# [a16z crypto css](https://az.swoogo.com/a16zcryptostartupschool/home) **Los Angeles, CA March 6 - May 26, 2023** ## 1. Begin Application ### Email Address \* jun.sugiura.jp@gmail.com ## 2. Applicant Profile ### First Name \* Junichi ### Last Name \* Sugiura ### Which of the following describes your primary skill-set(s)? Please select up to 2. \* - [x] Software Engineering - [ ] Design - [ ] Product Management - [ ] Growth - [ ] Marketing - [ ] Sales - [ ] Operations - [ ] Hardware Engineering ### Are you a technical founder (or prospective technical founder)? \* Yes ### Do you have a co-founder? If yes, you can include their bio and information at the end of the application. \* No ### Are you actively seeking a co-founder? \* Yes **Location** ### City \* Paris ### Country \* France ### What is your Twitter handle? JunichiSugiura ### What is your Github handle? JunichiSugiura ### What is your LinkedIn profile? https://www.linkedin.com/in/junichi-sugiura-74a407a1/ ### What is your Farcaster username? -- ### What is your ENS name? -- ### Other (Any other places we can discover your work) https://www.youtube.com/@junichi (in JP) ### Can you attend the program in Los Angeles if admitted? Sessions will take place Tuesday and Wednesday each week in person. \* Yes ### Where do you currently work? Company Name (or school if you're a student) \* Ledger ### Company URL? https://www.ledger.com/ ### What is your current role? \* Software Developer ### If you’d like, add any other jobs or education you want us to know about. (Positions/Majors and Dates). Please use a separate line for each job, most recent first. -- ### How did you get interested in web3? (500 chars)\* #review As a developer, I wanted to challenge bigger problems than the one simply find answers online. At the end of 2015, Ethereum caught my eyes. I prototyped software crypto wallet and I taught myself how it works along the way. I wanted to contributes to this historical paradigm shift in web technology. Eventually, it turned into a mobile web3 dapps browser like Cipher browser, Status.im at the time. That was my first startup attempt which failed quickly. Which leads to my current career at Ledger. --- NEW As a developer, I have always looked to solve difficult problems. Prior to discovering Ethereum in 2015, I was a Rails developer and was able to find solutions to my problems due to the amount of forums that existed. However when I discovered Ethereum and wallets, I was fascinated by knowledge gap and working on a frontier technology. I started to understand the codebases of Cipher Browser and Status.im and built my first Web3 startup wallet, which lead me to my current career at Ledger. ### Tell us in a few sentences about the most impressive thing you’ve built or achieved. (500 chars) \* #review In 2016, I was receiving Bitcoin for some of my work. I still had to pay my rent in fiat so I called my mom for help. We ended up setting up a Parity full node on her computer and I started sending her rent fees in ETH. She did not have any prior experience with a CLI nor crypto but she gave it a try for me. It was valuable experience helping new people adopt crypto. We had a similar session setting up ETH2 staking node later. My mom became a large advocate for crypto and Ledger products. ### Tell us about an important lesson you’ve learned through your career, hobbies, school projects, or products you’ve built. (500 chars)\* #review I was a finalist at TechCrunch Tokyo Hackathon 2015, just after one year of being a developer. We replaced restaurant queues with realtime website data and allowed users to sign up via Twilio. One of the judges told us he chose us because the idea was simple and demo just worked smoothly. It made me realise that creating a MVP demonstrates more to people and scoping is the key. In Japanese, we have a saying like "Don't tell, but behave". That has been my motto since. ## 3. Application ### Please upload a video (90 seconds or less) where you introduce yourself or your team, and explain why you want to join Crypto Startup School. Upload by providing a url to an unlisted Youtube or Vimeo video. \* #review https://youtu.be/3NpUQDFxMLU **WHO** Salut, my name is Jun. I'm a software developer at Ledger. Today, I wanna introduce my side project called dip. **WHAT** So what is dip? **dip enables you to build web3 applications across platforms including games. And it's all written in Rust.** (pause...) **WHY** Currently the most popular language is JavaScript. In fact, Ledger Live is all in TypeScript and it's been a huge success so far. However, if we are thinking five years down the line, I don't see myself writing scripting language anymore. Simply because.. - Apps are fat and slow - And most importantly, as a developer, we have less and less confidence shipping new features because the JS is fundamentally fragile language. Besides that, how do we transition from web to upcoming platforms like the metaverse? WebGL or Three.js sounds great but it's not gonna compete with Unreal Engine. Let's face it, web3 developers deserve better tooling and architecture. **HOW** So that's where dip comes in play. dip brings the best practices from game industries into web, while providing web3 SDK to gaming developers. It's based on a game engine, Our desktop plugin is already 3x faster and 20x lighter compare to popular framework like Electron and React. And with device plugin, you can already talk with Ledger wallets from 3D games. I published the first version on GitHub in May. It received 250 stars so far and it already ranked in GitHub Trending once. So this is the future I believe in. Now I simply need more time other than my weekends. I want to design the best onboarding experience for developers. Much like what Vercel or Alchemy is successfully doing these days. I hope to see you soon, ciao ! ### Which of the following best describes your product stage? \* - [ ] Interested in exploring a web3 project, not sure where to start. - [ ] Early stages of a new startup idea. - [x] Prototype/Pre-Launch - [ ] Launched ### Describe your idea in one sentence. (60 chars)\* #review Bundle Rust tools for web3 application and games ### What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to today because it doesn't exist yet? (500 chars)\* #review dip is based on a game engine called Bevy. dip brings Bevy outside of games by providing utility plugins. It also provides web3 specific plugins for Bevy gaming developers. Developers can build desktop apps, CLI tools and games in the same design pattern called Entity Component System and share components between. DesktopPlugin is a drop-in replacement for Electron and React. dip is 3x faster in speed and 20x lighter in app bundle size thanks to Rust and its ecosystem. ### Who are your competitors and why will your product be better? (500 chars)\* #review There are plenty of application frameworks in JavaScript ecosystem but they are not comparable to Rust libraries like dip. Rust binary code runs pretty much everywhere and it is magnitudes faster and lighter than any JS equivalent. Rust is a robust and safe language but also know for its steep learning curve. Bevy's Entity Component System design allows developers to code without dealing with complex concepts like lifetime and ownership. ### Why do you want to work on this? (1000 chars)\* #review I have been working on a cross-platform application at Ledger for 3 years. It was a success for us to choose Electron and RN which allowed us to write everything in TS and share logic between platforms. However, I think there is a limit with current tooling in the long run. As applications grow, it will became slower and way bigger. As a developer, we became less confident shipping reliable features. Fire fighting became the norm and it is mentally unhealthy. About a year ago, I had an idea to gamify Ledger Live like Animal Crossing. So I tried Bevy. I immediately fell in love with the process and by using ECS design and Rust. I wish to write desktop apps in ECS. So my journey began to bring Bevy outside of games. As the concept of the metaverse became more popular, I want this market to be something universal and transparent. I believe in crypto wallets to be the digital identity gateway and the web3 interface. dip is my aim to provide the best toolings for the emerging market. ### Product/Demo URL?\* https://github.com/diptools/dip ### Are you currently part-time or full-time on this idea?\* Part-time (20 hours a week) ### How long have you been working on this?\* About a year experimenting with Bevy game engine. ### Do you have users? How many?\* No ### Do you have revenue? How much?\* No ### Tell us anything else we should know about your progress (750 chars) #review v0.2 will be shipped shortly with these plugins. (blocker: next version of config-rs) - Desktop: drop-in replacement for Electron and React application - CLI: Create command line tools in ECS - State Management: Redux inspired UI state plugin - Async Tasks - Configuration: Plugin to manage default / user configuration files and its parser. - Device: Interact with hardware crypto wallet. - Bundle: Developer tool for setting up local environment. Run `dip bundle apply` to setup a new computer in one shot. v0.3 planning. People asked me for a web support. - Improve developer onboarding experience - Web plugin: SPA, SSR, SSG, + MDX - ETH plugin Achievement - 250 starts on GitHub - Ranked in GitHub Daily Trending in Rust **Funding** ### Have you formed a legal entity yet? \* No ### Have you raised funding? \* No ### Have you issued equity (or any rights to equity) to investors or others besides the founding team (e.g., advisors, consultants, non-founder employees)? \* No ### Have you issued tokens (or any rights to tokens) to investors or others besides the founding team (e.g., advisors, consultants, non-founder employees)? \* No ### Describe the equity and token ownership breakdown among the founders, employees and any other proposed investors. If the company is not formed yet, please describe the planned breakdown. \* I'm up to expose up to 35% if I find a co-founder. ### Are you currently fundraising? \* No **Legal** ### Will you be legally authorized to work or engage in business activity in the United States without restriction for the duration of the program? \* Yes ### Are any of the founders subject to employment agreements, non-competes and/or other restrictive covenants, intellectual property agreements, or any similar agreements that might overlap with your project? \* Yes ### Was any technical work on your product done by a non-founder or employee? \* No ### Is there any action, suit, proceeding, or investigation that is pending or threatened against either the company, or its founders and/or employees in connection with their employment by the company or use of the company’s technology? \* No ### Over the last ten years have you been convicted or sanctioned (which include stop orders and cease-and-desist orders) for misconduct relating to banking or securities laws (including but not limited to fraud, manipulation, or deceptive acts)? \* No ### Over the last ten years have you had any professional licenses (including FINRA licenses) suspended or revoked? \* No ### Over the last ten years have you been the subject of any court ordered injunction or restraining orders in relation to making false or misleading statements? \* No **Other** ### Do you have any co-founders? \* No ### Is there anything else we should know about you or your company? (1000 chars) \* #review - The role models for dip are companies such as Vercel, Alchemy, and Epic Games. - 3 tiers freemium model for hobbies, pros, and enterprises. - We provide API (price rates, blockchain explore etc.) as Bevy plugin. - Enterprise plan provides solution architect and API offerings to our partners in the future. We prioritise their demands in our plugin development plan. - I have been talking with one company from Tokyo called Gaudiy. They are willing to pay us $3.6k (500k in JPY) a month for technical consultant. - We like to collaborate with web3 companies via enterprise plan as much as possible - I am planning to talk with Ledger Cathay Capital fund for a seed round. There are many places dip can be useful in Ledger products. I think we have a good synergy. ### Sign up for the a16z crypto weekly newsletter? No ### Have you read the a16z Crypto Startup School Terms and Conditions? \* Yes ### Do you agree to the a16z Crypto Startup School Terms and Conditions? \* Yes