Building with Resilience and Purpose: Amanda Cassatt - Serotonin

Transcript

Amanda, welcome on the Human Protocol podcast. >> Thank you, Simona, for inviting me. I'm always happy to chat with you. >> Awesome. Same here. Um, this is the first virtual episode. All other episodes have been in person, but it is very very important to continue recording the wonderful stories uh of people in this space regardless of location. So virtual it is. Um, okay.

Before we dive in, I as always want to get a little bit of insight uh into who Amanda was before joining this um crazy wonderful space. So, I'm going to take you back to interning at the New Yorker, editing and writing for Huffost, and what was the trajectory of your life at that moment and when did you kind of think this isn't it?

So, I was always a word girl. Words are my thing. The word arguably created the world according to some [laughter] >> just to bring in the logos uh right right up top. Um and I thought I wanted to be a writer. Um maybe a journalist, maybe a poet, definitely something that didn't make any money. >> Okay. >> Um and I love The New Yorker. I interned there when I was in college. And one of the first things they had me do was, and this was a long time ago, and this will this will date me. Um, they wanted help digitizing their archive.

>> Okay, >> so if you think about when the internet first started having The New Yorker on it, um, the staff there thought, what do we do about all the old episodes of The New Yorker that [clears throat] are not natively digital? Mhm. >> Should we take pictures of them and upload them as PDFs and put them in a reader view where subscribers can log into a portal and see these PDFs? Should we type them out? This was a legitimate suggestion, right? Like type them out.

So, you start um you start at the beginning, which is a long time a long long long time ago. You start on page one and you you start typing. Um that's another option. Um, and it turns out that this was hard and this was a real problem. Um, it was something that, um, subscribers wanted. They wanted to be able to pull up an older article. Um, and it wasn't completely intuitive um, how to solve it. And I was a word person. I was an English major in college, although I've always been good at math. I've always liked math. Um, I have a minor in stats, actually.

>> Okay. Um, but um, I didn't really know how to do this either. And so I started typing. Um, I have a really high WPM um, sometimes like 128. I just started cracking. Um, but I also looked into some other solutions. Um, and I learned a lot about um, how the written word and technology were on a crash course to intersect. And I realized that in order to be valuable uh to the businesses that had so interested me, I needed to be the tech person.

>> Okay? >> And I needed to understand how content worked on the internet. Um and that was basically how I got my job at the Huffington Post because I was pretty interested in that. I knew a lot about it. Um, and if you put yourself back in 2012 2013 the that business model was really unique and brilliant. >> Um, all these journalists at all these news outfits go investing all these time and this time and resources investigating these stories and then you get an aggregator like Drudge Report or Huffost that comes along and puts a flashier headline on it. um

inside the story links out to the original reporting, >> but they grab all the traffic from the story, which is all the ad dollars. And maybe they're sending a little bit of traffic back to the organization that originally invested in producing the journalism. Um, but they're capturing most of the ad dollars with that flashier headline by going through the side doors of social media instead of assuming people come to your homepage. And so there are these kind of skimmers on the surface that were grabbing a lot of the value in this like frightening shrinking pie environment of the media landscape.

>> Um so that was very interesting. >> Yeah. >> Um and I learned a lot about working in an industry that was shrinking and the interpersonal dynamics that are caused by people feeling like they're playing musical chairs and fighting for their lives. Um, I would fortunately later learn what it looked and felt like to work in an industry where people felt like it was growing. >> Um, which felt a lot healthier. Um, but I definitely experienced the opposite and I I tried to solve it. >> So I started a company called Slant.

Yes. >> Um, after I left Huffost where um, and at this point I'd kind of taught myself how to code a bit. >> Um, one of my college classmates founded Code Academy. >> Okay. Um, and I was one of the people who kind of tested it. Um, I I played with it. I learn I learned to code on there. I took some of the MIT um, open courseware um, in CS along the way. But I learned a little bit about this. Um, co-founded a company called Slant where we um, taught emerging journalists, writers to market their content. We served ads across all of it and then we paid the creator 70% of the ad revenue from their article and we took 30%. Um,

and it was great because we grew in traffic really quickly. It was around the time when >> um, a lot of big media outlets were talking about what was going on on college campuses. It was during the time of like Mattress Girl, not to be coarse. Um, and and Black Lives Matter protests on campuses. Um, and so a lot of our writers ended up um getting hyperl from like the New York Times um and making a lot of money actually, like thousands of dollars.

>> But that wasn't the average. The average writer on our platform made a few cents uh is a creative distribution. >> Okay. Um, and that average writer in order to pay them out how we'd agreed, we had to split the dollar or often split the scent. And because even though we were getting lots of traffic, because of that business model, our economics didn't make sense ultimately, >> right? >> Um, and that's how I got very into payment processing. So, I'd sort of seen from like journalism and writing, okay, I got to get into tech. And then I saw from um being in tech um oh my goodness payments payments are a big mess. Um they don't work properly and the

payments make all these business models that make logical sense not make practical sense >> right >> and so I was going to every meetup I could um about payments and that oddly enough is how I stumbled upon the very first Ethereum meetup in New York. What year is this? >> 2015. >> Yeah. >> And then what happened at those meetups? Like was the immediate kind of flash of this is the thing that I now want to focus on or was it a period of hold on a second, this could be

something, maybe not, etc., etc.? It was definitely something and I knew that right from the beginning. I had never seen so many >> 160 plus 150 plus IQ people so excited >> in such a small dense vicinity. >> Um and that really struck me. You know I I wasn't in a place where I was able to fully diligence the tech. I could diligence the people. >> Um and it blew my mind. you know, I'd met very smart people before, but not all so excited about one thing.

>> And so I thought, you know, if they if they're so excited about this, I should really figure it out. I should figure out how this works. I should figure out what it could do. Um, and it was pretty impenetrable at that point. It was very um like there are some computer science people um >> where a phrase like the world computer really means something. >> Yes. Um, oh wow, spark. Okay, someone says the world computer to me. Oh wow, I understand exactly what that is, >> right?

>> What? Like, okay, you know, I have this computer, I have that computer, right? And so, um, >> the way that it was being explained, um, didn't immediately click for me. >> Okay. >> Um, and there was a lot of jargon. Um, not not not jargon, that's not the right word. There's a lot of there were a lot of technical terms >> um that didn't come predefined. >> Okay, >> I'll put it that way. And the whole movement felt very academic. >> Um the thing that people were so excited about was how this thing worked, not its potential to make a lot of money or um transform this particular industry or

that particular industry, right? It wasn't applied like if there's the pure math department and the applied math department, it felt like the pure math department. >> Okay. Yes. >> And so I realized I was the most commercial person in that room. I realized I was one of the only people in that room that was willing to try very hard to understand what they were talking about, but also could translate it to other people that came in like me. Mhm. >> Um, and I knew the media environment and I thought these nerds are going to get eaten alive and [snorts] I felt protective. Um, and I wanted it to go well because I saw the potential um, for

how this could genuinely transform a bunch of human systems for the better. Um, and so I joined the circus as soon as I could. >> Okay. >> Um, I applied for a position that didn't exist that I had created. um as consensus was crystallizing um called CMO of consensus. >> Yeah. >> Um invented by Amanda then uh Gutman, Amanda Casset now. Um >> and uh I uh convinced Joe to hire me. I said I wanted to make Ethereum like Starbucks and the MLB. Yes.

>> Was my line from my interview. And that seemed bananas um >> at that time. laughable and and not really of interest to anyone honestly. Um and and worrisome. I I'll actually add it seemed worrisome. >> Why? >> Because the word marketing >> was um for really reasonable reasons worrisome. Um >> like when you think about marketing at that point, you thought about advertising and you think about some brainless influencer slinging, you know, uh vitamin water. Um people trying to sell you things that you don't want. Um consumerism.

>> Yeah. >> Um a vision of life that's all about consumption that that that's empty that's surface level. How could such a discipline possibly be compatible with our deeply well-intentioned and intellectually elevated project and mission, >> right? Um and uh that was the problem I tried to solve. >> So before we followed the thread of translating all of this and actually marketing it and what that was like and cuz you were coming in again 25 let me be CMO. Let's do this. I

I wanted to be as big as Starbucks. What did wrapping up slant feel like? Was there a sense of loss there that that didn't work or was it a little bit less painful because you already had the this trajectory that was incredibly exciting? >> We sold it. Um so it wasn't >> some terrible thing. >> Okay. Um it was important to me to close things out thoughtfully.

>> Okay. >> Um which is why I wasn't able to join the Ethereum movement as a full-time employee formally. >> Okay. >> From the day after that meetup. Um you can contribute but not make it your full-time job quite yet. >> Okay. And um yeah, it's always been important to me whether I succeed or fail at something um to do it thoughtfully. Um but also to know when there's a greater opportunity >> um when kind of the TAM, the total addressable market um of a new idea is better and bigger um than the one

before. Mhm. >> And I'm very grateful for Slant and Huffost and New Yorker and that part of my life for helping lead me uh toward crypto um and giving me the background I needed to contribute to it in a differentiated way because without those experiences of being a founder >> um and of being in media, being in marketing, I wouldn't have something differentiated to bring um to something like the Ethereum project.

>> Okay. And so those pillars that you took from that experience that you just shared, tell me about the journey you embarked on with consensus and building again a position that didn't exist. A team of what 50 plus people during the boom or more? >> Well, started with zero. Um start started with zero people. Yeah. >> Um, actually, >> I'll be I'll be even more honest. Um, more more likeg -3 people.

>> Okay. More >> at the time. It was a very research driven entity. >> Yes. >> Um, Consensus, the Ethereum Foundation were a lot closer together. Um there there were some people that had a desire um to do kind of communication, storytelling, marketing type work um and that had a had a very deep desire to be employed by the consensus entity. >> Okay.

>> Um that weren't doing a good job. >> Okay. >> And I fought to change that. Um, and that was very hard because I was a newcomer to the institution >> and that's not the way to do it. Um, the way to do it is to ingratiate. Um, but and and I and I did some of that. I mean, not cuz I was like strategically trying to ingratiate, but because there were such great people around in consensus >> to learn things from >> um that I spent a lot of time really doing that. And I still have amazing friends um from the time I spent learning from certain people um who

became you know wonderful wonderful friends. But I changed a lot of what was happening on comms and marketing um quite quickly. >> Okay. >> Um in in my tenure because and this is something that I found throughout my business life. If something's not working, just change it. >> Y >> um and I I'm not willing to politic something to death. I want to be really transparent and really open about what I think and I'm I'm open to being wrong and I'm open to a different perspective. Um, but I was pretty sure I was right. >> Okay, >> we've been doing that work for a while and it turned out I was right.

>> Um, but it was hard. That made it hard. >> Um, and then the amount of time between um between when I joined Consensus and getting our first really blowout result. >> Yeah. um that proved that marketing worked basically. Um that was like five months. >> Okay. >> And those were the hardest months of my life literally like harder than anything else because I felt real pain almost daily like emotional pain um about having to do things and say things with very high conviction.

>> Yeah. um in order to get things done that I thought were right while feeling often times very deep doubt about whether any of this would work at all about my own ability to produce an extraordinary result just >> and and the the feeling of having your foot on the gas of you know proceeding you know what the next step is you're operating with a lot of conviction and also the breaks of like oh my goodness it's my first time doing something like this at this scale. It's my first time coming into an organization and recommending that people be removed from it. It's my f right like it's very aggressive.

>> [clears throat] >> Um it's my first time um running a campaign that involves Microsoft JP Morgan Santa Derek Centure all these different people which was our first real marketing campaign for Ethereum which was the enterprise Ethereum alliance announcement in February which was our first real proof point that the marketing comm's PR function we built really worked >> and that was kind of the first that was the first big Ethereum price ETH price spike right so >> there we go proved it to whoever cared about that number Right. Um and so um so I I I was in a huge amount of pain.

[clears throat] Um and I'll tell you a story because this is this is a because this is a story about everyone's feelings. There's a podcast about feelings. Um >> I'll tell you an experience I had >> that caused me just a completely catastrophic amount of pain. >> Tell me. And it was um a New Year's party right before New It was New Year's Eve 2016 into 2017 and 2017 is the year Ethereum would really pop um because of some of the like narrative work that our team did.

>> Um but it hadn't happened yet and it was in that period of like self-doubt but pushing very hard on the gas. >> Okay. and a very senior person in our organization um was at this party with me who who who who was very who was considered like the authority on um whether things were working or not or what the structures of things should look like. >> Okay. >> Um we were having kind of a deep one-on-one conversation at this party.

He was being very honest and he said to me directly, "I don't think you're going to be able to do this." >> What did that feel like? >> Yeah. He he said, "Um, I I just don't think you're the right person for this role, and I don't think it's going to work." >> Okay. What did you say? I don't even remember what I said.

[laughter] Like I basically like blacked out. Not from drinking. I [laughter] just like from >> Yeah. >> anxiety, I guess. >> Yeah. >> I don't think I really said anything. Um, I excused myself and I went into a bedroom and closed the door and I got on the floor and I'd been in yoga class um earlier that day and the yoga teacher had said if things ever feel overwhelming just get in child's pose, >> okay?

>> And I felt this like overwhelming need to get in child's pose. >> Okay? >> Because things felt overwhelming. And so I sat I I sat in child's pose on the floor of this bedroom at this New Year's party for maybe like 30 minutes. >> Wow. >> And I it was just like the chasm of doom. And by the time I was finished, I'd pulled myself together and I'd compartmentalized it. I was going to, you know, think about this later. And I was able to continue being in in in the environment I was in. But I can't even tell you how intense that felt. And I could tell you two different stories

from this, right? Okay. That would both be very corny stories. I could tell you a story that said his lack of belief in me drove me and motivated me to prove him wrong and become everything that you know that he didn't know and that you know and and now he he's not even in the industry and I you know created the and I showed him you know right like and and I could I could tell you that that's how I felt about it okay and that's how I feel looking back >> but that's not quite true. Um, the truth is more like I thought he might be right >> and there was a good chance he was right

[laughter] and I didn't want to actually compromise the movement by, you know, boguarding some role that I wasn't right for. Um, and so I took it very seriously and I thought, you know, I gave myself a little deadline and I said, >> you know, if this campaign we're doing, launching the EA, if this doesn't work out, if I'm not able to kind of prove, not just externally, but to myself that I'm the right person for this through this this thing I've been building up to. Like, let's give it a real shot. Let's give it a real shot. Let's try let's try the thing I've been working on. Then I'm going to, you know, step aside and maybe try to find someone else to do this role because maybe he's right. Um, and when I think back on it, I like don't blame him at all. I think

he was trying to say something transparent in order to be helpful to the movement and the larger project that we were working on. I don't think he was ill-intentioned and I think he I do not think he wished to cause me pain. >> Um, I think he would feel sad if I told him how much pain that caused. Um, but it made me really seriously examine whether what I was doing made sense. and assign assign a real like deadline around it and be very serious about it because my work was affecting other people um and other people's project and um I take no pleasure in the fact that he doesn't work in the industry anymore.

I I I truly do you know wish him well. Um, and I guess I needed to meet myself and understand who I was because at that point I hadn't proven to myself yet, um, that I could do something of that magnitude and scale. >> Um, and now if I take took on some kind of similar type of responsibility, I guess I have, right? I'm the CEO of a company. >> Um, now if someone says that to me, I would really laugh it off. Um, or I'd get curious and say like, "What makes you think that?" You know, maybe there's something that I'm missing that I'm not thinking about that they that they've realized, you know.

>> Um, but it wouldn't I wouldn't black out. [snorts] Um, I wouldn't really believe it. And that's part of getting older and that's part of racking up experiences and proving to yourself that you are the person that can do X and Y, but maybe also that you're not the kind of person who can do A and B. Um, and there are lots of examples where I've tried to to do A and B and realized I'm not the person that can do A and B. Um, and in those cases, he would have been right. So, it passes with time, but that's how it felt. [laughter] >> What do you feel in those moments? Like I know that you said um you gave yourself a deadline. What do you feel was

the part of you that went actually I can do this and I have the self-confidence even if it wobbled a little bit on this in this exchange. What was it internally that you tapped into to keep going and then obviously once you had confirmation that the EA did work and so on that would have strengthened that seed but the seed would have been in there. >> Yeah. I mean I don't know about confidence or lack of confidence or any kind of emotional quality like that.

>> Okay. Um, I think what I told myself was I haven't actually tried, >> right? >> Like I've been I've been working toward certain pinnacles, certain certain outcomes, and the the the moment where, you know, the rubber meets the road that I've been preparing for hasn't even arrived yet, right? >> And so it it's really too early to say. Like, and it really felt to me like >> I either quitting now would be too too soon because I hadn't really tried yet. The thing hadn't really happened. But also being but I wasn't I wasn't super confident right and there were other things that happened too right like there were a lot of political things that happened you know a company like that over um you know four years um being I was 25 you know other people

came with lots of experience and they wanted my position um and so I had to fend off all kinds of different things you know when I made changes to the team there were people that tried to um prevent it using a coup like [laughter] like like there are all kinds like I'm I'm like a battle tested >> human from from a lot of that but none of it was quite as impactful as that as that one conversation. Um but I I wasn't confident. I I just hadn't really flipped the I hadn't had the thing happen yet that would test whether I could do this or not. And so might as well keep trying until until that thing doesn't work out. And then once um once that really worked out.

>> Yes. >> Um and then ethereal the first ethereal which was my idea worked out. And so those two things that I was really kind of running both both worked. I don't know what would have happened to me if if they hadn't but um they both worked. Then I I could really fend off the sort of middle-aged suits that would later come for my job. [laughter] this >> exactly because of you know just just facts and credibility. Um but you have to build it first and I mean it's not like like my advice for anyone is to not be overconfident or underconfident. It's like you really just don't know when

you're when you're you don't know what you're capable of. You don't know what you're incapable of. And there's only one way to find out which is to genuinely try. Mhm. >> And you got to be open to the idea that you're more capable than you ever thought. And you have to be open to the idea that you're not capable of the thing that you thought you were. >> Mhm. And also, this is a very interesting um point that you're touching on is being comfortable with the unknown, right? Like being comfortable. Okay. You could be very very right, but you could also be very wrong.

>> But it wasn't comfortable. But it wasn't comfortable at all. I wasn't comfortable with the unknown. I was experiencing intense discomfort. >> What did that man like? >> What did that manifest like? Cuz I'm pretty sure so many people are experiencing this on the daily. And nobody >> That's why I'm bringing it up. That's why I'm bringing it up. Like >> like you're like it's like working out. You're in order to make your muscle grow, you need to tear your muscle. Like that's literally how muscle growth works. And it's the same for everything.

>> And it's the same for emotional growth, spiritual growth, growth at work. You can feel the tearing, right? [clears throat] And to pretend that you're going to be comfortable and not feel the tearing. Oh gosh. Like >> you're you're going to feel it. >> Yeah. >> And then you got to also know >> what is hypertrophy, what what's you know healthy muscle tearing, and what's injury, >> right? Um, and and that night, that New Year's Eve, I wasn't sure I wasn't sure whether that was hypertrophy or injury. >> Okay.

>> And and and that's the most uncomfortable of all where you're like, whoa, >> is this going to make me grow or is this going to like >> me, right? >> Can I deal with someone feeling like this toward me? Can I deal with this information? Have there been other times since then that you have felt that or not necessarily because obviously it's not going to be the same because like we say we evolve and we grow and we get older but have there been people who have thought things about you that you have felt is so completely wrong?

>> Yes. But since then, um, since and since since being a little older and having a few more life experiences and having confidence kind of built through certain facts, >> um, when someone I know has the wrong impression of me, yes, >> I feel like I actually have an asymmetric advantage. >> Um, because all information asymmetry is advantageous, right? And so it it's it's unbotherome to me and I'm willing to play certain roles in certain situations that I know conform quite well to what the other person expects. Okay, >> in order to navigate reality harmoniously and smoothly, right? Like we all are in these avatars and other people see that avatar, experience that avatar and have a certain set of ideas

about what would be connected to that avatar, how it would behave, what it what it it's like to be them inside. And everyone has a different way that they move through reality, that other people will permit them to move through reality. And I'm a big believer in Zen um which emerged from a cross between Buddhism and and Dao. Yeah. The idea of woo way, right? You want to move with the grain of reality. You want to move with the flow. It's the idea of like water, right? Water always finds the lowest level. It finds that crack. It finds that way. It doesn't insist you have to treat me like a, you know, it's water. It's going to it's going to find those cracks. And sometimes it finds those cracks by by by moving with the

tilt of the earth. Um, and so I'm not out there trying to prove to someone that their opinion was wrong and they underestimated a little girl. Like I've >> Who has energy for that? Like energy towards other more important things. It's a bit more of a um I hope it's a bit more of an elegant flow um with the grain and current of reality subtly navigating it >> um than it is that kind of >> sort of earnest and corny uh mashing up against it.

>> We've spoken about this. We spoke about this in Argentina, but you have that and you shared that with me of and this, you know, the concept of everything that comes along is there for a reason. You go with it, you flow with it. And every experience is not uh but not this uh this but without this little bit >> and this. Tell me more about that. >> Yeah. and this this too. Um, so I guess I've been in fairly like emotionally internally stressful scenarios for a while because I've bu I've built a lot of internal infrastructure um for

dealing with it >> um that I certainly didn't have on the night that I was describing to you. Um but one of those things that I built and this comes from Tara Brock who is um a wonderful meditation teacher um has a great podcast. When something happens um you will experience suffering if you try to resist it. If you try to push away reality and push away the present, you will experience a lot less suffering if you accept whatever it is. That doesn't mean you need to accept poor treatment or accept being discriminated against or accept something unfair, right?

>> I'm I'm using accept in a bit of a different way. >> You have to accept that something is that something is happening. just that literally instead of pushing away reality, wishing away reality, wishing wish wishing things were different. And so when stuff like that is coming, um, imagine you're at the dentist and then they're poking a hole in one tooth and they start poking a hole in the next one. You go, "And that, that too, also this." Instead of instead of pushing it off, right? Um, and things are going to happen. Mhm.

>> Bad things, good things, whatever. Your process of categorizing them like that, your process of pushing away the things that you deem bad, that's what causes the suffering. >> Mhm. >> Very. And it's something that I feel we get to realize as we go through more and more of the what we would have classed as bad when we were younger. You go through it and you see ah that was actually an opportunity for this or a lesson in this. And then you become much much more let's say amanable to that

idea of everything just is and then it's coming to teach me something to unlock something that wasn't there etc etc >> or it just is you know just like like >> I know we're getting a little bit metaphysical but >> we live in a world of abstractions and words and narratives and this is where this is where the logos is bad, right? Um, we live in a world of abstractions where we're narrating everything and we're deciding this is good, this is bad, this is okay with me, this is not okay with me. But reality isn't verbal, it isn't spiritual, it isn't physical. Reality is, you know,

that's reality >> now. and and and the more you can get with that >> um the more refuge you can take >> uh in the present uh instead of using your mind like a time machine passing forwards and backwards telling stories >> be in the now. >> Yeah. >> And and and the now isn't some story. No, >> the now is >> that this. Okay, circling a little bit back just because we talked about not going in the past. What was it like? So, you're

building and you're translating Ethereum and this technology for the world. You created this role for yourself. you had so much in play and growing in terms of the stories out there. I mean, I've known you since 2018 and seeing the work that was happening within consensus and how uh you were communicating it out, the ethereal events and everything to do with that.

What happened? cuz I know how I experienced the departure. My own departure from the >> your departure [laughter] >> from the container. How did you experience it? What was it like for you? >> Well, so I always enjoyed, you know, ever since ever since um the EA announcement worked and Ethereal worked and I was allowed to hire a team. >> Yes. Um, and people trusted me. Um, I got a budget and I was allowed to do stuff. Um, and I had Joe's support and trust. Um, and deep friendship and support and trust amongst a lot of

people in the organization. >> Um, and that was fabulous. Mhm. >> And I had so much fun at that point doing great work. >> And I no longer had my foot on the gas and the brakes internally freaking out while externally moving with conviction. >> Yes. >> I just had the foot on the the gas. Um and the things we built were so cool. Mhm. >> So instead of a normal approach to um media, we organized these weekly calls with journalists where anyone could just join and hear from consensus about any project that they were curious about anything that's going on in the space um off the record and so you could they

could diligence anything. And so our goal was to just um be that source so that they wouldn't get anything wrong about the technology >> and super transparent. >> Yeah. >> So they wouldn't write about scams. And we ended up building these deep trust relationships with the media because we weren't just trying to get something. We we were we were building something for the long term. And then at that point we could create like a web an email property that summarized everything that was happening um this month at consensus and this weekend Ethereum came then too >> right Evan. Um, so there were people that were able to summarize um, you know, what was going on in the ecosystem very efficiently. Um, and that was really useful and we created properties with great SEO that are still many of

the main explainer properties about um, what's going on in the ecosystem if you Google. >> Um, and now those things are being indexed and taken up by um, the LLM. And so it's um, it's hardening into into history, you know, the way that we describe things. Um, and then with paid growth, we we weren't allowed to use um Google and Facebook and all those standard platforms because crypto words were banned. >> And so >> we developed our own um growth marketing strategies that were really like growth hacker kind of stuff. And that's what led us toward these organize the organizers, you know, meetup group discords where we helped organize all the Ethereum meetup organizers all over

the world and make sure they were singing from the same himnil, make sure they have the same visual assets, that they have beer and pizza money um that they can talk to each other um and that they have kind of a roving curated group of um new projects presenting to them so that those projects can then get feedback and build audiences. And so we built such amazing staff, such a great team. >> Um, and I worked at Consensus for about four years. >> And, um, I really felt like we'd launched the Ethereum story. Um, it worked. Um, and >> and you did, I mean, I joined and, uh, did uh, bounties because of things that

I had read and come across from. help. >> So, it worked um for lots of reasons. Some that we helped fan the flames of and oxygen blow oxygen onto and some because of you know what it what it was like the core of >> um that that it allowed for that, right? Like >> marketing and product are like muscle and bone. >> Yes. >> If you're just storytelling without anything hard at the core, you're going to just flop around, right? If you are all skeleton and no muscle, you can't get up off the floor.

>> Yep. Um, and so it's always both. So I felt like mission accomplished. Um, Consensus also felt like mission accomplished and didn't really want to do all of the marketing for Ethereum and pay for it. Um, and wanted to turn inward to do product marketing for its own products >> and for the spokes. Yeah. >> And for the spokes. And >> that didn't interest me as much. >> Okay. Um, I wanted to paint with a broad brush and I wanted to bring the whole continue bringing the whole ecosystem to market together in addition to the Ethereum story.

>> I didn't want to be a product marketer for this one thing. >> Yeah. Um, and and that's what consensus seemed like it wanted to do on the on the marketing side to to to back away from the larger bite it had taken responsibility wise out of the what it could deliver for the ecosystem. >> Yeah. [clears throat] >> You were supposed to then be like a an internal agency servicing. >> Well, we were that's what we were um for all the spokes. Um, >> but what consensus was going to stop doing and has has stopped doing, I think. I don't want to speak out of turn. I don't work there, but um, >> is being responsible for like the marketing of Ethereum, right?

>> Um, and I wanted to continue getting to paint with that broad brush and and to also bring to market individual projects, but to fit them into the map >> [clears throat] >> um, of this bigger thing that we're creating, which is, I think, even beyond Ethereum. It's how can we build open, permissionless, fluid um financial networks that anybody can use um that lets anybody um build finance into something that they're creating online in a in an open-ended way, right? Um in a censorship resistant way. So there were a lot of um projects that wanted me to join as their CMO.

>> And so I said yes to all of them, but that we wouldn't be exclusive. And then I started serotonin um and hired a lot of my original team. Um so many of us at Serotonin have been working together for 10 plus years. >> Yes. And that was 2020 or 2019. >> 2019. >> And you started it no investment bootstrapped it all. >> Yes. But not bootstrap, just profitable from day one because it's a services business.

Memo to everyone. If you're starting a services business, don't raise money. Just make it profitable from day one. Don't hire unless you have revenue booked. Um then you can hire into your booked revenue. Um it's a profitable cash flowing business that I think produces some pretty incredible results um for our for our clients and partners. Um and that's always been the model. And you know, I think with AI, one one thing that's going to happen is that a lot of scalable software companies or companies that thought that they were going to be that y >> are actually going to become services companies >> because if everyone can build their own software, maybe not all software, but a

lot of their own software, [clears throat] they aren't going to pay some SAS ARR to some venture-funded startup to do something that they can just build internally. >> Yeah. And so a lot of those companies are going to become services providers, but they've taken in venture funding from investors, 10, 15, 20 million bucks that wants to make a 10x return. >> Um, and that would never have intentionally funded a services business. You can't fund a services business's growth, right? Like there's private equity for that. There's there's um, you know, acquisition.

There's all kinds of ways that services businesses once they hit a certain scale do raise money. Um, >> but right from the beginning, raising tech VC would have been a terrible mistake. And I I fear that a lot of the businesses in our space are going to become services businesses or if you look at their revenue mix, they already are services businesses, but they can't admit it because they have these VCs that expect these 10x returns. And that that's again to this is a podcast about emotions, [clears throat] right? That's a very painful situation. That's a very painful situation and it's not ours fortunately.

>> I think like I I think there's a lot of pain um amongst founders who have this gap between what they're supposed to be doing, what they what they're supposed to have created, what the public perceives them as having created, what investors want them to create, and what the thing really is. >> Right? And when that's the case, you can try to make it be what they expect >> and change it um or you can admit it. Um or you can try to keep the show going as long as possible um without admitting it that it is actually that thing while also keeping it this thing. And unfortunately that third option is what

a lot of projects try and actually one and two are fine, right? like just try to do the thing or say you can't do the thing, return the money, whatever, but but trying Yeah. And um and that's terrible because I mean this we're on this funny like emotion podcast, right? So we're I I think a lot of you associate this with like Asian culture like face saving like like trying to avoid shame. Um, but I think there's a lot of that in just like global founder culture and there's a lot of like money wasted. Um, from just people trying to hold on as long as possible while the chasm's widening between perception and reality to uh to

the to the perception and and that causes some pretty bad scenarios. >> Yes. And how much shame do you think we have and this type of behavior do you think we have in our space? >> A lot. >> Yeah. >> A lot. Um, and usually like when something suddenly collapses and everyone's shocked, it's because there was a really big chasm between what something was projecting on the outside and what like the reality really looked like on the inside. And then you can imagine two tectonic plates in pangia coming apart, right? And then eventually they come apart and everyone falls into the crater, right? And so when these

things suddenly happen, it's like whoa. Like you lift the you lift the rock and you see everything that was squirming underneath and you're like whoa, that was all in there. >> Mhm. >> Um and so long story short, I'm very grateful that we never tried to raise VC into serotonin at the beginning there. I think at this point we're a scaled business and we could raise like PE or something and use it to scale up or make acquisitions or whatever. I'm [snorts] very happy with the way we started the business. And my advice to other people is try to get some product market fit or glimmers of fit or clear, you know, LOIs that people will pay you for something before you raise a bunch of venture funding. And then the other advice is don't go in a hole and spend $100 million on your product without ever

testing if anyone will use it and then come out $und00 million later with this product saying, "Okay, marketing, okay, >> sales, find me some users." That's not how it works. I mean, if you read the lean startup or if you read zero to one, you have to go through all these feedback loops, feedback loop, feedback loop. Um, starting with you in the in the very beginning, you're using marketing to just probe for kernels of fit, right? Little little kernels of product market fit, and then you feed that back into product, tweak the product a little more, then, you know, try the message a little more, then maybe put some spend behind it, then maybe this, then maybe this. You won't get your first 10 million users until you have your first 10,000 users, until you have your first five users.

I remember this from consensus. I think maybe we talked about this because I remember this very distinctly when again uh we were doing things with bounties and I was like right 100 million was a moonshot at that point but that was super important that gradual >> being where you again again I mean I loved how Jeff Bezos put this he he wrote this in a Washington Post oped reality is the undisputed champion what a great phrase then there's something beautiful and zen about that Right? Like be where you are and your product is where it is. Your users are where they are. How do you grow a little bit from that? A little bit from that. A little bit from that.

>> Um and that's the strategy that we follow um and that we've brought to a lot of projects in the space. >> How much do you feel patience is important in this process? Well, if you were very patient and end up being right, then patience looks like it was great. >> If you end up being very patient and were wrong, then it looks like you wasted a whole bunch of time, >> right?

>> And so the question is, are you right? Um, truly the question is, are you right? Um, and if you have a real reason to think that, you know, I've built this thing, we have this many users, it's a down market, this one factor is likely to change soon, maybe when the market follows a natural cycle or maybe I've built this RWA platform and RWA's the interest in them is going like that. And we know that our category, like we have some of the best deals within our category. Um, but it's only just starting to go like that. Um, and and there's a future where this really has this category works and then my specific project within the

category works for this specific reason, but it's going to be another maybe year until this thing fully catches on and we can keep on building toward it and getting more fit to be ready when that when that, you know, tide comes in. That's good patience, >> right? Um, bad patience is if there's not some reason why the thematics of what you're doing will work better in the future. Um, and there's not some reason why you and what you're creating within that thematic um, would succeed um, even if that thematic succeeds. So those are usually like the two dependencies um, that determine whether being patient makes sense, >> right? Um

I'm interested in with this whole journey and also we didn't talk about um Mjito and the NFT situ what what was that like? So obviously you launched Mjito and I'll I'll let you um give the the background to that but it was immediately like boom skyrocket what 100 million >> and then the NFT collapse. What was that like? And again >> how did it feel?

So, a spin out of serotonin um a spinout project um with Sabes and CIA that was a scalable technology project um and so did raise VC um is Mojito. Um, Mojito had this wonderful deal with Sabes um and with CIA and all of its artists where it was the platform um that facilitated all of the various NFT sales so that they had a place to direct that that they own part of um and the total amount of value that went through that platform is astronomical.

>> Yeah. um like the amount of money that were made by various CIA talent that were made that was made by Sabes itself um that created the whole like sues metaverse >> um was very significant um and if you look at some of the other entities that believed in this like large scale like metaverse NFT hypothesis >> the biggest loser I would say who didn't really make any money but who lost a lot of money and brand value was meta.

>> Yeah. >> Like they believed in this paradigm so much that they invested billions in this like hokey cartoon world um because they thought maybe we'd be stuck at home with new versions of co for the next 30 years. You know, maybe maybe right that was reasonable because there were so many entities that benefited financially from co >> that it's logical to think that our, you know, lizard overlords would make their always be that and we'd be at home forever and so your NFT art really is what you'd look at all day and your owns from your video games would really matter to you and we'd all live in this kind of like hokey mediated world. Um there there was real reason to think that. And so let's not forget what we

were all thinking during that time. And let's >> let's not dismiss our past selves. >> Let's understand our past selves and integrate them. >> Understand why we thought that so that we can bring more wisdom to what we're thinking now. Right? Because I think like let's say there was another co right now. People would start having that same thought again, >> right? Um, and so like the NFT bubble was like every other cryptobubble in that people started erroneously thinking that by token wrapping something that it creates value where value doesn't exist. Yeah.

>> So there still are art NFTTS that um sell very well and it's only one type. It's the type of art NFT where the art was worth something even if it wasn't on the blockchain. >> Yep. [clears throat] >> Like a bull or something, right? like uh and a couple of other those really high-end NFT artists that are also normal artists. >> Um and the the moral of the story is that token wrapping something and putting on a blockchain doesn't make something valuable that wasn't before. >> It merely takes some kind of value and brings it into >> a venue. Brings it into a venue where it can get priced, where it can be exchanged with other types of assets that live in that venue. And every

single bubble is where people think there's value being created out of nowhere merely by token wrapping something and putting it on the blockchain. >> Um, and so it was a bubble very similar to that, but it has some lasting um effects, right? Like the nonf fungeible token technology will always be used. Um, whether art really makes sense as that use case or other things remains to be remains to be seen. I think the art use case will always exist. Mhm. >> Um I think Mojito generated a lot of allowed a lot of NFTTS to be sold by the entities that funded it. Um and so they uh were able to do the thing they wanted to capture value during that period. Um

and while whilst um a lot of the um NFT companies that raise tons and tons of capital like way beyond Mojito um are really defunct now >> um and are down like 99% or whatever. Mojito was always quite conservative about spending money. Um, and as a result, um, it exists today in a totally new form and has a different name and is about to launch a pretty significant vault protocol.

>> And so, um, yeah, no big feeling. um happy with um preserving uh agility and ability to adapt to new circumstances basically. Um and uh not um spending beyond conviction. >> Um doing the thing that was required in the time that people wanted um and being able to nimly move um to heads down bidding that we think people are going to want. Um yeah >> and this I feel is a very important piece is this adaptability and not collapsing or putting um not

necessarily all eggs in one basket because you want to have conviction in the things in the thing that you're doing but not giving yourself that room to be flexible and move. Again, coming back to the movement, moving with how everything is evolving because it should evolve and it should progress, but if you're cementing yourself in a certain space, then it's going to be mighty hard for you not to collapse or hit walls.

>> Yeah. I I think like both with the kind of personal internal emotional stuff around like confidence and conviction and self-questing that we've been talking about and things like deploying deploying capital raised um or like the mission of a company. I think it's the same principle which is have some conviction, validate, grow or change the conviction. Have some conviction, validate, grow or change the conviction. Have some conviction. And so like the answer isn't be confident or be unconfident. Be completely convicted or have zero conviction and just be, you know, blow on your and and and do do whatever the wind is blowing lately.

It's measure at each step and iterate and and figure out the right amount of conviction that makes sense. Um, and complete the loop where you take in external data and external feedback into your amount of conviction and your idea of what you should be building, what you should be doing. >> Would you say that's one of the biggest pieces of your human protocol? Let's say with regards to how you live and build or what give me some >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I would I would say that that is WOO, right? Like that is that is the like startup that that

that's like the startup application of WOO right? >> It's um >> you you want to have some form. You want to have some like idea some some and then you want to move with what it's going to what what reality is going to permit um and maneuver and maybe change it a little bit in order to fit through that crack. Um, and then maybe it changes again. Um, and so this moving with the grain of reality. Um, and I think there are other ways to there are other ways to live life, right? Like there's a way to live life white knuckling and brute forcing your way through everything.

>> Um, and that can work. Um, and there's a way to move with reality with the grain, right? Like there there are two ways to pick up an object. like there's there's this way and then there's this way and you're using different amounts of energy and you're using different types of of grips because we were talking about this briefly before we press record. What would you say is the indicator of what is authentic to you? Like you were just giving the example of how to grip the object, right? How do you find,

oh, this feels better versus this versus this versus whatever? >> Well, in my example of gripping the object, like this is going to be a better way to grip it than this because you can easily drop this, right? And this is a much more secure secure way to grip it where you're using less energy and it's more secure. And like this, you're using more energy and it's less secure, right? um and they go through the same thing of holding the the object in in suspension. I mean I like so the the question of authenticity we get this a lot. So, at Serotonin, um, we do a lot of social media. Um, and I do a lot of social like I I worked on Consensus and Joe and you know a lot of a lot of the original kind of like social accounts in

the Ethereum ecosystem and um you can tell um and I often suggest that founders tweet the kinds of things that they say to me when we're in conversation. Um, and stop editing themselves so much and actually lower the barrier to entry between having a thought and turning it into a tweet.

Because a lot of times people have this kind of artificial barrier between their internal self or their themselves in a private conversation and how they express themsel publicly. >> And some of that can be valuable, right? Like it's important not to uh you know get up on stage and take off your shirt, >> right? Um but it's overdone and almost everyone almost everyone who's like reached the stage of being a founder having you know a profile that involves other people telling you how to manage it right most of those people are too locked up about it and they'll be very interesting conversationalists in private um they'll text over some like really fascinating thoughts and then they're so scared

>> to express themselves like that publicly that it ends up being bland >> and So like I want the I want people to tweet the most interesting things they think, the most interesting things they heard to express themselves really naturally. Um and not create persona that they won't be able to then maintain by themselves. Um because you don't want to paint yourself into some box where you have to always be some way that's very very different from how you are so that that person who's been building up that Twitter all to be that way, they go away. then you're you're stuck with this this world that you can't maintain, right? So, it's about finding the angle on yourself where you know how you express yourself naturally actually

converges with what people are interested in hearing about from you and that's a very specific different ven diagram overlap kind of convergence for different people. um identifying that and then expressing yourself from that place. And I think that's a it's both authentic and it's marketable because it's finding that that overlap between what do people want to hear from this person and what is this person already saying >> and it's that level of integrity, right? Because you do have that split when the two are in congruent, right? The persona that's on Twitter and who you are as a person normally.

There's a lot of energy to maintain the two all the time. >> Well, it's like let's say a person has a hundred interesting things that they thought today >> and let's say three of those things um would work well on Twitter. >> Mhm. >> Eventually, you're going to have a persona on Twitter that's a bit different from how you are because it's only capturing this one side. this small percentage. So, it's not going to be a perfect fit. Um, but I think having it be completely divergent is bananas because you won't be able to maintain it by yourself when whoever's helping you with that is gone.

>> Fair. >> Um, what still very much inspires you here and where we're going? I mean, we're seeing all of these conversations on Twitter and um I was just telling you that I came back on it about after a year, almost a year and a half of not being on it. And there's constantly conversations about, oh, this isn't going fast enough, this isn't doing well enough, this isn't doing this, this is doing the other thing that we didn't think it should be doing etc. etc.

What do you feel as again a person who has been involved in this for such a long time whose home is this? What do you feel inspired by and what would you say to everybody who is so invested in this emotional roller coaster of it's not fast enough, it's not good enough, it's not Well, I think it's good to have there be pressure to be excellent.

>> Um, and I think being comfortable all the time is certainly too much to expect. >> Mhm. >> Um, and the most growth comes from the most discomfort. >> Yes. And so I think the same way that hacking attempting to hack Ethereum makes it stronger, um criticizing [clears throat] Ethereum and the EF and all that, I'm all for it. Um I think it's um it it it battle tests it >> and I think it's silly to say stop criticizing this.

>> Why not? Of course. Um, I loved, you know, when Tomas, who's no longer co-head of the EF, but when he first joined, how he would just reply to every thread where people were critical with a Calendarly link. I just love that because I think that's the right way to greet um, critique is to truly receive it. um not to push it away, but to get curious and figure out whether it [clears throat] has um any interesting messages.

I mean, I think the EF has always wished to employ fewer people and to be less uh powerful and to really serve as less of a crutch and for the ecosystem to um stand on its own. >> It reminds me of the scene in Monty Python where the [snorts] Jesus character goes, "Stop believing me. think for yourselves and they go, "Stop. We'll think we'll think for ourselves." [laughter] >> Um, so people people do like rallying around a patron saint of course.

>> Um, >> but I just don't think it's a problem. Okay. >> Like I I think ultimately, you know, there will always be like the dialectic of criticism um and response to criticism. maybe with an invitation, maybe with curiosity, maybe by integrating um those people. And I think as long as the Ethereum blockchain is censorship resistant, um that it's open and permissionless for people to use, um so that anyone can use it, um that it's secure, um that it's as decentralized as possible. Um, I think we'll have something very differentiated uh from everything else that's going on in the market. Um, and I'm very proud of that

discipline. I don't love every decision. There are some decisions that I disagree with. There are regrets that I have on behalf of like the community and the ecosystem that something wasn't done differently. Um, but long story short, you know, I'm in it. uh because something really amazing was accomplished, right? And this is what motivates me. >> Bitcoin made it possible to send value to anyone, anywhere, even if all the governments of the world didn't want you to.

>> Yes. >> And that changed the world. And then Ethereum made it possible to use that value and to do all kinds of things with it so that it wouldn't just sit there in its own little tub. Um, and that created a bull work against authoritarianism >> that is permanent and in a world that's trending in both the east and the west toward authoritarianism.

Um, and I don't even mean necessarily controlled by governments. I think it could be controlled from the inside out >> by by systems that hack the person from the inside. >> This is a bull work against authoritarianism in a world that's more under threat than ever. And it makes the world a little looser, a little freer, a little less controlled, a little less locked down. Um, and that's very special. And I want to keep on building things and accelerating building things that do that that create that create a little space that create that little that little gap that allow a little more room for maneuvering that make it a

little less possible to fully crack down and control everything. And I think our ecosystem still producing that. >> Yes. Love that. That's going to be a great clip. Um, [snorts] okay. We're nearing the end. Is there anything that you have never shared publicly, never said? It could be about whatever you want. It could be about your view on life. It could be about your view on building, the view on the ecosystem, whatever you want.

>> I mean, I told you a story already. You can cut this part. Even I told you a story that I'd never told anyone like about about like the the the new year the New Year's party. Um this is all a lot of stuff that I've never told anyone >> um and in this format personally I have Yeah, I guess a philosophy that I've come to over time is to try to build things that are genuinely valuable to other people. Um,

and to the human project. Um, and if I had a billboard, that's kind of what I'd write on it because I think that there is has been a divorce between the map and the territory. >> Um, where let's say that territory is creating something valuable and the map is money and the map of money used to really correspond to okay, did you make something valuable? Mhm.

>> Um that moves humanity forward, that is something people want, that solves people's problem. Um and money, money was the description um and of the thing. And the thing was something that that matters to people that's really valuable. And with fiat money, the degree of inflation, um the privatization of gains and publicizing losses, um the increasing financialization and the number of people who are rent seeking on capital in various ways. Mhm.

>> Um there's a bit of a disparity emerging, a bit of an unpeeling, if you can imagine a sticker that's stuck to something whose side is coming up just a little bit, there's a bit of an unpeeling um between uh that map and that territory. And if you have to pick one side or the other, which is do I want to focus on the description um on on the map on optimizing the map or do I want to focus on having the skills to create things that people want and be in that territory. I personally pick the territory. Mhm.

>> Um, and in places where I see those things as being, you know, maybe getting unpeeled or having edges that are slightly off, um, and where you have to pick, um, I pick the territory over the map. Um, and I I I have a feeling like that's going to happen more, >> um, not less. And I think there are also alternate forms of currency. I mean, attention's the most obvious one. Um, because it's already very metricized. There are other forms of currency emerging. Um, and you have to evaluate whether you like those um whether whether they're reasonable, whether there's something else.

>> Um, because I think that super macro and you could say ever since 1971 when the money became fake, right? There there's something to be said for that too. >> Yeah. um that trying to get out of the world of abstractions and back to the basics of making sure you're building something that's actually valuable to people. >> That's something I think about a lot these days. >> And I'll I'll just put that out there as something that's on my mind. >> Definitely also on my mind. So, thank you so much for sharing that and I think it will not use it. Feel free to use it or not use it, but >> great. I love it and it's it speaks so much to I think what a lot of people

feel but potentially don't express or think about because this is just the way the game is. So we have to go with the >> status quo which is again to your point the change will happen when more people are choosing the territory versus Right. >> Totally maps go away. People make new maps. [clears throat] people make new maps and also it all it reminds me of an Alan Watts quote of people being so detached from the territory that it's like eating the menu instead of the meal.

>> Exactly. Eating the menu. It's like there's also a Bourhees short story. >> Okay. >> Which is like a group of people decide to make the world's best map >> and in order to not lose any detail, it's the same exact size as the world. And [snorts] so they spread it out over the whole world and eventually everyone just has this soggy piece of paper under them that's coating the entire earth because they made the perfect map that captured every bit of the territory. Obviously Bourhees had never heard of lossless compression.

[laughter] >> But that's a very again a very apt analogy on what we're kind of living in. You're living in the the kind of chewed up soggy map >> map and then eating menus. Amazing. >> Exactly. >> All right, Amanda. Thank you so much. Thank >> you. I hope this was good. Chop it up. Do whatever you want with it. >> It's fantastic. >> Thank you so much for joining. >> Of course. Bye. >> Bye.