How Entrepreneurs Can Take Advantage of Emerging Innovations and Technologies with Adrienne Ravez

This interview is a transcript from Inter:views, Cracking The Entrepreneurship Code, with Adrienne Ravez,web3 entrepreneur. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Technology advances rapidly, and entrepreneurs must keep pace because it changes business.

The internet, for example, is evolving and has gone from web1 to web2, and now we are moving towards the future of web3. In the new age of technology, entrepreneurs need to know how they can embrace and tap into the opportunities of web3. The opportunities are endless. Entrepreneurs need to figure out how their business fits this new era.

Adrienne Ravez is a Web3 Entrepreneur, Digital & Innovation Specialist, intercultural Clinical Psychologist, DEI Practitioner & Advocate, and trade advisor for France (CCE). Join my conversation with her, and learn about technology's past, current, and future and how an entrepreneur can be well-informed to maximize opportunities.

How did you end up being an entrepreneur?

Thank you very much for the question. It's a very good question, and my answer is usually that I didn't plan to.

I was working in France. I'm initially an Intercultural Psychologist. Most of my work was really in project management, project development, and especially in the nonprofit sector, working a lot to support some advocacy initiatives. Because of the intercultural aspect of my work, there was a lot of awareness and advocacy work, so basically, I started to be more and more involved in digital technologies because of it; back then, we called it Web 2.0. These tools represented amazing resources for us working in the nonprofit and awareness-advocacy sector to amplify some messages and particular causes, raise funds, and raise awareness on a general basis. So that's how I started to be involved in new technologies.

My partner was a designer and worked with many companies providing multimedia and creative design back then. There appeared to be a synergy between two experts, and we started to provide consulting work to clients. And because it started to scale and grow, it became practical and natural to launch a company catering to our clients and partners' needs.

But none of us thought, okay, let's become entrepreneurs. Let's launch something. It was really like a practical and natural process that came because of the demand and the supply, I would say.

I've heard similar stories before. It's one of the natural ways of becoming an entrepreneur. But it's interesting that you didn't realize you were becoming an entrepreneur. You became one, and then you remained one. So, I guess you are hooked. What has it meant for you to be an entrepreneur?

Absolutely hooked. Yes. And I think that my experience as an entrepreneur is mostly about creating value. When you launch some projects, at some point, it’s essential to be KPI oriented and to create financial value so that you can be sustainable and continue to grow. But when I say creating value, it’s also about being creative and creating solutions and products that would cater to your team, clients, partners, and users.

So, this creativity is the most important aspect of entrepreneurship that I’ve become hooked on because when you talk about creativity, creating value, and generating ideas, it’s limitless. You can apply this to any industry. And what I find that is extremely interesting and fulfilling as an entrepreneur is that you can create synergies and convergence.

You can be a social worker, you can be a psychologist, you can have experience in sociology and anthropology, but on the other hand, embrace entirely the resources that new technologies can bring for your projects and the different products and solutions that you are going to create, and even create a convergence between human and social science, as well as new technologies.

This fulfillment that I found in entrepreneurship, I couldn’t find anywhere else because when I started to become an entrepreneur around 12 years ago, it was not necessarily evident and easy for people to understand that we could link those different perspectives. Whereas now, you will find so many people with a background in sociology or psychology who are very prominent in the new technology sector. So, it became something completely normal. But back then, it wasn't very easy for people to understand this kind of synergies and conversions.

And then you have entrepreneurs like me, who struggle with new technologies. Let’s start with the basics. What’s Web3?

That’s an excellent question because it became part of conversation buzzwords. Should it be marketing-based, entrepreneurship-based, or business-based conversations recently, it’s more straightforward than it seems. We always come up with terminology so that we can categorize some approaches and some tools. So, for example, when we talk about Web1, very simple; it’s what we call “read.” So, you have information on the internet, and you can read that information, and you access this information.

Then we started to talk about the advent of Web2. So Web2 protocols would revolve more around reading and writing. A widespread example of this is social media or blogging.

So, before you went to the internet to find some information, but then with Web2, you could go to the internet and also create information. You started to have a voice as a user. So, for example, you could create a Facebook profile, Twitter profile, a blog, and then you were able, as an internet user also, to be a creator of the information and to write your data.

And then Web3 is a step after that, that we call read, write, own. For example, under the Web2 protocols, you create an account under any social network such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. You can generate and write information, but your data and information, even if they are supposed to belong to you, are not hosted by you, right? Your third party hosts them. That would be Facebook or Google or Twitter, etc.

Some Web3 protocols promote decentralized protocols allowing users to own and store their data. It would enable users to claim a bit more ownership.

So, I think it’s both easy and challenging to define Web3 in the sense that it’s easier than what we are trying to highlight when we come up with a lot of buzzwords because, in the end, it’s only a matter of a new iteration of the internet that is putting the user in a different posture.

But on the other hand, it would also be complex because there will be many examples and use cases. So usually, through our company, when we provide consulting or training on Web3 opportunities, we like to take a step back from the buzzwords and focus on the use cases to give our clients concrete examples of how they can use these opportunities in their sectors.

And if we take it with a step back and think, okay, so from my perspective as an entrepreneur, as a business, depending on my industry and my expertise, how can I take advantage of these opportunities so that these resources, these tools, these technologies serve what I’m doing in a better way?