Welcome to our "Behind the Startup" series, where we have the pleasure of hosting Harrison Hines, the founder of Fleek, a pioneering company focused on revolutionizing website and app development through Web3 infrastructure. In this interview, we delve into Harrison's vision for Fleek, how the company differentiates itself from traditional developer platforms, and the importance of security and privacy in the age of decentralized applications.
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An Interview with Harrison Hines: The Future of Web3 and Fleek's Role in Shaping It
Ishan Pandey: Hi Harrison, great to have you here for our "Behind the Startup" series. what inspired you to start Fleek, and what was your vision for the company?
Harrison: I’ve always been inspired by the ideologies underpinning crypto and web3. After building my first company in the space back in 2017 (Token Foundry), I realized I was much more interested in the ‘decentralizing the web’ narrative rather than the decentralizing finance/Wall Street narrative, and so I knew I wanted to build something in that direction. Although when we started Fleek we weren’t exactly sure what that would look like, as there wasn’t a lot of decentralized web infrastructure built yet. So we had to adapt and adjust a lot in the early years as that part of the industry was figuring itself out.
Ishan Pandey: What are the key differentiators of Fleek compared to other website and app development platforms?
Harrison: One big differentiator is Fleek Network, the decentralized edge network we are building that underpins many of the infrastructure, products, and features surfaced on the Fleek platform. However, we also leverage many other protocols to power products and features we surface. Another key differentiator of Fleek is that the platform is like Airbnb, rather than a hotel which other developer platforms are similar to as they own the underlying infrastructure used to power the platform and rent it out to their customers.
Whereas with the Fleek platform, we just sit on top of a bunch of decentralized infrastructure that we don’t own, and serve as just a seamless interface connecting the supply side (decentralized web infra) to developers looking to use it, abstracting the complexities and packaging it in super developer-friendly products.
Ishan Pandey: How does Fleek ensure the security and privacy of its users' data? Can you discuss Fleek's approach to customer support and user feedback?
Harrison: Most of our code is open source, which I think is the ultimate way to give security and privacy to users because they know exactly what’s going on under the hood. The only things we don’t open source are things that would risk the security and privacy of our users. We also are constantly adding new features that embrace Web3 such as wallet sign-in, the ability to own or control an account from a smart contract/DAO, or representing the entirety of users' apps on chain as NFTs (what we call NFAs which stands for Non-Fungible Applications).
When it comes to our approach to customer support, in Web3 especially it’s critical to listen to user feedback because the industry is constantly evolving, as are the needs of the developers in the industry building applications. Therefore if you aren’t constantly listening to your users and paying attention to trends in the market there is a good chance you will be building in the wrong direction. We take customer support and success very seriously, and it’s the main driver of our product roadmap.
Ishan Pandey: Is Blockchain suitable for applications requiring high storage?
Harrison: Yes for sure. In fact, I’d say it’s more suitable for applications requiring high storage because the costs associated with storing data on web3 storage protocols are substantially lower than the costs associated with storing on Web2 cloud platforms. The missing pieces are just performance which we are addressing with Fleek Network, and developer experience by abstracting complexities which we are addressing with the new Fleek platform (Fleek.xyz).
Ishan Pandey: Can you talk about any exciting new features or developments that Fleek has in the pipeline?
Harrison: The most exciting is Fleek Network. That is the decentralized edge network we are currently building and plan to launch Mainnet in the fall of this year (2023). Fleek Network will fill a big unmet need in the Web3 infrastructure stack, with features like static and dynamic content acceleration (CDN), edge compute features like serverless functions, server side rendering, etc. This is exciting not just for Web3 but also for the Web in general.
The last couple of decades were all about moving to the ‘cloud’, but this decade is all about moving to the edge. Fleek Network is perfectly positioned to help with that trend and should be able to deliver both cost and performance benefits that meet or exceed Web2 CDNs/Edge Networks given we will have much higher node counts and geographic coverage. The other very exciting thing is the new Fleek platform (Fleek.xyz).
As I mentioned earlier, the new Fleek platform is like Uber or Airbnb for decentralized web infrastructure. Similar to Uber and Airbnb, when an industry gets decentralized (Airbnb for hotels; Uber for taxis), you really need a platform to facilitate it in order to make it happen, and we believe the new Fleek platform will really help accelerate the movement of the world’s application to decentralized web infra. Building on corporate-owned or controlled cloud infra will seem silly by the end of this decade.
Ishan Pandey: Can you discuss any partnerships or collaborations that Fleek has pursued, and what value these have brought to the platform?
Harrison: Most of the collaborations we are focused on right now are helping other Web3 protocols and their developer communities. With our platform we help address their current problems, for instance, performant delivery of content from all these various protocols to applications or end users. The issue is no protocols factor in performant delivery into their economic models, and so everyone (protocols, service providers sitting on top of protocols, app developers, etc.) is stuck using Cloudflare to make their data performant.
This is a huge risk to Web3 and the censorship resistance all these protocols claim, as Cloudflare is serving a very significant percentage of all Web3 data. So Fleek Network is a very welcomed addition to the Web3 infra stack, and a lot of these protocols are very excited about it because they all face the same issues (performant delivery, decentralizing access/gateways to their protocols, etc.)
Ishan Pandey: What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to start their own tech company?
Harrison: The intersection of crypto/AI is very exciting and I would look to start something in that space. But don’t get too attached to your first idea, as people rarely get it right with their first idea, and usually, as you start building you will realize better opportunities.
Ishan Pandey: According to you, should Web3 be regulated?
Harrison: I think Web3 is pretty much self-regulated by design. Everything is open and transparent. All the data is there for everybody to view and make informed decisions about. For example, it was on-chain detectives on Twitter who discovered FTX was in trouble first, not regulators or anybody else.
I think Web3 moves way too fast that by the time any regulation comes out, it would probably be stale, or the industry would have already found new ways to work around it, much like we’ve seen with things like Tornado Cash. Also the regulators today are too politically motivated to actually put out any good regulations, so because of that, I’d say no it shouldn’t be regulated. But that doesn’t mean bad actors in the space shouldn’t be punished, people doing illegal things in Web3 should be treated like everyone else doing illegal things.
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