Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin | Co-Founder of Axie Infinity: Turning Your Web3 Community into True Evangelists

In this episode of Unhashed Podcast, hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer speak to Jiho about his early days in Web3, starting Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity with Trung Nguyen, Tu Doan, Aleksander Larsen, and Andy Ho.

Jiho talks about building in the bear market, being “small and unrecognized” yet confident in their founding team, vision, and community.

The team wanted to build a Web3 community that would reward those with the technical knowledge and those willing to learn about the technology. He perfectly sums up their founding principle: “Something that can play into childhood nostalgia is going to be a compelling way to educate people on Web3.”

Jiho also talks to us about the obstacles the Axie Infinity team faced while building and maintaining their product. One of those was working with the community on expectations around the company’s roadmap as they put out features. In fact, it was one of his biggest learnings:

“I think we're always thinking about the intended action that we want to coordinate with the community and the outside world. And how do we ensure that the things that we're launching and saying, that we can actually do that? I think it's more important in Web3… How do you turn your community into your best evangelists? And how do you have them doing the things that are most beneficial and helpful for the network, which benefits everybody? I think an understanding of aligned incentives and different economic models and the cold start problem is something that a lot of Web3 startups have to think about.”

Today, Axie Infinity is one of the biggest Play2Earn NFT games in the crypto world. Sky Mavis recently closed a $152 million Series B round eyeing Axie’s expansion, which brings the company valuation to $3 billion.

Listen to this episode as Jiho discusses the Play2Earn economy, his responsibilities as Chief Growth Officer at Axie Infinity, and more.