and the product in The Guardian, the Washington Post, Lifehacker, and more. I had tens of thousands of users.

Eventually, I had to shut it all down because I hadn’t found true product market fit. But I continued on in the blockchain space, co-founding SimpleID. With SimpleID, we were closer to the blockchain than I was with Graphite. We went through a startup accelerator, received investment money, pitched dozens of investors for our Seed round. Then COVID-19 hit and slowed us down considerably.

I left SimpleID (on good terms with my co-founders), and despite having tons of expertise in the Web3 world, I knew my next product would not be built around the decentralized web. But why?

Honestly, it comes down to learning new things, experiencing new things. I had taught myself to code so that I could build Graphite. So 90% of my coding life was around building Web3 products. I wanted to try my hand at building a more traditional cloud product. Plus, I wanted to build for an audience like that of my MFA cohort. My MFA was in Creative Writing. Web3 products are still too new and difficult for many people to use. So if I was targeting the types of people like those in my MFA cohort, I had to build an app that was more like why they were used to. A traditional cloud app.

And that’s what Perligo is. I will build more products in the Web3 space, but for this side project, I had to step away from blockchain and decentralization. I’m proud of how it’s going and can’t wait to launch it.

If you’re interested in trying Perligo early, let me know!