Founder's Story - Building Communities to Over 100k: ROLA.ai and the Web3 Revolution, A Founder's Story with Rosalind Lee | S2: E6

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Without a doubt, cryptocurrency has disrupted the global financial system in the same way NFTs have changed the methods of ownership and rights. Rosalind Lee is a household name in these disruptive industries, not just as an enthusiast but as an innovator who has contributed her fair share to the development and worldwide acceptance of web3 related technologies.  Today, Rosalind is leading the team at ROLA.ai, a social media platform designed to democratize the Web3 experience while combining AI technology with a user-friendly interface and community-driven features. ROLA.ai aims to dismantle the barriers commonly connected to the cryptocurrency sector. Subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss out on exclusive interviews and special content: https://foundersstory.beehiiv.com/subscribe For more info on guests and future episodes visit pix11.com/impact and https://fox5sandiego.com/fox-5-partners/impactful/  Our Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Founders Story, the podcast where trailblazing entrepreneurs share their extraordinary journeys, uncover the passion, grit, and vision that drive the world of business and innovation. Artificial intelligence, Web3, and cryptocurrency have been making headlines this year. But with the rising interest also comes a demand for guidance, especially when it comes to crypto. Today, I have a guest who made exactly that her mission and more. Hello and welcome to another episode of Founder Stories. My name is Nadia Atwal and I'm here with Rosalind.

Your last name, which is so easy. Lee. Yeah. Let me do it easy. Lee. Lee, yeah. Let me do it again, okay? Can we do it again? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Rosalind Lee, CEO of ROLA. Artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and Web3 have been making headlines this year.

But with the rising interest in all three comes also a great demand for guidance. My guest today is providing exactly that and made their permission and more. Hello and welcome to another episode of Founder Story. My name is Nadia Atwal and today I'm joined by my guest Rosalind Lee, CEO of ROLA. Welcome to the show, Rosalind. Hi. So Rosalind, before I want to dive into what Rolla is all about, kindly tell us a little bit about your background and how you basically ended up in this position as the CEO of a crypto company. Yep, so I studying in uk for six years and then i first came across with cryptocurrency when i was studying at imperial college our professor said we just need to put some money into something so that we understand why all the finance theories and i was like yeah i just put some money into

anything and then back then it was 2017, people were talking about Bitcoin already. So I was like, yeah, I just put a few quid there. And then I remember like after several hours when I was doing my homework and then I checked the app and I saw my investments, it just got doubled. And I was so shocked about this. But of course that was just derivatives. And I, I started to understand the lucrative of this market. I didn't really go deeper into crypto. And then back in 2020, during the pandemic, I started my own payment company, but then my dog got lymphoma. So I had to pay for his chemotherapy. And so I sold my part in the company, but I still need some cash. So that was the beginning of the 2020 crypto bull market.

So I was like, OK, I need cash. So why not just invest in Bitcoin again? Because it was lucrative. But it didn't go well because I made all the mistakes people would make. Like I didn't do stop loss. I didn't take profits. I went on over leveraging. I just participate in projects that are ruck pools, got scammed.

And basically I lost a lot of money from that. And I just want to understand why did I lose so much and what did I do wrong? So I dig deeper into crypto and understanding like what are scams? How does this market work. And eventually one of the friends actually reached out and said, hey, do you think actually we need a crypto community and to actually help the community? And of course I said yes, because I know exactly if I had some guidance back then, or if I had someone to tell me what to do, or just explain to me better in simpler language, maybe I could have avoided some of those mistakes. So that's why we started Rolla. We hope to give some valuable information and education to our community. And of course, we are not the one providing like a guidance. It's actually the community coming to helping each other

and providing their views and educations and sharing the experience. So yeah, that's a summary of how I got to Rola. Very interesting. So basically, you suffered losses and wanted to find a solution to solve your own problems. And since nothing was out there, you said, I'm going to create it myself. Yeah. Very interesting.

So ROLA, what exactly is ROLA here and today and how can I use it? Okay. So ROLA, initially, it stands for Reiterative Open Learning Algorithm. So we have our own AI that gives signals on cryptocurrencies. But if you participate in the crypto market a lot, you know that actually the market is driven a lot by the sentiments, especially when Elon Musk, he tweeted something about Shiba or just trolling on Twitter or now X,

then people would just start going crazy with crypto. So you know there's a sentiment-driven thing in this market. That's why we think, okay, we have the AI to predict the market. But of course, we need to capture the sentiment to better improve the AI or to give some valuable insights to the market. So that's why we ask people to vote and then to train our AI and give them reward as well. And this is what ROLA stands for. But of course, behind the AIs and sentiments, there is a community because sentiments and community, they are intertwined.

And the community nowadays, I mean, if you look at X and other communities, some of them are very cold or very trolling or like moon boy all the time. Like crypto is going to moon, everything is going to 100K or going to a million. But in our community, people, of course, sometimes they want things to go to moon as well.

But we see that because we built the product in the bear market. Actually, the community is very cohesive and loving. They really share the experience. They really try to help. And sometimes people just share their greatest loss and just try to help. And sometimes people just share their greatest loss and just try to get through together. So I would say now, Rola, apart from the AI that is trained by the

community sentiment, it is also a community that is really strong and have a power in it. Interesting. So now there's also a feature within Ra that is a pay-to-predict feature. Tell us about that. How can I make money with Rolla? Okay, so basically, as I said, our AI gives signals on different cryptocurrencies. And we want to capture the sentiment of the community. So we said, hey, just vote. Do you think Bitcoin or Ethereum or other cryptocurrencies,

are they going to go up or down in the next session? So people vote either up or down. And if they're right, they will get the roller tokens. And for now, roller token is not listed yet. But people can actually use the tokens to mint NFTs or to hold them. And then when we get listed, when the market is better or more ideal for listing, then they could perhaps monetize the tokens or just keep hodling the roller tokens.

Ah, I see. So since this community is very engaging, it seems, and there's always dialogue and exchanging of experiences, how has the folding, the bankruptcy of FTX and also the conviction of Bankman Free, the CEO, affected the community? Oh, yeah. So on SBF and the Luna incident, we actually saw on our community some people talking about suicides or just talking about how bad the living are being

affected by these incidents. So we see the community try to share the experience, try to say I've been through this, maybe you could have such and such options or just grind through the situations together, we can make it through together and just try to, I mean, make sure each other is feeling well to get through the situations because we really need someone to have been through the situations

to be able to pat on our back and say, hey, it's fine. It's going to be all right. I mean, if someone that is not into crypto and say, hey, it's fine. It's not a big deal. We can get through it. Sometimes you just feel off because you don't even understand how bad this is.

But within the community, some people got affected badly and some people with the experience, they really explain how they can, for example, their assets just don't move anything from FTX. They share how they can maximize the possibility of getting those access back in case or when there is such arrangements. So we can see such self-helping community actually helping each other to grind through those unfortunate events. Very helpful. What are your plans for 2024? Any specific plans for ROLA? new territories, new features, new ideas? Yes, so basically we are trying to roll out several new products,

but not just virtual products, but physical products that are related to Web3. Because now people feel a bit okay, so everything is online, everything is on blockchain, we can't touch it. So we can only see it but not feel it. So we want to make something physical linking the Web3 and the actual real life so that people can actually understand, oh, there is a usage to it, or they can actually feel it in a real world scenario.

So we hope to bring up some real world integrations with our existing Web3 to help people to adapt to the technology and understand more about the usage of blockchains and Web3. So where can people get more information about Roller? So people can learn about Roller or to join our community from App Store, just type in roller.ai. You can see the big R logo there. Then you can just download the app. And you can also follow us on X and Instagram so that you can see all our updates and exciting competitions

or events happening every week. Thank you so much, Rosalind. This was very educational. I hope everybody is checking out the website. I think this is one of those wonderful startup companies that's actually providing real value. And I think it's always great when people exchange experiences and learn from other people's experiences so they don't have to go through many painful ones themselves. So thank you so much.

That was another episode of Founder Stories. Join us next time. That's it. Okay. Great. You are the pro. You are the pro. You are the pro. Fantastic.

How many minutes were that? You still have until 3.30. Oh, how many minutes was that? Yeah, how many recorded? It was like 11 minutes. Oh, hey. 40 seconds. Dan said you can go 10 minutes. So boom. We can use 11 minutes. Oh, hey. 40 seconds. Dan said you can go 10 minutes.

So, boom. We can use 10 minutes. So, that's good. Anything else otherwise that you want to touch on? The woman part. Oh, yeah. The woman part. Yeah.

Yeah. True, true. We want to put one more question in there. Okay. Yeah. I'm still recording. So, you can. All right.

So Rosalind, how is it to be a woman in the crypto world as a CEO? I'm sure you have some interesting stories to tell on that front. Yeah. So first of all, whenever I attend some meetings, I would say like half of the time I was being asked, so are you the design person? Or so are you the PowerPoint designer? They would thought, oh, a girl must be just a designer. And I think you can relate this with cigar as well. So I love cigars.

And every time when I walk into a cigar lounge, people were like, why is this girl here? What does she want? And this is exactly how it feels like in the crypto world. People were like, why is this girl here? What does she want? And this is exactly how it feels like in the crypto world. Because if you go online, you can see people are saying, oh, those girls in crypto, they're all scams. They're all trolls.

People are not really nice to women in the crypto industry. Really? So we are not perceived as the trustworthy ones. Exactly. You can see online a lot of memes, a lot of posts, a lot of ex-accounts, even the professional traders, they're making fun of the female crypto leaders or accounts. And I was like, that's not right because we can also do what you can do. So yeah, I would relate the experience in the Sitka Lounge

to being a woman in the crypto industry. But I hope things get better because nowadays more female executives are taking roles in crypto communities and companies. So yeah, I hope we don't perceive as scams and trolls anymore. Well, that is an interesting experience that you're sharing there because when it comes to speakerships, there is a great demand right now for female speakers in the crypto and Web3 world. So there's a shortage. So on one hand, you still feel that as a woman in the crypto world, you have to overcome a lot of prejudices and stereotypes. Yeah, I think probably people just think, oh, ITs, developments, machine learnings or AIs, they are done by the men. Of course, not the women.

They don't have the brain of mathematics. Perhaps. So I'm a data scientist myself so I know exactly whenever I just attend a meeting with another male colleague people were just saying he's the one doing machine learning or he's the one the only one being able to do it I was like well I'm a data scientist I can do exactly the same well I see you already making your mark and I'm wishing you a very successful career ahead and a wonderful 2024 for that matter. I have a feeling that nobody can stop you.

Thank you so much, Rosalind. That was another episode of Founder Stories. Join us next time. Okay. That was it. That was good input with the female experience. Okay. because I'm also involved in a Web3 startup company and whenever they hear that there is a male and a female in the company, they say, OK, can we have a woman? Oh, maybe that is for the politically correct thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, on Twitter, there's a lot of trolling, a lot of negative comments about, oh, the woman has an account on Twitter about crypto.

It must be a troll wow yeah i had no idea well this is shocking i have to say this is really this is really shocking yeah i think maybe some events they want to appear to be more politically correct but in the real life i mean like in the individual levels people just think oh just get a male yeah oh backwards yeah supposedly future-oriented and so backwards you know this is uh mind mind-boggling uh but yeah a bit of a shocker that uh but you're managing you know yeah i'm sure you're uh i'm sure you're gonna know your way around it um with a high eq not just a high iq yeah i mean every time i just being

oh that is a designer yeah uh or just a secretary yeah i hope you're great you're great outfits are great shoes and that's how she looks like creative designer you know i don't know but uh well it reminds me a little bit also of um what my friend who's a female film director is experiencing in los angeles she says she always has to make herself look unattractive she cannot look too feminine she puts the baseball cap off otherwise people the producers don't take her seriously so you have to artificially um become more masculine in your looks in order to get that yeah yeah taking seriously yeah thank you it's yeah and in all those years she says it has not improved much so that is i find very discouraging you know there

are supposedly more women in film but you said that if you really look at who's getting the jobs see how many women really do get the job it's everything but even you know exactly i mean my friend is also a female director in hong kong exactly the same when they have like a special sponsorship they always just give to the males because they think like a female director is not serious enough into their things like they can't devote into their films and things. Oh man, well, what are you doing next? Are you doing the show with Vince? And are you coming more often?

No, I'm not a New Yorker. Well, we can also do some virtual stuff, wherever you are in the world, but tomorrow will be exciting. And will be exciting. The New York Stock Exchange really has something of a something. You rechannel your inner Gordon Gagel when you go. It is, then you get the tour and you get the photo op. And apropos photo op, could you take a few pictures of us, Mr. Engineer in Charge? That would be great, no? I'm going to send them to you.

Okay. I know I'm going to touch them up. So just also have something, you know, later on. Thank you for tuning in to Founders Story. Keep exploring, keep dreaming, and join us next time for more inspiring entrepreneurial journeys.