Josh Kriger, Co-Founder of Edge of NFT, on the Next Intersection of Tech and Entertainment | Ep. 204
In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Josh Kriger, Co-Founder of Edge of NFT, talks about the secret sauce of running a successful conference and the next intersection of tech and entertainment.
About Josh Kriger
Josh Kriger is the Co-Founder of Edge of NFT (formerly known as NFT LA) and Co-Host of The Edge of NFT Podcast. He is a serial entrepreneur from Boston, who has launched and consulted with businesses across various industries (food, fashion, art, and entertainment). Josh is ex big 5 senior manager and led an array of multi-million, complex data analytics and geospatial data projects. Josh has dabbled and then some with data analytics/visualization and marketplaces, and he enjoys sports games and funky art with a message.
Josh Kriger gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com.
Highlights Of The Interview
- Why was NFT LA (now Outer Edge LA) created
- Reasoning behind the name change – NFT LA to Outer Edge LA
- The secret sauce of acquiring speakers for your conference
- The next intersection of tech and culture/entertainment
- How technology is enabling more personalized and immersive experiences for creators to connect with consumers than ever before
Full Transcript Of The Interview
Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We are buzzin as always and, today’s guest is coming in hot from the City of Angels, the one and only La La Land, Los Angeles, super pumped to have Joshua Kriger on the show the Co-Founder of Edge of NFT, formerly known as NFT LA and, Co-Host of the Edge of NFT Podcast. Josh is a serial entrepreneur from Boston. It’ll be in town, now staying warm in Southern California, who has launched and consulted with businesses across a variety of industries, including food, fashion, art and entertainment. He is ex big five senior manager and has led an array of multimillion dollar complex data analytics and geospatial data projects. Josh has dabbled and then some with data analytics and visualization and marketplaces. And he enjoys sports games and funky art with a message. Josh pumped to have you on man, how you doing?
Josh Kriger
Good man, it’s good to be here with you. And I guess Playa Del Rey, so you’re keeping warm too.
Matt Zahab
Yes. Good Old Mexico. Couple days ago in Toronto, it was minus 30 Celsius, which for my American friends would be I think minus 35. Like that’s when you walk outside and the face starts going red and you can’t feel your nails and your toes. It’s just, it’s unfortunate. I feel bad for my friends and family at home. But it is what it is.
Josh Kriger
You know, I think like people pay for that in LA it’s called a cold plunge and like we pay like 50 or $100 for that experience. But um, yeah.
Matt Zahab
It’s too much fun. Been trying to get you on for a while you and the team have blown up what is now Outer Edge and used to be NFT LA I think before we get into you and, your incredible career and, what you and the team are doing. I’d love to know why the name change because from my perspective, I thought I loved it. I thought it was great. You knew right away. Everyone knows as soon as you hear the words, LA you know exactly what it means. And I loved it. But I’m sure you guys got a better reason for it. Why change the name from NFT LA to Outer Edge LA?
Josh Kriger
Yeah, so great question. It was really an evolution for the year to a new theme based on the evolution of the industry. We love NFTs we love NFT LA. The desire was to build something more broad for the Web3 culture and support the overall convergence of technologies that’s happened in the space over the last year things have moved really fast. I think, you know, there’s always a debate in Web3, right is each month, like seven years or nine years, I’m not sure but things are moving fast. And within the sort of scope of what we need to discuss and what we discussed in our Podcast and maybe what you discussed, we realized that there’s some things on the table that we need to include like AI and DAOs and, DeFi and you know, all the different sort of gaming technology that’s out there in the full scope of the Metaverse. And so, we wanted to come up with a theme for the year that was fully encompassing of all this incredible technology in supporting all the builders and creators out there. Because there’s folks doing great stuff with Web3, where NFTs are a tool in the toolkit, but there’s other tools in that toolkit as well.
Matt Zahab
Well said who came up with the name? Like the name is pretty sweet. Outer Edge you know what I mean? Like it’s funky. It’s a little too farfetched. It’s a little like futuristic, but it also like sort of encompasses everything puts it in a nice little bucket. That’s sort of understandable if you were to think, what would Outer Edge LA perhaps if there was a conference titled Outer Edge? What would it encompass? And you guys nailed it on the head. So, shout out time who came up with the name?
Josh Kriger
Yeah, thanks. And, you know, we’ve been really pleased with the response to the concept. People just tell me every day that they love the theme for the year and they’re excited about it and, doesn’t get better than announcing Outer Edge LA with the one and only William Shatner. As one of our keynotes. That was pretty awesome. The guy that’s like, flown around to all these other galaxies, right? It was a team effort. We brainstormed quite a bit. We had this desire of course, to sort of reflect Edge in the name of if possible if it made sense. And we kind of rift on a lot of different possibilities and I’m actually not sure who popped it up there and sorry to whoever did suggested on the team. But it just felt right when we heard it and we just rolled with it.
Matt Zahab
With a name like that. I could almost see it being like a Burning Man or like an Art Basel, you know where it’s just like it’s become such it’s culture now, you know, like, a Yo, you’re gonna Outer Edge this year, like it just it has that like let’s do some crazy shit and go to the biggest and best sort of emerging tech conference in LA. Is that a goal at all? Or am I just like blown this way out of left field here?
Josh Kriger
I mean, we were definitely inspired by the idea of having this be more of an innovation festival, right? You know, I think in the Web3 space, there’s a lot of different ways to engage from Twitter Spaces to you know, small symposiums to Discord. If people are going to make that time and effort to get together, it’s gotta feel like a high vibration environment, that’s more of a festival. And I think that was the sort of thinking on this is, how do we sort of create a vibe, where people can sort of connect, co-create collaborate, I personally love IRL events, where we have a Twitter space to show and, but nothing beats coming together to figure out sort of what’s possible with people that maybe you already are connecting with, you know, and Twitter Spaces and whatnot, that personal connection in real life, I’m looking someone in the eye, sort of seeing how passionate they are about X, Y, or Z. You can’t beat it. And I think that’s the power of IRL. So, it’s like, let’s all get together on the Outer Edge and celebrate a what incredible advancements have already been made with this technology and, be aware of where it’s going next and how we can do it together.
Matt Zahab
I love that. Josh, let’s take a little step back. And I want to learn more about yourself here you have a really cool career up until jumping into Crypto. And you are a bit of an analytics guru, which I’m a big analytics guy as well. So, I love this I want to get right into this tell me about all the way from you know, school grown up in Boston probably being unfortunately a huge Boston sports fan. You guys love your Bruins and your Socks and your Pats and, you guys win every friggin year, I cannot tell you how much.
Josh Kriger
It wasn’t always that way though. Like when I was growing up. There are a lot of years where we didn’t have a win on the board. And you know, fortunately we did come up with some of those big wins before my dad passed away. But yeah, I grew up on the north shore of Boston very familiar with the beach and whatnot, just a little bit saltier. Oceans over there. And I went to school away, marry in Virginia, I wanted to go somewhere a little bit warmer, like you I sort of gravitate towards warm weather. And that’s where I called home. And, you know, ironically went to a liberal arts school and then majored in business. But I did take a lot of different liberal arts classes as well and information technology. And I got recruited right out of school and to consulting, you know, at Deloitte and, then I worked at a number of different companies. And it was really cool to have a chance to, you know, work across different industries, and just, you know, throw things against the wall and help companies with their strategies and their program management and whatnot. So, I did that for about a decade feels like a lifetime ago. Some of the cool projects that I did, actually are quite relevant to sort of where my career went, like, for example, I worked with a Geospatial line of business, sort of integrating shared services across 28 different agencies. And I worked on an open government initiative, where we’re trying to sort of bring transparency in and around data to the public so that they know what’s going on in our federal government. And I also worked on the innovation lab at housing and urban development. So, I think if you can innovate in the government, you can innovate anywhere and in.
Matt Zahab
Well said.
Josh Kriger
And that was a really incredible time of my life, I found that I was doing more in kind of intrapreneurship like I actually started a nonprofit, to help the homeless find and keep jobs in DC. And I brought a lot of communities together. You know nonprofits had never worked together and, you know, kind of created a crash tower. So, I guess in a lot of ways, that’s where my passion for events began. I also sort of did a lot of events in college. I was one of those guys. But you know, fast forward, my business partner, Jeff Kelley, who’s one of the co-founders of Edge of Company as well, you know, kept saying Let’s be entrepreneurs, let’s do something. Let’s create something. And finally, you know, he convinced me to sort of go over the wild side. And we started a company that became territory foods, which also checked a lot of boxes for both of us in terms of that intersection of our passion and market demand and trends going on in the space. And I think that’s where my energy around looking at the world a little bit differently comes from is what happened with that company, because I realized that you can bend the matrix and create something bigger if you just look at the world a little bit differently. So at that moment in time, we had a lot of trends going on with people busier than ever, you know, the health of the US population was declining. People wanted to eat well and, there are foodies, but they didn’t have the time to cook. In at the same time, we saw this sort of effort people were making to go to the yoga studio, go to the CrossFit studio. This was when CrossFit started to get really hot. So, we just came up with this idea what if we put a fridge in a jam and, have meals delivered to individuals, when they can just go grab them while they’re working out. And the other key which sort of has some Blockchain asks decentralization principles is, it’s really hard to scale and capitalize a central manufactured food company, and you’re constrained by who’s cooking and the space in terms of what you can make. So what if we decentralize the cooking process and worked with a bunch of different chefs and, let them cook what they love and co-create with them. So, we were one of the first companies is back in 2012, where we celebrated chefs by part of them on the meals. And then we also, you know, gave them a rev share of every meal that they produced. And so, we have had chefs that have turned into millionaires from being with us in those early days of building this company. And that’s where I sort of realized that you can decentralize things in creative ways, whether or not you’re using Blockchain and, create a more anti fragile system. And so, a lot of that is applied in what I’ve done in the Blockchain space. And what we’ve done with the Edge of Companies since then, like we have a fully decentralized team. And we had one back then. So, while it’s kind of a random parlay, if you will, from food tech to Blockchain, a lot of what we learned around co-creation marketplaces, building a tribe, sub communities, it all applies.
Matt Zahab
You sort of just gave me goosebumps there. You got me all fired up their Josh geez. I love that. That was one that was a great story. Before we get into all the Blockchain stuff that you guys almost like, so you sort of had like the UberEATS Asks, I know, it’s not very, it’s not quite the exact same, but a lot of similarities. And also, that the whole health kick thing 10 years later, it’s probably the biggest trend alive right now. Every you and I talked about friggin take an ice bath now, spending 50 bucks to go take a cold plunge, like, how did you? How did all these trends come about? Where you just like man, a lot of people are caring about health now, a lot of people don’t have time to cook. This seems like a no brainer. Like, was it as easy as it made it sound? Or like, what was that whole process like?
Josh Kriger
I mean, we had Jeff and I had a big idea board. And we were looking, you know, at things that suck in the world. And we’re also looking at things that we love to do and, then what’s happening around us. And that was the process, we were very much a lean startup type of design. Shout out to Trevor Ellens, who’s one of our advisors and runs Tax Foundation, you know, and actually helped create the Lean Startup Machine sort of bootcamp in DC that we took before deciding to do this. It didn’t happen overnight. But you know, it clicked and we just kind of went for it. I think, as an entrepreneur, you have to sort of balance that natural desire to overthink things and make sure that your idea checks all the boxes, with sort of just putting it into motion. And we did some customer discovery, where we asked a bunch of people if they would do something like this, we did a lean test at a yoga studio. We had an overwhelming response. I mean, you were onto something we just went with it.
Matt Zahab
It’s just like that’s so far up my alleyway. Tell me if you think this idea is completely off my rocker but I live in a condo in downtown Toronto, just like most of my friend’s people my age in their late 20s And I would love for condos to have just like you said, a big massive fridge and chefs from around the area just again, just like your idea, right? Whether it’s Ma and Pa shops or even big food chains, instead of having an UberEATS delivery man or woman pop in every 15 minutes, which that might even be a stretch, it’s probably more like every five minutes. Now, literally every five minutes coming in the door dropping off food, there’s just you know, you can go in the morning, you can order your lunch, order your dinner for people like me who can cook but just would rather you know, spend a little bit more money to not have to cook and not have to clean. Like I’ve been craving that for so long. I don’t have the time to make that happen. But I feel like there could be some community aspect to it as well. You know, like everyday people, you’re talking, you’re in the elevator like hey, what are you getting for dinner tonight, like you order from the Ma and Pa Tindery shop down the road, I just feel like it’d be a lot of fun. Again, it’s probably wouldn’t work. There’s too many variables to jump through. But that’s, uh, I love that. That’s exactly what we’re going for. What do you think that’s too farfetched? Or do you think we have a billion-dollar idea there?
Josh Kriger
I don’t know, we got to test it out. I’ll say that the last mile of food delivery is always the biggest challenge. And that sort of predictableness of inventory. But you know, if there was a simplified version of the menu for these, you know, different folks, and there was an opportunity to sort of queue up those orders the day before, there might be something there.
Matt Zahab
It’s tough, though. Because when you like, very rarely do you know what you want to eat the following day. You know, like most people, you don’t know what you want until badly. I’m sure you guys had the same problem too.
Josh Kriger
Well, that’s why we gave people sort of an abundance of choices. And I think the other thing about what people want to eat is, there’s definitely some food that people enjoy more often than other food. And so, sticking to those comfort meals, but done well, the classics done well. There’s a reason why a lot of bars have these classics, because at the end of the day, people want to experiment, but they don’t want to go too far over the edge, they just want to hit that edge on the regular. Now, when it comes to sort of, you know, that special meal once in a while, yeah, maybe I’ll try that duck or that Peking duck or something like that or, you know some kind of special ramen. But typically, that’s not you’re like everyday foods. So, you have to kind of balance that when you’re creating a menu. It’s not easy stuff. But it’s a lot of fun to sort of think about what people want. And you know, as humans, we’re always evolving. It’s like, What’s the trend similar to the world of fashion. In the food world, there is a food Bible. And there are trends forecasts for the years. So as humans, we always want to mix it up. We always want to evolve, which is very similar to sort of what’s happening in Blockchain, I think that the rate of evolution is just accelerated with all this converging technology.
Matt Zahab
One last question about food delivery, and then we will start moving to grooving into Outer Edge LA and your Podcast, the Edge of NFT Podcast. UberEATS, did you have this vision at all? Did you ever think that UberEATS and DoorDash and all of the massive food delivery conglomerates do ever think that they would be as widespread and as popular as they are? Because like it is in downtown areas, Josh it is. And I can only speak for the downtown areas that I’ve been to and most like in North America, it is absolutely absurd there every other biker on the streets has a cooling pack on his or her backpack. Every fifth car is probably an UberEATS delivery driver. It is insane. I’ve never seen anything like it. My condo in Toronto literally has its own sort of separate room now just for food delivery. Because there’s so many packages, food packages coming in and out. Did you ever think that this would happen? Sort of 10 years after you and your biz partner came up with a very similar idea.
Josh Kriger
We saw the trend. I mean, I wonder from UberEATS on the regular and you know, I think UberEATS really helped Uber’s business during COVID. You know, they needed to evolve and they put a lot of marketing energy into it. But fundamentally the trend has been there, people continue to cook less. And in metropolitan areas, there’s a high enough disposable income that people value quick in sort of not having to think about things. The big challenge I saw was the time to deliver. You know, I think that time is cut down a lot with the proliferation of drivers over the last year or two. Prior to that I was reluctant to pull the trigger because you get an estimate of 30 minutes and then your food comes in two hours and it’s cold and that’s no fun. But yeah, I think we did see this coming and that’s why we’re so bullish on territory foods which continues is to sort of evolve as well and serve more folks more conveniently. But there’s a strong trend in our society around convenience eating well you know and, in those trends are not going away, people will continue to evolve the food industry and other industries to, you know, achieve that greater level of convenience for Metropolitan consumers.
Matt Zahab
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Josh Kriger
Yeah, thanks, Matt for the question. And it was a great time. And we were really excited to bring everyone together. We wanted to offer up a new type of experience where people can gather, get to know each other, create memorable moments in door and then walk away and do something with what they’ve learned. And that was really the culmination of a lot of thinking that Ethan, Jeff and I did while we were doing the Podcast. We love doing the Podcast, it’s a lot of fun getting to know new people and learning about what they’re doing. And we saw our audience growing. And we wanted to give them a chance to all connect and do something for LA which is such a staple of the crater economy is really not too many cities like LA that sort of bring together tech Blockchain, entertainment, art, music all in one place. And so, we wanted to offer up a high vibration environment for people to just, you know, vibe, and then do something cool together and learn. And I think that was the primary inspiration for NFT LA We decided we’re going to do it, we did it. It’s pretty amazing. We had over 3700 attendees, twelve million media impressions, folks, everyone from variety to GQ came by to say hi. And you know, had a lot of fun, it was really cool to like introduce Andrew Yang to Sir Mix a Lot behind stage and in moments like that. And, you know, I have my girlfriend got to talk with Nelly and Too Short before they performed and stuff like that. So, it was a lot of fun. And we learned a lot, it was great to sort of see what transpired as a result. Like I’ve heard stories of people that have moved to LA and people met their co-founders, I’ve heard stories of people getting meeting their investors there. And yeah, LA is a special place in and I think that sort of ups the bar when it comes to what you’re doing. Because there’s a lot of opportunities to gather and do cool things. There’re events all the time. So, we wanted to make it special and memorable and also create an environment where people want to come by from Europe, from Asia, to get to know what’s happening over here on the West Coast. With the crater economy. I had been to the events in New York and other cities around the country. And I was kept running into people from LA, and realizing that there’s a lot going on in LA and we really need to do this. I had moved here about seven years before with territory. And you know, Jeff, myself and Ethan, we knew Zach from the World of Events, Zack CitEcar does some incredible events had been doing them. So, we got together and we said, you know, what would we want to do if we were to create an event in LA it wasn’t about sort of what other people are doing. It’s like, what’s our idea of an experience and innovation festival that sort of suits this environment and we kind of created from that blank slate and you know, it came together.
Matt Zahab
How much of a shitshow was it throwing a conference this big? Like, people have no clue, right? Like it’s insane while walking through some of these just like this. It’s crazy.
Josh Kriger
There isn’t enough toilet paper in the world. When you’re throwing a conference this bamboo shoot and yeah, I mean, it’s just funny because, you know, we saw fires, but everyone else is like I’m having a great time. And as like, awesome. You know, that’s all that really matters. It’s a lot, it’s a full year undertaking. There’re tremendous moving parts, it’s like running 20 projects at once, with constantly changing requirements and the dynamics of outside stakeholders say, you know, all have different wants and needs. And it’s a lot of relationship management. It’s a lot of curation. It’s a lot of strategy. And it’s a lot of logistics, you know, you have to have a certain sort of wiring, I guess to enjoy throwing events.
Matt Zahab
You need yeah, you’d like you won, you got to love that stress. Like you got to be a high performer in very stressful situations. And I’ve never thrown an event even remotely close, not even 1/1000 to the size of Outer Edge LA. But the thing that I find so interesting is you literally you haul ass and work your booty off for 300 and, what 60 days, just so the other three or four can go smoothly? Like it’s there’s not a lot of businesses that are like that, you know. And it’s just the moving parts, like making sure food and beverage is locked and loaded, making sure all the speakers are locked and loaded. The performers, the moving company, all of the chairs and tables, that everything, there’s just millions of moving parts and having this go smoothly. I just feel like is such an underappreciated aspect. And I’m a big conference guy love conferences, for all the reasons that you spoke about. But there’s never any thanks to the people who run them. It’s just like, see you next year. And you know what I mean?
Josh Kriger
Well, we’re really grateful for the support, you know, I still get hugs from people that went to the event. So yeah, I mean, I appreciate you saying all that. Because we do put our hearts and souls into this event. It and we do it for the community, I’m very grateful that we have an incredible team to pull something like this off. About half our team is women. You know, our team comes from the events world, from the entertainment world, from the Podcast world from the media world. And we leave it all on the table to throw an incredible event that sort of inspires people doing amazing things in the world for years to come. And that’s sort of the biggest appreciation that we internally have is when you manifest something that makes the world a little bit better, that allows people to sort of reach their next goal. That’s really gratifying for me. And it’s what keeps me sort of going during the grind, right? Like yesterday, was a 6:30am start to 10:30pm, I sort of realized that I’ve got this interview with Matt tomorrow. Let’s go. So took a cold shower this morning. And here we are. And you know and, this was the nature of events and, that last sort of eight weeks, it’s pretty intense. But I’m sort of training for this. I know we’re talking about health, if you want to go into that topic at some point, but I’ve been training for this sort of time period for us. So this year, I’m ready.
Matt Zahab
What is training for this look like they’re talking mentally, physically bit of both.
Josh Kriger
All of the above, you know, I’ve been working out more and drinking more water, trying to go to bed a little bit earlier, even though like stuff is on my mind, been listening to a lot of Andrew Huberman.
Matt Zahab
Oh he is the best.
Josh Kriger
Enjoying some his advice around supplements that really are supplemental to sort of doing the right things initially, trying to get better quality sleep, walking in the morning, meditating, these are all really important to sort of balanced stress load in this type of environment. And, you know it does help to have an incredible team of folks that are the right people in the right place sort of thinking about things so you don’t have to think about them.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, health, wealth and happiness, baby. That is the name of the game. What is going to be different from 2023 to 2022. Again, you guys said over 250 speakers bunch of big dogs, incredible performers, the whole nine yards. It was absolutely, it was world class and, this year is going to be even more world class. How do you pull that off? And what do the attendees have to look forward to for Outer Edge LA 2023?
Josh Kriger
Yeah, we’re trying some new things this year and, you know, learning from our event and the feedback of folks like for one thing, we wanted to curate a slightly tighter lineup of speakers and have all of that in one place. So there’s a really awesome room when you walk in the convention center called West Hall. And so, we wanted to make sure it’s easy for people to just all come together in one place to share in so that’s one thing. The other thing is, you know, we’re really living and breathing the concept of the Outer Edge. So when you go in that space where everyone’s together on the Outer Edge of that Space is going to be community activations. So we’re giving away land grants this year to community based projects, artists, you know, folks that want to do something cool in the space, maybe it’s more of an emerging project, you know, slightly tighter on funds. So we give them a plot of land where they can co-create with us. And that’s really exciting. So we’ve gotten a lot of incredible applications from local artists that have said to us, you know, normally I don’t do events, I do my own event, right. So this year, they’re coming, and they’re doing something with us. And then the other thing that we’re doing is really doubling down on community events. So we focused our conference, there’s a sort of casual gathering on Monday. And then the primary event is Tuesday, and Wednesday, Thursday’s community day. So we’re gonna have a community calendar, and really embrace activations throughout LA and, sort of decentralize that conference experience. So we’re decentralizing it within the conference. And then we’re decentralizing it external to the conference. So we’re kind of doubling down on decentralization. And there’s just people doing great things all over LA and we want people that come into town to have a chance to get some vitamin D to move around to check out what’s going on throughout LA so there’ll be all sorts of things from sports and wellness to art activations people are doing around the city. So we’re partnering with some of those folks and, we’re featuring all of them on our community calendar. Another thing that is different this year is we’re doing more social impact talks, which I think is really important. Ariel Caputo on our team is sort of heading that effort. There’s been so many great philanthropic projects, sort of tied to Web3 and, we want to sort of shine a light on those projects this year. We want to cover AI in more detail this year. So this is some of the fun things we’re doing differently. We’re also going to have a content streaming studio at the event where we’re going to do sort of live Twitter spaces throughout the conference for people that maybe can’t get to LA so they can be part of it.
Matt Zahab
That is one thing that I wish I unfortunately, I will still be here. I honestly, I might even just cut my accommodation theory a little short, so I can go, but that’d be so cool. Recording a live pod in LA at the conference. Like come on. That’s I love that’s such a good idea to and I would love to do that. But it’s like an unlikely but hey, the fat lady has not so.
Josh Kriger
We can we can probably get you in there as a co-host worst case scenario, since it is going to be Twitter Spaces. So we’ll see what we can do but try to get over here.
Matt Zahab
100%. Another thing Josh the speakers you guys have some absolutely crazy speakers this year. I mean, William Shatner, like never heard of them. That’s crazy. And so cliche for Outer Edge. Neil Strauss.
Josh Kriger
Cliche and like the best possible way right.
Matt Zahab
Oh yeah I mean, who wouldn’t want to hear that dude talk? He’s the man. Neil Strauss, huge. I read the game when I was like, I want to say 17 I think that was the first nonfiction book I’ve ever read. And he’s just an absolute legend.
Josh Kriger
And by the way, he’s been a huge Web3 advocate. You know, he’s done the decentralized publishing model. He worked, you know, with Jenkins The Valet so, you know, really incredible sort of pedigree that Neil has in terms of innovation in the space and he’s written over 10 bestsellers, I think he just launched another book. He’s just prolific thought leader.
Matt Zahab
Crazy. And couple more names, just while we’re on the train here, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands yet sew, who is you know, for those who don’t know Animoca they have an equity stake in probably every Web3 company you’ve ever heard of and, are doing a hell of a lot for creators and really moving and grooving LA RAM CCO, Jennifer Print two time NBA All Star Baron Davis. Health, the list goes on and on. Metta World Peace, that would be so interesting to hear him talk what a name to tie him Metta World Peace, hilarious. It’ll run our test. Just crazy.
Josh Kriger
Great, a really great guy, a true born and bred entrepreneur that’s trying to disrupt a lot of industries. Yeah and, there’s a lot of folks we haven’t even announced yet. So it’s been an incredible process in terms of the amount of interest folks have and participating in this event. So we do drop new names of speakers about once a week or every week or two. So there’s definitely some more surprises to come in terms of some of our speakers that will be on the board. So we’re really excited about having this diverse array of leaders not only in Crypto and Blockchain, but also in art and entertainment and sports come together to talk about the future because at the end of the day, like you know, we’ve seen sort of that we’ve recognized that the adoption curve for Web3 is still taking off and you know, there’s the industry isn’t as big as everyone thought it might be at this moment truthfully. So the way that we look at it is critical that we have an event that is broad enough to encompass you know, all those different folks that are on the edge of curiosity and want to be part of it so you know, my advice to someone that’s like passionate diehard about Web3 is bring a friend bring someone that’s still learning that’s the in spark their curiosity. And I think our event is that event where you can have the OG’s in the space mixing with sort of the leaders of entertainment arts and sports that are also sort of exploring what they want to do in this space. I do believe this is the year of sort of that type of evolution, you have folks like Warner Brothers and Fox, coming into the space doing cool things. I think by the time this airs, I can announce the CEO of a very famous music company that’s relatively decentralized, we’ll be speaking so you know, we want to bring all those types of folks together to figure this out.
Matt Zahab
I love that Josh what a treat I’ve had so much fun speaking with you a couple more questions and then we will wrap up let’s jump in the hot take factory let a couple of them fly perhaps only something that Josh believes in whereas most other people do not doesn’t have to be tech related can be you know, health, wealth, happiness, sports, politics, food, outer space, AI, you name it, but give me a couple Josh hot takes before we end.
Josh Kriger
All right. So this is a relatively new belief of mine, which is that I used to be a low carb keto guy. And after sort of studying different diets and whatnot, I figured out that moderate carb is totally fine. If you have an active lifestyle and, sort of one of the things that I’ve learned just from years of sort of being in the food space is there is no one diet that works for everyone. I think that’s a misnomer. This diet is better than this diet, everyone’s different. It depends on your age, your lifestyle, your genetics, sort of how you like to eat, but there’s definitely sort of ways to be healthier, whether it’s, you know, vegan, or Mediterranean or low carb, but I think the key there is it’s not just the diet it’s what you eat and when you eat it and how you eat it that also matters.
Matt Zahab
Well said. Are you a fasting guy?
Josh Kriger
I have but you know, the challenge right now, and this is sort of probably a TMI is when you fast, you want to sort of have your eating period between like 2 and 8pm and I find myself on meetings a lot during that time, so I don’t have enough time to eat food. So I can’t do the fasting thing as usual. So because of that because you want to get enough calories in your diet overall. I tend to be grazing throughout the day a little bit more and eating normal breakfast but I love fasting and it’s definitely a good way to sort of help increase your metabolism if you do it right.
Matt Zahab
Josh truly a treat man so much fun very grateful to have you on and really hope that I can meet you in person in beautiful LA at Outer Edge. Before we let you go can you please let our listeners know where they can find you where they can find Outer Edge LA and, where they can find your Podcast, which we barely discussed Edge of NFT online and on socials.
Josh Kriger
Yeah, thanks Matt. Yeah, definitely check out the Podcast we’ve had over 200 episodes with leaders in the space we talk about everything at the Edge on a weekly basis. So for the Podcast, you can go to edgeofnft.com or @EdgeofNft to Twitter, or just Google edgeofnft with no spaces. You know and, you can kind of find us on Spotify, on iTunes on Google Podcasts wherever you like to listen to Podcast and then if you’re interested in checking out the conference, please go to outeredge.live. Tickets are still very reasonably priced. They will go up as we get closer to the event. Definitely recommend you snag a ticket and join us on the Outer Edge and you can also find this @NFTLAlive on Twitter. We have a newsletter for the show and then also for the conference. So encourage you to subscribe to those, we put a lot of fun stuff in there.
Matt Zahab
And what about you? You got to pull yourself.
Josh Kriger
Yeah personally @joshkriger on Twitter. Drop me a DM and say what’s up.
Matt Zahab
Love that Josh, thank you so much man. Appreciate it cannot wait for round two. And hopefully we’ll see you in person very shortly.
Josh Kriger
Thanks, Matt. Glad to be here,
Matt Zahab
Folks what an episode with Josh Kriger, Co-Founder of the Outer Edge LA Conference and Edge of NFT Podcast. As always, I will include everything in the show notes Josh has an incredible story and is moving and grooving in the space drop tons of knowledge bombs. We’d love to see that if you guys enjoyed this one and I hope you did, please do subscribe it would mean the world to my team and I speaking to the team love you guys so much. Justas my amazing sound editor appreciate you and to the listeners love you guys. Keep on growing those bags and keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy. Bye for now and we’ll talk soon.
