Episode link:
https://www.citizencosmos.space/sistla

Episode name:
The Power of Community: Exploring possibilities, Building Communities & Introspection with Sistla Abhishek.

In this episode, Sistla V Abhishek, the founder of OmniFlix is interviewed. He discusses the culture around education in India and how this contributed to his success and India's dominance in the area of computer science . He gives his perspective on the importance of community building and content creation in web3. Sistla gives his vision for the future of Omniflix and what they are trying to build.

Citizen Cosmos:
Hi everyone, welcome to a new episode of the Citizen Cosmos Podcast. And today I have an OG content creator with me, Sistla, the man, the one and only man from Omniflix. Sistla Mann, hi, welcome to the show. How are you?

Sistla:
I'm doing great. Glad to be here on the Citizen Cosmos Podcast. Been hearing it, been following it, know all the builders that are coming down week after week and glad to see you continue even after all these years. So I'm pretty excited to be here

Citizen Cosmos:
Thanks.

Citizen Cosmos:
Thanks. Man, again, for all the listeners out there, I must say Sistla is in my not opinion, but I would say, of course, it's an opinion, but it's something that I see has been a Cosmos OG creator since pretty much day one. And there wasn't many content creators when Sistla and his team already had the idea of creating a whole blockchain dedicated today, which of course we will talk about today and ask, but first thing is first, Sistla, can you introduce yourself a little bit? Tell me about who is Sistla? What does it do in life? What are your interests? Why blockchain? What happened? Who are you, man? Tell us all about it.

Sistla:
So yeah, I mean, I got started with computers back in about 2007. That was when I was in high school. And yeah, like academics were one. But you know, I was more involved in, as soon as I got access to the computer, played a lot of Counter-Strike, you know, dealt a lot with awkward communities, right. And almost actually failed one of my, you know, annual exams as well. because like three months before I got the computer and I was hooked and you know, yeah, that happened. But after that, like, you know, I found my love, you know, doing things that that would never explode, exploring, you know, what could be possible. And because of that, you know, started off on Orkut being involved in communities like I rose to being a moderator back then, not not many like Orkut is the equivalent of Facebook. And this was primarily in Brazil, India and some of the other countries. It was by Google, but they shut it down, you know, after a while. That was where like I learned how to code because you could like modify your or could you know page you could do a lot of things with JavaScript and that was my introduction to coding as well and exploring. So, you know since then like for the last you know 13-15 years, you know, I've been hooked on to computers, freelance my way. During college, built websites here and there, educated people about tech, people didn't care, some cared, hung out with them. I was pretty interested in speedcubing, so I've competed at a national level, held a few national records and that was what interested me. Even in college, I worked part-time at a test assessment firm. where we used to handle recruitment drives for like 6,000 students from multiple colleges. I was part of those ops. Again, I quickly rose to lead multiple teams there and that operational experience helps me even till today. So that is something that I've been thankful for. And I'm just now an extension of how I was during college, but 10x where I am.

Citizen Cosmos:
Headshot, this is what I know from Counter-Strike. Headshot. This was like a sniper shot story. Man, I didn't know that you participated in competitions and that you did all that. I know you have a computer science degree, but I wasn't aware of the competition thing.

Citizen Cosmos:
But I wasn't aware of all your competitions man of all your national competitions and participation I know you have a degree in computer science. I knew that but I didn't know you managed to achieve so many things in terms of competition. Let me ask you a question, Sistla.

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
I know it's a stigmatic question, but

Sistla:
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
it's a good stigma. I know that India is one of those countries that has a very high level of computer producers, a very high level of computer engineers. And one of the reasons for that from what they say, from what people say in general, is due to a very hard educational system that is dedicated to study a lot, a lot, a lot. How was your experience studying computer science? How did you, was it like that, or is it different in reality?

Sistla:
Yeah, I mean, I'll have to keep it real. It is hard. The competition is too high. People are like, you know, they really take their academics seriously. And for those that don't, they to some extent get left out if they can't figure things out by themselves. And, you know, everyone, like most people are like really good at math and science, not just like physics and chemistry, but also biology. So, you know, that has been... Personally for me a bit difficult to navigate. I was always like, you know, the average kid, you know, like the 10th Friendliest rank or something like that in a class of say 40 50 people But yeah, like personally I chose computer science because this is what I was interested in and you know for me like I really I scored like out of out of 80 I think or 75 I scored no, sorry out of 100 I scored like 16 units and I was using

Sistla:
Linux for like three years before that, right? And everyone else that never even

Sistla:
interacted with the Linux system or they got like 80 or 90 in Unix. So the education system, like the, the system is like to an extent favors like a different set of people. Definitely not for me. I was like more the average kind, but I was interested in other things actually executing. And hence like even in 12th or, you know, yeah, like. just into college, engineering college. I was already working on various projects with other universities and built robots, went to competitions even before I got into college. So there's a summer break before you get into engineering college. Even before that, I participated in competitions using my identity as a college student. So yeah, these are things that I did. Luckily, they turned out well for me. But I personally chose computer science because I don't think I could have done anything else better than this. So yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
You say you chose computer science because you don't think you could have done anything better for sure. I think that's a lie. I'm sure you have many other skills, man. Come on. When you

Citizen Cosmos:
build communities, that's already one skill you have. So you have a lot more skills than you think. But I mean, I mean, I understand

Citizen Cosmos:
that, you know, that was one reason to succeed, to do something that you like. But where's there what drew you to computers when you were a kid? You said that you participated, you know. Before college with that, what was the initial attraction? Why computers? Why not philosophy or psychology or English or I don't know, Hindi or anything else? Why that particular subject? What made you fall in love with it?

Sistla:
Yeah, I mean in simple words, you can create something that doesn't exist. I know art is also like that. Yeah. I

Sistla:
know like, you know, being able to like, you know, create something out of nothing is exists like across multiple like industries, but here I was like extremely fascinated, the most fascination is when, you know, like I could like interact with the command line or write a small HTML file where I could like see the output on a browser. It is like really, really simple right now, but these were the things that actually motivated me to do more, learn more and get involved.

Citizen Cosmos:
That makes sense, man. It's crazy to think now that we have all those AI tools, right? That just like

Sistla:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Citizen Cosmos:
let you do it in second, right? What we started. What do you think? What do you think, man? As a computer engineer, what do you think? How is it going to evolve? Where is it going? The whole AI thing.

Sistla:
Wow, like I am thrilled. You know, I just want to like live for as long as possible to see everything that, you know, that actually like, you know, progresses the world. Like I think like the current set of like AI has been around. Like even when we interact with Google, we just don't think that we're interacting with an AI. Right, like it's a search query that we are like typing. But you know, in this case, right, like no one when they use Facebook or Twitter, they... They don't think that they're interacting with AI systems. But when they're utilizing chat GPT, they're thinking that they are interacting with an AI machine, like something that is responding to them, and so on and so forth. So I think that shift has made people more conscious about something that is intangible, but is now finally tangible, and people can wrap their heads around it. And this, I believe. will lead to quite a lot of interesting possibilities where AI is not just restricted for the smartest of the smart people, but even accessible by everyone. And yeah, initially there'll be a bit of hassle when people might need to rescale, upscale, and so on and so forth. But this will improve productivity by 10x and just like how we start remembering phone numbers or something like that, you'll, like a lot of this. information that we are gathering right now and remembering and things like that. Of course, it is helpful to remember important phone numbers, but now you can offload that to your phone. Just like that, people will probably start to offload a lot of the activities to an AI, which is tailor-made, just like our app chain, Cosmos app chain is tailor-made for one specific purpose. You can have an AI also be tailor-made for one specific purpose. And we'll probably see... much more advancements in industry specific AI.

Citizen Cosmos:
I have a cheeky question for you now, Sistla. How many phone numbers do you remember? Ahahaha! Ha!

Sistla:
I think I remember like 10 or 15 and these are the people that I've been interacting

Citizen Cosmos:
WHOA!

Sistla:
with like 10 or 15 years so

Citizen Cosmos:
Are you serious?

Sistla:
I know them. Yeah I mean

Citizen Cosmos:
Are you serious?

Sistla:
I never made an effort.

Citizen Cosmos:
You remember 15 phone numbers? Wow,

Sistla:
Oh you're saying

Citizen Cosmos:
man,

Sistla:
that's

Citizen Cosmos:
that

Sistla:
a lot?

Citizen Cosmos:
is impressive,

Sistla:
Okay

Citizen Cosmos:
man.

Sistla:
okay okay.

Citizen Cosmos:
I mean, when I was a kid, yes, yes, when I was a, no, when I was a kid, yes, when I was a kid, I remember like, you know, before mobile phones even, I mean, I'm a child of the 90s, I grew up in the 90s, I'm a child of the 80s, I grew up in the 90s, but I remember remembering house phone numbers, you know? And then at some point, mobile phone numbers, but not too many, but wow, 15 numbers, man, you must love numbers. because I don't remember 15 numbers, Muro, no way, no way.

Citizen Cosmos:
I hope my girlfriend isn't listening. I don't even remember her phone number. I hope she's not listening to this because I don't remember her phone number.

Sistla:
I mean the numbers I remember

Citizen Cosmos:
I'm sorry.

Sistla:
like they didn't change for like a decade so hence I remember so yeah yeah

Citizen Cosmos:
Nice, nice

Citizen Cosmos:
man. Man, I have a complex question for you. Now you said that the reason you fell in love with computers was the ability to create something. And that essentially led you to go and study computers and essentially, you know, participate in all those competitions, succeed, prove to yourself that you can do it if I understand correctly, and then go on to building what you're doing today, which we will talk about. But before we talk about that, Do you still think that, you know, your original desire of to build and create things with the use of computer technology, can you honestly say that this is what you're doing today? Is this is something you wanted to do?

Sistla:
Actually, yes. I mean, I could have done more. I mean, these are like, there are things that I could have done better. But no, 100% like, I mean, I'll just give you an example. I bought my like, I have a Mac, Mac laptop, Mac Pro, Macbook Pro. And I bought it in 2020. And this has like, oh, not 2020, 2021. Sorry. And you know like, like buying that gave me like a sense of like, like I felt empowered, right? And more than that, like I finally could buy what I was like looking for, like for a decade or so, like you know, over a decade. And I'll tell you why this is important. Like even today, like when I start to work, I still feel excited. Like every day morning, I just can't like wait to wake up. That's why I don't sleep a lot. Like I'm usually excited. And every morning when I wake up, as soon as I like, like the first thing that I try to do, even before anything is to like, just like catch up with where we are at, like with work or, you know, where the team is at, because, you know, we have like a global team. So I'm like, usually I'm pretty excited. And, you know, I fresh up and like do all those things a bit later, but, you know, I'm pretty excited every day. So... At least that in essence, like, I mean, I had to think when you ask that question, but definitely this is where this is what we've always dreamt of. Like, you know, I knew that we could always start a business or a company or things like that. I did, you know, I did like I trained people on Rubik's cube. I had that skill. I did do

Sistla:
that in college, like held workshops,

Sistla:
earned some money, trained people on open like FOSS, free and open source software, things like that. But, you know, like that I knew was possible but today like I personally think like this is where we wanted to be and we can we could have been gone further but definitely like this is you know this is on track and you know I'm pretty excited every day you know to be doing whatever I'm doing yeah

Citizen Cosmos:
When you say when you say you could have gone further where where is that further dream where the you Sistla

Citizen Cosmos:
I want to know share with us

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
where is the ending point where where is it if you want to of course you don't have to share it with out of curiosity.

Sistla:
I mean, I definitely do not see an end. So I think of things as like perpetual,

Sistla:
but definitely they are not perpetual. What I wanted to convey there was there were a few decisions, choices over the past decade that I personally took that led me to being here and nothing is, I don't regret anything. I think like every decision, small, big, you know, it was important to being where we are today. But at the same time, I personally think things could have gone better in terms of, say me, managing finances well, or things that I could have personally learned to do whatever I'm doing even better. So I never did an MBA or those are things that are never gone into formal training of anything. But I think I... I mean, it's always in hindsight, right? You know, I think having some of those skills, like, put in, not skills, but some of those frameworks learned even before, like not now, but like before, would have probably helped me take better decisions, but I don't know, right? Like it's a butterfly effect. So, you know, all of these things lead to where we are today. So I mean, I'll say I couldn't be happier, but definitely want to do more, you know? That's the idea.

Citizen Cosmos:
Nice, nice, nice, nice. No, it's always, in my opinion, this personal opinion, I think it's always cool to understand that people envision and dream things, and what is that vision and dream? I mean, there are some, I can tell you that over the last three and a half years or whatever, some of the founders that we speak with, Sometimes you found out very interesting things which you would never expect from people to say. You're like, wow, that's cool, man. There is

Citizen Cosmos:
like something and it shows a really different side as well. I have another stigmatic question for you. I hope that's going to be the last stigmatic question I ask.

Citizen Cosmos:
But it's an interesting, I'm sorry, man, but it's

Citizen Cosmos:
an interesting one because India is becoming, I mean, you live in India and India is becoming, as recently overcame China in terms of population. And India has always been to the outside world, a very different country with a very different set of culture, a very different set of rules, you know, the castes, you know, all those things, you know, there was a lot to it, which fascinates people and scare people and make people fall in love with India depends on who you are, you know,

Citizen Cosmos:
I want to I want to hear your opinion as as not just somebody that was born lives in India, but as a person. with such ambitions because you were talking about ambitions and they're not just ambitions, you have created already a project which is, you know, running and helping others to create more things. So, you have achieved all those things. In your opinion, as somebody who did all that and as somebody who's working with that, what is the current situation in terms of India and adoption? Because in my opinion, India, well, at least by the population size, It plays a huge role in adoption, right? So what's your opinion on that? And I'm sorry for the stigmatic question, but I would really love to hear your opinion on this.

Sistla:
Yeah, I mean not at all and what adoption? Internet, blockchain?

Citizen Cosmos:
Oh, sorry. I'm sorry, Sistla. Well,

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
I was in my own. I'm sorry. I just really, you know what? After I asked that, I was like, oh shit, I forgot to say what adoption. Sisla is probably going to correct me. So Web3, of course I'm talking Web3. I'm really apologize for being silly. Sorry. Web3, of course.

Sistla:
No, no, not at all. I'll say I attribute that to like, you know, I think about 50 or so years ago, no, people will kill me if I get this wrong. 70 plus years ago, we got independence in 1947. And since then, since then, like, you know, India has like focused a bit or like a bit more than that on education, right? Like just before independence to You know, people like India was ruled by the British and English was a common factor in India actually like adopting English because even with the person that's from a neighboring state, I do not know their language, they do not know our language, we all know English. So that has played a huge role in actually say English medium education in the 70s, 80s and 90s. And by 90s, like everyone like English medium became a default. More or less like 80% of the country had access to English medium or I'll say 70% of the country had access to English medium education. And over these years, even if English was not your first language or even if whether or not you had English medium education, you could like have access to all the resources. Right. Like, and the thing with India is that we missed a couple of revolutions. I'll. tell you what happened. There was the phone, the landline and the cordless and there was no laptop or computer revolution. We missed that and directly moved to mobile revolution. Like and we were like

Citizen Cosmos:
Mmhmm.

Sistla:
India was like the fastest like 2007-8 you had like you know China producing mass like mass producing phones you know like dumping them all over the world. India was like quick to adopt to those

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm-hmm.

Sistla:
because you had what was like you know Nokia or Blackberry. or a Chinese phone

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm-hmm.

Sistla:
and

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Sistla:
you know people are like that preferred quality but Nokia, Symbian OS and people that didn't care about that bought a Chinese phone you know like it was low cost but had internet right and people didn't even get data packs until like say 2009 right and then you had companies like DoCoMo from Japan that partnered with an Indian company and introduced like what is a per second billing and so on so forth hence mobile penetration like grew by quite a lot and then you had an Indian company that got started with yeah this is 2010 and once everyone had access to internet there was like a huge influx of digital media so YouTube, Facebook all of these like grew by like by quite a lot which your platform had a presence in India or like among Indian audience those grew like by quite a lot between 2010 and 2015. And that was the time when, by 2010, we were the guys that were talking about digital, asking companies to get their own websites. Computer science education was trending, if I can say. And all of that put together, 2010 and 2015 saw massive adoption. And 2020? But yeah, 15 to 20 was when we had like an influx. Like there was, I don't know if many are aware, but there was a demonetization event in India where in 2016, like all old notes were banned in four hours. Like four hours later, no old note could be used. Right. And this led to and like a massive, massive adoption of digital payments. And India has what is the UPI, where it is like a blockchain network. But I, I, I'm really not sure if they're using blockchain or not. But it exactly functions like a blockchain network. Every bank is on UPI. UPI stands for Unified Payments Interface. And UPI works

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm-hmm.

Sistla:
exactly like a, like you have what is Google Pay in India, which is like a metamask. web like mobile app, you have multiple clients,

Citizen Cosmos:
Hmm. Heh.

Sistla:
you know, there is the UPI network, all the banks are like serving the UPI network, part of the UPI network. And then there are multiple clients like Google Pay, you know, like everyone WhatsApp, everyone supports UPI, right. And once like this was in place, like India was onboarded to digital, right, like you had digitally native services, you had digitally native, like finance, like apps, you had digitally native like, you know, yeah, everything that the world has to offer was accessible. And companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, all of these companies, they took advantage of this, built services, products around this. And right now you can, I'm in a city where if I want groceries in 15 minutes, I can actually get them in 15 minutes. Yeah, there are services where that is possible.

Sistla:
And yeah, it is possible in about at least 30, 40% of the country, you have such services available. So you don't have any problem and also like India in like 2004, 5, 6 or 7 like you had access to the fastest internet like I do not know how that happened like I think like India cracked like good deals but like it was like fucking fast like you know no like developing developed countries also did not have like that fast of an internet access and you know like downloading a GB or you know like in 2010 downloading a GB was nothing. In 2007, of course, like you had a dial up not dial up, but like 56 Kbps or 64 Kbps or something like that connection, 500 Kbps. And you had to probably wait for like half an hour or more to be able to download. But yeah, like buy and buy like things improved like so much that you know, people could not even catch up like people could not catch up. And everyone that was like over 40 or something, they all got on to WhatsApp. You know, like everything, like they now know QR codes, they scan, they book a cab. You know, all of these things happen normally and no one like bats an eye and no one. And even people that do not know English because of icons and all the optimizations, uh, you know, everything is accessible. So no one really localizes in India. Like I never accessed any app that was in Hindi. Like I don't even know Hindi properly. Right. So, yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
Really?

Sistla:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
Are you serious? Wow.

Citizen Cosmos:
But so do you think do you think the same thing will happen with Web3 in India? Or it's already happening?

Sistla:
Yeah, it

Citizen Cosmos:
quick adoption.

Sistla:
is happening. Actually, before there was there is now like a blanket, not like a blanket ban, but I think it is not. It is in dark gray area. You have like high taxes and so on and so forth right now in India to deal with crypto. But you know, earlier when that didn't happen, how should I tell you? There is this league called IPL, Indian Premier League, which is for cricket. to what I don't know like Super Bowl and all those are for football right like oh no like here in the Europe right EPL. EPL. IPL is to cricket in India what EPL

Citizen Cosmos:
I

Sistla:
is to

Citizen Cosmos:
I I

Sistla:
football yeah sorry.

Citizen Cosmos:
I actually, I actually, no, I was going to say I was going to, no, don't be sorry. This is, this is me pulling the quilt. Me interrupting you. Sorry.

Sistla:
None.

Citizen Cosmos:
Like I was going to just say that I grew up in the UK. So

Sistla:
Oh

Citizen Cosmos:
I actually had a lot, a lot, a lot of Indian, well, mostly from Punjab, like a lot of friends when I was in high school.

Sistla:
Night.

Citizen Cosmos:
So I, I know a little bit more about

Citizen Cosmos:
Indian, let's say like

Sistla:
culture.

Citizen Cosmos:
India. Yes. Then most people. Yeah, like the culture. Yeah. And the preferences. I even played cricket. I don't understand fuck all about cricket,

Sistla:
Ha ha!

Citizen Cosmos:
but I even played it in high school, but I don't understand what's what's going on. I need I know you need to run. I know I know that much but That's what I remember.

Sistla:
But yeah, no worries,

Citizen Cosmos:
Sorry, sorry, man. I'm not good at cricket.

Sistla:
like me neither.

Citizen Cosmos:
But I know how big it

Sistla:
Me

Citizen Cosmos:
is.

Sistla:
neither. You know, I look at cricket as like

Sistla:
entertainment,

Sistla:
like what a massive franchise like cricket has built. So I look at all those things. But yeah, like in like IPL had crypto ads, like at one point in time, you could not like there was a there

Citizen Cosmos:
Wow.

Sistla:
was a break. And during that break You only saw fintech and crypto ads. You didn't see FMCG. You didn't see Amazon's. You didn't see those ads. You saw like crypto exchange, crypto product. Do this with crypto, do that with crypto. You saw fintech products where you could like get a policy, get like loans and things like that. But you see like that, like because people, because the population is typically young, they are like into, you know, I'll just tell you an example, like, you know, vouchers, right? Like gift vouchers. There's like a... huge business around people like collecting those and these are digital vouchers, coupon codes and they resell those and things like that. All of these things happen and they game like VC funded startups, make a lot of money on those apps, you know and do all those things. So people are smart, they just don't like, not everyone gets crypto or like they still are a bit afraid because to operate in this ecosystem you actually you'll have to come down to the internet with money. 99% people don't come down to the internet with money. They want to be able to navigate. They pay once for internet and that's all that they want to do. They might not even want to pay for subscriptions, but the ones that really get it, they're already involved. They're getting involved rather quickly.

Citizen Cosmos:
I think the reason in my head, at least personally, that I'm so fascinated with what does India think, even though I'm an anarchist, right? And I don't like the whole concept of countries and that, but why India fascinates me personally is because in my opinion, India with the diversity of its languages and communities is actually the closest example to a centralisedly run, decentralised country. The amount of cultures and languages and nations inside of India is exactly that example of loads of decentralized societies

Citizen Cosmos:
that came over years and thousands of generations of rules of under different mandates, regardless if it was Chinese or English or Mongolian or whatever, to exist what it exists today. And I think we can, by looking at India... in the decentralized world learn a little bit of what to do correctly and what mistakes we can expect already because India, with its being all those great cultural examples that are, like you said yourself, many things could have been better.

Citizen Cosmos:
Everything could be

Citizen Cosmos:
better. And I think that's why I'm so fascinated with India because I'm fascinated with decentralization. I think it's a very good example of decentralization in India. It's interesting.

Sistla:
Nice.

Citizen Cosmos:
And I'm not talking about on the national level of the national government. I'm talking about, you know, those

Citizen Cosmos:
communities inside of India. And yes,the people, the real people, the real people, not the government.

Sistla:
Correct. There's a famous tweet by, I mean, I know that tweet, I remember it, by Balaji Srinivasan. He's pretty active in the,

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes,

Sistla:
yes,

Citizen Cosmos:
of course.

Sistla:
right. So, Balaji says, I'm bullish on Indians, not on India. That changed

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
the perspective quite a lot

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
for a lot of

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
people. And they wanted

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
people to be bullish on India

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
as a narrative. The current Prime Minister also does... push that quite a lot. Our state government also encourages technology, innovation. The place where I am, we have Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon's largest data center, Microsoft's largest warehouse, Microsoft's largest data center, multiple other banks, tech companies. All of these are there. And this was like a result of like, say 30, 40 years of, I'd say, not planning. people could not have planned for this, but they were prepared for this. Where like they've doubled down, tripled down on education. They, they just like focused on the most basic things like education, infra and that like that led the long way into like, you know, being this, uh, I'll say, I'll say like powerhouse or like an influx of people because like people got people ready and they didn't know what, what they would all do. But people got ready for something

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm-hmm.

Sistla:
that they wanted to do. Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
I think I would carry on ... sentence here. I would say I'm bullish on people, not on governments. So, you know,

Sistla:
Yes.

Citizen Cosmos:
this is what I think. I'm not bullish on governments, I'm bullish on people.

Sistla:
Okay.

Citizen Cosmos:
But wait, man, let's get back to you and not inside of my anti-governmental head. Wait. Now, let's talk a little bit about Omniflex. But before

Sistla:
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
that... I'm going to play devil's advocate. I'm a content creator,

Sistla:
Yes.

Citizen Cosmos:
so I'm not just a content creator, but I'm primarily a content creator, but my next question is going to be very devil's advocate. A lot of people, especially considering that the blockchain world is, can be argued to still today be a highly technological universe space for people who are coders and yourself, you know, you're coming from a computer science background. So there is a lot of people out there. And the reason I'm asking you that, we still haven't touched on Omniflex too much, but Omniflex is a platform for content creators and for communities. We will talk about it in more in a second, but first the question. Some people in crypto still today, and I understand where it's coming from, but I want to hear your opinion. They see content creation and value as not exactly in the same league. So people say, oh, you're just a YouTuber or, oh, you're just,

Citizen Cosmos:
I don't know, a designer or, you know, you're just a meme guy. And what do you, what would you say to that? What would you, how would you reflect on that sentence? What is it? Does it, why, why content creation? I mean, why did you decide to build a platform around communities?

Sistla:
Yeah, I mean, this is the backbone of the internet. Like without a community, like your, whatever you build is like almost like however smart, however, you know, effective it might be. Like, you know, it just can't like sustain. Microsoft had all the resources,

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
Linux had the community, they now power 98% of world servers. Like that is what I see as community. And you know, for the people that don't believe... I don't know like where you'll publish this, but I'll ask them to f off, right? Like I don't care because like being able to like articulate what you innovate is the most important skill set that an innovator can have. Like even though his innovation might not be the best, you know, if he can articulate if he or she can articulate that very well, you know, they can then present that idea generations later like how you're using Tesla's concepts, you know, right now. Probably if Tesla would have had a better, you know, I don't know. people that helped him communicate, you know, that made sure to, you know, be in those like power circles and things like that, world would have been different now. So it is probably, you know, like, yeah, these are some of the reasons like I personally think content creation is also creation from scratch. I am not a creator myself, but I can't appreciate creators enough. Like beat anyone like create someone that creates a meme is, is actually putting together multiple perspectives into one static image without writing like thousand words and then presenting it like what like what better can it get right

Citizen Cosmos:
Yeah.

Sistla:
it's a unit of thought

Citizen Cosmos:
Yeah.

Sistla:
like a meme

Citizen Cosmos:
Yeah.

Sistla:
is like a unit of thought it represents a fraction of thought so right from the smallest possible unit to like macro things like a video like a live stream you know all of these are like important like we we went to cosmos 2022 but like cosmos 2021 We were doing it offline, from India. And we heard people, there were people that came up to us and said OmniFlix, you're doing a great job this year, but last year, due to those live streams I really was motivated to come down to Cosmo Awards and this is my first ever IRL event. I shared that this was my first IRL event as well, from a Cosmo standpoint. I couldn't have been more excited and we are very glad that we could present all that was happening to the world outside because you know, like that is the power of that live stream. The same is the case with, you know, your podcast or a video, you know, something is happening in the Celestia ecosystem. How will Ethereum people know they don't follow GitHub? They don't probably care about, you know, the team or the company or the community of Celestia, but one idea that someone has that an effective thread can communicate is far, far, far more effective than You know, right? Like building a kick-ass app that no one utilizes. So, yeah. That's my thought.

Citizen Cosmos:
Thank you for saying that because it correlates personally with our mission at Citizen Cosmos. And our mission is to bridge layer zero with layer zero being the community.

Citizen Cosmos:
And this is what I refer to as layer zero.

Citizen Cosmos:
And I think that no matter how many L1s, L2s, L3s, L27s we build,

Citizen Cosmos:
of the day, until AI replaces all of us, we're still here and we need to communicate. And blockchain is a communication tool. And somebody needs to bridge that. And this is what, what, and it's fascinating by the way, you know, I'm going to give you, I'm sorry, but I have to give you this example because it happened to me yesterday,

Sistla:
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
um, the, the power of semantics, the power of what words mean to us, you know, I live in, in, in, in an island and people here speak Portuguese

Sistla:
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
and, um, I, I, I am learning Portuguese and you know, I've learned one phrase, of course I'm learning from, from, from my girlfriend, you

Sistla:
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
know. And, you know, she teaches me, of course, sometimes funny things, sometimes a bit, you know, not, not, not good to say, you know,

Sistla:
That's

Citizen Cosmos:
not,

Sistla:
how

Citizen Cosmos:
not,

Sistla:
you learn a

Citizen Cosmos:
but

Sistla:
language.

Citizen Cosmos:
at, but I realized, but, but it is, but what I realized about semantics, man, was a very powerful thing. I was, I was, I was, we were at, at, at a barbecue with our friends. It was a couple of days ago yesterday or the day before yesterday. And, um, they were kids there and they were saying that sentence,

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
which is just. There is no swear words in it. It's just using normal words. But because I learned it in a way which my brain memorized

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
it as used, you know, in a kind of funny, like adult way

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
to me, even with the kids were saying that I was like, oh my God, why am I thinking this is like wrong? You know, my brain is makes that stupid connection. And this is the power of semantics,

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
how powerful words can

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
be, you know, like boom. It's like,

Sistla:
Exactly.

Citizen Cosmos:
wow, crazy, man, crazy.

Sistla:
100 percent.

Citizen Cosmos:
Let me ask you something about Omniflix

Sistla:
Hehehe

Citizen Cosmos:
man. What is the mission of Omniflix? I want to know what is in your opinion, in your opinion, what is the mission of Omniflix?

Sistla:
So it is pretty simple, right? Sovereign publishing platforms are a sovereign way for you to manage, distribute, and monetize your content. And this is pretty fixed. It might sound too vague or it might sound as if it is a larger than life mission. Yes, it can be, but sometimes it's not as well. Because. You know, we've seen platforms like WordPress grow. We've seen what YouTube does, does even now, did earlier, the total amount of revenue that they take. And this is also again, like Google AdWords revenue, right? And you know, all of these things, like when we see how all these systems, when we saw how all these systems function, we appreciated them for various reasons. We also did not like a few ways in which they operated. And we felt that, you know, Working on Omniflix will help us improve that. And we found our community in the blockchain ecosystem. We already did this. We were working on this even without blockchain. We were helping teams or organizations manage their content, distribute it effectively, get the right word out at the right time, and be able to monetize that effectively so that all they can do is just create content and still survive. But it was all in a web two centric way. When it came to web three, there was this additional super part that we felt was part of web three infrastructure, which is sovereignty and Cosmos like displays demonstrates that like no other technology, piece of infra. So, you know, hence utilizing Cosmos, like I'll say, being able to provide those sovereign management distribution publishing and monetization platforms, you know, is at the core of what we're doing at OmniFlix. So. If you complete this in say 10 years, I'm very happy to like say, let this, I won't say let this go, but if at some point in time, there is someone better or if there are like, you know, better people that can do this and take the mission even further, like nothing like it, right? So this is what we are aiming for. And, you know, we want to make sure that, you know, over a period of time, this infrastructure is built at various levels, right? For a small creative. to a larger organization that deals only with media, to an organization that doesn't even care about media. So all of them should have the tools. And you know, if they're all on a level playing field, like how the internet changes things, like I think a lot of things will change.

Citizen Cosmos:
I absolutely agree with you and hope that it is what it's going to be. I was in Lisbon during the blockchain week and I interviewed people from Chorus One, from Steakfish, I don't remember if P2P was on that. No, I don't think so. But there was are successful founders within the Web3

Citizen Cosmos:
world and beyond it. You know, some of them,

Citizen Cosmos:
definitely those numbers can be taken into the real world. You know, and I was asking all of them the same or a similar set of questions. And one of them was, and this is what I'm going to ask you as

Citizen Cosmos:
well. Of course, Omniflix is still young, but I want to ask that anyways, because you don't have to think only about Omniflix. The question was more or less this. Do you think that what you are building and doing... Okay, but not from a high point, but do you

Citizen Cosmos:
really

Citizen Cosmos:
think that people out there, you know, with everyday lives, you know, because, you know, we are all we all live in a different parts of the world and you yourself, you know, I, you know, how it can be,

Citizen Cosmos:
you know, you know, how it can get.

Citizen Cosmos:
Unfortunately, do you think that we are here, all of us and of course, not just we because it's about you today. But do you think what you are building will really help people? Will it really solve something for them in their everyday life? Will they even care about that? Why, you know, do you think that this is something that is realistic, what I'm saying, for them to care about that?

Sistla:
Yeah, like actually good question. Like if we would have built for everyone, like we would have failed on day one or like day 100 or day 1000. Here we are not building for everyone. Like that's why I think, I personally think even in the Web3 space, or I don't know, like even in the cosmos, some people might not really understand what we are talking but at the same time, like the ones that actually talk to us that actually are feeling this problem or you know, will have this problem in the future, they see like. true potential in what we're building. So I'll say this is for a subset of people that are actually looking to create, like manage, distribute and monetize content. And for all the consumers out there, right? These tools will help them see like better content, you know, help them manage. So I've known like, you know, open source projects that died, you know, too many tokens like in the crypto space, like Web 3 space that, you know,

Sistla:
did not like make it. I hope we are not one of them, at least like that's what we're working towards. But regardless of our Web3 side of things, what are we doing on the media tech side of things? This can be reused by any community, Web2, Web3, even in the future, if there is any other community. We're pretty sure that these frameworks will help them utilize. So this is like an algorithm, but scaled to a framework, which will enable people to implement in any language. I mean, just letting you know about that analogy. But you know, in our case, like I'm I perfectly or rather I, I believe 100% that what do we do, whether we are able to distribute that in the best possible way or not, we are 100% sure that this will this can be used and we'll identify distribution channels, not just in us or like, you know, our team or like Omniflix community or something like that. But we'll identify distribution channels to make this work. Because until that day, I don't think our work has ended. Just building something and praying that people will use it makes no sense. And for people to actually find value, they'll have to know how Omniflix infrastructure can add value. So, yeah, I believe that this will be used whether or not like Web3. And Web3 is making sure that we incentivize the right people, we align incentives to the right stakeholders. That is what we're probably utilizing the Web3 layer or the Web3... Yeah, the Web3 layer for to be able to align incentives to the right people. Because like, you know, you can run a live stream, whether or not Web3 infra, you can run a server, whether or not a Akash net you can run. Yeah. You can do all of these things. Like, I don't know, right? Like without the blockchain, you could sell art, but why NFTs? So, you know, all of these things put together, like are. Like are shaping up content as we know. And like this infrastructure we believe is the first step in like, you know, Enabling people run their own like, you know media studio Why should only at times or like whoever it is like a BBC or a Fox should run an empire, right? There are hundreds of thousands

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
of independent creators that have like far more Content like quantity and we never know quality because we don't see it on those channels, right? So that is something that we are aiming for him, you know, we believe this is like outlast whatever we're doing And specifically web 3 or not You know, this would still be something that we would be up to. No. Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
I think Joe Rogan, by the way, is a great proof to what you say, right? I mean, Joe Rogan per average has... I'm a bit scared to get the numbers wrong right now, so please don't quote me on that, anyone. But if I'm not mistaken, on average, Joe Rogan has two to three times more viewers per episode than CNN News or Fox News or anyone else. So what is mainstream media?

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
That is a good

Sistla:
Ha

Citizen Cosmos:
question.

Sistla:
ha ha ha ha ha, yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
Who is the mainstream?

Sistla:
Exactly.

Citizen Cosmos:
So, but it's cool and it's proof to what you say that it's working, man. Absolutely. So, and, and hopefully more and more creators, not just Joe Rogan with kudos to his work, you know, can, can achieve that with the help of a three, man. I have an uncomfortable question for you about OmniFlix.

Citizen Cosmos:
Um, it's not uncomfortable really. It's devil's advocate question, but you know, um, we are in the content creation business now. I'm joking. I'm joking. I know that way. Um.

Citizen Cosmos:
About Omniflix and USD, you know, there was a lot of talk about Omniflix and, you know, using prices and quoting prices in USD and in some, why USD? Why peg things to the USD, man?

Sistla:
Ha ha ha.

Citizen Cosmos:
Why not use peg things to Atom? I don't know.

Sistla:
Correct. So the thing was that like, you know, threefold.

Citizen Cosmos:
haha

Sistla:
I'll give you a three, like three point answer to this. First, like

Citizen Cosmos:
Please.

Sistla:
we were already

Citizen Cosmos:
Please.

Sistla:
like going ahead and like displaying NFT listings in whatever they were listed in, say Atom or Osmo, Juno, Huawei, KT. So these were the listings that were supported. Now what happened was like people wanted first something stable, which we could not offer if we didn't support a stable coin. And at this point in time, like we were too afraid to like, you know, say support bridge tokens, you know, Luna, USD, Bridgehacks

Sistla:
and everything else afterwards. You know, we only wanted to like support native tokens, you know, that was like another point. But that didn't help because like people could not like plan for, you know, specific things if they didn't see values in USD. So, and the other fact was that because of too many tokens. We were like collectors were not able to like list or not list but like do their research or do their due diligence and identify an NFT or you know yeah an NFT that was listed uh you know because they had to like navigate between multiple tokens and so on so forth so the common denominator right now is USD where the price is shown in USD but is still listed in Atom and going forward We aim

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm-hmm.

Sistla:
to integrate other currencies as well, where we are seeing traffic from. We do see traffic from Europe, we do see traffic from actually Africa as well, but that traffic is again, it's like too many currencies to support, so we did not take that initiative. Even in the, even like I'll say the Euro specific traffic, we did not think or consider supporting Euro at this point in time. But with demand, we are very open. The same applies for multiple other currencies, like the Korean won or Japanese yen is also something that, like a community. There are creators that spread the word about their collections in Japan. They have their community sorted. Now, the same is the case with China as well. But in our case, we just went ahead with USD because people could filter everything and like... quickly access but we have no affinity towards USD like everyone you know if there is demand for USDC you know we'll 100% go and add that we've had that demand like people asked but we did not like you know we were like too anxious to support a bridge token right now and you know like revoke support and things like that later so you know never got to supporting USDC or AXL USDC but like actually we are connected with Axlar like relaying technically connected with Axlar and You know, we also like bridged AXL-USDC into the Omniflix ecosystem. NFTs can be listed in AXL-USDC even now and transactions can happen. We just did not go down that route to support it yet.

Citizen Cosmos:
It makes sense to be honest that the visibility isn't something

Citizen Cosmos:
people are used to. I totally understand

Sistla:
Yeah,

Citizen Cosmos:
that.

Sistla:
because like,

Citizen Cosmos:
It was

Sistla:
no,

Citizen Cosmos:
more of a devil's advocate question to understand.

Sistla:
no, like, like you like we have Chihuahua being supported, for example, and say 99,000 Chihuahua or something that the NFTs listed for, you know, doesn't pop up in like a low to high search, you know, or a filter or a sort and things like that. But, you know, if you end up saying five or ten or twenty dollars, you know, it's easy for all those NFTs. And you know, it's clear that as soon as someone like start like clicks on collect, they see the token that the native token that the NFT is listed in. So it's not like we are hiding that token completely, the details, but just like using USD as a common denominator.

Citizen Cosmos:
I can tell you by a secret that when we were building Golos in 2016, the fork of Steemit, we were doing the same thing.

Sistla:
Mmmmmmmmm

Citizen Cosmos:
We had an internal currency, but the prices were shown

Sistla:
Hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
to the people either in dollars or in rubles or in euros. So they chose, we were doing exactly the same thing you guys are doing and that is the correct way. I was just wondering, in my opinion, at least I was wondering like how does it work behind the background.

Sistla:
I mean, I have a... sorry, sorry. Like, I have a quick question.

Citizen Cosmos:
No go

Sistla:
Sure,

Citizen Cosmos:
on

Sistla:
sure,

Citizen Cosmos:
sorry sorry no no no go on go on please please

Sistla:
sure.

Citizen Cosmos:
please go on Please

Sistla:
I have a question for you then. Like, if we... like, in future, we'll build

Citizen Cosmos:
Oh.

Sistla:
Omniflix TV where people can like publish VOD videos, like live sessions can run and so on and so forth. If someone wants to tip, right? How is it... like, how do you want people to tip? Do you want people to tip? say 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 dollars or do you want them to tip one or two Atom?

Citizen Cosmos:
I think it's not about, I will answer from a very, I will try to be very objective.

Sistla:
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
I think it's important that those tips will be in crypto. And I think one of the main reasons is to avoid any bureaucratic issues, because when you're tipping the person in dollars or in

Sistla:
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
euros, you kind of playing around with bureaucratic issues that there is no need to play

Sistla:
Hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
with.

Sistla:
Mmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
Luckily for us today, that doesn't mean anybody for anything. So anybody can accept cryptocurrencies, like accepting,

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
you know, because some content creators, not

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
us, particularly, but some content creators, they stick with legalities.

Sistla:
Mmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
And I totally respect and understand that it's their choice.

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
I will not be the one to tell them no, but especially for them, you know, instead of going through the whole process of accepting dollars as tips and making money

Sistla:
Thank you.

Citizen Cosmos:
in that. They can say, well, I'm accepting whatever, whatever, not to slug them off, but you know, it's not regulated by anyone. So when it's like that, it's already then up to them whether or not and what they do with it. But at least it will save. At least this is how I see it. Now I might be totally wrong,

Sistla:
No,

Citizen Cosmos:
but that would be my

Sistla:
no, no.

Citizen Cosmos:
opinion.

Sistla:
I mean like 99% we won't support fiat. The thing is that like if they'll have to like choose, so you can imagine it to be like this. They'll anyways like consider that they'll anyways tip in crypto. But the first screen

Citizen Cosmos:
Uh huh.

Sistla:
that they see, like as soon as they hit tip, the options that are presented to them might look like $5, $10, $50 or $100. As soon

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm-hmm.

Sistla:
as

Citizen Cosmos:
Ah,

Sistla:
you

Citizen Cosmos:
okay,

Sistla:
click

Citizen Cosmos:
okay, okay, okay.

Sistla:
on

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm-hmm.

Sistla:
five. It might ask you for say atom or Flix or whatever, and then like send it to your address. But do you want to see the USD value or do you want people to see a crypto tokens directly?

Citizen Cosmos:
Now, again, if you're asking me, Citizen Cosmos, I would say I would like to see the

Sistla:
crypto.

Citizen Cosmos:
crypto values, but I'm assuming and trying to be objective that I think that for a lot of people that would be uncomfortable. The reason I say crypto is because my personal goal in life and also with Citizen Cosmos is to try to... to make things better, to build a better world. And I think one of the problems is fiat currencies. And I think

Sistla:
Mmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
the more we educate the world about the existence of other things, the more people will accept it. But with that, I'm objective. And I think that that might be very uncomfortable

Sistla:
I'm

Citizen Cosmos:
for a

Sistla:
sorry.

Citizen Cosmos:
lot of people. So I'm assuming that people would prefer seeing... But you can overplay it. You could overplay it very easily by in the settings of an account,

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
let's say a person has the settings. And they could choose the default currency and somebody could choose seeing in Bitcoin, somebody in dollars, somebody in atom. And then everybody gets to see the customization they want to see. Right.

Sistla:
Correct, correct. At this point in time, it is like that default is tokens. So to the top right corner of the market place, you hit what is like a toggle between USD and tokens. And then only then you'll see values in USD because like sometimes people don't think in USD. Okay. Like crypto folks, Web3 folks, they

Citizen Cosmos:
Yeah,

Sistla:
think in USD, but yeah, I

Citizen Cosmos:
I

Sistla:
mean

Citizen Cosmos:
don't.

Sistla:
like the prices and all

Citizen Cosmos:
don't

Sistla:
are usually.

Citizen Cosmos:
man I think in ether I think in ether and

Sistla:
Oh

Citizen Cosmos:
atom

Sistla:
yeah, of course, of course. You know like NFTs are not thought of in dollars. People would like, you know people would go crazy if they think of NFTs in dollars. Yeah, they'll probably think of them in ETH or you know like the native token, you know, Flix or any other token.

Citizen Cosmos:
Sometimes I look at the price of things in the shopping mall and I'm like, that costs 0.1 ether. Are you guys serious? Like I would not pay like 0.1

Sistla:
It's

Citizen Cosmos:
ether for that, you know? Oh man, I'm serious though. I'm like that when I'm crazy

Sistla:
No,

Citizen Cosmos:
when

Sistla:
no,

Citizen Cosmos:
it

Sistla:
no,

Citizen Cosmos:
comes to that.

Sistla:
you're absolutely right. This is what happens to us as well.

Citizen Cosmos:
It's okay. It's

Sistla:
Yeah,

Citizen Cosmos:
okay.

Sistla:
yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Citizen Cosmos:
It's normal. Sistla, man, the Blitz. Let's get into it. I have three questions for you. So first one. give me a three projects

Sistla:
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
that are interest you technologically. They don't have to be crypto projects.

Sistla:
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Cosmos:
It could be any project in the world, something three things that interest you as projects technologically.

Sistla:
Okay, like there are these GANs, like video AI GANs that I'm personally, I was fascinated with them since like 2016-17 when the first set of research came out. Even now it hasn't like fully materialized but you can imagine a text to video, you know, that can be created but you know like well done, right? Like and those, like those GANs like Generative Adversarial Neural Networks, they have been like evolving. quite a lot in the last five years. I'm like as research, I'm like personally bullish on that because I personally think that it will solve like a lot of problems, not just in the media space but also outside like for cellular biology research. You know, it can be anything because these are all like thousands of frames under a microscope and you put them together to form what is like a video, all these frames and then you do your analysis, like go ahead with your analysis. So these are things that like. Like this fascinated me quite a lot. Been following that research. Of course, did not build anything myself. But you know, I've been following the research and you know, quite bullish on that as a tech. Right? Like GANs. And you know, specially GANs in media. Right? So... That is one. Hahaha! I should say I'm like... I really like Celestia.

Citizen Cosmos:
Next one.

Sistla:
Yeah. I really like Celestia for what they're doing.

Citizen Cosmos:
Okay.

Sistla:
And you know, I... I... Like I believe I'm... I'll say like I don't know, aligned or I like what the founders also think of, how they present things and you know,

Citizen Cosmos:
I understand.

Sistla:
yeah, like I like what is happening there,

Citizen Cosmos:
I understand.

Sistla:
right? So that is like, you know, from a crypto native standpoint and you know, something like technology, internet technology and crypto native, but moving out of like internet as a whole, right? I really like companies that have huge distribution channels that build their distribution channels from the ground up. There is a company in India, it's called IDC, they are extremely massive. I can't compare it with any other company. It's like a Philip Morris plus a Marriott plus Stedler plus a few companies put together. It's like a public... private corporation. It started like way earlier but their distribution channels are like extremely unique and I've seen that strategy get implemented time and again. I mean in the internet realm they're called growth hacks, but you know they exist in the real world too and you know, yeah, I'm like personally, you know, like I really like what they're doing I'm not like probably a fan of the company or whatever IDC stands for like Indian Tobacco Corporation. So they sell cigarettes but they're like massive and you know their distribution goes as Like further than any government right like any yeah You get you get IDC products in like the remote remotest parts of India Right and that is a strategy that has like and to be able to get there They used a lot of strategies and there are like quite a lot of case studies as well So, you know, I'm like extremely bullish on you know companies that identify their distribution channels and build them double down and build them. So, you know, yeah, that is, you know, those are three things that I'm like, personally bullish on.

Citizen Cosmos:
That was a surprise. I liked, I loved that answer, by the way, by the way, this is a very good answer. Thank you. The last part, fantastic man.

Sistla:
Thank you.

Citizen Cosmos:
Um, second question, it gave me two motivational things that you in your daily life that exists

Citizen Cosmos:
that keeps Sistla building, um, not just Omniflix, but keep Sistla going. Keep Sistla trying, you know, to, to uphold the values that you were talking about. And, you know, Just getting on with your daily life. What are those two things that help you keep going?

Sistla:
I mean, if I have to talk about like the zero index in the array, like array my zero, like the first thing, I'll answer that, you know, it is the people around me that, you know, yeah,

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm-hmm.

Sistla:
and this might be like common, but I personally, like I have like friends that I've known like our friends since like... the last say 15 years, 10 years, like over a decade is like pretty common. What does that mean? Like that means that did I not make any new friends in the last few years? Obviously not. Like I did make friends, but at a personal level, you connect with a few people. And you know, that, if that is like one, I read a quote when I was in 12th on a college prospectus, like an admission test that I had to take, and that like changed the way I saw things. Like. I do not know, it was by Aristotle or Plato or Socrates, one of these guys. And the quote goes like this, you are what you do repeatedly, therefore excellence is not an act but a habit. That was mind blowing to me. I don't know why, those set of words, they just changed the way I saw things and from then on, it was a long game. I never did anything for the short term, fortunately. Like even now if you look at like how I do not know like Omniflix operates, none of the things that we do are like short term in nature. So like that, like that has changed the way I saw things. Right and that has led me to being able to like, you know, be at be like excellent. That is not a destination but a journey. So I'm aware of that. But you know, I just do my best personally and I try to push everyone else. to do their best. So you know sometimes people like me for that like sometimes they don't but at the same time you know end of the day like when everyone sees that output like the way actually is meant to be everyone is happy they'll forget all their worries like all the effort all the sacrifices that they made and seeing that in action seeing that get to life is like you know mesmerizing you know personally for me so I like that is another quote that I live by and Of course, like I said before, creating things that do not exist, that definitely motivates me. And creating things that don't exist, not just means new tech, but a new way of doing things. Auctions existed, internet existed, then came eBay, and then Amazon took over eBay, and then XYZ happened. So, combination of two things can lead to far more, it can be far more effective. The results can be exponential. These are the things that I think, you know, like, I'm motivated by. Like no one has asked me this question. So I had to think, but if you ask me quickly, like these are the things that I think I'm like, uh, you know, yeah, pretty inspired, take inspiration from.

Citizen Cosmos:
curiosity, exploration, I think it's what makes us intelligent. By the way, it's an Aristotle quote, but

Sistla:
Uh...

Citizen Cosmos:
I know that there's a story behind that quote that they say that it wasn't really Aristotle who said it, it was somebody who was trying to explain it and the Aristotle quote was similar, but it's an Aristotle if I'm not

Sistla:
Ah,

Citizen Cosmos:
mistaken.

Sistla:
okay.

Citizen Cosmos:
Last one,

Sistla:
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
A writer doesn't matter. It could be a cartoon character. It could be a github person

Sistla:
He he.

Citizen Cosmos:
you follow could be you Anyone in the world and it doesn't they don't have to be real that inspires you doesn't influence you but inspires you

Sistla:
Hmmmmmmmmmmm So, No, I do not know. Like, I think inspiration from my dad is good. Okay. I mean, I should say I do not know because, you know, I have been inspired equally from what, say, a Bill Gates did or what a Steve Jobs did, you know, like like a few things and do not like a few things. I mean very hard. Like, yeah, like that role

Citizen Cosmos:
It's okay,

Sistla:
model type,

Citizen Cosmos:
you don't have to answer.

Sistla:
I mean that persona in my head doesn't exist, but although it exists, like it's a combination of different personas. So, you know, quite a lot of people, like I've read, I've got into reading biographies, I don't read fiction, I read like, sorry, sorry, I don't read

Citizen Cosmos:
Mm.

Sistla:
fiction. I only read non-fiction. Yeah,

Citizen Cosmos:
Fiction.

Sistla:
right? And biographies are pretty interesting because, Those are like real stories that happened and like how people like, I don't know, in some sense, like overcame some of those difficulties, you know, thought about perspectives that people didn't. So, you know, in that sense, the most common, you know, inspirations would be like role models in that sense would be the people that like that invented created things like, you know, the, the, the steam engine, the cars, the industries, you know, the automotive. You know, like, yeah, things like that and the internet electricity. So these inspired me. Like I cannot like name names, like too many to name, like Linus Torvalds, like creator of Linux. Like he inspired me as well, in some sense that, you know, he proved that like at 20 you could do anything and that could change the world in like 10 years. And, you know, that was actually something that we had, like we needed, you know, because as, as a kid, I never saw someone that changed things like in front of my eyes, right? Like for real. I heard stories, I always knew history was corrupted by the people that wrote history. But

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
all these things put together,

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
we had to have those validations, those real examples. I found the internet to be inspiring enough. I could see the bad as well. I found Bitcoin for other reasons. But at the same time, internet as a whole has inspired me quite a lot. Sorry for the long answer and not like a straightforward answer. But

Citizen Cosmos:
It's

Sistla:
yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
beautiful. It's beautiful, man. I love answers like that. I love the answers like that. And by the way, I think it was Isaac Kazimov, right? Who said that the most dangerous weapon in his history

Sistla:
Hahaha!

Citizen Cosmos:
invented. It's not the will

Sistla:
Yeah!

Citizen Cosmos:
or machine gun. It's history. Whoever controls history controls all of

Sistla:
Yeah,

Citizen Cosmos:
the universe.

Sistla:
yeah, yeah.

Citizen Cosmos:
It's interesting. Sistla man, it's been a huge pleasure to finally record with you. Really is really has. I'm glad too that we are finally connected. And thank you very much, man, for your answers.

Sistla:
No, thank you. Thank you for those questions. Like I personally had to like think a lot before when I said anything. And this was, yeah, like before, like off record also, we talked about, you know, maybe me and like, you know, talking about these things. I definitely was myself during all of this interview and, you know, pretty glad. I'm like really, really glad that we got on together. And after all these years of hearing Citizen Cosmos. Now I get to hear

Citizen Cosmos:
Yes.

Sistla:
myself on Spotify

Citizen Cosmos:
Yay!

Sistla:
and all the other distribution channels. So thank you for having

Citizen Cosmos:
Thank

Sistla:
me.

Citizen Cosmos:
you. Thank you man, and thanks everybody for listening. Thanks, bye. Bye.

If you would like to support our mission in creating educational content and aligning the goals of different communities, please stake with us here:

Join our community, to build a future where communication is decentralized. May the code be with you!