- Randi Zuckerberg says she’s so vocal about crypto because of its benefits for female founders.
- The Web3 enthusiast spoke with Insider about the launch of her new crypto podcast on SiriusXM.
- While Web3 has downsides, she says it’s a great alternative to VC funding for seed-stage founders.
Just five or six years ago, Randi Zuckerberg didn’t have a clue about crypto. Now, she’s become an influential Web3 evangelist. An advisor to the crypto exchange Okcoin and a cofounder of the NFT community Hug, she’s also known for making music-video parodies in the hopes of bringing more people into the space — especially women seeking to launch new ventures.
Zuckerberg — the sister of Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, and the former director of market development at Facebook — is launching a podcast on SiriusXM called “Crypto Café With Randi Zuckerberg,” in which she discusses topics ranging from non-fungible tokens to the metaverse with guests, such as Chris Cantino, a cofounder of the venture-capital firm Color Capital; Maliha Abidi, the creator of the NFT collection Women Rise; and Brit Morin and Jaime Schmidt, cofounders of a Web3 community for women, BFF.
On the podcast, Zuckerberg delves into some of crypto’s thorniest issues, such as the adverse environmental effects of its high energy usage and the reasons founders in the space may choose to remain anonymous even when they seek funding.
Despite those issues, Zuckerberg said, she’s an unabashed booster of Web3 — in large part because she believed it could be transformative for female founders seeking to raise capital.
“Maybe this isn’t for every woman, but every woman needs to understand what’s happening right now, because we have nothing to lose, and the traditional way is not working for us,” she told Insider.
Zuckerberg first got intrigued by crypto several years ago, while interviewing a guest for her radio show, which is also on SiriusXM. She was admittedly flummoxed by the topic at the time — “An hour into the show, I knew less than when I started,” she said — but listeners loved it. As a result, she resolved to dig deeper into the space.
After a few years, she felt like she had a better understanding of the nascent space. But what really made things click was a panel she sat on at the NFT.NYC conference last fall. All the panelists were women — a rare sight in the male-dominated world of crypto — and talk turned to the often unfriendly fundraising environment for female founders.
By contrast, Zuckerberg said, she’s seen women raise seed funding in a matter of months through decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, for NFT collections and other Web3 projects. Recently, there’s been a growing push to get women more involved in crypto, with DAOs such as BFF and Eden Wealth providing education on the space.
“If you’re a female founder, it’s going to take you six months of beating your head into a wall to raise money in a traditional way, or you can raise $600,000 quickly from the community,” she said. “If you are smart and passionate, why would you ever go the traditional model again?”
