Trevor McFedries - Building Web 3.0 - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 29]

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Founder's Field Guide. Founder's Field Guide is a series of conversations with founders, CEOs and operators building great businesses. I believe we are all builders in our own way and this series is dedicated to stories and lessons from builders of all types.
Founder's Field Guide is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all of our podcasts, including edited transcripts, show notes and resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:59)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:22)
My guest today is Trevor McFedries, the founder of technology startup Brud and the creator of the virtual pop star Miquela, a Gen Z icon with millions of fans worldwide. Trevor's background is fascinating. He worked as a DJ and producer, toured with Katy Perry, worked at Spotify and much more. In our conversation, we discussed the music industrial complex, the creation of Miquela and what Web 3 will mean for creators and builders in the future.
I hope you enjoy this conversation with Trevor McFedries.
Okay, Trevor, so I think you probably have the most interesting sequence of things you've done of anybody I've had on the show, from college football player to rap artist, to DJ, to software developer, to Sequoia back founder, to tokenized community manager. You seem to have done everything interesting over the last 10 years. So my first question is what unites all this stuff? It's all very different, yet it seems to be wildly creative and always interesting. How would you describe the thread that unites the disparate things that you've done?

**Trevor McFedries** (3:24)
I think if I had to answer that, it's probably just a deep curiosity mixed with some good blue collar Midwest work ethic. I've always just been really curious about things and was kind of ingrained very early on that if you work really hard at something, you can be good at it, whether that's football or that's crypto.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:39)
I wanna talk about transitions a lot because some of these things are pretty big jumps from one area to another. So maybe talk me through the very beginning. You're an athlete in college.
Why did you stop doing that? What did you do first and next? And what lessons did you learn from that first professional chapter?

**Trevor McFedries** (3:54)
I actually was born in LA. My mom and dad split up when I was one and I moved back to Davenport, Iowa, where I grew up until I was 16
And in Iowa, I was building flash video games, packing together websites for mom and pops around the neighborhood. And I was also playing in hardcore bands and really interested in music, but those things were hobbies. Like it wasn't clear that could be real life. In my head, it felt like I could be a University of Iowa football player and maybe one day be like head football coach or perhaps a firefighter or something. It was a pretty narrow scope of where I thought I could see myself down the road.