I normally like to start the day with an uplifting, jovial GM. Not this morning. Scrolling through the timeline and seeing the amount of vitriol being directed at members of the Arc team simply because they’re South Asian, because of the colour of their skin, their accents or the way they look is genuinely embarrassing. And some of it isn’t even subtle. Web3 has spent years selling itself as the new frontier. Permissionless. Borderless. A great leveller where an individual developer can compete with a multi-billion-dollar company based on what they build. Yet apparently, for some people, “permissionless” stops the moment the people building look a little different to them. Let me make something very clear. Criticise the product. Criticise the launch. Criticise the token decisions, the strategy or the execution. That’s fair game. But if your investment thesis suddenly becomes “there are too many Indians on the team”, or you decide somebody is incompetent because they’re brown, that isn’t due diligence. It’s racism dressed up as market analysis. And before anyone starts confusing South Asian heritage with an inability to build world-class companies, here are a few names worth remembering: Google Sundar Pichai IS South Asian Microsoft Satya Nadella IS South Asian IBM Arvind Krishna IS South Asian FedEx Raj Subramaniam IS South Asian Adobe Shantanu Narayen IS South Asian Chanel Leena Nair IS South Asian GoDaddy Aman Bhutani IS South Asian HubSpot Yamini Rangan IS South Asian Wayfair Niraj Shah IS South Asian YouTube Neal Mohan IS South Asian Some of the largest and most influential companies on the planet are led by people of South Asian heritage. Talent doesn’t have a skin colour. Intelligence doesn’t have an accent. Innovation doesn’t belong to one nationality. And competence isn’t determined by whether somebody looks like the anonymous PFP judging them from the other side of a screen. The people being mocked on the timeline today are builders. Some of them may go on to become leaders of this industry and build things that materially move this space forward. Meanwhile, the people reducing them to their ethnicity will still be posting the same tired garbage from behind a PFP. - Judge people on what they build. - Judge them on their actions. - Judge them on their execution. But the moment you judge them on the colour of their skin or where their family comes from, you’ve told everyone far more about yourself than you ever did about them. Web3 needs to do better. A lot of YOU need to do better. And one final thing. If you’re South Asian, African, Middle Eastern, East Asian, or from any minority background, and you’re hiding behind a PFP because you’re worried people will judge you by your face, your name, your accent or where you come from: My DMs are ALWAYS open. You should never feel like you need to hide who you are to be taken seriously in this space. If you’re building, creating, learning or trying to make your mark, I’ll always have time for you. Web3 is supposed to open doors. Not make people feel they have to hide before they can walk through them. I have no requirement or need for a mass number of followers. I feel no need to pander to racists no matter how large your following. If you do not like me or my message pls unfollow me. I wish you ALL a GMGM.