It’s safe to say Steven Bartlett’s profile has ballooned this year. The 29 year-old entrepreneur became the youngest dragon on Dragons’ Den, has interviewed everyone from Matt Hancock to Love Island star Molly-Mae Hague on his podcast and he recently finished up a UK-wide tour.
Meanwhile, he has dipped his toe in many different enterprises. At the end of last year, he launched Flight Story to capitalise on the growing number of DIY investors.
At the same time he launched Third Web, a platform that provides tools for developers and creators to build and manage Web3 projects.
Steven Bartlett launched Web3 platform Third Web last year
It’s a natural step for the entrepreneur who made his millions from social media.
Now, Third Web has secured $24million in a funding round led by Haun Ventures and Coinbase Ventures among others, giving the company a valuation of $160million.
Is Web3 the latest fad in the world of crypto or could it be the future of the internet?
Why Web3?
You’ve probably heard of the metaverse by now; last October Mark Zuckerberg outlined his vision for the future of the company with a strange avatar in tow.
It is part of a wider movement towards what tech junkies call Web3.
In simple terms it is the third generation of the internet which incorporates concepts like decentralisation and blockchain.
It is essentially the technology that underpins crypto and NFTs, and Bartlett wants a piece of the action.
‘The reason I started Third Web and the reason why I decided to commit myself to Web3 after leaving what people call Web2 is for the exact same reasons I got involved in social media…
‘I found a technology that I felt would make lives better in some way. I was convinced before the masses showed up that this was a better way of doing something.’
There are some similarities between what Bartlett is doing with Third Web and what he did with his first company, The Social Chain.
He founded the social media content and marketing firm at the age of 21 after realising the influence brands could have via Facebook and Twitter.
His critics might say he was merely in the right place at the right time but he capitalised on it and built a multimillion publicly listed company.
Whether or not he can replicate the same success in Web3 remains to be seen.
But the appetite for Third Web is already there – it now has around 80,000 developers using its tools to build Web3 applications and has deployed over 150,000 smart contracts.
It has generated over $1.5million in revenue this year.
Third Web seems to reflect a level of maturity that Barlett has gained from being an important part of how we, and brands, use social media now.
Instead of going headfirst into Web3 with a flashy NFT or crypto platform, Bartlett, along with co-founder Furqan Rydhan, is building the tools developers can use in Web3.
‘We decided to build the infrastructure layer of Web3. We could have built an app ourselves, we could have built a Coinbase, another application, but we wanted to build the layer below which allows the world’s Web3 developers and the Web3 builders to create that future to build Web3.’
Mark Zuckerberg has been a big proponent of Web3 and the Metaverse
What will Web3 look like?
It is still very early days for Web3. The concept has raised some eyebrows in institutional circles and Randi Zuckerberg has described it as ‘chaos’.
Given it is based on decentralisation it’s difficult to build a cohesive picture of what it might look like it.
Bartlett recognises it’s still early on in the process. Could it be too early for him to have moved into this space?
‘It is possible to be too early… the reason you can be too early is because your success depends on some kind of macro factor.
‘You could build something that relies on everyone having a mobile phone in their hand and 5G internet for it to really work.
‘You might have built the same thing in 2000 but because we didn’t have mobile internet streaming…
‘This is much the reason why Third Web exists because there’s an infrastructure piece to do in order to be successful. It’s the picks and shovels of the gold rush.
‘You can either be in the river sifting for gold or you can be the person that is selling the pricks and the shovels.
‘That’s why we focus on the foundation layer to enable builders to build this next iteration of the internet.’
Is the move to Web3 driven by FOMO?
Bartlett is an enthusiastic proponent of Web3. He owns a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and has several other NFT artworks. Could he have been swept up in the excitement of Web3 before thinking about what it will actually look like?
He doesn’t seem to think so.
‘When I left Social Chain I looked around at what was going on in the world and there was quite clearly a tectonic shift happening and that’s what we call Web3… the shift towards decentralisation, blockchain technology and all of the possibilities that enables.
‘I wanted to build in the space… Whenever you see a wave coming into share, it’s just about which surfboard do you want to be on? What team do you want to partner with?’
Any suggestion he is getting involved in Web3 through FOMO (the fear of missing out) is quickly shut down.
‘One thing we know for sure is that change is coming… The pandemic was change. When these tectonic shifts happen you have a choice – stay the same and be a Blockbuster or change and hope you might become Netflix.
‘Don’t allow your conventional wisdom to lead you to be left behind in a changing world when there’s a prospect of a new technology.’
Surfing metaphors aside, Bartlett seems to have his ear on the ground. A new kind of internet is certainly emerging and while it might not be the metaverse Zuckerberg envisions, how we use the internet will be transformed.
‘You go back to the dotcom boom… there was huge over optimism in some areas…
‘Companies were raising a lot of capital and there was a huge amount of optimism.
‘There was a huge amount of fear.
‘But when the dust settled, you had some over optimism in some places. You had a lot of over pessimism in some places, but then you had great companies that changed the world.
‘Amazon emerged out of the dotcom boom, a lot of other great companies that we use today. So I imagine it’ll follow the same path.
‘We’re probably over optimistic and over pessimistic in different areas, depending on who you speak to.’
It remains to be seen how successful Third Web will be but if Bartlett’s track record is anything to go by, Web3 will be the future of the internet. Hopefully without the silly avatars.
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