The Fund Founder Spotlight Interview: Bec Jones of Clutch Wallet
The Fund is a founder community and early stage fund, by founders for founders.
Welcome to The Founder Spotlight where we highlight the incredible people behind the companies we’ve backed at The Fund. This week the spotlight is on Bec Jones, co-founder and CEO of Clutch Wallet, an innovative Web3 tool that is humanizing crypto and empowering first-time users to hold, invest in, and trade digital assets.
When you hear the words Web3, blockchain, and cryptocurrency, what comes to mind? Excitement, fear, curiosity, all of the above. If you're a newbie to this world, it can be a daunting task to even know where to begin. A great place to start is with Clutch Wallet, a digital wallet that allows you to hold, invest in, and trade digital assets (crypto currencies, coins, tokens, PO Apps) on the Ethereum Blockchain. It’s also your social identity and connection into the world of Web3. It stores all the items you would carry in your real purse or wallet, except cash of course - hence the clever name “Clutch.”
CEO and co-founder Bec Jones is an influencer and content creator and has over 50k followers on Tik Tok (@crytpobec_). She offers education, insight, and clarity into Web3, crypto and blockchain. Previously, she worked for one of the largest banks in Australia, where she met her co-founder James Kouzinas, who she credits for introducing her to crypto. They added Sheela Vats to the founding team, as she had prior experience building an Ethereum based wallet. They’re working together to empower first-time users and women and really engage them in this industry.
While Clutch Wallet isn’t live quite yet, they’re soft launching with their community this week. In the meantime, you can join the waitlist to get exclusive access to the Clutch Wallet when it launches and progress updates as they build!
Why did you decide to create Clutch Wallet and why now?
I’ve been active in the crypto industry for the past 4 years, during which time, I’ve used a lot of products, and helped many people onboard into the space. Throughout this time, I’ve noticed the overall user experience become more complex, making it hard for new entrants to participate. Seeing the knowledge gap between new-to-industry folks and expert product users grow, I felt compelled to focus on the first touch-point for consumers when they enter, and make this a delightful experience - in my view, that touch point is the wallet.
The experience of opening your first wallet is often accompanied with so many questions, and I believe these can be answered through intelligent design, and by weaving education into the product.
At present, there’s a lot of attention on the space as a whole, but participation rates are still incredibly low, as such, I feel that it’s the perfect time to build Clutch.
What’s Clutch Wallet’s “Northstar”?
We hold the belief that crypto will become mainstream in the next 5-7 years, and as the technology, and asset class improve, wallets will become powerful tools for consumers, allowing them to seamlessly transact, store their assets, craft their social identity, and lastly, act as information channels for education and news.
Who are Clutch Wallet’s target customers at the moment?
Being a start-up, we’re trying to remain focused on a core audience; at present, we’re going after women, and first-time users. In our view, participation rates are incredibly low for women because few products in the space are built with their needs in mind, and as for first-time users, they are typically hesitant due to the complex nature of the products.
How does the Clutch Wallet inspire “customer love”?
We have a very human-centered approach. Our mission of humanizing crypto is really about bringing people into this very complex space, and making it enjoyable. We do this by leading with education, delighting them with UX, and connecting people socially, which together, builds a greater understanding and connection, ergo more love. We haven’t really seen that with these very technically-focused companies. They’re more centered solely on the innovation of tech, which is a wonderful component and it’s something we are also prioritizing, however, we do spend a lot of time ensuring we create that experience of love for our product.
Do you have any podcasts you’d like to share with other founders and/or users?
For Web3, there's a podcast called Bankless. They do a wonderful job breaking down technical topics, and bringing you the latest news in crypto.
I’m also going to plug a former housemate of mine named Dulma Altan, who’s very active on TikTok - @iamdulma. She speaks a lot about founders, startups go-to-market strategies, and gives insight into how you can optimize for that and be different from others to stand out. She gets a lot of attention from celebrities and media and brands because of her unique and thoughtful views.
The Fund XX (early stage VC fund investing in women-led businesses) is looking for a Venture Capital Associate - apply here!