Web3 CMO Stories

Joeri Billast

Web3 CMO Stories is the podcast for marketing leaders and founders building in the next web, where blockchain, AI and immersive technology meet. Every week, host Joeri Billast sits down with founders, CMOs and thought leaders to unpack how brands grow visibility and trust when technology rewrites the rules. No hype and no jargon: clear, strategic conversations in a language business leaders outside the tech bubble understand. With more than 300 episodes since 2022, the show ranks in the top 5% of podcasts globally according to Listen Notes. Guests include Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Do, Mark Schaefer, Joe Pulizzi and Ben Goertzel of SingularityNET. Joeri is a Fractional CMO, AI Visibility Strategist, TEDx speaker and author of The Future CMO, endorsed by Philip Kotler. Sponsored by CoinDesk (2024), RYO (2025-2026) and Metricool (2026). Featured in Cryptopolitan. "One of the sharpest marketing shows running right now." Matt Wilkinson, Founder of Strivenn Articles and transcripts: The Future CMO Library, webdrie.net About Joeri: joeribillast.com

  1. 5d ago

    Michael Jordan at SBC Summit: Authenticity, Focus and the Future of Business | S6 E42

    Send us Fan Mail Hundreds of phones went up in the MEO Arena the moment Michael Jordan stepped on stage at SBC Summit, and what followed was far more useful than a typical sports business talk. We walk through the sharpest ideas from that conversation with Jordan, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, and Sportradar CEO Carsten Koerl, then translate them into real-world lessons for marketing leadership, brand strategy, and building companies in uncertain markets. We start with a principle that gets more important the easier content becomes to produce: authenticity before visibility. AI can generate assets, platforms can amplify them, and paid media can push them everywhere, but none of that creates credibility if the connection is forced. From there we move to focus and control. When modern business drowns us in dashboards, attribution, predictions, and AI analysis, the edge is knowing what you can influence and putting your energy there. We also unpack a tension many executives and creators feel right now: personal branding can strengthen a company, but it can also quietly compete with the team objective if it drifts away from the strategy. Robins brings the strategic centerpiece: stop trying to predict one future and start building option value. That mindset maps directly onto AI adoption, where nobody truly knows which models, agent platforms, or workflows will win. Koerl pushes the AI conversation beyond efficiency into innovation, showing why “write faster” is less interesting than “build what was impossible before.” We close on the most human takeaway: data improves judgment, but it never deletes uncertainty, and great leaders still act without perfect information. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who leads a team, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. This episode was recorded at SBC Summit (Lisbon) on Sep 29, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/michael-jordan-at-sbc-summit-authenticity-focus-and-the-future-of-business/ ..........................................................................  📘 Read The Future CMO: Amazon  👥 Join the Future CMO Community  🌿 Explore Sintra Synergies Retreat  💼 Connect on LinkedIn ..........................................................................

    Michael Jordan at SBC Summit: Authenticity, Focus and the Future of Business | S6 E42
  2. Sep 24

    How Stablecoins And On-Chain Credit Are Going Mainstream | S6 E41

    Send us Fan Mail Crypto doesn’t have a technology problem, it has a translation problem. Most people outside the space hear one word and mentally bundle everything together, from Bitcoin to meme coins to Ethereum, then assume it’s all the same risk. I sit down with DeFi Dave, Head of Growth at CAP and a longtime DeFi educator, to break that framing and rebuild it with clear categories, simple analogies, and practical takeaways founders can use right now. We explore why on-chain finance is in a real metamorphosis: stablecoins are becoming more institutional and more “TradFi-like,” while tokenised stocks and stock tokens are pulling liquidity and experimentation back toward the wild energy of early DeFi. Dave explains stablecoins in the most useful way I’ve heard: like PayPal or Venmo balances, except on a public network with many counterparties verifying balances. That shift changes everything for product design, marketing, and adoption because the winning stablecoin UX makes the blockchain disappear. Then we go deep on on-chain credit. Dave outlines CAP’s approach with funded underwriters who post collateral, do diligence, and take penalties when risk is mispriced, aiming to solve the incentive issues that have made lending markets blow up again and again. We also cover regulation (what the Genius Act clarifies, what lending still lacks), macro conditions like rates and liquidity, and why rising markets can trick teams into believing they found product-market fit. Finally, we get into “lore building,” where the community writes the story and the company acts as the shepherd, plus how to stand out when AI makes content flat and abundant. This episode was recorded through a Descript call on September 9, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/how-stablecoins-and-on-chain-credit-are-going-mainstream If you care about stablecoins, DeFi lending, on-chain credit, crypto marketing, and building trust at scale, this conversation will sharpen your thinking. Subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review if you want more conversations like this. ..........................................................................  📘 Read The Future CMO: Amazon  👥 Join the Future CMO Community  🌿 Explore Sintra Synergies Retreat  💼 Connect on LinkedIn ..........................................................................

    How Stablecoins And On-Chain Credit Are Going Mainstream | S6 E41
  3. Sep 17

    Travel AI Can Automate. Can It Build Relationships? | S6 E40

    Send us Fan Mail Most travel platforms are brilliant at one thing: getting you to click “confirm.” Then the real trip starts, something goes wrong, and you’re suddenly on your own. We sit down with Vipul Doshi, a travel tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Zenvoya, to unpack why the industry optimises the booking transaction while neglecting the relationship that matters most: the full traveler journey from planning and discovery to on-trip support and disruption recovery. We dig into what changes when generative AI is treated as a personal travel assistant instead of a cost-cutting automation layer. Vipul explains why information and inventory are no longer true differentiators, and why context, intent, and judgment are becoming the new competitive edge. If an AI remembers your preferences, constraints, and past choices, it can do the hard work for you and keep improving over time, turning “personalisation” into something real rather than a template email with your name. We also explore the convergence of marketing and customer service as AI starts to deliver more of the product experience. A brand promise that sounds warm but feels cold in support destroys trust fast. That’s why values, tone, and accountability must carry through the AI layer, and why modern teams should shift metrics away from average handling time toward repeat engagement, repurchase behaviour, and customer lifetime value. If you care about AI in travel, customer experience, travel loyalty, and the future of distribution, this conversation gives you a clear framework to build with. This episode was recorded through a Descript call on September 10, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/travel-ai-can-automate-can-it-build-relationships Subscribe for more Web3 CMO Stories, share this with a frequent traveler or product leader, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show. .......................................................................... Metricool is a new official podcast partner of Web3 CMO Stories in 2026. Metricool helps marketers and creators bring structure, clarity, and consistency to their social media workflows through analytics, planning, and reporting. Listeners can try Metricool Premium for free for 30 days using the coupon code JOERI ..........................................................................  📘 Read The Future CMO: Amazon  👥 Join the Future CMO Community  🌿 Explore Sintra Synergies Retreat  💼 Connect on LinkedIn ..........................................................................

    Travel AI Can Automate. Can It Build Relationships? | S6 E40
  4. Sep 10

    From Burning a $95,000 Banksy To Building Online Trust | S6 E39

    Send us Fan Mail The web is starting to feel like a hall of mirrors. With AI cranking out endless “good enough” text, images, and video, it’s getting harder to know whether you’re reading a real fact, seeing a real person, or walking straight into a scam. That’s why I sat down with Anthony Anzalone, better known online as Burnt Banksy, to dig into a question that’s becoming impossible to ignore: how do we prove what’s real on the internet without sacrificing privacy? Anthony’s story starts with a now-famous act of digital ownership provocation: buying a $95,000 Banksy, burning it, and then selling the work as an NFT for around $400,000. From there, we trace the deeper theme behind the headline, verification. Crypto proved that when you can verify money and transactions, you can build entire new markets on top. Anthony argues the next frontier is verified information, the kind of trustworthy data that can help humans, brands, and AI systems operate without drowning in fraud, deepfakes, fake credentials, and bot traffic. We unpack how Verona (evolving from earlier infrastructure work on chain abstraction) aims to become an intelligence layer for AI agents, what an AI agent actually needs to know before we let it act on our behalf, and why zero-knowledge proofs matter for real-world privacy. We also get into the unglamorous truth about adoption: people don’t buy “blockchain,” they buy outcomes like less risk, safer onboarding, and higher trust. If you care about AI trust, identity verification, data privacy, and a future internet with less “AI slop,” you’ll get a lot out of this conversation. This episode was recorded through a Descript call on September 8, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/from-burning-a-95000-banksy-to-building-online-trust/ If the ideas resonate, subscribe for more, share this with someone who worries about online trust, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show. ..........................................................................  📘 Read The Future CMO: Amazon  👥 Join the Future CMO Community  🌿 Explore Sintra Synergies Retreat  💼 Connect on LinkedIn ..........................................................................

    From Burning a $95,000 Banksy To Building Online Trust | S6 E39
  5. Sep 3

    What Serious Web3 Investors Want | S6 E38

    Send us Fan Mail Serious Web3 capital does not chase the loudest narrative. It follows clear thinking, real adoption, and founders who can earn trust when the hype is gone. Joeri Billast sits down with Bashar Al Madhoun, CEO of Dubai’s ALMAK Group, a royal-backed global holding and investment management group chaired by Sheikh Ali bin Rashed Al Maktoum, to explore where Web3 venture capital and institutional capital are actually moving in 2026. Fresh from conversations in Kuala Lumpur and across Southeast Asia, Bashar explains why some of the most compelling opportunities are moving beyond “crypto” as a category toward practical business problems involving digital identity, ownership, payments, data infrastructure, and new collaboration models. If you are building, marketing, investing in, or fundraising for a Web3 company, this conversation breaks down what investors listen for when deciding whether a project deserves a second meeting. Bashar shares the core signals: clarity around the problem, customer, solution and business model, evidence of real adoption, and a team and leader capable of executing. We also explore the red flags that can quickly undermine an otherwise promising project, from vanity growth metrics and weak governance to unclear legal structures, poor risk management and insufficient data protection. Bashar explains why compliance can become a competitive advantage rather than friction, and why leadership, consistency and transparency about uncertainty increasingly matter in building investor trust. Joeri and Bashar then compare Dubai and Southeast Asia as Web3 ecosystems and examine the growing convergence of AI and Web3. Where does that combination create real economic value, and when is it simply two powerful narratives packaged together? Bashar also explains why AI can support investment analysis but should never replace human judgment. For founders building for the next five years rather than the next hype cycle, the message is clear: solve a focused problem, prove that people need it, and protect governance, data, IP, security and reputation from the beginning. This episode was recorded through a Descript call on September 2, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/where-serious-web3-capital-is-moving-what-investors-want-in-2026-with-bashar-al-madhoun/ ..........................................................................  📘 Read The Future CMO: Amazon  👥 Join the Future CMO Community  🌿 Explore Sintra Synergies Retreat  💼 Connect on LinkedIn ..........................................................................

    What Serious Web3 Investors Want | S6 E38
  6. Aug 27

    The AI Adoption Race Is Ending: What Michael Stelzner’s 2026 Report Means for Marketers | S6 E37

    Send us Fan Mail 73% of marketers now use AI every day, and most of us feel the boost: more speed, more output, more “done”. But one number stops me cold: only about 30% say they’re seeing significant measurable results. That gap is the signal. The big question for marketing leaders is no longer whether AI belongs in the team. It’s whether AI is making our marketing better or simply making us faster at producing more. I unpack what the 2026 AI Marketing Industry Report from Michael Stelzner and the Social Media Examiner team really means for CMOs, founders, and growth leads. We talk about why AI makes marketing activity cheap while value creation stays hard, and why the future CMO role shifts toward orchestration: connecting business goals, customer needs, marketing technology, people, and outcomes. If your AI success metric is “hours saved” or “content shipped”, we’re stopping too early. The board cares about what changes because of the work. We also explore the tension between visibility and differentiation, pulling in ideas I’ve discussed with Gary Vaynerchuk and Chris Do. AI discovery is real, and being present across formats matters, but when everyone can publish endlessly, the differentiator becomes deeply human: judgment, taste, courage, a clear point of view, and trust. With rising concerns about accuracy, reliability, data privacy, and security, trust is the one thing AI can’t scale for you. This solo episode was recorded via Descript on August 26, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/the-ai-adoption-race-is-ending-what-michael-stelzners-2026-report-means-for-marketers Subscribe to Web3 CMO Stories, share this with a marketing leader who needs it, and leave a review if it helps. What’s your honest answer right now: is AI making your marketing better or mostly faster? ..........................................................................  📘 Read The Future CMO: Amazon  👥 Join the Future CMO Community  🌿 Explore Sintra Synergies Retreat  💼 Connect on LinkedIn ..........................................................................

    The AI Adoption Race Is Ending: What Michael Stelzner’s 2026 Report Means for Marketers | S6 E37
  7. Aug 20

    Who Owns the Data Your Business Creates? | S6 E36

    Send us Fan Mail Your data is not “in the cloud” in some magical place. It is on someone else’s computer, under someone else’s rules and that changes everything once AI enters the picture. I sit down with Ehsan Darweshi (Founder and Architect at QANAT) and Georg Schmejkal (Growth lead and founding team) to unpack the real business cost of modern tooling: the quiet trade of convenience for dependency, and the growing fear that confidential work can leak, be profiled, or be used to train models you do not control. We dig into what people get wrong about data ownership in Web2, why “free” often means you pay with personal data, and how a lack of transparency erodes trust between brands and customers. Ehsan breaks down the difference between privacy and digital sovereignty using a simple metaphor: privacy is locking the door, sovereignty is being able to move freely without being watched. From there, we explore data gravity, vendor lock-in, and why switching platforms can feel impossible once your workflows and LLM learning are baked into a provider. AI makes this urgent. We talk about LLMs acting like internal employees without NDAs, risks like prompt injection, and why private AI and zero trust, zero knowledge architectures matter for companies of any size. Georg shares why digital sovereignty is now a government and enterprise priority, with lessons from a UAE roadshow, and we close with a practical, staged path for founders and marketers who rely on Google, LinkedIn, Meta, and AI platforms but still want control. This episode was recorded through a Descript call on August 4, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/who-owns-the-data-your-business-creates If you care about digital sovereignty, data privacy, private LLMs, and building long-term trust, listen now then subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it. ..........................................................................  📘 Read The Future CMO: Amazon  👥 Join the Future CMO Community  🌿 Explore Sintra Synergies Retreat  💼 Connect on LinkedIn ..........................................................................

    Who Owns the Data Your Business Creates? | S6 E36
  8. Aug 13

    Train The AI To Recommend You – with Andy Crestodina | S6 E35

    Send us Fan Mail AI is quietly rewriting the rules of marketing, not by “changing SEO” but by changing how buyers choose. When a chatbot can shortlist vendors in a single conversation, visibility is no longer the finish line. Recommendability is. I sit down with Andy Crestodina, co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media, to unpack what it takes to earn AI recommendations and what most brands are missing when they chase rankings without understanding the visitor. We get practical about how AI search optimization is really the overlap of SEO and conversion rate optimization. Andy explains why prompts are longer and more personal than classic queries, how that extra context reveals real decision criteria, and why your website still matters because it is the place you control the depth, proof, and sales answers. We also dig into why AI-sourced visitors can be far more qualified, why traffic growth is a shaky North Star, and how to stop being silently excluded by publishing the questions prospects actually ask before they will take action. Then we go deeper on content strategy in an era of infinite “average” content. Andy makes a clear case for the formats AI cannot truly replicate: thought leadership with a strong point of view and original research rooted in real data. We also talk prompt engineering maturity, from ad hoc prompts to reusable prompts to custom assistants and tools, and what separates the revenue accountable CMO from someone who just manages AI outputs. This episode was recorded through a Descript call on August 3, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/train-the-ai-to-recommend-you-with-andy-crestodina If you care about B2B marketing, lead generation, buyer intent, and building a brand that gets chosen, this one will sharpen your playbook. Subscribe, share this with a marketer who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. .......................................................................... Metricool is a new official podcast partner of Web3 CMO Stories in 2026. Metricool helps marketers and creators bring structure, clarity, and consistency to their social media workflows through analytics, planning, and reporting. Listeners can try Metricool Premium for free for 30 days using the coupon code JOERI ..........................................................................  📘 Read The Future CMO: Amazon  👥 Join the Future CMO Community  🌿 Explore Sintra Synergies Retreat  💼 Connect on LinkedIn ..........................................................................

    Train The AI To Recommend You – with Andy Crestodina | S6 E35
5
out of 5
19 Ratings

About

Web3 CMO Stories is the podcast for marketing leaders and founders building in the next web, where blockchain, AI and immersive technology meet. Every week, host Joeri Billast sits down with founders, CMOs and thought leaders to unpack how brands grow visibility and trust when technology rewrites the rules. No hype and no jargon: clear, strategic conversations in a language business leaders outside the tech bubble understand. With more than 300 episodes since 2022, the show ranks in the top 5% of podcasts globally according to Listen Notes. Guests include Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Do, Mark Schaefer, Joe Pulizzi and Ben Goertzel of SingularityNET. Joeri is a Fractional CMO, AI Visibility Strategist, TEDx speaker and author of The Future CMO, endorsed by Philip Kotler. Sponsored by CoinDesk (2024), RYO (2025-2026) and Metricool (2026). Featured in Cryptopolitan. "One of the sharpest marketing shows running right now." Matt Wilkinson, Founder of Strivenn Articles and transcripts: The Future CMO Library, webdrie.net About Joeri: joeribillast.com