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Andy Larkin
Andy Larkin

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Web3 for Biz Devs: What I Learned From Actually Building with Smart Contracts

For the past 1.5 years at StartupRad, I’ve been deep in the world of Web3 — talking to founders, exploring partnerships, tracking market trends. But at some point, I realized something uncomfortable:

I could pitch Web3, but I couldn’t truly explain how it worked.

That’s when I challenged myself to go beyond the deck and into the code. Not to become a Solidity developer — but to understand the architecture I was building partnerships around.

💡 First Stop: Smart Contracts 101 (For Non-Devs)
I started with the basics. Wrote a “Hello Web3” contract. Fumbled my way through Remix, then migrated to Hardhat. The first time I paid gas fees from a wallet I created myself? Magic.

What I discovered:

Smart contracts are not hard to understand (if you stop fearing them).

You don’t need to be a dev to deploy a testnet contract.

It’s much easier to build trust in what you're selling when you've used it.

🔄 Connecting With Real Use Cases
One of my favorite exercises was building a tiny contract for user rewards — a basic loyalty system using ERC-20 logic. Simple, but it made all the difference when I later sat with a DeFi project looking for growth partners.

Instead of asking, “So how do your contracts work?”
I was asking, “Are you tracking wallet activity off-chain or on-chain before your airdrop triggers?”

Totally different energy.

⚙️ Where WhiteBIT Fit In
During this process, I leaned on WhiteBIT as a go-to resource — not just for trading, but for watching how new tokens were listed and gaining traction.

Their clean interface and transparent launch processes helped me understand how projects mature from idea → code → listing → real adoption.

As a biz dev, seeing that pipeline gave me new language and credibility in strategic calls.

🚀 The Big Lesson
Web3 partnerships work best when both sides speak the same language.
If you're a business development professional in crypto and haven’t played with contracts, wallets, or basic chain logic — you’re missing half the story.

Go build. Even just a little. Your pitch will never be the same again.

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