DeFi by Design EP#100: The Ultimate Cross-Chain API w Philipp Zentner CEO of Li.Fi

Transcript

foreign [Music] by Design where we talk all things blockchain and cryptocurrency while striving to educate Empower and generate good morning rollup nation and happy happy 100th episode of the well I guess the D5 by Design defy State roll up Podcast now a very exciting time for us it's been a long journey in the D5 world and bringing back a a previous guest um in maybe in episode 50 or 60 to talk about some very interesting applications in defy cross chain zaps cross chain

world uh what's going on in the in the in the world of bridging um and kind of how you guys can take advantage of this information to get better rates to have a better experience as a D5 user and some really interesting things that are happening in the background to abstract some of this complexity of defy away so without further Ado we'll jump right in and good morning Rob happy 100th podcast I like your Polo man looking fly it's good to be back good morning yeah happy 100th podcast it's a pleasure uh Philip to have you on man A lot has changed since you're on last time um we can jump right into it you know we're going to talk about series a we're going to talk about Integrations uh the

the SDK the software development kit that you guys are providing other protocols um and jumper which you know is totally new since uh since you were on the uh the podcast last time so uh absolute pleasure to have you on um we can jump right into it you know what what are you most excited about uh over at leafy and jumper right now guys first of all hi and good to be back and happy hundreds podcast congrats I mean you pulled through uh that's that took a lot of discipline and uh and following on to get that done congrats pretty nice so what was your question again cheers man yeah we're pretty stoked

about the 100th podcast too we're gonna have a lot of a lot of uh celebration along with it so uh my question you can tell we're excited I'm curious what are you most excited about when it comes to jumper and leafy foreign the team has been growing we are above 40 people now um which is nice um so we will find it at a point where the organization can grow and ship um autonomously on on any level that's that's so nice so I finally get to go back to the beginning and questioning who are we where do we have to be how do we get there and um that's what you do

as a Founder from day one right but then you get just busy with fundraising executing hiring selling and of that and now two years later we are at a point again where I can question the industry the status quo of Venus 3 and the status quo of our company and I get back to doing research I get back to um thinking long term and I finally have some time until the next fundraise um to think about how will a series B look like right um and I'm excited about so many things that are going like the amount of things we are shipping

um it's great to see the organization itself growth like internally um processes and and all of that are finally coming into place I'm also excited about the deals we are closing uh we have some amazing pipeline uh ahead of us uh so uh that's that's going to be exciting it's going to drive Revenue um and you guys know how hard it is to be sustainable in this industry it's always it's often a race to the bottom and it's really hard to create sustainable businesses in general so I'm I'm really lucky to be in a position uh that yeah building something like that right now and and finding that sustainability um and and the proper business model and all of that um I'm also excited about

um what's happening in the industry intense driven systems account abstraction chart sequences password password um there's a lot happening uh and uh yeah yeah I I finally get to catch up with all of that so exciting excitement all over the place yeah so before we we really dive deep on where we are right now and where leafy and jumper is going maybe you could give our audience like a quick summary as far as where leafy has been right uh over the last essentially since you've been on the podcast last which was about a year to a year and a half ago what has

happened in the last year that you'd like to share with our audience so Levi has found a degree of product maturity that you can implement it and it works and it it it is it provides a great user experience it the API is is now fast um a year ago it was slow it's simply because all these Integrations the party Integrations um count a lot of overhead and it took some refactoring here and there also because like these infrastructural pieces these crocheting Bridges taxes tax aggregators they're also Reinventing themselves and change things and completely change protocols reinvent themselves there's a lot of Maintenance

overhead and we uh a lot has happened under the hood and the overall developer experience has become so much better um the way we can provide analytics um debugging options the way the API talks to the developer everything has changed and became so much better um so this is good the company is much more stability close to series a um beginning this year seven 18 and a half million dollars during the worst market conditions that was quite tough I guess we're going to talk about that later on um also um yeah we are around 20 networks um Solana is coming soon Bitcoin is coming soon uh Cosmos is coming soon so there's a lot happening

um and uh we just um allowed for so we're always allowed for cross-shank contract calls but now we support direct apps in a partnership with whiteo um where we allow to we have cross-chain zap into anything um also on trainzap into anything so this is this is quite amazing um and we aim to build this out more and more there's so many players in this crochet in zapping Space by now um also that becomes um uh quite a challenge to oversee and yeah what and we we continue to see the interoperability space exploding on so many levels crochet improves crocheting messaging uh Market maker driven Bridges intend driven Bridges um limit order

driven Bridges there's there's so much um happening and uh um it's we are specialized on this and it's still hard for us to keep up with all these Solutions and evaluate them and give them a fair chance right it's very easy to say ah you're small I don't have time to look into it but then on the other hand there's so much more technology coming out um at a high quality so yeah a lot sorry yeah man yeah no I I've I've recently felt a very similar um vibe from the overall ecosystem of D5 really I I thought that in in the previous kind of hype cycle if you will

it was almost like defy wasn't exactly ready um for for all the users and for all the activity and I feel like not only from a a scaling perspective as far as the layer twos and other alternative layer ones where users can find their home base but also just from a a tooling and a UI perspective where really really getting quite a bit closer and I think a great example there is that cross chain zap infrastructure that you speak of with um in the recent partnership with Widow like for example I mean doing anything cross-chain over the last couple years whether it just be bridging has just been kind of kind of you know a nightmare um it's a it's a gas do I have gas tokens there okay which token do I need

to bridge does this bridge even support it can I trust this bridge and so many of the bridging questions are starting to to be answered not only from a technical perspective but also from a kind of a UI and user experience perspective and that to me is the most bullish kind of thing happening um as far as just teams building quality Tech and being ready for you know kind of what's next and so I I truly think that we're quite a bit closer than we've ever been as far as things like creating the best user experience possible and something you know you mentioned intent and account abstraction and those you know those are just absolutely impeccably powerful for um for user experience yeah the idea of

just wanting to do something and then having it be able to you know be processed on chain is like something that is almost unfathomable for us being kind of in the space on metamask for so long and now it's you know it's coming um yeah yeah space is improving um ux is becoming better websites becoming faster depths becoming faster more seamless account abstractions around the corner we see many players going into that one that means my contract wallets have been around for quite some time but there wasn't they were not taken serious um enough and now with account abstraction um these projects become much more I I getting much more um attention and there's also good to see

uh yeah it's it's incredible how fast the space is moving right like it's it's yeah they they're we are overrunning each other like all the time uh it's really hard for any um top level application to catch up uh with with all the developments and um yeah and there are a narrative that that is just came out can be outdated a week later it's crazy yeah that is a really really crazy aspect because I mean I mean there's like there's a ton of traction I I idea and there's kind of the Stark net and their Cairo um upgrade and languages and then these layer twos upgrade like optimism has just upgraded to bedrock and there's

super chain and just like there's it does feel like there's a ton of news um happening and you know I feel like you guys have done a fantastic job of kind of getting out into the light with your um with your comms and marketing side as well as just like really kind of being the backbone for a lot of these applications is is that kind of a big use case that you see for it um the SDK and just kind of your product and your business model I'm kind of being this backbone for a lot of these front-facing applications wallet steps um kind of these users really have no idea that they're actually using um the SDK and the tech that you have built but that's kind of um you know the the model of growth that You're Expecting or or is there

something kind of different um that you're leaning on you know um in this space is totally normal Levi is focusing exactly on this right we are abstracting away complexity and progression like also that progression you shouldn't have to take care of that so there is there is a complexity to begin with um we abstract away but then the within that complexity we progress in different directions on how things are done and and we are taking care of evaluating these progressions and implementing them so that you don't have to um right so that's why we always say it's a multi-chain D5 middleware

sometimes we are saying it's a multi-chain D5 settlement layer sometimes it's it's a multi-chain D5 liquidity layer so they you can it's really hard to find a messaging that fits all because really depends on who you're talking to and whom whom we want to address and Levi can be a lot in many different ways that on the one hand gives us great opportunities to grow um on the other hand obviously you know uh the best way to grow in general is to do one thing right for one target group and then you win in that Niche and then you grow out of that Target Ruble out of that Niche into the next one the next Market segment and often you have been outpaced from a competitor that has simply done the same thing for another

Niche so growing fast is super important for us that's why we have done such an amount of marketing uh race funds and all of this it is but yeah it's we have a very generalizable solution you can apply it to so many use cases and so many Target groups within this space and outside the space as well yeah and I don't mean to steal the floor from from Rob but taking this in a further kind of business perspective you mentioned earlier on um you know kind of in in the same line of of of of this thought of of um the kind of types of messaging and and this and the sophistication of a market of of a given Niche really trying to kind of

uh be a dominant player in that Niche kind of on that same line of thought you mentioned earlier about um how it's tough to be a uh to create a sustainable uh overall product and business in this Niche because of the tokens and the emissions and the kind of overall hype and the and the types of products that exist and the market conditions and other various factors but generally you know from a broad lens what what does a sustainable crypto business look like you know how does that how does that work and then more specifically you know what are you guys doing to try to achieve so sustainability or you know what can you what Alpha can you share with us without giving away all the uh Jazz I mean you

have to ask yourself the right questions right are you riding a wave or are you solving a problem and then is the problem you're solving big enough and for whom are you solving the problem and is that Target group big enough again so in order to need to stay in order to build a sustainable business it probably has to be big enough so that other people save time if they save time they are willing to pay money in general and uh and then also like how long lasting is this problem how fast will this problem go away how big is your um how prone are you to disruption um right and that can happen to us as well right like in in a perfect world where everything is intent based who

knows like how do we have to position ourselves for that one do we have to be that intent based system um will there be competing Solutions can we then abstract away and aggregate that again there's a lot going on um also for us and uh any business can be killed but you need to make sure that uh that you position yourself in a um you position so there's one thing is solving a problem that's how how you start right and we Levi did that well we solved a problem we still solve a problem and we're going to solve that problem for the next three to five years at least so for the next five years we're good we're good you want to see greater Concepts that could endanger us but we

will also be able to Pivot fast enough and adjust and again abstract away the complexity and enrich that then again with other things so we can overcompensate potential so just because we we the problem we solved in the beginning is not a problem anymore in five years from now doesn't mean that there is no uh no right to exist anymore right because until then we have earned a much be not enough B2B relationships and until then we have enough time to Pivot and adjust um to still be the one that not only solves the problem but maybe enrich that solution with or other kinds of things that a potential client or an existing client needs down the line so

um with Levi we are super generalized uh positioned and and that gives us lots of freedom to evolve um that doesn't fit for everyone if you're building a D5 protocol you simply might get disrupted I mean uni swap is evolving heavily with v123 before like also they managed to do it but if there's there's also this question are you so one one thing is like um is it is it is it a feature or a painkiller right this is also a question like are you just building a company around a feature or is it really a painkiller and then and

yeah yeah and you you have to you ask yourself very traditional consultant-ish questions um like Port is five forces ask yourself like how does that look like for you for your business right um there are lots of tools um you can use to question your business every day over and over again but you have to be true to yourself you have to be so honest to yourself and sometimes that that can make you really anxious also me yeah because you're you're faced with like the issue that you're trying to solve and these aren't issues that are going to be solved overnight

um and leafy has championed itself on solving a very important issue which is complexity right you guys you guys are able to remove confusion in the space right and and for so long we've heard that ux complexity is what is holding us back from scaling to mass adoption right it's just too confusing for users who don't know how to navigate the internet your grandmother to download a metamask install a Chrome extension go on uniswap Cross chain swaps you know even if there was a use case that applied uh and and provided her value and now leafy is able to come in and Abstract away all that complexity and simplify D5 so that it is consumable for the masses I think eventually as we as we kind of intersect

Finance technology traditional finance and decentralized finance we will start to see these like these solutions that look like venmo cash app right start to become the banks and then we'll start to slowly like diffuse that technology so that it is consumable for the individual and ultimately have self-custody um with a user experience that doesn't frighten people and I think that is somewhat the direction that we're heading in leafy is able to complement it um and and it is a serious problem that you guys are you guys are solving which is complexity and D5 I think I think that is a problem that is facing lots of

protocols and it can be a bit overwhelming at times for projects to to look at some of the most important critical issues in the space and try to take them on headstrong um and kudos to you guys for for doing so um I I'd like to I'd like to somewhat switch gears but also talk about what I think is a potential painkiller in the space um and it's something that we've we've heard a lot about and you guys are are taking it on in terms of cross-chain swaps and and it's the idea of atomic swaps and I'm curious from a from a technological point of view this gets a little bit away from the business elements but I'd like to revisit the Rays and the business elements as well

I'm curious how you see the technology of atomic swaps and is that different from and we don't have to go too deep on it if it's not something that is uh is very core to Leafy but I'm curious is that is that the functionality of cross-chain swaps is it is it truly a decentralized swap between say Bitcoin and ethereum how does that middleware function oh well we haven't found true Atomic swaps in this space yet Atomic and decentralized no we haven't we have managed to to do that yet as atomic as it can be in terms of like you can also

roll it back um some projects are more decentralized and and and on it like connects for example um but most bridging Solutions are not there and um if by middleware you mean like the the man in the middle the bridge still is as of today because most birds are not decentralized there is a man in the middle you have trust assumptions you have written a great piece of on on trust is a spectrum that's how it's called that's what you can Google trust is a spectrum you find on our blog where we dive into all these different types of um of trust assumptions uh we are facing when we're using Bridges bridging Technologies and uh different concepts different trade-offs

it's always about trade-offs um so uh that true atomicity we are we are seeking is not there yet and it's also okay kind of like from a go to market perspective um I sometimes even believe it might make more sense to start more centralized get traction and decentralized down the way but it has to be number one priority as you find traction and that's really tough right because like you're optimizing then so you start to centralized and then people are demanding more features um suddenly um so when when does the point come where you stop delivering features and the one thing you focus on is decentralization

so it takes lots of discipline and also like um the right sentiment in in your own Community to actually Embrace decentralization and actually waiting for it and just the pain of decentralizations of not big enough despite those huge events we have seen last year uh where central instances within crypto have have caused the Bell markets right like what happened FTX 3ac solid skills you name it and and huge Bridge hacks um lots of them oh um still is centralization now important enough for us I don't know I just see

this space Moving On Moving On Moving On Moving on um and we need we need these decentralization Ultras that keep on pushing decentralization um and luckily we have such teams uh again connects such a team that simply continues to reinvent themselves um while keeping up their idealistic standards yeah and it does require shout out yeah to Arjun they're good friends of ours uh we did a great podcast with connexed just a few episodes back so definitely check that one out and it to your point it it takes lots of discipline um to not fall into that trap of decentralization because it's not right for every protocol and and it's not the

problem you guys are trying to solve yeah yeah for us I mean I mean Levi has smart contracts which obviously as decentralized as the chainr we have to deploy smart contact on each chain we are we are supporting um but we have an off-chain component simply because computation is not where it is where it needs to be yet um to decentralize it because it's not only about providing decentralized Computing instances it's also about the whole processes around this like devops and continuous degradation CI CD um processes you need to continuously ship new features in a safe manner all of that tooling is simply not there yet um so we rely on a centralized instance

but we are non-custodial we never touch funds um there's not that much harm that can be done um so um and yeah we're working on verification mechanisms as well yeah and you guys the the primary um Bridges or or teams that you would use on jumper and just in general for uh the cross chain swaps or the gas feature or um where where users can use moonpay to buy crypto using USD or Euros um would you say that those those main teams are Stargate and connects for their quality of of product and

decentralization or um kind of what's the what's the uh backbone there and thought process there are we talking about decentralization or I think just overall like if we were to say the the the the top tier um Bridge Technologies I'm not even sure if I should talk about names in that context to be honest fair enough all these different teams do different things like common entrepreneurial perspective from a purely entrepreneurial perspective all these projects layer zero and axillary and hyperlane um like from the A and B side as well as

it connects as a hop they all have different strategies on how they want to be seen and on how to execute right they have such huge treasuries they can reinvent themselves if they don't fall into the Trap of spending and growing the organization too fast which is like if you have raised so much money you're Keen to grow very fast um until you learn like the the magical man month you know um it's the mythical Amendment like throwing more developers at something doesn't mean you're going to develop the software faster and and a better quality [Music]

um but that's certainly something that gives them a huge Advantage then there's a connects that's very idealistic and and they are really good at not not falling in love with their own ideas and simply starting from scratch starting from scratch and and making sure they relive up to the ethereum ethos Hub managed to start very very Community Driven but they they kind of failed to see that it takes a larger team to strive in a very competitive market um so I think this team is still super super small and I still believe um that is something where they um should have been sort of be more aggressive

um and and then there are then there are small strategies like hyperlane they're like hey let's not focus on what has been so hyperlines bet is simply let's connect the other 100 well-funded ecosystems to the rest of your theorem and give them a chance to grow so there's a lot of money to be made from these ecosystems um so you know it's just like uh interability as a service concept uh they simply you can simply plug in hyperlane to your own ecosystem no matter in which smart contract language it's written that's kind of the idea so they're going to expand to all these random ecosystems that haven't existed yet or haven't seen much traction yet um and that can be a cat a growth Catalyst for them on many levels on the

revenue side as well as on the attraction side um you'll know right all these wealth and ecosystems they also do business development and try to onboard new brands um then um and then we see uh people that have been growing strong based on their own token uh let's talk synapse synapse has Builder like they released talking early and they have a very strong almost chaining style community that is like evangelists is if you want right um they have the most amazing telegram memes amazing yeah and and they start a very centralized and now I think in the recent round they uh tried to sell a

more decentralized future but they got traction first and now they ain't been centralized because they also learned hey we kind of have to like long term we have to decentralize right and then then also comparing XLR and but but then again if you go into detail and you compare all these approaches from hyperlane axillary zero it's all very opinionated and everything comes within technological up and down sides it's a very interesting space like why did they do this that way and why do they do that that way um I can I can read what they are doing um it's it's tough to judge

yeah most definitely and I think similarly to uh the blockchain the blockchain trilemma there's there's a similar aspect to to the bridging trilemma where there's certain teams that focus on on different um aspects of the experience to make that part better um you know and obviously with every Pro there there come cons and um yeah just appreciate your uh your Insight on those and uh it just continuously is seeming to me that kind of being this like this infrastructure layer that that you guys are building is just kind of like the winner takes all kind of layer I mean you can support all these different teams with different visions and different uh protocols applications some might win big in which you know you will

be supporting those that went big and some might not you know do as well and you know still kind of be able to uh you know have your Tech integrated and support and you know with that kind of Outlook in mind it it almost is like um what you're building is like a venture capital firm by integrating your technology to all these different products and kind of some of them are going to work really well and some might and the ones that do work really well will kind of make up the majority of the volume um you know and it's just an interesting way to think about what you're building yes absolutely it's also uh yeah yeah it's also like a bet we are placing is that for example right now all these most bridges have a focus on b2c right

and and their bet is uh they're about essentially uh hey uh the D5 power user uh wave will be will survive long enough until we have fully vested and cashed out let's dab it right uh and and we are saying a like the the mass adoption will not happen by power users it will be like the Robin Hood that will onboard uses so we need to position ourselves as a B2B so that's our play but fan off like I like for me I just want to build a huge company like it's just like all right well domination like

this is this is how I think about it right but that's what what is it I don't know is it ego is that uh um but I can tell you for sure what it is it is fun it's it's [ __ ] fun like I love building this company I just want to see it grow like that's that's I Source all my energy out of seeing watching that organization grow um that's all I want um I can see how you were able to raise 17 million in the um in the in the worst conditions seen since 2018 here yeah Philip like we obviously like can tell where you're going it's world

domination like let's talk about the path you know let's talk about how you get to world domination um good question yeah I'm asking myself that a lot um yeah for us it it means addressing the right target group at the right time because as I mentioned we have a generalized product that can involve in many many ways which is good but it also it it leaves a lot of room for failure right like if you have a generalized product that can grow into many directions you can quickly end up at the point where you're doing too much and we had that fallacy uh last year at some point we were like oh [ __ ] we okay we cannot do all of that so at some

point we have to start thinking about okay is this some for example cross chains apps for a long time we thought we have to be the ones building that we had a generalized crushing contract call capability already but the last mile who is doing that and at the same time we saw we saw Widow valah we saw portal Phi we saw all these different solutions coming up building on Crosshair and zaps or building on zaps um so going out of anything into a certain deposit for example or staking or whatever and yeah at some point realized hey we need to partner up here and and and so be up so we have we constantly have to remind

ourselves to stay lean and then making sure that we are solving uh large enough problems um for the right target group and who is that right should we focus on banks right now not sure maybe it's on ramps off-ramps and custodians first and uh and uh and uh should be addressed trading desks what's keeping trading desks from finding adoption how far away are trading desks from finding adoption right and then it comes up Suddenly it comes down to structural problems like liquidity depth um because you can't trade with with with our price impact so there's a chicken egg problem there like how long will it take to resolve and then there is um when we talk about trading we quickly come into into trading

strategies so which kind of um so what are we talking about we're talking about limit orders stop loss orders um trading sub orders t-wop orders and so these traditional trading strategies all the trading desk business models are based on how available are they in the space right now their companies are taxable and a cow swap uh one inch uh Fusion right they they try to get into this stuff more and so they are Paving the way it should be should we be there when is the right point to aggregate these Solutions will it drive more business or not um so it's a lot about timing timing talking to the market talking to potential Target groups and

not falling in love with certain ideas again this is super important that's that's what has been killing past Ventures it's just you fall in love with an idea and then you go with it for six months in six months and startup time six month in crypto it's a it's a death sentence it's a death sentence you have to be super careful yeah yeah there's something to be said about having the ability to Pivot quickly to drop your ego and understand that there's a better path also it comes from listening to people on your team who um you know they're there for a reason right like you brought them on especially the early um the early team and then obviously those who kind of vet

um the the the the new hires there's you know there's a reason why they're there listening to them hearing teams perspective as well as the the community um and kind of understanding the best task forward and pivoting quickly um all traits of a successful leader and it's a successful company yeah yeah true yeah and as you kind of come coming to the last couple minutes here I'd like to to kind of touch gears briefly on the Rays um briefly on what's coming up uh for kind of road map items um and then a couple uh other types of questions so um yeah I guess you you have some

experience with raising in the past I think from previous Ventures outside of crypto um or at least a previous race here how did this one go um you know what can you what can you kind of share for some Founders who either haven't raised or are going through a process now um you know what did you learn um you know those types of things yeah I can constantly just change just communicate the same learnings around fundraising so all in all how did that fundraise go good question I started almost so I started on the 26th of June last year that's where I started the fundraise and it's been incredibly tough I my old

seat my seat lead investor 1kx like they they joke Philip they just flip you exhausted the market like I spoke to everyone who does investments in crypto I spoke to 340 investors not joking 340 independent funds family offices multi-millionaires whatever call them what you want um so there's been plenty of phone calls it has drive me out um I closed around I think February 1st this year so six seven months of full-time fundraise so first thing it is a full-time thing always has been which is only possible if you are bold enough

to sell on whatever you have at that point and you need the right partner that continues on shipping things so in the precede round it was narrative and as I sold on story multi-chain I did a a seed extension uh which um which was based on early traction and and and marketing traction um and and so when I raised my my my pre-seed seed essentially people were like hey uh not sure if the future is coming multi-chained so I had to convince people on on motor chain narrative and many people simply invested me as a personality I would say all in all I think from 160 investors we

haven't bought only three of them spoke to my co-founder ever um so um in the beginning early stages it's always about founder personality um I don't want to put myself on a potassium but but but you have to make sure that you are very certain about what you want to do if you're insecure in any way around what you're doing without acknowledging it you can be unsure about certain things but you have to be you have to see this be like hey I'm going to figure that out later because I don't I didn't have time for that yet so but we need to focus on this now so again like I can acknowledge weaknesses

um and justify them with a very bold Behavior it's like if you behave in a bold way but but not in in a stubborn way but in a hey I'm determined this is the right thing to do at the right time because that's all about being a Founder is doing the right things at the right time so you have to be able to communicate that to potential investors and that's where many like many especially first-time Founders you are you you carry around so many insecurities that's why seed rounds are so [ __ ] hard especially if you're a first-time founder and then this series a I mean market conditions were bad I was simply ignoring them so my play with the series a was like I don't care about the mark conditions I don't care which is kind of stubborn

Behavior because like obviously a piece like the investors behind VCS become more conservative and they they block Investments then in the end right um like that can happen um but nevertheless uh so I made it a numbers game and that's also so this is the next earnings essentially it's sales fundraising is sales and sales always has been a numbers game so if your conversion rate is one out of ten uh and the average income per close deal is Arnold K you need a million well you have to talk to 100.

right so you have to talk to Android if you need 50 million you want you have to talk to 300. so it's a wealthier clients is what you need yeah and you have to also you have to um so what I'm doing now I'm helping lots of founders with their fundraise I make introductions I'm asking uh investors if they want to talk to a certain I I reviewed Dex I'm giving back right and some Founders have done the same thing for me um and if you know if you have that mentality that also allows you to very rigorously uh um ask for help so I was asking for so many introductions I was

asking clients for introductions I was asking befriended Founders for introductions I was asking not be friend Founders for introductions right like you just you have to do that it doesn't feel nice but you have to do it you have to build your network and talk and talk and get the drugs get introduced get introduced um and you have to take these calls and you have to take them ASAP not next week tomorrow right you get introduction be quick I had I have a variety of shortcuts for my fundraise so I had my I had keyboard shortcuts for my pitch deck I had keyboard shortcuts for my data room also again next one I did my homework first I actually had a data room where all the relevant links that

concerning my like making it easy for the P so VCS they give them money but in the first place you work with them right so it's a work relationship you have with them so if you make their life easier to get to a yes or no that's good that's that shows how you're working so I had a very clean data room where I was like hey uh this is the link to our website GitHub YouTube channel Twitter um whatsoever then I had a link to a my role where they could like my robot where they could find our org chart um and uh a link to um uh to a financial uh business model um and and all of that stuff everything

was linked up and clean and I could always go back to it and there was even investment thesis and and the capture with composition and everything was in there it was just an ocean side but but it did a lot and it got I got a lot of prop for that um and I think that shows how many people are not doing it if people are giving me compliments for just doing some basic homework then it also shows me many people simply don't do the basic homework right um so treat investors like you want to be treated in terms of working with you um I got I could I could write a book about it it's uh there's a lot to do about it this is massively helpful uh recommendations and information for any first-time founder specifically out

there who may be struggling to raise or is thinking about raising you know you just rattled off quite a few elements of what is considered basic you know among uh investors and Founders who are looking to raise I think a lot of it boils down to to preemptively answering the questions that investors have so that they don't have to ask you questions you already provided the answer and and you did that through this this set of links and data that you provided uh during this race um yeah as we as we kind of wrap up um you know that this has been absolutely massively helpful and uh you know one thing that that we've done uh in the last 100 episodes is we uh we

like to ask uh the podcast guests basically um if you are in uh like an elevator right like with uh anyone that you could explain leafy and uh the solution that you guys are providing uh who would you choose to explain it to and why you've already talked to 340 you know independent investment firms but if there was one entity or one person out there that you didn't get a chance to talk to who would you want to talk to um I need to Google that person again

yeah maybe it would be Abby gay Johnson just like um CEO of fidelity and there's probably uh the person I would sit down with an elevator if you like listen and then I would probably listen carefully sit down here right now like and I would be like and I would be plain simple you know I wouldn't like I wouldn't explain what if I'd ask if it's core I would essentially just throw a value proposition at her and be like look you see this financial system being

built from the ground up and it's messy it's complex it's big and there's only one middleware you need to continue to start working with us as fast as possible to continue working with it no matter what happens and to be able to prototype and and and and and build out whatever you want to build out internally you just need that in one middleware um and then stop and like you just Spike enough curiosity to to get a coffee invite after the elevator trip yeah a second date right that's that's that's the key exactly okay I just get to the second date what

take I literally cannot stop thinking about dating through your entire process about talking to VCS like you could take the entire conversation we just had talk about trying to find the right girl dating quickly dating a lot cutting off quickly making it easy it's just it never ends so uh yeah man [Laughter] you you must have a lot of girlfriends brother anyways anyways all right Phillip it was an absolute pleasure having you on um thank you for episode 100 roll-up Nation um D5 by Design listeners and Philip of course with what you guys are are

building it was an absolute pleasure we look forward to having you on again um and who knows how long of time and where where you guys will pivot by then but we are excited for that um and thanks again thank you so much I really enjoyed the conversations always it's so much fun to talk to you guys and uh yeah I wish we would get to talk more often um so maybe we will next year like let's let's aim for that