#61: Ryan Lambacher (Graffle)

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:00:00]:
All of the data that you see backing, you know, great products or or kind of the products we use every day like, a great example would be like a Google search, for example. All of that index data, you know, that's behind the search bar that returns from your search, that's where we wanna be in respects to NFTs. So you go in and you type in LeBron and you see every NFT across every chain that he's associated or tagged on in metadata or, you know, what have you. And that's where really where it becomes interesting from our perspective because then we become, you know, this huge data provider of what's powering you know, basically, web 3 and consumer applications on it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:38]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:47]:
Welcome to the lay of the land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today I had the pleasure of speaking with Ryan Lambacher, who is the founder and CEO of Graffle Dot IO, which is a venture funded web 3 provider for projects built on the flow blockchain. They recently closed on close to a $4,000,000 round. Ryan has a unique cross section of skills that accelerated him far ahead of the competition in the world of NFTs, non fungible tokens. First, his technical experience building product at Dripps with former lay of the land guest, AC Evans. And second, years of building hype and generating sales within his own marketing firm. This combination allowed him to see the value of NFTs and recognize the massive opportunity in solving the infrastructure layer for every single project built on blockchains.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:48]:
For context, the Flow blockchain, which was originally conceived by the team behind CryptoKitties and has since powered applications like NBA Top Shot and established partnerships with organizations like the UFC and Doctor. Seuss is a blockchain designed from the ground up to support consumer experiences at mainstream scale with a growing community of brands and web 3 builders leveraging its infrastructure. From entrepreneurship to flow to NFTs, we make our way down the crypto rabbit hole here and cover a wide range of topics through the lens of Grafel and the work Ryan is doing there. So please enjoy my conversation with Ryan

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:02:31]:
Lambacher.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:34]:
I wanted to start with your background and interest in entrepreneurship, but I was thinking where actually is the best place to start. And I I think I have to ask what has now become kind of the staple crypto question, which is what drew you down the crypto rabbit hole? Because I know everyone has their story of of the gravity that that drew them down the hole.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:02:58]:
Yeah. For sure. I think the the best way to answer this is probably to frame it around specifically NFTs because my answer would definitely vary dramatically based on, you know, actual crypto, like, way back in 2013, 2014 just buying Bitcoin versus now. I think it's more relevant to explain how I got into NFTs kind of like the subset of crypto because purely my interest for crypto as a whole just came from kind of being around computers my whole life and understanding that digital goods or digital assets or more specifically digital currency, could actually be, you know, worth something or hold value. So in terms of like the kind of when I found out about NFTs, I immediately got an email from NBA Top Shot, which is a product that's built on Flow that has officially licensed moments from the NBA. Basically, game clips like 3 pointers, game winners, dunks, etcetera. And I was kinda just poking through and thinking about it from the perspective of, you know, I've seen baseball cards. I've been around sports my whole life.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:04:00]:
I understand, like, what a highlight is and, why that's collectible. And it kinda just clicked for me immediately, like, I can own this officially licensed clip, and I'm able to actually sell it and make money to somebody else who wants to buy it potentially for more. Or I can open up packs just like I can go to my, you know, local Target or store and and buy sports cards, but I can do this all from the comfort of my own home and make it such a, you know, seamless and kind of connected experience. And I I grew up on the Internet, so it just kinda made sense. You know, digital assets made sense from that perspective.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:36]:
When you kinda couple your interest in in NFTs and and crypto more generally, I know you had worked prior at Drips, who we've had on on the podcast. It's really awesome actually seeing startups grow out of other startups here in the area and more generally have a a past of entrepreneurship with a few other endeavors. So so as we get towards the the founding of of Grafel here and the work that you're doing, you just share a little bit about, you know, your own your own background and and what drew you to the world of entrepreneurship and and startups as well?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:05:11]:
Yeah, absolutely. It really started when I understood that the the value of an item basically or or of the value of somebody else want or demand. And I think that came through just, you know, basically selling stuff on eBay. Like I started at garage sales, as cliche as it sounds. That's basically how how it all began is going to garage sales with my dad and kinda picking things up and just understanding or trying to guess the value of those items and seeing if it's severely underpriced so that I could go sell it on eBay to a larger market. And I think that's kind of the the beginning of the progression. Immediately, I kinda honed in on sneakers. It was about 2011, 2012, and shoes and reselling shoes was kind of a a newer topic or someone that was buttoning, because there was a lot of money to be made.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:05:59]:
And that's kind of where I kind of inserted myself because I kind of understood the culture. You know, LeBron is from Akron. There's a lot of exclusive shoes and and retailers around that that get all of the the shoe drops, essentially. And that's really where, you know, it kind of formalized in my brain like, hey, I can actually, you know, buy this thing and I can resell it, and then I can keep doing that over and over, and then I can grow my scale of how many you know, the quantity of how many I can buy and the connections that I can make and kind of just naturally, it kind of evolved. And really where I landed, I think, with kind of the sneaker and and fashion world is I actually created automation software to basically assist you in purchasing quickly from online stores. And that's really where I kinda realized that productizing problems with software or technology is really where, you know, I kind of excel. Or, like, the way that I solve problems is through technology and and something to assist that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:57]:
And so as we kind of combined your interest here in entrepreneurship with NFTs through the the lens of NBA Top Shot And just thinking about the space is helpful just to describe a little bit at a at a high level what GraphQL is, and then we can kinda work backwards from there and and understand, a little bit of the founding story.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:07:21]:
Yeah. For sure. So at a high level, Grafel is all about data accessibility. You could kind of compare it to like a Twilio of the Web 2 world in the sense that we are actually kind of the liaisons for for this data getting to the consumer product or to the end consumer, essentially. So all of this data goes on chain. Like, when you list something for sale on NBA Top Shot's peer to peer marketplace, you're actually omitting an event to a blockchain, and we actually pick that up, index it, and then give it to the application, send it to them so they can actually realize, you know, in their UI or their customer on the customer end that, oh, this is actually listed for sale and here is the price. That's at a high level, basically, what we do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:05]:
Got it. And so I I think to to fully grasp the the nature of the work that you're doing, it'll be important to maybe just to actually go a little bit down the rabbit hole and and define some of the the things we're talking about here. And so I'd love to and we'll cover these kinda separately, but get a better understanding of of flow, which I think is an important ingredient, in the work that you're doing. And and we can talk more generally also about NFTs here. But before we we kinda get to those, you know, how is it that you came what was the essentially, like, the founding insight, as you think about the the Twilio analogy of web 2 to web 3? Maybe just, a brief overview of of how you think about what web 3 is in relation to web 2 and recognizing the the opportunity, and and starting to work on this this problem that that Grafel has now, set out to solve?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:09:03]:
Yeah, for sure. I think the, the founding story is a great place to start there. So Dakota, Kinzer, and myself, we were kinda just working on a community project, kinda like an analytics dashboard, and we decided, you know, to to point our, our direction towards NBA Top Shot in, in, in particular. We saw an opportunity to make money. And we also just wanted to gather insight around, you know, what are these NFTs? How does one with officially licensed IP? How does it sell? How does it move, etcetera? So we started to dive into that process and and very quickly we actually realized a problem. And the way we kind of came to that realization was we actually integrated ourselves into the developer community of Flow Flow the blockchain that is. Everybody was was in the beginnings of building, you know, their own applications, their own version of Top Shot, you know, whatever it may be, but they all had and shared the same problem, and that was data accessibility. And we quickly realized we could put up a managed service and kind of productize the ability for them to access their data.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:10:06]:
So we aggregate the data off chain, and then we make it easy for them to go out and get that. So we open up APIs, webhooks, web sockets, and those are the typical ways that developers would consume data in the web 2 world. Well, now we're just combining that and allowing them to build these super powerful, responsive consumer applications on web 3 technology.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:30]:
And how do you think about web 3 just from a defining of terms perspective?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:10:36]:
Like, what web 3 is to me or what web 3 could mean as a whole for society? Cause that's definitely I guess there's 2 answers to that question. Like Web 3 to me is definitely what's next, and we're all going to embrace it in some way. And that's one thing that I think Dapper Labs does exceptionally well is they they understand how to onboard non crypto native people onto a blockchain blockchain backed technology or product like NBA Top Shot. A lot of people don't even realize that they're actually buying NFTs or that data is on the blockchain. But then when that becomes more important and popularized and normalized, they're gonna completely understand how they got to this point. So web 3 really to me is about, you know, enabling this direct ownership model while also, you know, exemplifying the fact that I can own something and sell it to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:28]:
And so maybe also a little bit of of context here on on who Dapper Labs is. And then and then we can talk a little bit about Flow, which Sure. I think would be great to get some context on. Right? There's obviously all these different layer 1 blockchains out there, ones that I think folks might be more familiar with, like Ethereum or maybe even Solana. But but maybe just kind of frame flow in the context of some of those other ones that exist and how it is that flow came to be and and maybe a little bit of what ultimately drew you to flow specifically relative to to some of the options that that you had out there.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:12:08]:
Yeah. For sure. Dapper Labs, most notably before NBA Top Shot, was known for a project called CryptoKitties, which was an exceptional product that that was kind of built around the idea of NFTs and actually being able to genetically breed cats or these, like, cats that are represented as NFTs. There's actually a really complex bit of logic behind it on how the breeding works. So that's that's the way they kind of, like, broke on to the scene, I guess, or made their kind of, like, name. Moving beyond that, they obviously tacked on NBA top shot. They now have NFL all day as well as UFC strike. And Flow is it was birthed out of a problem basically or conceptualized out of a problem.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:12:52]:
And that problem was Ethereum couldn't handle the traffic CryptoKitties was essentially doing. So immediately at that point, they go into how do we build a blockchain that can actually support these super scalable consumer applications? Or, like, we all expect an app in our on our phone to work a certain way and be fast and responsive. Right? Well, when that when the underlying technology of that can't support that interaction between the user, then there is a need for for some new technology or one that works better. And that's exactly the gap that Flow Filled, and it's exemplified in the fact that now NBA Top Shot is this super high volume, super high transaction platform, and the chain has no problems with it. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:35]:
And with that has come other people building on top of flow, other applications that that leverage that that efficacy.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:13:44]:
Yeah. Exactly. There's no, you know, there's no boundaries around who can build on flow. There is just, you know, small processes in place to make sure everything is is good and well, but ultimately, anybody can build on Flow whatever project they want.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:00]:
So I think I think we could talk a little bit about NFTs here, still in the kinda context setting phase, but I think there's a lot of really interesting things going on here. But maybe just start at a at a high level with how you think about what NFTs are. And then maybe we can talk about some of the kinda uses that have transpired over the last year from art, music, gaming, identity, and some of the the kinda core functionality. So I I think they're really kinda critical in the framing of this web 3 versus web 2 and and the kinda ownership mechanism that that underlies it.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:14:35]:
I tend to more think on the I tend to more think on the utility side of NFTs rather than the, like, visual or collectible side. And I think most notably right now in pop culture, just circulating around the Internet is is kind of the visual or collectible side. So it's very easy to start there, but I think it's better to add more context around the potential utility and the use cases that will actually impact our everyday life. And I think, you know, we all see, you know, different stars, Jimmy Fallon, you know, Paris Hilton, they all have these Bored Ape Yacht Clubs and, you know, they're super expensive. They're, you know, 300, $400,000 just for the cheapest one. And we all look at that and we go, okay. That doesn't really make all that much sense, you know, to me or to really anyone. I completely understand the value behind them because they bring community and access, but that's not valuable to everyone.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:15:24]:
Now what could be valuable or, you know, is the actual utility behind what what people are currently implementing and especially on Flow. There's there's great examples. And I think Flow is one of the leading chains on how can NFTs have utility in the real world as well as online for, you know, redemption or or access to, you know, creators' backlog of content or or what have you. So giving an example is probably the best way to explain, you know, NFTs or context setting is, say you own season tickets to your favorite sports team. Right? And that season ticket, you can go and sell or give away certain games, you know, to your friends or you could sell them on one of the platforms. Right? That allows you to sell tickets. Well, in a web 3 world where that's actually an NFT, you could essentially split that up and have a direct peer to peer interaction and sale with no middleman, no royalty, and no, you know, processing. There's just one to 1 essentially.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:16:25]:
And a lot of the marketplaces that are being built on web 3 have that same ideology where it's like, I want you to interact with only the person that's getting this on the end, who your buyer. We don't need to take any fees, and we don't need to tack on all these extra process, because it's a it's a direct ownership model. So I'm transferring, you know, maybe one one game out of my 120 to you and now you directly own that and can do whatever you want with it. So you could go then and resell it. You could give it away. And that's that's a powerful example of of how NFTs, you know, really could be used, you know, quickly in the real world.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:04]:
Right. There there does seem to be this spectrum of of applications that kinda capture everything, like, you know, the baseball cards and the collectibles to access to more of the aesthetic and, like, patronage component. There there's obviously some speculation component. There's almost like a status component that's come out of it as well. Yeah, absolutely. It's been really interesting to see these things just in the wild over the last year. From from my perspective, one of the the areas that I've just found very interesting is the whole, intersection of NFTs with gaming and this general concept of, like, composability and how you have these assets, these NFTs that could potentially native to the internet kind of live across different environments and be applicable in different ways across those different systems in a way that really didn't exist, in games before. Exactly.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:18:06]:
It's, the way I like to put it is every year we we buy a new copy of Madden, right? And none none of the progress from previous years ever gets transported or moved over, right? In a Web 3 world, you just buy an update or you get free updates and then everything transfers over. And in an interconnected world, especially in this case, this this use case or this edge case, I guess you could say, it's the same company that's, you know, updating things year after year. So it's very clear to see how they could implement and and kind of transfer these assets and and how NFTs could actually be kind of the vehicle for that. And if you think about other, you know, just to continue down the the kind of gaming aspect of NFTs is a lot of these studios are triple a, you know, game producers. They own a lot of different IP, and they can actually now combine that together and and have it exist in different, you know, game universes, if you will. And that's a that's a super interesting point on on composability and just kind of the, you know, the way that we see, you know, the consumption of gaming or media, for example.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:11]:
Yeah. And it and it really all does stem from this idea that that users can now genuinely own digital objects, and people can build on top of those things in in in new creative ways that that really we haven't been able to explore before.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:19:27]:
Exactly. And I think technology is finally reaching a point where it's becoming easier and easier for people to kind of build these, you know, 3 d or these games, and you you can kind of see how an individual or a small group of people could actually extend, you know, their favorite game or or add something to that or actually pull those assets in and build their own derivative. The direct ownership model is very freeing and it's also, you know, in the spirit of entrepreneurship, I believe, where you actually can can take those assets and and build a brand or, you know, build a business with them.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:01]:
So there's this massive proliferation of NFTs over the last year spanning, again, art, music, gaming, identity, access, and just this kind of massive influx of people into the space who who may not have had any exposure to the the world of crypto before and are are experiencing it more through this web 3 lens. And so there's there's all this activity going on. I think it would be really interesting to hear from the perspective of Grafel, kinda like what what was your first break? It sounds like you had identified this this problem of there there's now all this data, but how are people interfacing with it? And so what was kind of, like, the original, you know, projects that that you were working on, as you were forming Grafel?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:20:48]:
Yeah. We had, immediately got a lot of outreach when we just kind of put the idea out there and casted our net to say, you know, hey, here's what we're thinking about doing. We already have a prototype who would like to, you know, sign up and potentially use, like, a pre alpha access. And immediately, we were rushed with, you know, 20 or 30 projects and we selected 3 of them actually to kind of work very closely with and kind of understand from the beginning what a what a customer or consumer, you know, experience would look like both on their end as well as the relationship between us and and their kind of project. And immediately, the first one that comes to mind is versus dotauction. And they're basically an auction platform where one side is you're bidding on the one of 1. So you so one person is bidding to own only one of them versus 10 people building bidding on an addition. And I thought it was a really cool concept where it's, like, 1 versus many essentially in, like, a bidding war.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:21:47]:
So, like, imagine eBay, but instead of just one person bidding and winning the auction, there's another side where 10 people can combine together to beat that one person, and they each get one of the objects. So that's that's basically the premise of their business. And they became very interesting to us because they're what's called a SOTA, which is a serverless on chain data distributed application, which basically means in a very long winded technical way that they don't have a back end or a database. So all of their data lives on chain and they query the chain for that. And quickly, a lot of, you know, a lot of problems arise in terms of, like, the user experience and how quickly things were happening because these executions to go find the data on chain isn't quick by any means. So we immediately plugged in with them and they were able to basically swap out all of this infrastructure that was taking 30, 45 seconds to a minute to to bring back, you know, simple results, you know, we're under, you know, 100, 200 milliseconds using Grafels. So they built this beautiful customer or, you know, the customer experience and and, you know, it was basically kneecapped by how poor the performance was of their site. And we came in and and, you know, worked very closely with them and got them all up to speed.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:23:02]:
And, you know, it's been a success ever since. And that was really, like, the first major break where Dakota and myself saw, like, wow. You know, this actually works. People are using it, and it's extremely helpful because everyone is going to reach this point where it's either through scale or just technical barriers that they can't continue using these patterns. And and that's kind of the entry point for GraphQL. And as we continue to go down that kind of that path, we realize that the scalability part is huge because when an enterprise company comes on or an enterprise level IP or brand comes on chain, they're gonna have a lot of fans and followers that wanna consume it. And that means a lot of traffic and a lot of traffic expecting a certain level of performance. And that's really where we find a lot of of requests.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:23:49]:
And it's it got very interesting quickly because now the biggest projects on flow are coming to us and saying, hey. We need to solve this problem, and we need to solve it at scale. That's really the kind of moment, and where we began our our fundraising journey.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:05]:
And as you have continued to build it, I'm curious from from, like, a product vision perspective, were you able to kind of formulate, like, looking back in retrospect, you know, a little bit further down the line, where you see Grafel in the future, or is the immediate future determined by this kind of influx of requests that you have right now for for kind of feature development?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:24:33]:
No. We we knew kind of where where the next steps were. We always knew what the next right step was. And I think that was just based on the fact that we did have this, you know, kind of connection and to see what people were building or the problems that they that they were gonna potentially face. We kind of understood that just by processing and having the data ourselves and and looking into that, on the Top Shot side. So immediately, the v one of our product came out, and we've onboarded over 70 people to date. And I think we have another 30 people right at the top of the pipeline just getting ready to to be onboarded. Sorry, we have 30 people who are ready to be onboarded, 70 people who are actually using Grafel and about 400 people at the top of the funnel.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:25:15]:
So, yeah, we we kind of expanded from there, and we took user feedback as everyone does. But we understood that the having the full scope of the data or just being able to access all of your data is the answer. So that's that's essentially where our v two and the direction of that has gone. We actually switched over from more of a subscription to a kind of, like, we have everything. Just tell us what you need. So the current v one essentially works. You come to our site, you make a project, and then you make a setting that tracks one event from your smart contract. And all that does is basically aggregates that singular event.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:25:51]:
So you're telling us from that point on, you wanna know anytime that this event is emitted on chain. Where we're currently moving and what's very close to coming out in beta is our v 2, which is a full relational graphing of mainnet, which is basically Flowblockchain's mainnet. And and, essentially, what that has is we're establishing relationships between smart contracts users, users to another user, as well as how those, you know, transactions kind of go through the chain or how how an object or an NFT actually passes through the chain and through different wallets. That's kind of where we're at currently.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:28]:
Can you kinda take us through the life cycle maybe using an example of a consumer application leveraging Grafel today of of what that looks like in in practice?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:26:40]:
Yeah. For sure. And then I can also kind of explain what the v two would look like just because we do have internally projects built on that and using that technology right now. So we have a great understanding of of what kind of doors that opens. But currently in in the v one scenario, you're gonna sign up and you're gonna you're essentially gonna make a project in that project holds what we call event index or settings. And simply put those index or settings map to an event from your smart contract. A smart contract event is essentially the functionality of what happens on chain to an object when that function is called. So let's say it's transfer or withdrawal.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:27:18]:
Let's use withdrawal from exam, for example. It's going that withdrawal function is gonna hold all of the logic to move an NFT from one wallet to another. So when you're calling this on chain, you're basically saying, hey, my smart contract has a withdrawal function. I'm calling that, and this is where it needs to go. So now we have this event that fires, and we have the wallets to and from inside that. That's essentially the data that's typically in there, and we have a a record of that on chain. Well, now what Grafel does is you say, hey. I wanna subscribe.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:27:49]:
Anytime a withdrawal happens, you aggregate that for me, and you can either we can either push it to you so you can sort your own database, or we can store it for you and give it access give you access via our search API. And what that allows is now you essentially you have a decentralized application that's running on a blockchain or all of your data is on a blockchain, and now you can actually index and aggregate that and use it in a very scalable and performant way. So you know when party a transfers an NFT to party b. And without our saw our solution, essentially, you would have to build very complex and scalable infrastructure that actually tracks those events on chain.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:31]:
So as this robust middle layer for these applications on on Flow, how is it that GraphQL actually makes money from a business perspective?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:28:42]:
Yeah. For sure. Compute usage is probably the easiest way to to start the monetization conversation. At this current point, we've taken $3,800,000 in funding from some very strategic partners on the chain or associated with the chain, I should say. And our current focus is just on growth and adoption.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:02]:
Growth and adoption of the larger flow ecosystem or just getting more folks to to leverage Grafel? Correct. Yeah. When you talk about the strategic partnerships, I guess, how how, like, macro has that has that scope become?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:29:18]:
Yeah. It has become very macro. I mean, Dapper Labs themselves via their their venture fund called Baller VC actually participated in our round as well as Animoca Brands. And then finally, we were led by the accelerator that's associated with Flow called AppWorks. It's a VC based out of Taiwan, and they're very interested in the growth of both the ecosystem as well as Grafel's user base. So by virtue of of both of those things being mutually beneficial, all we have to do essentially is is grow our adoption, which also trickles, you know, to

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:59]:
From from my perspective, I I think it's it's pretty awesome the round that you were able to to pull together in the space that you're doing in. And I I think it just stands in a little bit of contrast actually to to some of the rounds I'm used to seeing in in the Northeast Ohio area. And just, you know, kinda tell us how it is that you went about it and and kinda the story that that you told.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:30:22]:
Yeah. So we were we were mostly inbounded based on interest that was generated through Dapper Labs and Flow kind of talking about us, you know, in their circle of of investors as well as kind of the ecosystem broader as a whole, we we were inbounded and took these meetings. We had the intention of raising 3 or 4,000,000 after kind of understanding how our product fit. And as we continue to to gain more users, it just made all the sense in the world to kind of double down on our relationship with Dapr and and utilize, you know, their connections. And, from there, it was it was actually pretty easy. One of the first meetings we took ended up being our lead. We had many other conversations and it just to us, it made all the sense in the world to go with AppWorks. They're the accelerator on Flow, and they they basically incubate a lot of projects.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:31:12]:
And that also is beneficial for us because those then become use cases or users of GraphQL as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:18]:
So a a few questions I have here just kind of about the the space more generally, and in particular, how you are thinking about the the future, you know, beyond v 2, you know, version x of of what it is that that you'll be building. How extensible is kinda the nature of what you've built for Flow to potentially other blockchains out there? And is that something you think about or their competitors? I'm just trying to understand a little bit of the market dynamics, and how you think about the the players in the space and the ecosystem.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:31:53]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think the best way to put that simply is flow is our 0 to 1. So it's it's where we kind of understand and and grow this process, and then we start horizontal expansion. That's currently kinda where we're at in the thought process as well as our our next fundraising round, which has, you know, got underway. Those discussions have started to happen. I can't necessarily share it with who, but we are, you know, getting inbounded by certain blockchains to actually take our solution and kind of build it over there. And they wanna, you know, participate or or potentially even lead around for us.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:32:26]:
So it's getting very interesting from that perspective where we we went from 0 to 1 and we grabbed, you know, the majority, the vast majority of projects building on Flow. And now we're kind of translating that expertise and getting ready and gearing up to actually expand to another chain.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:43]:
So so the problem you have unearthed and and and kind of built on top of highly extensible to to the other systems that are out there.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:32:53]:
Yeah. They're all unique and and dynamic in their own way. And I think the next one we choose will also have kind of a uniqueness around it as well, the next blockchain we choose that is. So there will be new problems, but, ultimately, yes, a lot of our system and the scalability portion of it will always, you know, be there and kind of stay the same. It's just a matter of us accessing the data and then, you know, kind of normalizing it in the Grafel system.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:18]:
And so how do you then think about about competition in the space? Are there competing middle layers on on Flow? How does that how does that work?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:33:29]:
I mean, there's a lot of middle layers for Ethereum, for example, and that's a pretty, you know, well built out ecosystem of developer tools and middle layers. On Flow, there's really no competition at this point. There's definitely inklings of of big providers on different chains coming over. But at at this current point, we capture, you know, the vast majority of all projects being built on Flow, you know, all the way through and through. So there's definitely a competition and there's definitely more competition when you talk about horizontal expansion depending on the way we wanna go. So if we go to an EVM based chain, we immediately, you know, incur a bunch of of direct competition. If we go to something like Solana, for example, we have a much, you know, a much less dense, I guess, you could say, playing field.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:15]:
When you think about the the potential avenues you have to expand going forward, what are some of the, like, variables you're considering when you think about different chains that you could potentially expand to?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:34:29]:
Yeah. For sure. I mean, definitely an emphasis on NFTs. Any chain that's, you know, currently spinning up projects around non fungible tokens is important to us, you know, because that's the initial draw to flow, and I think that's where a lot of the interesting problems kinda stem from. I don't really wanna get into the can we make it faster or cheaper in the sense of, like, DeFi and and, supports them. You know, their their kind of game is performance and and cost reduction. Right? With NFTs, there's a whole new set of problems, and there's another set of problems people haven't even discovered yet. And that's really what's interesting to me is kind of the unknown and then also solving complex problems in an elegant way that really enables these consumer applications to leverage this new technology.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:18]:
What what are you kinda most excited about with the round closed, and some runway in front of you in terms of the opportunities that you have and potentially some of the the projects that are are leveraging Grafel?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:35:33]:
Yeah. For sure. I think that's more of a of a question that's actually pertinent to Ohio and just, making this homegrown. Dakota and myself are are from here, born and raised, and we both think it's very important to retain talent in Ohio. And, you know, we're looking to hire the best engineers, and we're really in the the hiring and ramp up mode right now. And we feel it's really important to pay people, you know, what they're worth. We don't want people escaping Ohio to go to work at, you know, companies on the East or West Coast. You know, we want people and developers and good talent to stay here and build with us.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:36:07]:
And I think that's the most exciting part is we raise money to be able to basically build this here, have a footprint in Ohio. And, Yeah. That's that's probably the most exciting part.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:19]:
Yeah. That's very exciting for sure. I think it's actually a good segue maybe to talk about the business itself as an organization. You know, what what does that actually look like? And how are how are you kind of operating Grafel as a as a company?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:36:34]:
Sure. So, yeah, I operate as the CEO and Dakota and myself are both the original founders. Dakota operates as the CTO. Then we have 2 late stage cofounders, Andrew and Thomas. Andrew's in LA. Thomas is in Montana. But primarily, the the entirety of the operation is actually here in Ohio. So our engineering team, as well as our biz dev, all in Ohio.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:36:57]:
And that's, you know, currently kinda where we're at. Like, we have, some people in the biz dev front. We have a growing engineering team that grows, it seems like, every day. And, you know, that's, that's the current position.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:11]:
Right on. So having been in the the broader crypto space for a little bit, myself, I think the the thing that I am very curious your perspective on is there is this persistent, I think, kind of skepticism of utility in the network. And I think it's increasingly becoming hard to to say that there isn't utility when you just even look specifically at NFTs. But from a a risk perspective, I am curious how you think about risk in in the Web 3 world, and some of the things that, you know, maybe keep you up at night with regards to the the work that you're doing and and things that that could challenge the the business. Sure.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:37:56]:
I mean, the beautiful thing about us is we're use case agnostic. So if someone's leveraging NFTs in any way possible, whether it's collectibles, utility based, or otherwise, we can support them. And I think that's really where we kind of, you know, trade off risk in the sense that we're infrastructure. Everybody is gonna need us and everybody's gonna come to us when they have a problem. And that's really where we've kind of derisked or positioned ourselves in the the sense of kind of Web 3 as a whole. And I think in general, like, we will definitely see, you know, kind of the swings or the ups and downs of of NFTs or kind of this this new technology, but it's really gonna be the people in in 2 to 3 years from now that are gonna be the winners who stuck it out And, you know, we're able to kinda go heads down and build. I know especially right now, you know, we're at the kind of the end of the 1st month of 2022, and the markets are all down. That's not nothing we look at besides for personal portfolios.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:38:54]:
We're heads down building just like we would be if they were at all time highs.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:59]:
And on maybe the more optimistic side of that question, when you think about the future, of NFTs, what is the vision that's in your head for for the implication of of what these can become?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:39:14]:
I mean, I think they're gonna be every they're going to encapsulate some portion of every part of our lives from verification to identity to collectibles to utility. I mean, they're they're going to be used as passes to get into games. They're going to be used as, you know, passports. We're already seeing all sorts of these kind of companies pop up to to implement or to test this type of technology. And I think really we're gonna start to see some winners arise, you know, very quickly. And and those use cases will be implemented into our daily lives, you know, whether we know it or not. And I think it's important to understand that, you know, kind of paving the way now and and having this kind of infrastructure, you know, it's gonna allow applications and and kind of the bigger ideas to focus on on executing that rather than the the, you know, the the technical ability of of trying to aggregate this data or, you know, kind of what we solve. And, you know, that's how we feel.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:40:10]:
We're enablers to kind of pushing forward this this, you know, Web 3 and this new wave of of technology.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:16]:
Yeah. I know. It's it's incredibly exciting. And in the same way, I think you're thinking about the impact that you hope to have particularly here in in the Northeast Ohio area. I think it's this is really cool that that you guys are here and and doing it here.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:40:32]:
Yeah. Absolutely. That's probably the the most important thing to to us. And we also found 2, you know, cofounders that that felt exactly the the same way. You know, they supported us and they understand, you know, kind of the positioning and and how we wanna go about this. And that's super important because it is it is kind of a, you know, a unicorn in the sense of Ohio where we don't really have many of these. That makes it super attractive to be here and to be one of them.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:00]:
Yeah. And by these, for me, I mean, specifically, you know, like a web 3 first company.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:41:07]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Correct. We have plenty of startups in Ohio, Cleveland, Akron, Columbus, Cincinnati. But, yeah, web 3 startups, few and far between, in the northeast, you know, Ohio or just greater Ohio region.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:19]:
Yeah. Why why do you think there isn't the the crypto literacy and and web 3 affinity here that that we see it on, you know, in in SF, for example. I feel like the in particular, the this, like, there's always been some rift between start ups here in in in in Ohio and those on the coast, but I I feel like it's almost amplified a little bit when it comes to Web 3 and and crypto.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:41:46]:
I mean, it's a new technology that not everyone is ready to adopt. I mean, even the thought of crypto, you know, to a lot of people just all around the United States is is foreign. So I think when you add that in and the fact that, you know, there's all these new technologies and and, challenges that come along with that, it definitely shies away people from kind of exploring that. But that's really where, you know, Dakota and myself embrace it. And, you know, we wanna uplift other people and and get people exposed to this world and and show them, you know, how great it is and how interesting of of problems it actually has.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:22]:
Has it has it been a particularly difficult challenge on the recruiting side?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:42:28]:
We started to kinda go through that at first, but we kind of changed our approach. And once we started attracting, you know, the right kind of people who are interested in the crypto space, they immediately, you know, the chemistry and just their willingness to learn and kind of their demeanor, they all have fallen into the same category of, you know, wow. These are people we wanna hire. So once we kinda try to change around, you know, who we are trying to attract, we immediately started finding all the right candidates. So it's been very fruitful for the last month, the amount of interviews and just quality conversations we've had. So definitely in Northeast Ohio, crypto is definitely starting to button in the sense of awareness or that it's a new technology that's gonna be worked on and and built here.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:12]:
Yeah. I wanna maybe kinda bookend the conversation with some reflections and and learnings that that you've had over your time building Grafel so far?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:43:23]:
Yeah. For sure. It's definitely been a a humbling experience, you know, to to have 2, you know, we're really sorry, 3 great founders to to support me in in the ways that, you know, I can't fill all the gaps and I can't do everything. And I think that's probably the biggest realization I've had personally is, you know, what I'm good at or or where I can put my my effort and, you know, kind of the skills I've accumulated over the years and allowing people to do what they're good at and, and kind of uplifting them in that way. So all of my kind of learnings have come from a leadership standpoint, but also just the interaction between, you know, raising funds and what that looks like for a business you know, has been incredibly interesting and and fruitful for us. Like I said, we just closed a $3,800,000 round, and we have a very large series a already in discussion. And we closed our for context, we closed our, seed round October 31, 2021.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:20]:
Yeah. No. It's it's an incredible trajectory, and I guess I'll I'll I'll throw it out there, just to kinda see what see what you're thinking about. But what do you view as kinda the end game for for GraphQL?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:44:33]:
All of the data that you see backing, you know, great products or or kind of the products we use every day. Like, a great example would be like a Google search, for example. All of that index data, you know, that's behind the search bar that returns from your search, that's where we wanna be in respects to NFTs. So you go in and you type in LeBron and you see every NFT across every chain that he's associated or tagged on in metadata or, you know, what have you. And that's where really where it becomes interesting from our perspective because then we become, you know, this huge data provider of what's powering, you know, basically web 3 and consumer applications on it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:11]:
It's an ambitious vision in it, but it I think it it makes a lot of sense in the context of of what NFTs are becoming. I feel like, and this is just my observation from, from afar in the space, but we've had to like reinvent some of the same technologies that we had to build the first time around for the Internet. And we're, like, rediscovering their their usefulness in in the in the world of of crypto.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:45:37]:
Exactly.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:38]:
Exactly. And it it took some it took people kind of running up against the problems again to be like, oh, yeah. We need we need infrastructure. We we need to figure out how to make this work at scale.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:45:51]:
Exactly. And that's, that's where infrastructure comes in because it's the enabler. You know? Apps always beget infrastructure, essentially. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:00]:
So I'll I'll close it out with question that we we ask everyone on the on the podcast, which as we're we're painting kind of a a collective collage here of not necessarily people's favorite things in in the Northeast Ohio area, but for hidden gems, things that other folks may not necessarily know about. And so with that, I will ask you for your favorite hidden gems in the area.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:46:24]:
Yeah. I would definitely say I have one that pops to the top of my mind and that's North Hill Donuts. It's down there on Talmadge Avenue and, it used to be a Dunkin' Donuts, and they didn't conform to kind of the the franchise standards. And they've been running ever since as North Hill Donuts, and they're incredible.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:42]:
North Hill Donuts. Excellent. I have to add that one to the list. Yeah.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:46:47]:
It's great.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:48]:
Well, Ryan, thank you so much for for coming on and and sharing your story. Again, genuinely, I'm I'm really excited about having you guys in the area and and seeing all the progress that you're making. It's, I think, hopefully, an example for for how others can can do it. And, yeah, wishing wishing you all the best in your in your journey here.

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:47:07]:
Yeah. Much appreciated. Thank you for having me on the show. And just as a closing comment too is it's fully our intention to code and myself to to help mentor and and, you know, offer any sort of advisement we can to to people looking to get into the web 3 space in the the Northeast Ohio area. So we definitely wanna accept those people with open arms and, you know, potentially hire them or just help them out on their project and help them avoid pitfalls that we've seen. And, know, we work with a lot of projects, so we would love to share the insight, especially locally.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:37]:
Yeah. Absolutely. If if folks had anything they wanted to follow-up with you about with regards to that or or otherwise, what is the the best way for them to do so?

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:47:46]:
Yeah. Info@graffle.i o would be the best way to, to get a hold of us. Perfect.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:52]:
Well, thank you again, Ryan. Really appreciate

Ryan Lambacher (Graffle) [00:47:54]:
it. Yeah. Much appreciated. Thanks again. Have a good

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:59]:
one. That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.fm, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland land or at @sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:36]:
The Lay of the Land podcast