A New Era in Crypto: Product-led Founders Take Over | Roundup

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Crypto projects that have operated like FinTech have won, I think, the past 2 or 3 years. >> This episode is sponsored by Canton, the only public permissionless blockchain built for institutional finance. We'll hear more from Canton later in the episode. Blockworks Digital Asset Summit is back in New York March 24th through 26th. We'll have top speakers from leading asset managers, financial institutions, DeFi protocols, crypto companies, and policy makers all under one roof. Think Black Rockck, Coinbase, Robin Hood, and more. Follow the link in today's show notes to buy tickets, and make sure to use code bell 200 for $200 off at checkout. See you there. Hey everyone, quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode. Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or

sell securities or tokens. This podcast is forformational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed. All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Bell Curve. You got me Miles Zave. >> Good to be back, boys. >> Morning. >> Good to see you. >> Just a three short week countdown till bass. I know. I took the words right out of your mouth, Miles. There you go. The obligatory show.

>> Exactly. Well, we'll be there. >> We're doing a live. We're doing a live. I think this will be the first time that the three of us have ever um done a live panel or anything like that. So, should be fun. Um it's really it's a really interesting time to be doing this though, I will say because the divergence in between I mean just the amount of raw excitement on the institutional side of the market, the amount of fintexs that are looking at faults, I mean it's so different from kind of the rock bottom sentiment of the natives. And yeah, I pointed out at last ask, but it just the the diversion continues to get larger and larger and larger. It's um yeah, it's a pretty it's kind of the most interesting thing happening in crypto at the moment. Um so

we'll see how in March or you mean like the the RWA defi intersection basically. >> I mean what's like what is happening in crypto at the moment? I would say you can broadly characterize it as an innovation in exchanges. So this combination of the everything app, the everything exchange and prediction markets, stable coins and tokenization, RWA, RDBA looping. I think that's >> Yeah, I agree. >> Well, I mean that's the growth. That's the growth. Yeah, I think like >> AI is obviously working, but is crypto AI working? Like >> well, okay, so we can say like crypto has faded into the background of fintech broadly, right? Like that's good. That's

what I would say like stable coin crossborder is like a slam junk, right? Um and crypto is trying to fade into the background of let's call it like uh you know tradi like asset management, right? As more assets become tokenized and that just becomes the you know the default rail for some things. And then yeah, I think like the exact same thing is being pushed um from the AI side is that like okay cool you have agents that do XYZ. Well, that should be the headline. Oh, okay. In the background, yeah, they're using like stable coins and crypto rails. Um, but yeah, we only have like hit escape velocity on that first one, I think, which is the fintech side.

>> I agree. I agree. And given that crypto and fintech are now so intertwined and increasingly where the leverage is coming from in crypto is changing and it's becoming external to the industry. This is my lead into the topic that we wanted to discuss today, which is the changing archetype of both founders in the space and investors in the space. And people say this often, but you know, what got us here is not going to get us where we want to be. Um, and you know, crypto's been around for uh, you know, about going on um, 20 years now. Um, which is kind of crazy to I mean crypto the

industry hasn't but you know Bitcoin um is about is it 18 years old. Uh so yeah we're getting older in the tooth and you know there have been a lot of real visionary uh founders that um took big bets um and really had to peer far into the future to understand how the space was going to be and how this technology could be leveraged. and some you know unbelievable like very brave uh frankly like tales of investors um who took early chances on them and put up capital when there was very little chance of success. However, it does feel I think if you're in this space like we are potentially at a spot where there's going to be a changing of the guard and I think it feels like that because we've had so many highprofile exits, right?

We've seen, you know, Kyle Smani publicly announce, you know, his resignation from Multicoin and step down. Um there are a couple others that aren't necessarily public yet. Um but there's, you know, all a lot of GPS and you know, teams that have like founders that have stepped down. Um I saw Michael Bentley step down from oiler. I don't know if he's leaving crypto but there's this kind of feeling in the air right of things changing and at the same time um the parts of what is determining uh winners and losers in crypto is kind of external and it seems like a different type of both founder um and investor are needed um from what we've from what we've you know depended on in the past.

Uh, and this is not, by the way, uh, to belittle the accomplishments. Um, and I'm sure there there are people who've been around for a long time and will continue to be successful, but it feels like, um, this is changing and it's kind of relative to where the industry is. So, >> yeah, >> I don't know if you have any commentary there. I'm happy to get into it on the founder side. How do you work? >> Yeah, I think like a good analogy is to compare it to um a company and the life cycle of a company where in the early days um let's call it pre-product market fit or pre- like hyperrowth stage you have a set of individuals that are really good as like the pioneers right for that company finding its place in

the world and finding you know establishing itself and very often you know the the first 10 employees right? If they were successful, they don't always have the skill set or like the, you know, the they're not always the best people to take the company through, let's say, like, you know, from employee one to 100 to to be there and lead the company from employee 100 to, you know, 1,000 or 10,000. >> Right. Right. Um, and I think we're hitting that with crypto where like as an industry, um, a lot of the playbooks and things that made and and just skill sets and and you know, I I guess mindsets that like made the first generations of of founders successful

are not necessarily the, you know, going they're not necessarily evolving with the space and, you know, are necessarily the right people to drive like crypto, you know, into beyond our like self-refer ial bubble, right? And and break into whether that's, you know, competing with NASDAQ if you're unis swap or competing, you know, with the largest fintexs in the world if you're um building some like stable coin impact business or payments business, right? Um and so again, like what we talked about just at the beginning of the call, like stable coins have kind of faded into the background of fintech. um you have like RWAS which are trying to fade into the

background of tradi asset management and we're now going after AI which is more of like a growth frontier but you're targeting like very much so non-cryptonative people right um so as a founder I don't you know I think like a lot of the a lot of the things that um you know have got folks to like some level of success to date are not the sort of things that they need or like will you know make them successful going forward. Um so yeah I'll pause there that was a very like high level um viewpoint but >> yeah I have a few brief comments to make. So I tweeted a few weeks ago saying in the age of AI really execution and technical risk are really minimizing to almost zero. Where back in the day if

I was pitched something a lot of crypto investing in particular was around the technical capabilities of a certain team or a network and how fast something could go and could it scale. Think Salana and Ethereum. Uh now these days I think that anything that I'm pitched I can assume it will be built and I can also assume it'll be built in a pretty short amount of time. I mean again taking us back to the last podcast I mentioned that the Ethereum road map was pretty much vibe coded. Metallic came out this week saying hey there's maybe some bugs and security vulnerabilities that we should be aware of with something like that. But even still how fast you can ship now and execute and also build the technical side is much greater than it's ever been before. So like as an investor, I think again I'm

only speaking for myself here, but what changed the most for me is like thinking really really hard about a market because you're seeing now in crypto that these things are being valued similarly to how they get valued in traditional software or even AI and a lot of it is around business models you know cash flows. It's actually about building durable businesses now in crypto. So I think a lot of teams are going back to the drawing board and thinking about finding a customer you know doing like a block works which they've always done and you know always had great customers and a growing business and that is a good business whereas in crypto a lot of it I think was focused on the token and the customer was the person buying the token the customers was not the person using the network like that's a completely

separate user persona and so I think now what's changed is that there is no customer buying a token that generates no revenues and a business that's going under. So the in my eyes the space has changed a lot in the last you know 12 months even and I think this is the change that will be in crypto forever and so now teams are much much more focused on the business side finding the right market asking themselves the right questions around why someone would use this and pay for this in the first place and I think that the best investors going forward will have the best sense of problems I think actually in crypto and just like really fundamental and it's got nothing to do with how good the tech is or how much a token might pop with people buying it.

>> Yeah. I mean, I'm curious. I maybe this is a heretical opinion, but I was on Unchained this week with Duchar and Lauren talking about Salana and you know, we're talking a lot about the technical roadmap. Again, this is not uh to say that it's not impressive and we do need to work on the tech and all of that stuff, but I don't I don't actually get the sense that that's the needle mover on a 12 to 18month time horizon here. I I think the tech is probably good enough and it's almost entirely a BD like you know even prop AMMs are a super interesting example of the tech didn't marketly change we just found a different way of using it and I think that that's the whole like as an analog of for a particular moment in time um

most of the internet entrepreneurs that you think of weren't the big names before the dot bubble almost every internet entrepreneur that you think of started post.com bubble. And I think the reason for that is different archetypes. You had to be kind of a weirdo and supervisionary to understand the possibility of the internet pre that massive blowup because nothing worked, right? You had to ignore all of these very rational instincts of like, hey, it takes 10 minutes to load a photograph. Like no one's no but no one but nerds are going to use this thing. You had to be very visionary and um take a big risk. But then the founders that succeeded after that were the ones who you know leveraged that you you know this term dark dark fiber like 98% of

fiber was you know unused um at that time and say hey actually now there is bandwidth to load pictures very fast for my Harvard you know my Harvard uh girl rating app or whatever it was in the beginning um and make Facebook. So, I think that that's kind of the moment that we're at in crypto. And honestly, Z and out to be again the boomer on AI. Like, I'm I'm not I'm sure AI has something to do with this, too. But I I think we're just at the phase where crypto is scaling up, right? We you needed a bunch of people to believe in something that didn't ex didn't necessarily exist yet. And getting something out the door which met the lowhanging fruit needs was enough. And it was interesting and it brought capital and people. But now you've gone

for the skill set needed is not to visualize that world cuz everyone sees that world. Larry Frink is on Fox talking about tokenizing all of their index funds. You don't need a visionary anymore. Larry Frink is saying it. So what do you need? You need someone who can scale it. >> Yeah. >> There was like a maybe just to hit like the uh I don't know when the turn when the page turned. there was like a uh a period where you were trying to build a cult basically and a cult of believers and now you're basically trying to all you care about is just distribution and users. Um meaning like in the very early days like it was actually really powerful to be a founder that could uh strike an ideological chord with people

and I think that's how like Ethereum you know found success and found developers early on. And that's how obviously Bitcoin like you know started everything off. Um and then there was a period of like you know academics and like just like I don't know um folks that could manufacture speculation right there was a period of hey this is the future. This is what you have to believe. We all nerded out on like, you know, crypto architecture and semantics debates for like three years, but like it was all about, you know, who had the best story of the future, right? Um, and now it's all about external validation outside of

crypto. And so I think like fintech has been the first to just validate basically stable coins, right? Um, and the crypto projects that have been dead focused on or the crypto projects that have operated like FinTech have won I think the past two or three years, right? Bridge being like the poster child for this. Um, >> and Zach, if you look, Zach Abrams, the founder of Bridge, like has, you know, kind of like the archetype of a fintech veteran profile. like he went he came from like Rex, Coinbase, um a bunch of different things where he learned like the traditional playbooks and just you know applied that to

crossborder and then solve the really nitty-gritty like pain points which was on and off ramping and crushed it. Um, and now I think, yeah, uh, it's all about how do you like, um, get folks from outside of this industry to to validate like what you're doing and and actually start using that. And for like the RWA and DeFi side, that's about going and getting like non-cryptonative capital, you know, lined up to be buying a product, whether that's like an RWA vault that does something like looping.

Um, then on the AI side, I think it's all about like can you get folks that have, you know, traditionally been almost like looked down on crypto like from the a like Silicon Valley AI crowd to be like, yeah, actually this is this is super useful. This is where I see like this agentic economy going. And that I think to your point, Meo, like has not totally happened yet. and it does feel like we're just kind of doing the, you know, um, research circle jerk a little bit. Um, but yeah, I think that's the whole game today is external validation.

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Um, okay. Let's talk about different founder archetypes here because I want to make this real for people and I I you know in doing some some research there is a uh so YC uh you know has a um there's a guy there's a guy there named Jared Haymon um who has broken down popular archetypes of founders into five different personality types. So one is the charismatic hustler um so kind of salesdriven uh you know can sell snow to the Eskimos uh can convince you know people to invest employees to join Jason Yanowit.

[laughter] >> Exactly. Exactly. Um and the best there the best that there is uh in best and breed there. Um two technical experts so deep product knowledge um you know kind of like a the classic kind of gigabrain um as it were in crypto. Uh industry insiders. So, domain experts. So, this might be, you know, what might be a good example of this is sort of a and I know this project didn't necessarily work out, but like an um Antonio uh from DYDX who was at Coinbase, understood the makings of an exchange and then went to start. A lot of ex kind of Coinbase mafia people fit this uh personality type of persona and you know, they saw a problem up close, they had a different

take and they had the industry cache and knowledge to go out and and and make it a thing. Um, so I think that VCs love that one by the way. >> They see like the idea and then they see the pedigree behind the founders and they're like, "Oh, I don't have to do any sort of like logically to think that that's going to be successful." >> Yeah. Sometimes right, sometimes not. >> Sometimes right, sometimes not. I mean, I can see why they think that it's the safest bet, right? I mean, it's kind of you've got Hutzba, you know the problem already. I kind of feel that. Um, okay. Intellectual giants. So highly academic right I mean you can clearly point to all of these people in the AI space today the you know the Dario Amade but also you know the shriams right from ien

layer um you know many of the folks in that are building in the me space frankly a lot of the fatal is is like this um you know he's kind of a deep intellectual thinker and uh you know kind of an inventor um and then the last archetype being the serial entrepreneurs um and to honest, you don't really like you know who I kind of think of here as almost a like a Frank Slutman type uh you know just give me you get him in there and he'll you or like a Travis Kalanick maybe is a better Travis Frank Sloopman is more like a professional CEO like a Travis Kalanick type character and maybe crypto is a little bit too young for that we don't really have um anyone that's tried multiple ventures if one's kind of still on their first um if they're still doing it and haven't

played >> Lashner Lashner >> Lashner Lusher is a great example Yeah. Yeah. Great example. Um, so anyway, those are those are the archetypes and I thought it might be fun to knit onto. There's a um there are kind of these behavioral and psychological archetypes as well that you can kind of knit. There's a sales hustler like the hustler is a is a famous um psychological archetype which is is I mean directly knits onto the uh the charismatic hustler. Uh there's a vi the visionary. So driven by a long-term goal, charismatic. I think that's kind of the um technical in expert or um intellectual giant. Um the accidental founder. There's actually a lot of

people like this. There's like the Morris Chang of the world. Um and then the operator. So someone who kind of scales and innovates. Um, and you know, I guess to just cut right to the chase and my my take here is I think this industry was very very heavy on tinkerer visionary visionary founders like real like you had to be peering so far into the future and take such risk. Um, and I think we take it for granted today. I mean even the idea of moving money on chain or locking something up into a DeFi product or doing yield farm. I mean, this was this was wild west stuff not that long ago, you know, six years ago, u 5 years ago. And you I I think that these are kind of the

um you know, maybe the the cane wars, right? The uh the runes, the uh you know, the Haydens, the like very early mover, real visionary. You really had to believe um really had to believe. and uh and I think that the industry has a lot of those people. Um and I think that they'll continue to be very successful. I'm very supportive of every one of those people. Um I think the question is where do we need visionary founders and where do we need I think there's been a missing category of founder. Like when you think of most crypto founders, they mostly fall into the the um you know the brainiac intellect uh you know gigabrain researcher contributor um or the

visionary who's kind of talking about some new mechanism stuff. You don't know many crypto founders who are really great like operator scaler innovators. You don't know like most of the founders that you know they're kind of a little off color. Um, you know, they've got some edge, a little bit of a counterultural spice, but there's not a ton of them that scream immediately like, you know, I could lead an army into war. You know, we don't we don't have many like Douglas MacArthur's. I I think that's the what I would posit is the missing archetype in the space.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. I I think you're right. But they're coming. Yeah. Z, go for it if you haven't thought that. >> Yeah. I I wanted to maybe classify the missing founder who I'm always looking for is a productled founder. Uh which I don't think was in any of those archetypes. And I think I was going to mention before, you know, what's happening in crypto is we're moving from infra to apps. And so most of the builders in crypto are inframinded and they're very good at building it, but they're not very good at understanding the user, what they need, like prioritizing features to accommodate those users. And we've needed a shift in that kind of founder in crypto which I think we're still going through right now. Very few builders can do both. In fact, I've seen many come and fail. Um

and also not only we going from infer to apps, which obviously we need to find the users, we're also going from users to agents. So now there's a mix again of like okay now we need productled founders who also have some technical ability and understand agents are coming and what does that mean? And that's why I think right now in crypto it's very exciting because there's a lot of opportunity but it's also very uncertain of like what kind of product to build who's using it how technical do you need to be and I want to go back to that uh classification of founders Mike of the serial entrepreneur etc. So like I feel like during my time as an investor over the years I've worked with every kind of you know archetype of founder. So for me the founder the shift I'm seeing really across the board is that the

intellectual like metallic for example that kind of founder the visionary the like philosophical founder like Miles was saying before I think these people are becoming a lot less in crypto as like the kind of founder who's going to really make it and be successful. I'd also argue the tech guru again, Mike, you mustn't like me saying it, but the tech guru I think is like, you know, going away in real time right now as like I can be a tech guru and just use Claude for a day or two and play around with that, probably build something, which is like not meaning to offend, but I think every engineer would agree with me here in terms of like how good the tech is getting and it's making everyone a tech guru. So that's commoditizing basically. the things that aren't commoditizing are obviously being a serial entrepreneur. My investment

partner Brian, you know, who I'm working with at practice, I think he's someone who I see as someone that is very ideas driven, but really deeply thinking and not just deeply thinking about the tech, but deeply thinking about markets and very like high level macro thinkers. I think these people in crypto will continue doing very very well who will continue making interesting businesses even outside of crypto potentially. I could see a lot of people in crypto who have been successful actually moving out into AI and quantum. And I tweeted about this a few weeks ago that I think crypto founders have are built different and they understand volatility and pain better than any other founder out there.

And so I wouldn't be surprised to see some serial entrepreneurs moved outside of crypto which is hugely exciting to see. And then the two that I look at the most as an investor right now which I've always loved um are the domain expert and the hustler. So to start with the hustler I feel like there's a bit of hustler in me potentially as well. So, I'm a bit partial to any kind of like person who goes out there and hustles and makes it happen. Cuz I think right now in crypto in a bare market, you need to make it happen. Like you can't be sitting on your hands and thinking it's going to come to you cuz it's not. You need to prove your grit. Even if it's not working, you need to prove that you can still make it, still keep confident, optimistic, try and find a way. And the

best founders always find a way. And a lot of the startups almost died. So having a hustler and you know one person person we backed recently is really this archetype and really one of the reasons why I think we backed him in the first place is just because like he's super smart switched on and he's just going to make it happen and he feel it whenever everyone says to me this guy has just got this you know charismatic way of speaking to me around like his passion and excitement and curiosity and like these are all things I think that you need as a founder. And the second archetype I I've always been also really really fond of is the domain expert. But I really want to make a point here around the domain expert of something that I've fallen into the trap of of like I think a domain expert can be a

domain expert on a supply and a demand side. And I think in crypto a lot of domain experts are on the supply side. So I'm talking like let's say you worked at some infra protocol. You found a problem in the infra. You go out and build the emperor. You're a domain expert of that infra and you go out and build it over here. then you realize that only you care about that problem in your little silo in that company and you've just raised 50 million VC bucks and that's going nowhere. Whereas like the demand side domain expert is like really what you want. And I'm seeing this again on a higher level more and more. I'm getting more and more excited about founders that are like kind of in companies trying to now sell for the first time in crypto finding the customer then realizing like well

actually the emperor or the product they've built isn't actually for the customer. Would would you have guessed that from the start? Of course, that was the way that crypto used to be. Whereas now, it's moving towards a world of like you need to build in for a product that people will pay for. A lot of people are leaving these companies now being like, "All right, the customer wants this. We couldn't deliver this." And so, here's my insight into the demand side around like here's how we're going to serve it. Here's how we're going to scale it. Here's how we're going to build defensibility around it. So, again, want to like just stress and emphasize the concluding point that the main experts and hustlers for me are really the archetype of founder right now in crypto that is exploding. A lot of these are productled led founders as well, which

we haven't had in the past. And so I think it's a really interesting time to be looking at these kinds of archetypes as opposed to some of the other ones that used to be in crypto that might be leading or doing different things or scaling back. >> Yeah. And within crypto, I think that probably ties most heavily to those that have been successful uh building companies without a token up until today. Um >> Sure. For sure. >> Because there was no easy way out, right? which was like um selling a grandiose vision of the future that you could speculate on that vision with the token, right? If that token goes up, that's actually what they're optimizing for rather than, you know, creating an ultra tight feedback loop with users of

the product and being able to improve the product such that it can then break out of this little self-re referential bubble of users to to the outside world. Um, and yeah, I know Mike, you're one of those people. So, >> no, no, no, I'm not. No, I'm not. I'm just saying you need to do both. I I like I love that we've overcorrected and but I I just want to just like many things in life, right? You I'm just going to remind everyone that Elon Musk is talking about GPUs in space at the moment. You have to set a vision, right? Like everyone even at the highest level of the game does it. I I know that it's like >> you're rubbing salt in the wound because we've that's all we've done for the last couple years. I just want to encourage everyone to not overcorrect all the way

to the other side and say like we don't need to talk about this at all or sell any vision. We just need to build. You need to do both. You have to do both. Um because if you don't tell people what you're building and get people excited, people don't want to back you there. Even in this world of global markets and everything being efficient, there's still something about the human quality of looking at another human and being like, I think you can do it. That is there is charisma and that still means a lot, I think. Um, so I think you I think you just have to do both, >> right? You just can't you can't just like only sell that long-term vision while ignoring like where >> where market pull exists in the next six months to a year and who's going to actually pay for this [ __ ] or like I

agree. Okay, >> so as a hypothetical for you guys um let's say you don't know anything uh set bar boost, right? everything else being equal, you've got one batch, you can only pick uh, you know, one batch of founder here. One, um, who's got early in this like AI kind of wave, right? And they maybe got this idea in crypto. Um, two, but they've got this background in AI. Two, uh, they come from finance from fintech, um, and they've got an idea in crypto. Or three, a repeat crypto founder who has another crypto idea.

Everything else is the same. No difference in charisma, no like nothing, nothing there. Who are you backing in this instance? Who do you think is the most highest chance of success here? >> Go ahead. >> Um, >> for me, it's clear, I think, which direction I'm pointing in. Me too. >> AI >> founder with the AI insight because again like I know we've spoken about it on the podcast a lot but I I think genuinely right now in crypto the biggest opportunity is to build infrastructure for for agents on chain because it's very clear to me that they're coming and they're coming sooner than anyone thinks. So I think if you have an insight into like what this looks like, who's using the agents, what is it or is not commoditizing, what rails they need, why they'll use you

over other competitors, like it's and a lot of these people don't have previous experience serving agents. So it's a brand new ballpark as well, which I think means that anyone can kind of come in. So like I like the financial person from Black Rockck coming in being like, here's an idea in real world assets. I also don't mind the crypto entrepreneur who's already created something else and has a new idea, but I take myself back to the point where like a lot of crypto entrepreneurs I know from back in the day are infra people and they're not really product people. And it's really really hard. Like I want to stress this point. It's so hard to move from infraineering to product engineering or like being a product manager. I I haven't actually I'm not even sure if I've seen anyone do it. And if you look

at this cycle, what won this cycle which we're now in a new cycle was maybe last cycle. What actually won? Well, like Poly Market, you know, Athena, Hyperliquid, we've talked about this. Why do they win, but they're productled founders? They're not really infrastructure founders. And so I think like we barely saw any new infrounders. Maybe Kone at uh Monad popped up, but even then it's like we saw it's very difficult now to like build that narrative like you really already need to be productled. I think if you're productled now, and this is a call that I'll make, but like if you're a productled founder now and you are not thinking about AI, you will fail in the next six to 12 months in my opinion.

like you need to be thinking about AI, how it's disrupting the space and building your product towards that future. And this is why there's a massive disruption happening right now in crypto. Not only is it really really hard to build products and barely any humans and users are are there, we are now building already for the future of agents talking about the vision, Mike. Well, that is a vision. And so like I I get like very red flags start popping up for me when I speak with someone and they're like AI isn't going to impact us. Like we'll be okay and like here's the DeFi product. It's like well actually I don't know if that's the case and I think it will disrupt you. Someone will build a better product that you have serve their market better with AI which is what everyone's used to using

now. So that's like some two cents on on those different archetypes. My accuracy. >> Yeah. I mean like if you're saying that this hypothetical founder comes into crypto with a strong network in like crypto AI credibility in non-crypto AI that's like not even close. I mean the amount of dollars and companies being started today that that person is going to be able to get in the room with and the growth prospects around that like are much larger than I think you know the RWA Trafi space is because I also have come from a large trad company uh and lots of people in our industry have as well. um going back to you know your friends at that company and being like

hey I've built this thing that I you know would have loved to have if I was in my seat at Fidelity like it's like all right cool um we'll we'll run you through the normal gamut and like all this it's not easy versus with AI there's startups looking to move fast and differentiate right they're it's much more it's a better fit for a bottoms up go to market which you're likely going to have um in crypto regardless us, right? And then the repeat crap fit cryptofounder is the interesting one. It's like, okay, but what kind of like repeat crypto founder is this? I don't know. There's just like [ __ ] that doesn't matter anymore and is just like a kind of a a oneoff point in time like good nice to have skill set.

Remember like oh community is your moat, right? Anything can be forked in crypto so community is the moat. Like none of that [ __ ] matters anymore. um you're looking for growth outside of like the you know 10 to 100,000 daily users of onchain applications. Um and if that person has demonstrated an ability to like you know break beyond that then hell yeah. Um that's probably the you know the second best person in that crowd. Um but yeah, I think it's just like how much does your previous experience like how much do you come like as a a bundled deal of like distribution and network you know already there right and you've actually like stumbled on upon something um so I

don't know Mike yeah argue with us because I probably the only observation that I'm going to make here is like this this would have been a highly unlikely you two years ago would never have said as right would never have said and I am so such a believer in this right I use this every single day I totally get it um I am uh I can at leis visualize a world um where and actually like real so here's like an observation that I would make for you guys on the AI

side of things which is supposed to be killing SAS Every conversation that we have about integrating agents in our business leads to us spending more money on SAS like real examples, right? So, hey, let's instead of hiring a BDR, I'm going to spin an agent up. Well, the agent needs perfect context on all of your notes and it needs to have a great history of, oh, so we're going to upgrade our HubSpot and our Granola. And I'm just like, you know, I I could give you that, you know, over almost every vertical of our business. Linear is a great example of like every engineer and product person in the world would know that tool. Um, and they're shipping an agent in there.

And it's kind of like, yeah, I could like jerryrig all this [ __ ] together or I could just put my linear like my linear agent is going to handle a bunch of PRs and stuff for me. I I um simultaneously believe in the power of AI. I also, you know, I'm I am um I have just to paint the counter example here is I could see it being a compliment more than people think. And I could also see uh I think that we are in a little bit of a we're in the exciting part of the cycle here, right? Like no matter what, right? Like even if it is unbelievable, we're clearly in the exciting part. Um and I think if we were having this conversation in 2021 for crypto, you know, we would have sworn

the opposite too. And now we're saying that that's, you know, if we had to rank, I think we all would have ranked crypto at the bottom. Um, and I'm I'm not 100% sure I'm ready to do that yet. >> Well, I can tell you from my seat, um, it was like I remember in the beginning of, uh, when I when I just joined Delta, which is coming up on two years ago, like a new L1, we know we need like, you know, to get apps basically built on Delta, get them to convince them to come over. you know, we've always viewed ourselves as incremental, you know, technology following like the broader arc of technology where like we thought crypto is kind of building in its own bubble over here and we need infrastructure that doesn't you don't need to like lift and shift everything

over to this bubble, right? You can just tack it on to your existing back end. So, we've had lots of debates internally in the company around who should we be hiring. Should we be hiring cryptonative people that have a strong network within web 3? And this was, you know, again, like going back to two years ago, or should we be hiring like outside of of crypto? Um, and we never really landed on a strong answer, but the people that like did understand all the dynamics and understood and did have a strong network in web 3 where likely we can source our first, you know, ecosystem projects, but also had like a likeminded, you know, I don't know, like a mindset of us of like crypto is not going to go anywhere

unless we can break out of this bubble and reach out, you know, outside to the rest of the world. Like those were the people that we wanted to hire. Um, and those were un, you know, those are also like the sort of, you know, ecosystem projects that we wanted to be our first adopters. And like that was a very small niche, right? You're either like fully cryptonative and like had that skill set and wanted to build there or you were fully not, right? Um, so I can just say it's like it's not as simple as it sounds actually because maybe I think my answer probably discounted what how much value I put on somebody like shared experience with us over the past 5 years.

>> Everyone in crypto loves to talk about transparency, but would any serious business publish [music] its payroll for the world to see or hand competitors its contracts? That's not a feature. That's a bug. And it's why most financial institutions can't operate on today's public rails. Canton network is different. It's the only public permissionless layer 1 blockchain built with privacy at its core, sharing data only on a need to- know [music] basis. That's why Goldman Sachs, NASDAQ, and Broadridge are already building on the network. Only Canton delivers the network effects of a public chain with the privacy and control real finance demands. Learn more about Canton by following the link in today's show notes. This has been the longest question of Blockworks. Do you need to be cryptonative? And like look in some

functions absolutely not. um you know actually I think good sellers generalize across you don't you don't need um you don't need uh cryptogivity in sellers sales managers actually I'd have a different answer for you um product absolutely absolutely um so it just it depends and >> you know engineers like actually no like I've I've found not having cryptonative experience is like great because they don't come with any like false priors.

They just they just approach everything from first principles. Um and like that's that's been wonderful for us. But um yeah, I go back and forth on the product and BC and BD side. >> It's just like I'm just going to observe that it's just it's this very um struggling to come up with a more politically correct word than kind of a cucked attitude um for people that work in this industry that everyone's waiting our collective experience so poorly, right? I mean, we think we're going to get Travis is going to come eat our lunch. The AI people are going to come eat our lunch. I think this is reflective, if I were being honest, of an actual talent issue in crypto. Um, where yeah, I think that the average quality of a crypto startup, especially a token based one, is lower than you'd see in other industries because the

incentives have been so bad and we haven't talked about the investor side of things yet, but I think that's a very real observation. But I also I guess what I would say to you is if we think finance and crypto are coming together and crypto I believe is are better financial rails, you very rarely see two technologies or industries collide and the older worse version ends up being the dominant player or culture, right? You almost never see that. So the I'm I'm open to the idea that um the >> that's a good segue into the venture side. And sorry Z if you want to like uh if you had a a point to that go for it.

Yeah, maybe just briefly, um, I guess more speaking from experience here, Mike, uh, Block Works and I think my previous company, Chorus One, probably went through a similar period of the business life of you were selling into cryptonatives once upon a time and then now you're selling into institutions. And I think from my time at Chorus One, it was a very very cryptonative company started by cryptonative founders. And so the company was probably one of the most cryptonative teams almost out there for a very long time. Very heavy on the research side looking at me, looking at networks, the differences between them.

Like at some point as that market sort of was capped, it was clear that things would move more institutional and then you had some other peers pop up which kind of just started hiring suits. >> And then you know for Chorus One's DNA it wasn't really a suited up company to some extent. It was kind of like okay here's here's what we're passionate about but like now institutions are coming do we understand that market do we have sales people who really understand people who want to buy this stuff and so I think like you were saying Mike I totally agree like not everyone has to be cryptonative I do think on the strategy side for example you and Yano um Mike and you know your product manager like you said and your researchers by the way which are some of the best in the space right now on the

strategy side you need to be cryptonative still and I think you will have to continue to be because you need to understand the tech how it works as well was that the markets who's coming now who's coming later etc and I don't think trad or AI people like alone have this understanding on the sales side I think you need to have the trust of like especially if you're selling into institutions and I think I haven't seen many teams I think blocks again here is a good example though of a team that has like a bit of a mixture of both of crypton nativity as well as you know institutional sales people and like really trying to balance both markets but it has been a massive change I don't think many teams have done this extremely well but like yeah it's I do think there are some merit to being

cryptonative, but it's now I actually think one of the best things about being cryptonative is really at the startup level. If you need your first few customers, I think crypto teams are much more risk-seeking. So, they're going to be more likely to try your product and pay for it in the early days for that very early traction you need to maybe go from free seed to seed as opposed to like going out some web two company that's completely riskoff, hates crypto, blah blah blah. And if you have a cryptoated person selling into that, I think you can get like a leg up, but then you need that next step and that's when you hire that sales team like what you were saying. Yeah, >> that is super interesting because yeah, Chorus one has always been like way more cryptonative. Uh that's why Bitwise is probably such a great like marriage now,

right? Because like Figment and Bison Trails, those guys were like much more buttoned up and institutional. I was just going to say that this like transitions well to the VC side of the conversation because I think um let's call it like 2021 we had a lot of entrance from web 2 Silicon Valley and they would go to they would go to cryptonative VCs and be like all right show me the ropes right like what I need you guys to help me navigate this crazy wild west space tell me like what the playbooks are like I have to set up a discord to like manage the community like there's an airdrop there's tokconomics right and like governance and all that crap and and like um the VCs were like, "Don't worry, we we've been here for a couple years. Like we

see what's working and what's not working. We'll like we'll help you get up to speed, right?" Um and now I think it's the opposite. I think like folks, it's you know the the all the things that were valuable to go after this cryptonative like user base, we realize that's not actually super attractive. like it's saturated especially for like any of the the the sort of like you know let's call it like trading or pers or prediction markets like okay you want to go after that you can get a small slice of like the pie um but now I think as a f like you know at least from my seat and I think a lot of folks are um now looking at like who has been historically like the best fintech VCs you know that have dabbled in crypto but

like also just carry massive credibility and networks with all of your target, you know, customers that are outside of crypto. Um, who's going to get you in the room, you know, with the sof of the world? Um, uh, those sort of companies, right? And it's about like extending your network and then and just like you're almost selling part of your company for credibility and warm intros. Um, and I think that's probably the biggest value ad that I see from like um, you know, if you're not coming in with an established network outside of crypto, you're probably looking to to to buy that network from your VCs. Well, you know

what, I would just say Blockworks is really uh, lucky to have um, you know, some really excellent investors and so I think they're really really good investors in this space. I'll call out um you know the the team that led our first round um previously 10T uh currently 50T and you know they had this thesis about growth equity and I think they were really there's another element outside of there's kind of the skill set and value ad and there was all this stuff that the early VCs helped you with but also the most attractive part of the um you know of the uh the most attractive stage to invest in was the really early stage stuff and partially Actually, there's a very logical reason for that because there aren't many

businesses. They're only early stage businesses. The more cynical reason is we don't care about the long-term value creation. These tokens are going to go live before there's even a product. In most cases, we're just going to flip these things. And so, you you actually have seen this bulging and this like over supply of capital at the very early stage. And then a lot of those early funds did really well and they got bigger. So now there's this dual dynamic of well even if you wanted to do your previous style of investing just buying tokens at the early stage it's not going to work because you have too much money. Um so there are firms like uh I mean part of the inspiration for this episode was Paradigm. Uh you know they did this back in 2023. They said we're going to be an AI and crypto fund and now they're

doing it again and it's the Wall Street Journal. But if you're Dragonfly and and uh or or Paradigm you can't really be a super early stage investor anymore. the fund math just doesn't work out or make sense. So based on how much you've raised, you need to adopt a new strategy, maybe one that's um you know later in the life cycle of um of capital raising for crypto. So I think that's also part of the dynamic now that investors almost a victim of their success in some cases. It's like ooh we made kind of too much money here and now we have to we're drifting into this other part and it the skill set and the edge required of being a you know series B or C investor is very different from seed very different especially in

crypto. Yeah, I think well put Mike. Maybe just two cents here. Uh you know we are really focused at the preede stage right now and what I'm noticing I saw Frank uh recently fintech Frank put out a uh really interesting statistic which I actually reposted around the number of preed deals closed in in quarter one. Of course this is just announced and it was five and I think maybe like a year and a half years ago it was like I don't know 150 to 200 plus or something like that. So it really shows you at preede right now there are very very few players out there still investing we are of course actively investing in preede founders at fractus at the moment but it feels to me every

preede founder I speak to uh really there's just like not much appetite and also what's happening Mike like you were saying is like these funds have a lot of money and they're not really wanting to take risk at preede which makes sense because they have a lot more money they can put to work so preede is a bit too early for them but what that means is at seed stage they're requiring a a lot more traction and so like across the board preede founders now being really pushed to show market validation of the product etc. So it's actually very very healthy for the space. But what it means is that like at preede there are fewer and fewer investors and there's some blurred lines around like exactly what founders need to even raise that first preede round. And the gap from preede to seed to get to those larger VCs is

massive because they requiring a lot of traction right now because they're like the space is changing. We don't exactly know where we're going to put the money. If we're going to put the money in crypto, well then they better bloody show us, you know, that they're actually growing and progressing and they have traction. And this PMF is a key word here like seed investors like Dragonfly etc. They need to see teams of PMF now they're not going to like take a punt at seed stage separately what's been happening at preede again like just based on the data and giving some insight commentary a lot of first-time funds maybe that raised in 21 22 etc. It's obviously been a hard time in crypto for a long time, for many years, and the cycle's been super tough. And I suspect that many of these funds have deployed a lot of the capital and don't

have much capital left. And so there's just so little capital at preceding stage now. It's actually kind of crazy. Like I've never experienced this anywhere near what it's like right now in crypto, especially at the earlier stage at preede stage. And maybe back in the day, a preede investor would come in and give capital, but they're not right now. But it's not like seed investors are stepping in like Dragonfly, Series A investors, etc. because they want to again stay focused at PMF stage, put more money to work in things and concentrate basically in things that matter. So this is creating a complete reshuffleling and recycling of the entire sort of founder market especially from investors. And what I'm also noticing, what you said, Mike, is these bigger funds, EG Paradigm, which for the second time announced, they're going to also be looking at AI deals, even though

they announced that in that last fund, and I think they only made one or two investments into the AI category from that. But I I do suspect this fund, they'll be making more investments in AI across the board from preede up to series A and beyond. Even us, like, you know, we are open to speaking to people outside of crypto. The question really is like, what is the right to win? you have like can I walk up to an AI founder in SF tomorrow and be like I'm Z I work at Fractice here's a bit of capital would you take it because I suspect that they'd like to take it from the other web two VCs whereas like the series A investors and beyond the larger ones they have a bigger right to win no doubt they've got obviously phenomenal brands and I'm very jealous of those brands but

like you know they do have some right to win but they're also competing with like Sequoia you know some of these other big ones that are really like you know benchmark etc and I think that's where it's going to get very interesting to see if they can compete so like it's It's a very new new era I think for all crypto investors. >> Yeah, that's interesting. I mean I would say like on the you get too big to win or like your your success ends up being a problem, right? Like study benchmark super interesting. >> Yeah. They uh had an extremely successful like do bubble you know fund tried to scale up total failure and have just stuck to their guns saying like you know 150 is our sweet spot and we could raise as much as we want but we're a

premium product and we're going to stay like we're not going to win on basically just um management fees. So that is like my favorite fund because of that discipline uh and the consistency around it for sure. about it. >> By the way, Miles, as well, just worth mentioning as well for listeners that like, you know, not only have they capped the fund size, but it came out in the last week or so that the returns have been like 5 to 10x on those 150 mil funds. >> So, they had some of the best returns in Silicon Valley, right? >> Yeah. Don't get greedy. It's your bread and butter. Just stick to it and you're going to nail it. Um, and then the second piece is um, you know, there there are two like funds that I think are interesting examples to take a look at. The first one you mentioned is

Paradigm like returning to AI and robotics. Second one is inversion capital. Um so that's uh Santi's fund that is basically taking a stake like a a controlling stake in mid-market companies and then call it like web3ifying them, right? Um and this points at two things that so far have been really hard for crypto companies to do. one is like actually you know getting traction outside of the crypto bubble in AI and we'll call it robotics down the road like that I think like paradigm sees tempo they have a massive stake in tempo they see like agentic commerce and payments being a large part

of tempo's growth potential what's the easiest way to make that happen you do like the you know Kleiner Perkins playbook you just have a cabal right or you invest in this company and you pair it with this other port and you facilitate all of this, right? Um, and then the other, you know, big growth area that's been really tough to crack is like, hey, how about all the nonsexy existing companies out there in the world that are not thinking about anything related to like the bleeding edge of tech, even crypto, right? Or like thinking how, you know, crypto could transform their business. But a smart person who looks at like a sleepy or like on the surface sleepy company can be like yeah that actually there's a legs for there's like if you've been

growing at you know 5% or 10% per per year like if there's any we we could probably make we could probably squeeze a lot of juice out of this company you know if we were to like web 3ify it and then you know see some massive growth maybe do a big rollup strategy under it sell it a lot but like I've been trying to pitch those sleeping companies from like an L1 seat and they're like what are you talking about? Like maybe like yeah but like we have a lot of other priorities here, right? Like our our budget and roadmap has been set months ago. What's the way to do that? You just force the issue and you buy that company and then you pair it with the tech that you want it to use, right? Um and that's been super cool. That's like that's like

almost forcing the Palunteer, you know, playbook on a company because you own the majority stake of it. Um, and by the way, that's what Thrive Capital is doing. Probably like the hottest VC firm in the world right now with Thrive Holdings. Um, they're just basically becoming like a holding company. Um, and you know, like taking big stakes in companies and then, you know, they have a they own 10 to 20% of Open AI. Cool. All right. Let's like take that company and make it AI native. Uh, because we can now that we own it and we see the potential and we figured that out ourselves. we don't need some internal champion to like buy into this idea.

We'll just buy the company itself. So those are two things that point at like manufacturing distribution for your port codes as a value prop. >> Yeah, I think um you know that is that's also such an active way of uh manufacturing the distribution too. I mean even even like which I totally think are super interesting and very cool even just from like a pure brand perspect. So like let's just look at what is working in crypto today like exchanges of some sort right if you're trying to build prediction markets a new deck I mean it's getting more and more crowded more difficult to do that but like that's what's kind of working right like hyper liquid right

exchange stuff um stable coins and uh tokenization rwas in every single one of those categories imagine yourself you're a new founder you're like who do I need access to everyone that you need access to is outside of the space. That's that's the that's where I I think the most imminent threat to VCs in crypto is just fintech and like fintech VCs. Um and >> bingo that's that's why Ribbit is never been like more attractive as a VC right now for crypto companies.

>> Yeah, Ribbit Ribbit is like the perfect example of this. I agree. >> Uh just a quick one on that. So, you know, I was actually just looking. So, Ribbit did invest in like something like Osmosis back in the day, which of course is the Cosmos chain. Shout out to Sunny. But, um, you know, even back then, Ribbit was always a fund that was actually kind of pro crypto. So, like nothing has kind of changed there. It might be leaning in a bit more, but I think fintech funds were always crypto curious, but now I I I'm curious. I don't know if you you guys have seen it. Like, are you noticing more fintech funds are coming in? Because at least from my perspective, like it still feels like they're kind of watching and waiting to see where this market goes in the next year or so.

>> Yeah. I mean, I think the most active player right now at preede is YC, right? Like I think they're they're they're taking a ton of crypto deals on and then I think outside of that like but you're you're right like Z like NEA is a big one. Um uh what's the one? There's one that starts with a Q. like I I don't think like they've >> green oaks just >> but that's it's more crypto companies like vying for their sort of attention than the other way around. Um and that speaks to what like crypto teams I think are focused on. But maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I'm like this is very this is a very finger in the air like >> no I think it's just a branding it's a branding thing, right? I mean even the uh VC arms of asset managers like Apollo or Fidelity, right, have a lot of edge in winning deals. Um I think you know over M is laughing. M I know you have deep experience there. Um but they you know they do that's that's especially if you're trying to you view your customer as institutions and large asset managers you want some of them on your cap table. So anyway all of all of this to say um all of this to say I think uh you know this is not us picking on you know I'm sure that there will many of the crypto VCs that exist will be successful. Same with founders, right, that have been

doing it for a long time. I also think it's fair to say that the game is changing and typically when the game changes, not everyone figures out the new rules in time, right? And also a lot of people just made a lot of money already. Um, and I think our I think that's a huge part of it whenever, you know, you see someone leave that's high-profile like, oh my gosh, should I be questioning this? I mean, a lot of times just made a ton of money and that's amazing and that's great. Like that's the cycle of that's how it works. I have a huge amount of respect for uh Coinbase Ventures um because I I've loved their strategy from day one. It was it's always been 50% strategics, 50% like your ROI plays.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And to the and to the extent that your value prop like on the strategic side, even if it starts as an ROI play, can transition into a strategic partnership, like what else would a startup want apart from like Coinbase as its main customer, unless Coinbase decides to compete with it later. But like that's the sort of stuff I'm talking about where you can, you know, I think like the players that are representative of the distribution that crypto teams want, they should be taking stakes, you know, in these companies because it would be very very easy to get whoever they want. Um, you know, or to get into the cap tables that they want, right? Um, so PayPal Ventures has actually done a really great job. Uh, don't know don't not like bullish or

bearish on PayPal necessarily. Seems like they might get acquired by Stripe, which would be kind of nuts. Um, >> h Stripe. I mean, I >> Yeah, but there you go. Like, do you want to be in the Do you want to be in the Stripe, you know, Thrive Capital like Tempo Paradigm Cabal? Like, that sounds pretty good right now. Um, you're going to get a lot of warm intros. Um, and as long as you're not competing with one of their like, you know, biggest positions, like you're probably good. So yeah, the game has changed a lot.

>> The game has changed and I think the the question is I think there will still be um you know, Zave in this in the space you play like the very early stage, right? I kind of see that as kind of being a perpetual there will always be opportunity there and edge for finding it's just puff um just difficult to do. I think the if I had to guess like where the most pain is is the early stage VCs that kind of made their money in that investing in that stage and now are too big and now they have to figure out edge in later stages >> or they or they can't compete as like somebody who if you go to them for your seed or your A like you don't really think they have any like value add beyond that right like you'd rather

raise that seed or the A from the big big fund that can get you all of the big like enterprise contracts and then put another hundred million into you for like your your B or C, right? Um so yeah, I agree with that. And it's just about like there's teams that will like or there's funds that will be successful because of those like call it economies of scale or like um and then there are teams that have funds that will be super successful by like staying small and knowing what they're good at and just sticking to their guns.

>> I think one thing that could get interesting which I haven't given much thought to but I definitely think could happen is again I'm pretty sure it's Dragonfly. I could be wrong here, but there's that kind of finty company called Rain, uh, which it sounds like one of those or two of those funds that are all over. If that's like a major major success story, it's like a deticorn dragonfly and whoever else were there from series A beyond and they invest across rounds, they could actually have some major success stories like the next, you know, crypto x fintech founder to come on board and pick their capital over like a web two fund that hasn't really done that with a cryptonative company that tried extending out. So I do think like it's

really on them actually at the moment in terms of like they're probably husting hard to find these companies which they can use to you know establish brand credibility across the entire space which they already have an amazing brand obviously but I think they can win the category even against fintech VCs long term if they have a few success stories like I I don't know right now I'm putting this question to you guys like I don't really know if there's been any teams in fintech x crypto that has gone like insane maybe outside of stripe and tempo now because they've come to blockchain later. But like any teams which chose not to pick someone like a tier one series A investor in crypto and chose to pick like a tier one non-crypto investor and they scaled with that investor and ended up being an

incredible product with a lot of PMF and high growth success story in crypto like even something like Poly Market like that was cryptonative capital for a long time and then the bigger players came on later but like they were more like series B beyond sort of like series A beyond. So that could also happen where like crypto native capital ends up specializing at series A and keeps following on and then the bigger players come in, you know, after that when it's more and more obvious. So >> I mean, where would you rank like a morpho being led by Ribbit there? >> Um, that's a good question. >> Or even for Rain like um you know I I think they are the archetype of like who's who people are looking for now.

But yeah, Dragon Dragon Fly like led them, but they also had Mischief VC on their cap table, which is the, you know, had a product at Cash App. Um, the founder of Plaid, right? Um, I think these are the folks that like got the are most helpful at getting Rain into the rooms that they needed to to become like, you know, part of the Visa network and then like expand on from there. Like, you know, if you're trying to sell a white labelled stable coin to Clara, wouldn't you rather have like Clara's investor on your cap table, then you would, you know, the V Crypton Native VC that helped like the last one get like success or like, you know, maybe they got success despite not having that

help. I don't know that that's where I lean. But um >> I mean even still like I'm not in the inner dynamics of of that round. But it's still interesting that Dragonfly could lead that because from what I understand it is a very high growth successful company and they did choose Dragonfly's capital as a lead check and that is meaningful at any later stage. So yeah it' be curious to hear I guess why they chose that over other kinds of VCs to lead that round. Yeah, again it's just such a new ball game for crypto BTS trying to put capital work in different industries, AI, robotics, now they're competing with some trades. Do they try and specialize in a stage? Do they specialize in like a sector? Do they specialize in also that crypto intersection? I think all these

are like up for debate. I'm I'm super curious to see where they will land. And then also you have other funds like USV for example, which we haven't even spoken about in this episode which like I absolutely love as >> USB is super interesting. I I have a I've like just one devil's advocate on this in the same way that on the founder side like is it possible that we are underweing the like yes knowing how to manage your discord is useless right but kind of like there are some you know I've just I've just watched a lot of like very you know most of the work that you do as a cryptonative startup today is still very intensive like audit smart contract development I mean it's not like there's infinite talent in people

that can do that. I mean, >> I don't know. I would I would actually make the analogy back to the company like life cycle that I did at the beginning of the episode where it's like if you're building something in a space that's like it's what you're building like the thing is already working, right? Let's call it >> Yeah. >> crossborder for stable coins, >> then you can probably just hire like the mercenary VC who is like knows how to repeat playbooks, has a bunch of warm intros that it can give you, and you just run with that. But maybe there is, you know, there's a difference between like the pioneer salesperson or the pioneer BD person that has to be able to uh really comfortable navigating through the unknown, right? And I think that's probably the thing that has persisted

about VC's value ad is like we've been, you know, searching through open waters like navigating, you know, with the stars for like years and trying to find a path, right? And if you can find VCs that can help you do that rather than like pour gasoline on the fire of something that's already working, that does matter. And I do think that Rain probably raised back when their idea was not consensus working and popular and like Dragonflyy's value ad there is just being there through those times of the the unknown, right? And until you find product market fit and now you just need money to throw gasoline on the fire, right? and network help. But that's probably it, right? It doesn't matter

what the specifics are. It's just like we can help you think from first principles and navigate through all this because we've done it before. >> All right, guys. I think we got to call it here, but this was a fun one. And uh yeah, hopefully thoughtprovoking for, you know, new f I think there's I think the the positive spin on this is um you know, there's a lot of opportunity for new founders and new funds out there um in AI, right? Z. >> Hey [laughter] actually >> and uh I you know I I I just remain very positive on on the world here and I think um none of this was intended by the way as as any sort of um you know dig at anyone that's made it in crypto from the fund or the founder side like

you know unbelievable talent in the space and I think it's just think about how things are changing is all so >> awesome I think we threw less shade on people than we thought we would with this episode So, you think that's good? >> I think we did good. I think we were >> We'll get out with no hurt feelings. >> All right, perfect, guys. This was a ton of fun. See you next week. [music] See you guys.