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Meet a Founder: Richa Joshi, Co-founder of Push Protocol
Meet a Founder is a new Ask Me Anything (AMA) series on Telegram with Web3 founders building on BNB Chain. These AMAs offer our community a unique opportunity to delve into the diverse landscapes of Web3 projects, gaining insights into their creation processes, the challenges they encounter, and valuable tips for Web3 start-ups.
This article is a recap of the first AMA that we hosted on BNB Chain India with Richa Joshi, the co-founder of Push Protocol. Push is a decentralized communication protocol. It offers a solution that allows decentralized applications (Dapps), smart contracts, and backend systems to seamlessly send various forms of communication.
These include on-chain and off-chain messages, gasless notifications, and more, all linked directly to user wallets. What sets Push Protocol apart is its commitment to an open, gasless, and platform-neutral approach, simplifying the complexities of decentralized communication.
Since its inception, Push Protocol has powered over 50 million notifications for a growing base of 150,000 subscribers.
BNB Chain: Hi Richa! Can you give a quick introduction of yourself and your company?
Richa Joshi: Hello awesome folks! Great to join you for an AMA with the awesome BNB India Community. I am Richa, co-founder and marketing lead at Push Protocol.
I have close to 12 years of experience in product management and development across multiple facets of the product life cycle. I worked at Deloitte before moving into the blockchain space.
BNB Chain: So when you were a kid, Web3 didn’t exist yet. What did you want to do growing up?
Richa: Hahaha interesting question and definitely brings back some fond childhood memories 🙂
I think I wanted to do a lot of things to be honest – doctor, engineer, and so many other things. But really my interest was learning about interesting and emerging technology and how it shaped the future.
BNB Chain: What led you to start Push Protocol?
Richa: While trying and testing Dapps in 2019, we realized that there was no medium of communication for a protocol or service to notify users when a certain event has taken place. From there we knew we were on to something special and this was a pain point for a lot of fellow crypto users and services. We participated in EthGlobal Hackathon, Hack Money 2020.
There we launched the Alpha protocol. Post the hackathon, we also participated in IDEO CoLab Product Day Validation and Gitcoin grants, interviewing users from crypto users, DeFi super users and Dapp owners to learn and synthesize feedback during those sessions. For us learning from our mentors and receiving feedback (good and bad) was critical in shaping the protocol and its future.
BNB Chain: Why did you choose to build on BNB Chain?
Richa: BNB has been awesome supporters of our project. When we planned our launch our BNB Chain they not only supported us with community and marketing support but also introduced us to their ecosystem partners. This was super important as users were able to receive web3 native notifications for the first time on BNB with partners like 1inch, Apeswap, SushiSwap, Thena etc.
BNB Chain: What are some of the advantages of BNB Chain based on your experience?
Richa: There are so many advantages! Let me share a few:
- Ease for developers to migrate their EVM smart contracts, Dapps to BSC – giving them flexibility and inter-blockchain composability.
- I think BSC has one of the most thriving communities of devs, founders and community members in web3. New devs and founders should definitely take a note and try to take advantage of it while building their products out.
- Amazing ecosystem support teams – I’ve had the privilege of working with several ecosystem and growth teams at BNB Chain, and their support has been incredible. This includes not only well-designed programs like the BNB Kickstart, but also assistance in helping protocols to grow and thrive.
BNB Chain: Any tips or recommendations for founders starting out?
Richa: Tips for founders are mainly to talk to users and get your ideas and features validated. Don’t build in silos. A user will be able to share what their pain points and that information is gold when building a product or feature.
Secondly, be shameless in asking for help. The web3 community is really awesome and if you need any advice on how to build a startup, product etc. there are awesome mentors in the space who are always open to sharing their experiences.
If you have any other questions, come by Push’s Discord to chat.
