Jaynti Kanani | Co-Founder of Polygon: From Underdog to Champion

**Sachi Mihara** (0:00)
So, JayTi, what makes you a believer in Web3? That's the first question before we dive into something else.

**Jaynti Kanani** (0:08)
I have talked about this almost every podcast, and I also heard about it that, like in Web3, the most different thing from other part of the fields and everything is that users need one laptop and the internet connection to build anything in Web3, right? You don't need to be out there, put your name everywhere, face anywhere. You don't have to be from Stanford or any big colleges, nothing, right? Even if you don't have to go to the school to be in Web3, to be honest, right? That is the biggest thing in my mind for Web3, because I see people in smaller villages from India, building on Web3, building for Web3, with this idea to start building on top of it, and people kind of not giving them money to build it. Which is very, very amazing, right? I mean, it has never happened in my life before. In Web3, if you see, go to that, for example, if you are building something, you have to be in Silicon Valley to raise the fund, and investors will ask you, but okay, can you move to California, San Francisco if we fund you, right? So those kind of things is not there yet. So I think that is an amazing thing. You don't have to be anything. You just basically, if you have a left-of, right channel, and the internet connection, you can do anything, let's say.

**Kenzi Watanabe** (1:37)
Totally agree. Web3 is all about leveling the playing field, and it breaks the demographic, and also geographical barriers, and it really is a game changer. So that said, tell us a little bit more about your growing up days in India, and also what inspired you to become engineer, data scientist, and now founder. Is this what you imagine your life would be growing up, or surprising?

**Jaynti Kanani** (2:13)
I just basically happened to be a engineer, to be honest. So what started in my schooling and everything, my father was an active worker, right? So we never had access to a better education. We just had, I just went to the nearby school, like very cheap school. My father never knew where is my school, the location. He never knew. And after the, when we were kids, obviously like your parents always say, okay, either you be a engineer or you be the doctor. That's it. There's only two profession you have in your life. And after 10th classes or something, like we had to choose between mathematics and biology. And I chose mathematics before, because if I go with the doctor or biology line, it takes us a lot of time, years, to do kind of, you know, earn money, because you have to be like, you know, first educate, like get a education as a doctor, et cetera, and then training, and then become like after 10 years, you basically have like some kind of a money or salary, good salary. So I chose like the shortest path possible to earn money, took the mathematics, went for the engineering degree. And also in engineering degree, like there was like, it was like, I just wanted to choose like anything in the good college, like any kind of a course. I was choosing for, I was aiming for the electronics, but I couldn't get electronics, I just chose IT. Like there was a computer science, I couldn't get it, so I just went for the IT in one college. And that's it, like, you know, that's how I just jumped into the computer IT field. I remember like I had my first laptop in second or third year of the college. Before that, I had no access to personal laptop or anything.
We were just using the college's lab computers and everything. And then basically what happened is that I was also interested in filmmaking, movies and everything, but obviously, like, you know, I couldn't do that and just basically started with the job to earn some money, to choose someone to family and back home. So, yeah, I started with the job, very, like, you know, 100 bucks at the time, 100 dollars one month in Pune, Gujarat. And then after that, like, I kind of became like full-time employee there, and joined one startup, and then again one other startups, and basically started my take into HUN17.

**Kenzi Watanabe** (4:47)
So then, how did you actually get into crypto in the first place?

**Jaynti Kanani** (4:54)
Yeah, it was a very interesting story. As I told you before, right, I was very much interested in movies and TV series. So there was a TV series called Game of Thrones. I think most of you have heard this name, Game of Thrones, very popular at the time.