Taking the Long View: What a Web3 Deal Taught Me About Trust and Tokenization Real-World-Asset

“I now take a longer-term view on people.”

Taking the Long View: What a Web3 Deal Taught Me About Trust and Tokenization Real-World-Asset

*“I now take a longer-term view on people.”*In 1992 at an MIT Q&A, Steve Jobs was asked what he learned from his time at NeXT. Instead of firing off an answer, he paused — 5 seconds, 10 seconds, a full 18 seconds of silence. The room held its breath. Finally, Jobs responded with that one powerful line: “I now take a longer-term view on people.” After years of jumping in to fix things himself, he realized the value of patience and trust. He shifted from being a fixer to a builder, from controlling everything to trusting his team, from short-term reaction to long-term growth. That 18-second pause spoke volumes. And it resonates deeply with me as I reflect on a recent venture deal that tested my own faith in code, hype, and most importantly, people.This is the story of what I learned from the Klumi Ventures deal — a journey in the cutting-edge world of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. It’s a story about how trust, patience, and human judgment ended up mattering far more than code or buzzwords in building the future. As a tech-focused investor, I love shiny new tech and disruptive ideas. But through this experience, I was reminded that building something revolutionary (like bringing trillions in real assets onto blockchains) isn’t just about smart contracts or slick pitches. It’s about execution over the long term, about people. Here’s what happened and what I learned, in the hope that it inspires other founders and investors to take that “longer-term view” on the people behind the tech.

When Code Meets Reality: The Klumi Ventures Deal

Klumi Ventures is not your average crypto startup — they’re a regulated digital asset fund manager and Web3 venture capital firm based in the UAE. In fact, Klumi became the first and only licensed Web3 VC fund manager under Abu Dhabi’s ADGM regulator, with a special license to invest in both crypto tokens and equity. (If you’ve ever dealt in crypto, you know how big a deal that regulatory stamp is — it’s like getting a golden ticket that says “we’re legit”.) They even launched a $100 million fund focused on emerging decentralized tech, alongside a $15 million fund for early-stage Web3 startups. In short, Klumi was poised to bridge traditional finance and crypto in a way few others had.

When I first came across Klumi’s vision, I’ll admit: my inner geek got very excited. Here was a team focusing on investing in real-world asset tokenization and other blockchain innovations in a region (the Middle East) that’s fast becoming a global hub for digital assets. Tokenizing real-world assets (RWA) — essentially turning things like real estate, bonds, or commodities into blockchain tokens — has been hailed as the next big wave in crypto. We’re talking about the possibility of bringing parts of a $950 trillion asset market onto blockchain rails. Imagine unlocking trillions of dollars in value that today are trapped in old-school paper, spreadsheets and 5-day settlement cycles. No wonder there’s hype!

I dove into Klumi’s materials and the industry docs with the zeal of a coder reading new documentation. The promise was huge: RWA tokenization “bridges traditional finance and DeFi, unlocking trillions in trapped value, making money more efficient, and opening new doors for investors”. We’ve already seen a taste of success with tokenized dollars — stablecoins processed over $8.5 trillion in transactions in just one quarter of 2024, proving that even “real world” money can move at crypto speed. By late 2024, the tokenized asset market (excluding stablecoins) had grown 85% year-over-year to $15.2 billion on-chain. (Include stablecoins and that number jumps to $217+ billion, by the way.) Over 119 issuers were tokenizing assets from private credit to real estate, and more than 81,000 investors held tokenized assets by 2024’s end. These are real numbers, not just hype, showing that RWA tokenization is picking up steam.

Reading those stats and seeing Klumi’s thesis, it felt like peering into the future of finance. My FOMO kicked in — the coder in me wanted to jump in and build, build, build. If the code works and the market’s that big, what could go wrong, right? I was eager to close a deal and let our expert team start cranking on the technical integration, imagining an on-chain world where any real-world asset could be traded 24/7. The best of both worlds is that these digital tokens are all backed by real assets.

But here’s where reality sets in: To actually execute on an RWA venture is 90% human work and maybe 10% code.

RWA Tokenization: Beyond the Hype, Into the Trenches

To ground ourselves, let’s quickly recap what RWA tokenization means and why it’s as much a human challenge as a technical one:

• Bridging Two Worlds: Today’s crypto world (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi) largely operate in parallel silos. Crypto has great tech and transparency, but TradFi has centuries of scale and trust networks. Bringing real assets on-chain means bridging these two worlds, which is easier said than done. It’s not just flipping a switch; it requires aligning with regulations, legal frameworks, and the expectations of institutional players. In other words, you can’t solve it purely with code on a laptop — you need lawyers, regulators, and trad financiers on board (the people part). Klumi understood this deeply: they positioned themselves to “bridge traditional wealth management with the future of digital finance”, delivering institutional-grade compliance while innovating. You need techies and suits at the table.
• Regulatory Trust and Compliance: Unlike launching a DeFi app in a hackathon, tokenizing real assets often means dealing with government regulations in multiple jurisdictions. For instance, Klumi had to work with ADGM in Abu Dhabi to obtain that first-of-its-kind license to invest in tokens and equity. That process took months of audits, due diligence, and demonstrating trustworthiness. No smart contract could shortcut that. It was a human gauntlet, not a coding one. The upside? Now they have a sturdy regulatory bridge that others don’t — a moat built on trust.
• Infrastructure and Integration: Real-world assets come with legacy systems. Real estate deeds, bond certificates, legal contracts — these don’t magically turn into NFTs overnight. There’s a lot of integration work: hooking blockchain systems into existing databases, ensuring a token legally represents a real asset claim, etc. It’s painstaking and requires cooperation between old institutions and new tech firms. All assets need to be verified, valued, and stored or secured properly before they can be tokenised. I jokingly started calling RWA “Real Work Ahead” tokenization after seeing the extensive checklists and processes from Klumi’s playbook. It’s worth it, but it’s not a romantic overnight success story.
• Education and Market Readiness: We also spent much time simply educating stakeholders. Many potential investors and partners nodded along to the buzzwords but had deep-seated questions: How do we know the asset backs this token? What if something goes wrong? Isn’t crypto risky? Addressing these meant building personal credibility and relationships. Weekly calls, workshops, sharing memos, and research — essentially hand-holding people into the future. It required empathy and patience to bring others on the journey. In short, tokenizing an asset isn’t just an engineering project; it’s a people project. The technology foundation is important — blockchains, smart contracts, security — but all that only works if humans trust it and are willing to use it. It dawned on me that code might create the platform, but trust creates the market.

Trust, Patience, and the Human Side of Execution

So, how did the Klumi deal pan out, and what did I learn? Well, no. Our team pulled out last minute before signing the paper, two weeks after IC voted yes (after all those memos and late-night diligence sessions). But the real story was how it unfolded.

Early on, I was itching to move fast. Part of me expected a quick due diligence cycle and then boom — wire the funds, announce the deal, and start tokenizing some assets! But it felt like the universe (and Klumi’s team) conspired to slow me down — in a good way. We spent countless hours not just on strategic architecture, but on strategy discussions, scenario planning, and frankly, getting to know each other. I remember a moment during negotiations where I spotted an obvious miscommunication in the basic terms and processes. My instinct was to jump in and fix it myself on the spot (classic entrepreneur impulse).

To me, the 2 lines of tech-related milestones are supposed to be easy for our tokenisation expert team within a few days, but it ends nowhere. In the end, I did not do what Job did for the team. I jumped in to help with he communication, spent hours on calls and documents to understand all the technical and 90% regulatory, compliance, etc parts. I gained invaluable knowledge in this process, but…

The investor team sees this as “red flags”: “Tick knows more than the founder”. I admit that I made the mistake by focusing on the deadline and forgetting about “people”. I should have taken a breath and let our team’s tokenisation experts figure it out.

I offered to help, but the expert in-house team think I'll take over. If I bulldozed in to correct every little “screw up,” I’d just end up doing all the work and undermining the team. Sound familiar? It’s what Steve was talking about: don’t just fix it, help the person learn.

I did not, you could say I am not a good leader like Steven Jobs, indeed, they pulled out the investment because of my “mistake” of jumping in to help with the details of the communication.

Throughout this process, I also learned the value of human judgment over pure algorithms. As an AI guy (lady), I naturally look at data and patterns to make decisions. Sure, I had spreadsheets of market analysis and risk models for this investment. But there were moments where the numbers weren’t clear, and I had to go with my gut—or rather, my informed judgment about the people involved.

Ultimately, I made the call to back the people — I trusted that the Klumi team’s expertise and commitment would carry through the market turbulence. It was a bit of a leap of faith, but one grounded in months of relationship-building and seeing their character in action. Unfortunately, the investment team did not back me. The experts felt that the practitioners are not competent enough to deliver their vision. They changed their mind and pulled out last minute.

I must admit I failed to close the deal this time, but I am glad it failed somehow. In alternative or venture investing, “matching” is the most critical factor people often overlook. There are “founder-market-fit”, “product-market-fit”, but more importantly, we often ignore “investor-founder fit”. At the end of the day, people make and close the deal. In this case, it is the rare instance where the technical people from the investor side failed to fit the technical aspect of the founder.

Lessons for founders: if the investor is used to platform tech, it is definitely would less likely to understand decentralised tech. To spot the top investor for you, they must take the leap of faith with you; they must be courageous & determined as you.

The Long-Term View — Leadership in Investing

After we passed the deal, I took a step back to reflect. This wasn’t my first rodeo in startups or investments, but it felt markedly different in what it taught me. I came away with a renewed conviction that leadership in investing is about holding that long-term view, and having the leap of faith to back the founder. It’s about looking past the immediate coding sprint or this quarter’s KPIs, and seeing the decade ahead — the people beyond your team members can become, the trust with partners can deepen, and the slow but steady compounding of execution.

Steve Jobs’s lesson from NeXT echoed in my mind often: take a longer-term view on people. At the end of this journey, that quote came full circle for me. I saw firsthand that you win in the long run by betting on people and giving them room (and time) to grow. Whether it’s nurturing a team, cultivating a partnership, or developing a nascent market like RWA tokenization, the principle holds true. As Jobs put it, if something’s not done right, your first impulse shouldn’t be to grab the wheel and fix it yourself; rather, think “we’re building a team here to do great stuff for the next decade”. In other words, zoom out and invest in long-term capacity, not just short-term fixes.

For those of us building and investing in frontier technologies, this is a critical reminder. It’s easy to get swept up in the sprint — the rapid prototyping, the viral campaign, the quick flip of a token price. But real innovation is a marathon, not a sprint. Execution in the real world (especially when real assets and regulations are involved) is a long game. Human growth — whether an individual developer leveling up or a founder maturing into a CEO — takes time. No line of code can force-multiply that overnight. As leaders and investors, our job is to cultivate an environment where that growth can happen, to be patient and keep the faith even when progress is slow. It means sometimes sitting through that awkward 18-second pause — metaphorically speaking — and not rushing to fill it, because something meaningful is brewing.

I’m grateful that the Klumi Ventures deal reminded me of these truths. It reinforced that technology revolutions aren’t just built on brilliant code or bold ideas, but on relationships, trust, and time.

Founders and investors: as you push the boundaries of what’s possible, don’t forget the human element. Invest in your people like you invest in your technology. Because in the end, it’s the people who turn code into real-world change. Hype fades and code evolves, but trust and talent compound. Hold that longer-term perspective on your team, your partners, and yourself. That’s how we’ll build the future — one long-term, trusted relationship at a time.

So here’s to playing the long game and building for the next decade, not just the next year. 🥂 Take the long view on people — you’ll be amazed at what that empowers them to achieve. The future, much like a great investment, is made by those who can wait through the silence and still believe.

(TickTalk by Tick J.)

Sources:

• Steve Jobs on taking the long-term view on people
• Klumi Ventures focus and ADGM regulatory milestone
• Real-world asset tokenization trends and market data

By Tick JIANG on June 20, 2025.

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Exported from Medium on December 14, 2025.