Web3 Women to Watch: Meet Osnat Benari

Osnat is a product leader, strategist, and builder, as well as an active advisor and coach for startups and young professionals. Os is also a published author.

Over her twenty-plus-year career in product management, she cofounded Dragons Can Fly, a Web3 product strategy and design agency, and led product partnerships for BBG Ventures and product and innovation groups for AOL Studios and Verizon. As part of the founding team at WeWork Labs, she helped build the company’s physical and digital experiences, and she most recently served as senior vice president of Product Management at Diligent.

Osnat was one of the product-led-growth top 25 influencers and currently serves on the advisory board for both Audioburst and  Computer Science at Hunter College and is an alumni committee member at the American Friends of Tel Aviv University.

She’s an advocate for resilience and mental health in the workplace and a founding member of Chief, a network focused on connecting and supporting women executive leaders.

RAINE: What drives you/motivates you to be part of the Web3 movement?

BENARI: I’m a technologist and a product builder for many years so any tech advancement is of interest to me. I make sure to always be in the know of tech trends and advancement as it often affects the company I work for, the market, or my customers.

RAINE: How did you get into web3?

BENARI: My husband kept telling me about it and I knew I need to dig in more as I am a big believer we need to make space for always learning something new, It was on my list. But when I was working for a governance company and DAOs started coming up, as I was doing research - that got me learning more about the space. I started reading, listening to podcasts, and going to events, and there I met someone who later was my first customer.

RAINE: What do you see as the future of web3?

BENARI: I love that brands are OK experimenting with Web3. I love and admire companies that jump in and test. It ensures they properly make decisions, they allow innovation to affect them, and adjust to new interests of their users.

I’m hoping the future of Web3 will tackle three major things: social media decentralization, for example, look what happened to Twitter. So many who spend so much time on this platform and now staying on it contradicts their values. I also hope Web3 will take care of content creators (in music, movies, and brands) compensation will be sorted by Web3. And lastly, I’m excited about the Metaverse and hopefully the interoperable experiences we could have in it in the future.

RAINE: What are you building or helping to build in web3?

BENARI: I’m the behind-the-scenes product person and I work with companies to figure out their vision, strategy, and products in Web2 and Web3.

RAINE: What challenges do you see in the metaverse and web3 going forward?

BENARI: Just the fact that there are so many of them and very few are actually supporting users moving from one to another in a seamless experience is a huge barrier for scale and enforced the winner takes it all strategy. I’m less of a fan of this. I also see the clunky onboarding, and experience in general, feel very outdated.

It’s time to put the users front and center if this is really what builders will be after a lot of it can be addressed.

RAINE: What’s your perspective on how web3 has evolved?

BENARI: Well, it’s exciting to see the builders in the bear market and it cleared the way from the hype that interfered with building. I know so many founders that needed to catch up with the hype and events and that delayed their actual building of the company and product. So I'm glad that’s less common. I’m excited about how Web3 will handle identity, ownership, and compensation.

RAINE: What words of wisdom would you have for women and minorities interested in getting involved in web3?

BENARI: Just get in. Don’t stop learning, Web3, or anything else that interests you - and find a way to get experience through building something yourself, joining a builders team, or volunteering your time.

Raine Creative