The Founder’s Journey (And Return) | Antonio Juliano, dYdX

Only the founder can unilaterally make some of these decisions. And if they're bold decisions, you know, sometimes you have to stand up there and you have to have every single person in the company disagree with you and be willing to do it anyways. I've just accepted that this is an extension of who I am. This is what I want to continue doing. I really care about the space. Like I've been in it for— in crypto for 9 years at this point. And I face this question on, is this what I want to keep doing for the rest of my life? And the answer is yes.

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Thanks so much for having me. Good to be back.

Is it good to be back?

It is, actually. Yeah. I mean, we can dive more into it, but both here and a lot of places in my life.

Nice, man. Nice. All right, so let's jump right into it. There was this tweet, um, October 2023, basically exactly a year ago. You said, for myself, I have truly never been happier CEO of dYdX. It is the perfect job for me. I'm proud of what we've built, sad of what we've sacrificed to get here, immensely appreciative of the journey, and believe strongly in what we will do next. In May of 2024, so like 7 months after this tweet, you stepped down as CEO. So before we jump into coming back as CEO, I'd love to just hear about this journey at dYdX and tell me about the journey and tell me what led to you initially making this decision to step down as CEO.

First of all, as I alluded to here, and I continue to feel this way, I've just been immensely fortunate to be able to be on this journey. I think being a founder is just something that makes you experience more of life more quickly. That's basically my theory on it. And yeah, as you saw in that tweet, so in 2023, that was probably one of the best times for both dYdX and myself personally. I was at the company for about 6 years at that point and just dydx has been a huge focus of my life. Obviously, since then I'm a solo founder. Um, and at that point in my life, I, I think I had gone through this epiphany basically a year prior to that when I kind of had this existential moment of feeling just profoundly satisfied in my life, but it also started raising a lot of existential questions. Um, I had this moment in 2022 when dydx was doing very well. We We were getting a lot of attention. The value of the company and what we built had gone up quite a lot. And I just took a look around, and this was a particular moment on a particular day. And I thought, wow, like, I have more money than I ever need. I guess I'll just stop caring about money now. Wow, I've had more success than I ever dreamed of. I guess I don't need to care about that anymore. And really, that started this 2-year journey for the past 2 years of introspection. Because I was looking at all these external things in my life and I couldn't think in that moment of anything else that I wanted, which in a way was amazing. And I hope many people get to experience this in their lives. I think I was fortunate and perhaps unfortunate in some ways to experience this earlier than most. But it was also scary because I was like, well, what the hell am I supposed to do now? Because there was no clear objectives, clear goals. I was still here. I still very much cared about dYdX and the people, especially actually that I work with and our users. But outside of that, it was like, why am I doing this for myself? Or at least it felt like there was a big shift. So I really investigated that myself over a year after that. And the main conclusion that I got to as to why continue on this journey and why continue at dYdX at that point in time was mostly for connection. And I think one, one does introspection to this level, everyone will find different things. But this kind of core value of connection that I have, I think is, is really important. So the main reason I continued on at that point, and I think I went on my journey with this, you saw me at the height of it in that tweet in 2023, probably at the lowest point, um, in me leaving 6 months ago. And then we'll talk about where I am today. But I went on this whole journey of just investigating what does connection actually mean, especially as a leader. Um, and dYdX has been an awesome place. One of the things I feel most proud of on a continuous basis is the people that we have on the team. I think popping up a level on the stack, like, everybody is motivated by different things, um, and I think there comes this inflection point for a lot of people in a relationship, and really being a founder is a relationship with your company, where after 7 years or so you start to say Wow, like, this actually might be the entire rest of my life. And that's a very scary thing, right? Because you're sort of building towards something that could be that impactful that you want to spend your entire life on it, and you get there and it's amazing. But then you're like, oh wow, like, was I sure about this? Like, why did I think this? And you start asking yourself all these big questions. So that's what led to the leaving, was really just this like long-term existential loss of motivation stemming from journey with connection as, as it is with coworkers and the company itself. Um, what do you—

Antonio, what do you mean by connect? Uh, it's actually a different story than I've heard other founders who have left their company share. Like, usually the reason that founders leave their company is oftentimes it comes down to people, actually the people as well, but the way that they describe it is very different. Like the, the typical story is, I just, you know, running the company was fun, sales was going great, marketing was all good, our product, we're still shipping stuff, but like, the people problems were just exhausting. And I just couldn't keep doing the people problems. And that's usually how founders I've spoken with who leave their companies describe why they left their companies. And so yours is also related to people, but you're describing it in this language of connection. And I'm curious, yeah, how that's come to be.

So I faced that as well. And I think what I'm saying is actually very aligned with that. It's maybe just one step deeper in terms of introspection and how I personally deal with it. And I don't think there's any right way. But of course, we've had people problems at the company too. Every company does. I've heard it described like every human basically has one really significant issue in their life for years. We talked about this. Exactly. And so if you're managing enough people for you as the leader, eventually it gets to a point where you're dealing with that almost every day. And that was hard. I did have to deal with some of those things. I think that was made easier at DYDX just because, again, I really take pride in the people that we've had. So it's relatively harmonious, but there's still issues. I think the way I dealt with that first was really introspecting on what does it mean to have a problem with somebody? And I think at the beginning, it'd be like, oh man, I have to have this really hard conversation with somebody, or you have to let somebody go, or somebody's having a problem. It's like problems, problems, problems. But when I sat with that, I really found that that's actually a pretty deep expression of love to be able to be with somebody during whatever that hard conversation or that hard time is. And as I sat with that more, I actually started to really enjoy that. And I went from really dreading all of these hard conversations to enjoying them actually. And you still feel like, I still feel the sadness. I still feel the pain every time one of these things happens. But really that's an expression of love. Even if it's you're letting somebody go or you are dealing with them and they're angry at you or something like this, it's these intense emotions. And I find that to be like that's what being alive is. So, you know, I think that I found more peace with that. And then the next step after that was, okay, if I can find peace with that, then what is the level of connection and what is the level of, you know, love amongst me and these other people? And started to investigate that.

Hmm. Did you ever think about solving the— so the way that you solved the problem was stepping down as CEO. Did you ever think about solving it in a different way? Like, did you ever think about taking a 3-month break from the company? Did you ever think about hiring maybe a bigger leadership team so that there would be, you know, you didn't deal with as many problems? Did you ever think about hiring like, you know, Chief People Officer to obfuscate yourself from some of those people issues? Did you try those things and they didn't work?

I did do a lot of those things, actually. And one of the things I had done for basically my last year or so maybe even 2 years at DYDX was I wasn't managing the team as directly. I was still there every day and still involved in a lot of different things, but we had like a COO and then, you know, eventually another person who would manage most of the team and run things on a day-to-day basis would talk with people more directly. So that can help, but I think that's just deferring the problem, right? Like fundamentally, you're still responsible and you're still in charge of everything that's going on, even if you have a delegate to handle it for you. So that was the first learning. And then I think the second thing in terms of why just outright step away, why not take a sabbatical or something like that? I had tried a few month-long sabbaticals or so, and those actually were very helpful and were important points on the path. But again, this is, I think, just comes down to personal preference and who you are. Who I am, I think, is actually, and I've discovered this and it's been somewhat surprising to me, is actually a relatively extreme person. And so I like to just jump off of a cliff.

You discovered this in the downtime after you stepped down, or you had discovered this over the past 2 years of introspecting on myself?

And maybe I should have known it the whole time, right? And probably all of us in crypto are to some extent. We're working in this really exciting but sort of ridiculous at times field. And for myself, starting this leveraged derivatives product in crypto. That's, that's obviously a big bold bet, but it took me a little while to realize that extends to my personal life too. So yeah, like I could have just made it like a 6-month sabbatical or something like that, but really I found the most amount of fear but also fulfillment in making these really big bold bets. And I've started to do that in business, but then I started to think, well, why don't I just do that in my actual life too? And it's quite hard, it's quite scary, 'cause like that's all you have. But leaving the company for me and for any founder, especially after this long, is very challenging, right? Like you have put so much of yourself into this thing. You have hired these people, there's responsibility, there's friendships, relationships. And so I just felt like this was the thing I was most afraid to do and leave the company. And so I did it. And it was just a really interesting journey of reflection And one of the things I faced first and foremost in my time away was just this complete loss of identity. It really felt like I didn't know who I was just because most of my relationships were at the company. Most of myself was at the company even when I wasn't there. And so that brought me to one of the lines that I wrote in my coming back blog post. But I realized one of the reasons why I left, in addition to not feeling connected, was feeling trapped. And I think anyone feels like this. I think being a founder is just probably a lesser version of being a parent, perhaps. But I felt like I couldn't leave, or at least that the company wouldn't be successful if I left. And so in this leaving, in this letting go, I found that to be true. Like, I just could not get away from sort of my spirit being so intertwined with that of the company. Today, I would say I really don't feel the need for much external validation. Like, I've just accepted that this is an extension of who I am. This is what I want to continue doing. I really care about the space. Like, I've been in it for— in crypto for 9 years at this point. And I face this question on, is this what I want to keep doing for the rest of my life? And the answer is yes. And how many people can say they've gone very far in introspection and actually want to spend their entire life on something, especially something that's very unproven? I think that's not too many. And so I can find a lot of pride, like a lot of peace in that. And I feel very grateful to be able to continue.

Yeah. So you were away for 5 months. What— tell me about the first couple of weeks of being away. Was it relaxing? Was it anxiety-inducing? Did you go skydiving? Did you lie on the couch and not open a computer? What— tell me about those first couple of weeks.

The first couple of weeks honestly just felt like a bit of a vacation, felt like a bit of a dream. Like, I think it took a month or two for it to actually settle in.

Well, actually, maybe let's maybe set the context. Sorry to interrupt there, but did you fully— like, were you out of the Slack channels? Were you in the Slack channels? You had hired a CEO, you had promoted someone to CEO. So like, what was your level of involvement, basically?

So I had promoted somebody to CEO who'd been my longtime friend and coworker, and he had been doing an excellent job and continued to do so. But yeah, I was completely out. And especially in those first few months, that was something I really intentionally tried to do. I installed Slack from my phone, all this stuff. And the reason for that was twofold. It was both for my own personal benefit or whatever to fully let go, but it's also just to not involve myself as a secondary leader. I think it's really basically impossible to operate effectively if you have two leaders at the same time. So I tried my best to give our CEO at the time, Ivo, just complete authority to operate the company in the best way he saw fit. So yeah, I was fully out and that was tough. And I didn't even go back to the office. I wanted to, but that's kind of the entire point of this is it was a big letting go. So during some of those first few weeks, I was here in New York sometimes. I did a bit of travel as well. I went to Paris and saw a Taylor Swift concert. Side note, I've been told that me being really into Taylor Swift is the most surprising thing about me, but that was a big part.

I have a more surprising thing, which is I saw on your LinkedIn that you were in the Glee Club. So I think that's more—

Yep. Lots of singing and dancing and love stories.

But anyways, did you travel with friends? Did you call your friends and say, I've got, I've got some money, like, let's— and I've got free time now. Let's go travel. Do you have a girlfriend or a partner or—

No, it was basically, basically just me on a lot of this travel. And, you know, I met some interesting people along the way, but I think this whole 6 months has has been a few really important, like, characters and relationships, but also big amounts of solo introspection.

Okay, so at what point did we move from, hey, this is a nice vacation and maybe it's a little lonely, but also I get to do all these cool experiences and it's a vacation, to, oh my God, I've got the itch to build something again. And, you know, because when we caught up in maybe whatever, whatever that was, at some point in this 5-month journey, you were, I think, in the phase of itching to build something again, but didn't know maybe if it was dYdX or a new company or, you know, we talked about some interesting ideas around social. Like, tell me about that journey over the 5-month period.

Yeah. So there's just kind of one interim moment, and I think it was a crystallization of what I was talking about before in terms of me realizing I didn't have a great understanding of who I was, or I felt like I had lost it. And that moment came about a month or two— I think it was about one month after leaving. So I graduated from Princeton in 2015, and one of the cool things about Princeton is that we have really awesome reunions. So I've gone back every single year, and the reason I mention this is because it's always a big time of reflection. Like, it's exactly the same every year. Like, And so I use it as this moment to say, what has changed? Oh, it's me. And during this time, I wasn't there on campus, and I was just like, I don't know who I am anymore. And I think I described it to somebody as I'm going all the way down the blank. And in that space, it was scary, but you find more of yourself. And the reason I start with this as an answer to this question is because I realized that this inspiration for creation is actually very related to who you are fundamentally. At least that's the deepest form of creation. Um, and so as I grappled with that over the next month or so, who am I? Um, there also just started to spring a huge amount of creativity. Um, and more than that, just passion to continue. And that's really one of the things I was trying to determine. Like, I'm only 31 at this point. Um, but I was really taking seriously, hey, am I retiring now or am I keeping working? And by the way, retiring for a founder track is going and being like an angel investor or something. Anybody who's doing that for the most part, I think, is on the retirement path. So I was asking, do I want to keep doing that? Do I want to keep building something or am I retiring? And with all of this coming to myself, I think came a lot of coming to creativity and I just really started to understand the ways in which some of the things that dYdX and we have already created really resonate with me personally. And, and like you were asking, I was also seeing some of these new possibilities of what I might build or what dYdX might build in the future. And I continue to be really bought in on crypto. I think it's just something that really aligns with my values, and I think there's not that many people that take hugely long-term approach to crypto, especially in this day and age. But I try to pride myself, um, and I really respect the others who are looking at this on a decades-long time scale. And I think once you start looking at it on that time scale, you start to see these trends and these patterns. So dYdX, um, I think obviously is, is one of the leaders in DeFi now, and that is, is something that really wasn't obvious back in 2017 when dYdX was founded.

When you decided to come back, you know, I noticed on Twitter that Evo is no longer there. I'm curious how much of this— I'm curious how that conversation went. Um, and I'm also curious how much of this is because, you know, there's— I saw Scott Belsky, who I have a lot of respect for, commented on your post. And Scott's the founder of Behance, um, and they sold to Adobe, I think it is. Um, I, and I don't know what Scott's doing these days. I could see him being CEO of Adobe one day. Uh, phenomenal writer and has a great book and great founder. And he commented, he said, I can, I can resonate with the, quote, biological parent sense of responsibility for a founder, having also come back to Behance many years after leaving, even after an acquisition. Have fun jumping into founder mode. And when I read this tweet, the thing that I thought of was, I wonder how it went with Antonio and Ivo, because— and I don't need you to share personal stuff here, but, you know, I can imagine if we— if Blockworks ever hired a CEO there, even if they were doing a great job, they wouldn't do it my way. And that would start to irk me. And I could— even if— even if I'd stepped down, even if I was traveling to Taylor Swift conferences or Taylor Swift events and stuff, like, you know, I'd be like, that's not— that's not the— that's not the Blockworks way. Or like, that's not how I would do it. And I'm curious just how, yeah, how that went. And then, and then maybe you can tell me the second part, which is how it was, uh, having that conversation with him.

Yeah, so just as some history in terms of why Ivo— so he's somebody that's really excellent, um, and more than that, you're right, like, and I foresaw this problem of alignment over time, especially letting somebody else run your company as the founder. I think this becomes one of the most, if not the most important things. And the reason I felt comfortable with Ivo doing that, and I don't think I would have felt comfortable with literally any other person in the world doing it besides Ivo, which is hopefully one of the highest compliments I can give, was because we did— we were very aligned. Like, we had been best friends at that point for 12 years. We had worked at dYdX together for about 3, and so we were very aligned. But even given that, what you say is absolutely true, and this was probably the hardest thing as to just literally holding myself back from being involved in things at dYdX started to become so challenging. And it wasn't even massive disagreements or things that I wanted to change. It's just like, oh my God, even this little feature, I would've changed the copy this way or something like that. And it really just starts to show you how much you care as a founder. And other people can care too, but nobody is going to care any much anywhere close to as much as you do, or at least be as bought in as you are. And one of the things I think is interesting about the biological parent framing is it does, you know, I've never been a parent and the people who have been both founders and parents tell me parenthood is a hell of a lot more of this. But maybe I'm getting a glimpse just by being a founder. But you start to have this view and this context on what you've created in your company. That feels continuous. And it's like you've been there from the very beginning and you've seen every step of the idea maze and you've seen every generation of the people at your company and every iteration of the product. And it just starts to feel like this flow. And I think that's very different from any other person that's not the founder. I think anyone who's not the founder looks at a given company for the the broadmost part and ask, what is this thing today? And maybe like, it's interesting where it's going and where it's been in the past, but that's— it's hard to articulate, but it's different from this continuous flow of experience that you have as the founder with this thing always being the biggest thing in your mind. So that's one of the big things that I came to realize, that and some other things that I think make the founder basically irreplaceable. And that was a big question that I asked, and I think a big gamble that I took just asking this question is, am I irreplaceable for dYdX, or is the founder generally irreplaceable at a company? And I think after a certain stage, like once you are very much have gone from zero to one and, you know, are in the one-to-end phase, yeah, maybe the founder isn't as required for that. But here at dYdX and DeFi and crypto generally, what we're doing is still so aspirational. It's still, still so far from the incomplete version of what we're building. That almost has to come, that level of innovation and authority and just making a bold fucking move has to come from the founder because you need to do that on a continuous basis. So that's really what I saw. And again, like, I have a huge amount of respect and gratitude for Eva. I wouldn't have left this company to any other person in the world. But yes, it's, it's, I won't go too much into it, but it's, it's a challenging thing, right? I think for somebody else to come into a situation like that, and actually feel that level of ownership and that level of emotional investment. And I give Ivo a huge amount of props, and anyone who's kind of stepping into this kind of role, it's hard, you know, stepping in and you don't have the experience of leading that thing. And each particular thing is different and you just feel so emotionally invested in it that I think for him, like the clearest and most honest way I can say it is he felt just that how impactful leadership is and how hard and how fulfilling and all of these sort of things can be. And then ultimately I realized, right, that the company needed me, that just a given leader, like a founder, is always going to do it different than anyone outside of the company or outside of the— sorry, the founding team. But yeah, I think for him, he has a huge amount of promise and will go on to do other awesome things in his career. And him and I had this conversation, like one of the things that was challenging at dYdX in the time I was away is just the general level of inspiration and vision for the company. And I think Ivo, you know, just even as an example, is a really passionate, very inspirational person with a lot of vision, but it almost doesn't matter. Like it has to be the founder again because of all these reasons. And like, this is my thing. Like, and he or anybody else in this situation steps into a situation like this and you can try to be as inspirational, as vision setting as you want to, but it's not yours. And so, you know, I think that the company struggled with vision during that time. And the execution actually went pretty well at dydx while I was away. But really, everybody at the company and perhaps in the industry started to ask, like, wait, what are we doing here again? And that just starts to sink in over time because there's no unifying vision. There's no unifying inspiration. There's no one person that you absolutely know. I can say, I don't know where we're going, but I know I will be here. And I feel so passionate about this thing. That just really resonates with people. And I think that unification is almost required for outsized success.

Yeah. There's a Hosaka tweet in August that said, be market leader, get complacent with dominance, become lazy, about to get lapped by hungrier competitor, frantically copy their features. Posted a picture of dYdX's logo and you actually screenshotted it and said, there is some truth to this. Actually, I believe dYdX did become complacent, primarily led by me. Maybe you could just expand on how you let dYdX get complacent.

Yeah, I got complacent and I take all the responsibility for that.

Was that because it was hard to do new things or you were kind of exhausted by the team or you had already made a bunch of money and you were like, I don't really see the financial motivation or—

It was a result of all of the things I've talked about so far on this journey. And I think in that last 2 years or so period, it was like that inflection point for me of finding that level of satisfaction with ambition. I think ambition can be a really powerful thing and there's nothing wrong with it. But I was very motivated by that. I was super involved. And then around that time, like I talked about, I started to— we hired like a COO and other people were running the company and I was still there and I still cared quite a lot, but not in the same level of passion, probably. And I think that was part of it. I think to some extent there was a fear, probably even greater than that was, yeah, just this complacency that starts to set in. And we've been around for a long time, 7 years in DeFi, and there have been quite a lot of different competitors in DeFi plus derivatives over time. But honestly, I haven't felt like any of them were super legitimate until more recently. And yeah, eventually if you stay in that mode where you're not continuing to push yourself, the founder is not giving 100% of themselves and you're not making really big bold bets. And we did make some actually, like we moved to Cosmos chain from an L2 and all these sort of things. But yeah, we, we started to think too long term probably and started to get too complacent. And that's really what I realized. And I think that was also a big part of what led to me leaving as well, was me sort of losing the passion, like I said, but it had been happening for like 2 years. And it like started to go down over time and then really dropped off a cliff right before I left. And I think this coming back is a real finding of that again, but finding of what the authentic reason and the authentic passion is to go forwards and compete. And another example of this, like, you know, this has been a hot topic on Twitter recently, but I think dYdX is a prime example of a company that really needs to be in wartime, really needs to feel like we have absolutely built nothing compared to where we hope to get to in the future. And if we don't continue to execute, if we don't make big bold bets, if we don't have exactly, you know, the right company and the right people going forwards, then we will lose and we'll have ultimately built nothing. And that doesn't mean this journey meant nothing. Like, one of the things that I feel extremely proud of and nobody can ever take away from dYdX is that We have been innovators in the space so far. Like, we were very early to DeFi itself, to smart contracts. We were the first to build on— the first, like, serious project to build on L2, one of the first serious projects to build our own chain. And so even if we don't ultimately win, we brought a lot to the space. But I want to win, like, and I want what we build at dYdX to make a huge impact. And we have a big opportunity to do this. Like, the reason that there's probably literally 100 competitors in DeFi plus derivatives at this point is because it's a very obvious market that it's going to grow over time. And now there are other legitimate competitors like Hyperliquid, um, Drift is decent, a couple other ones. Um, and I think this competition, it has— was scary at first, but I see it as a blessing now. Um, and it's really driving us to, to make some of our biggest, boldest bets. I think you'll see that happen in the coming months at dYdX. And now I feel like I'm in exactly the right place and dYdX is to be able to do that.

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Yeah. And this actually, with the perspective of not being here for a while, has brought me a huge amount of clarity on what we need to do. And I actually feel it's incredibly obvious now. I'm basically just going to blow it all up and we're going to start over and go into founder mode, as they say, to run the company myself. It's just required at this point. Yes, it's interesting. I think aside from the founder mode, I think sometimes there there's these synergies where a lot of people start thinking about this before that became popular on Twitter. I was thinking about this a lot for the month prior, but like we've been talking about, there's just something different about the founder of the company running the company themselves and busting through all the bullshit, not having so many layers of hierarchy, not having so many processes, not having so many meetings. And I just feel like you have this presence, sort of this aura as a founder where the more things that you're involved in, yeah, you're going to make the best decisions. Yeah, you probably care the most. But the big impact of this is how the founder being involved in each particular thing radiates to everyone else at the company. And it really, I think, will inspire more people to act more like a founder at the company. And that is a very powerful thing. It's just hard. And I think one of the other things that people commonly talk about with what's the difference between a founder doing something and others is that founders have this sort of almost absolute authority at the company and nobody else has anything close to that. So only the founder can unilaterally make some of these decisions. And if they're bold decisions, then sometimes you have to stand up there and you have to have every single person in the company disagree with you and be willing to do it anyways. And you have to do that with compassion and with listening and care. And actually, you have to take into account what people are saying, but you don't have to listen to them. And I think nobody else at the company is sort of able to do that beside the founder. And that's what I plan to do going forwards at dYdX. I have some specific thoughts on where that's going to take us with the product strategy. But overall, I think it's going to make us execute a lot faster, make even bigger, bolder bets, and just walk the idea maze faster towards building something that's fundamentally a new product. And it's not just derivative of what's been, what has come before.

Nice. I do want to get to what you guys are doing with dYdX, but I have a few other questions on just like running the company. What advice would you have for founders who do not want to go through the journey of stepping down, announcing they're stepping down, waiting 5 months, finding themselves, and then coming back, what have you learned in this about like, I don't know, I'm trying to put a question around this thought, but it's like, oh man, if only I had known this in the first 7 years of, you know, this mentality or running the company like this, or even tactical things like, oh, if only I had structured the leadership team like this, or if only I had, you know, done these meetings instead of these meetings, or I'm curious how you if you have any advice for me or other founders out there who are in year 6, year 7, year 8?

I think it's different for everyone. There are certainly things that, like I just said, I am going to do very differently now. But this is why I continue to use this word journey. I think of the founder journey as something that's very personal. And the challenge is you actually have to experience all of the steps on the journey before you can move forwards. It's not like you can just go to the end state and be the same. And that doesn't necessarily mean that every founder has to leave their company or you have to do it in such an extreme, perhaps bold way as I did. But there has to be—

That's pretty good marketing though, Antonio. I mean, just like you guys building your own chain before. Everyone else. Now you're going to see all these founders step down and then come back, you know, be a trend.

I would love that. And if there's ever a founder that's in that part of the journey and they want to talk, I hear you and I've been there. But yeah, like you don't necessarily have to go and do all those things to get to this level of peace and this level of clarity. I think the thing that you do have to do is, yeah, just a lot of introspection and a lot of figuring out what is actually authentic for you. And people say this in different ways, but it's like doing the things that give you energy. But I think if you go a few steps further with that, or yeah, you should do the things that give you energy, just like literally don't do or don't even have the company do things that don't give you energy because you're just not going to succeed with them. But take it a step further and be like, why does this give me energy? Like, where is this motivation coming from? Maybe like I really I take pride in product development. Why is that? Oh, okay. I guess this product really resonates with me and this is part of like a big part of who I am. And, you know, I really care about like freedom or opportunity or, you know, integrity or whatever it is that you weave into your product and just go steps further and the introspection and trying to figure out what it is. So that's a big part of it. I think another big part of it is never getting trapped 'Cause I think I see, and this is just a life thing, but we're talking about life through the lens of being a founder right now. You can look at that as, yeah, there's steps on the journey, but you can get trapped in any one of them. And you might be like, oh man, I really want to do this thing, but it feels too scary, or I'm not sure how to move forwards. And just don't ever get trapped. Like, always feel like you're moving forwards. With your company first and foremost, and then with yourself as the leader of that company. And then just always challenging yourself to think of things as a journey and think, where am I today? And just being open to the next step that comes.

Yeah. What are the things for you that you have a lot of passion for that you weren't doing enough of before you left? And what are the things where you were, you were doing it, but now that you stepped back and came back, you're like, I'm just not going to do that.

I think a big part of the passion for me and probably a lot of founders, but maybe especially for me is just in product creation and product development. So really getting closer to that and doing more of it. I think one of the things that I felt challenged by is all the bullshit that comes with running a company. So we are not going to do it anymore. And it's as simple as that. And you might be like, okay, like what?

What is the bullshit?

Like having like execs, like having—

you will have no execs at dYdX?

I think we will have fewer, perhaps none besides me. I think we'll see how that works going forwards.

How many direct reports will you have in the end state?

It's something I'm figuring out, but for the past 2 or 3 years I've had like 2, and I think I'll probably go up to like 5 or 6. It doesn't have to be the whole company. There can be a management layer, but I think I've learned how to be really involved with things on that scale, and that's where we found the most success before. And, you know, I'm not necessarily advocating for all companies should be run this way, but given where I am, where dYdX is in the market for us right now, I really think that's what's required. And that's hard. Like, I think there will be changes that are required to get to that place, but I think it's something I feel really passionate to do. And one of the other things I wrote in my blog post that I think is sort of rare is Now I sort of feel like I have this passion, this drive again, like I felt for the first 5 years of dYdX to actually build and get my hands dirty and create something. But also the challenge with that for that whole time, and basically every founder goes through this, is you're building, you feel so passionate, but it feels so fucking hard. And every decision that you make is so scary. And you're in your apartment for a week at a time before you make every decision, just stressing out about it. Now, you know, I'm not perfect, not enlightened yet. But I really feel like I have gained more wisdom in a relative sense over the last 2 years. And now it just feels like this clarity, like, yes, I see that we should do this. And fuck yeah, that is going to be hard. But actually, that's, you know, again, like a sign of compassion and love for the company and for the people here and for our users to do all these things, to do them quickly. And to do them with both passion and wisdom. Hmm.

How big is dydx right now in terms of employees?

So it's about 50 people. And this is one of the other things that I feel good about is we've always tried hard to keep the company small. And so I think we're actually in a pretty good state right now.

Nice. Is there anything else structurally at the company that you're going to do differently? Like not— and I will pivot this in a second into DYDX, and, you know, there's— I'd be very curious to get your take around Appchains and stuff like that because you guys were there kind of first. But anything else on the not product side, more like structurally, or how you track, you know, track KPIs, or your leadership team, or anything else that you plan on changing now that you're back?

Yeah, I mean, I know I'm sort of being direct and heavy-handed about this, but like, this is all the bullshit that I'm getting rid of. Like, I don't care about like goals or KPIs or anything anymore.

Um, like, so it's funny, I've, I know a couple other founders who have come back and this is the same thing everybody says, which is like, I'm getting rid of the bullshit, I'm making the leadership team smaller, I'm gonna have more direct reports, I'm gonna get more hands-on with product, I'm not doing these like quarterly OKRs, I'm not doing annual planning, all the fluffy stuff I'm getting rid of.

Yes.

And then naturally it creeps back in because there is actually a reason that you started to do those things in the first place. So I mean, I guess, I guess we'll see how it goes.

I think we'll see. Yeah. Check in with me in like a year or two.

Yeah.

My hypothesis though, speaking in, I'm like purely in the state where like I just came back, right? Like obviously have a lot of energy for what we're doing, but my hypothesis on why this happens is actually not that they're required. It's that they save the founder a huge amount of energy and hassle. Like, they're sort of required if you don't want to, like, act with full energy and full passion yourself. Um, and if you can be in the state for as long as possible, it's a hell of a lot easier. Like, I accept that to be in this state right when you've taken 6 months off, um, and you found all this new passion to continue. So I think I'm just trying to ride that as long as I possibly can. Am I like, DYDX will never have execs or KPIs No, but I think it's clearly insane value to be in that state as a company, as a founder, as long as you possibly can. Because it's just like you have to stand alone as a founder. That's the challenge and that's the hard part about it. It's like every single person at your company will be like, oh, well, I want performance reviews and I want clear goals. And yes, absolutely, people deserve those things. But really the best way to do that is just a frank conversation with them and say, look, like, you are performing well, or sorry, man, like, you need to perform better, um, in this way. And just like, they'll know if you, if you have the energy to actually tell them, um, at every point. It's just being a founder is like unboundedly high amounts of potential but also energy required. So as long as you can channel that, I think you should stay in that state.

I have a different theory actually on why some of these things creep back in, which is it— there's this idea that you're kind of a— I need to figure out a better word for this, but like, you're kind of a dick if you just like make the decisions by yourself. I guess maybe a more professional word would be like a dictator, right? Like you are just a dictator if you're like, here's the 2025 goals. Nice, good, go do it. And so what ends up getting created is You need, uh, you need two-way goals, you need two-way performance reviews, all that kind of stuff so that you get the buy-in and you get like, everybody feels like they kind of have a say in it. When, you know, again, I, I've, I haven't done this before, but like talking to some founder friends who have come back, they're like, I'm not having two-way, I'm, I'm, I'm actually not having two-way communication. I'm, I am dictating. To these people who I love and trust and respect a lot what the goals are. But I don't— they're not telling me what the goals for 2025 are. I am telling them what the goals for 2025 are.

I would mostly agree with that. And I think that's a lot of the energy that I'm talking about here. Like, it's hard to do that. Like, I don't know, maybe you can be on a power trip and it like feels good or something, but in a more authentic way, like it's actually pretty hard, especially for people that you respect and care about to consistently say, look, I hear you, but by virtue of having it, having to have a unified vision, we need to do this thing. So yeah, the way I'm feeling right now is, I suppose, somewhat dictatorial. But I think the best dictator actually is making all of the calls, is making all of the decisions. They don't do anything that they don't want to, but they actually listen to people. And I think that's the big thing that I do my best with. And, you know, again, I really value the people that we've had on the team at dYdX and even other thought leaders in the space and stuff. I think you have to have this very hard to achieve combination of absolute confidence, but open-mindedness as well, where, you know, it's the strong beliefs held weekly thing. And so you can go passionately in one direction, but then if somebody actually talks you out of it, then change. But if the committee wants to do something different, fuck the committee. Don't ever do something that you don't want to do as a founder. Take feedback and take it seriously, but do what you want.

Yeah. What did you guys as investors think about both you leaving and you coming back?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a mixed bag. I think there's some of them, like, I'll call out one in particular, like Olaf, when I left at Polychain, He was very zen about the whole thing, which is classic for him. But he was like, yeah, man, you know, it's all part of the journey. Like, I don't know exactly where this is going, but I see this really positive for you and dYdX. So that's like the one extreme end of the spectrum. Like, there are some other people that's totally justifiably and like, I actually strongly agree with them now or when I was leaving, were like, okay, like the founder is not here. Like dYdX is done. Like I'm sort of done being interested in this. And now we're at this other state where I'm back, but there's been some turmoil. So trying to figure out what that looks like for the foreseeable future. I think the lucky part of this and one of the things I feel really good to have done is for the company behind dYdX to have maintained a lot of control over it. And so I basically have authority, assuming I have some reasonable amount of trust to do what feels right and feels authentic over time. And then also this combination of that with a decentralized project, right, where actually it really is more about the community for a project at dYdX's stage than it is about the investors at this point. And the community can make of it what they will.

Nice. Um, hmm, there was a tweet Who led your last round? Paradigm?

Yeah.

Got it. Okay. That adds more context. Why do you respect Fred Ehrsam or Ehrsam or Sam so much? And maybe for people who missed it, there was a tweet that you said— if I— this was actually before you stepped down. You said, if I ever decide to step down as CEO of dYdX, do not congratulate me. And instead, I would hope for your respect, sadness, appreciation, and belief So with that in mind, I would say to Fred, who has now been the leader I looked up to at both Coinbase and Paradigm, I have immense respect to build not one but two major crypto institutions. It must be very hard to— must be hard to step back from something that important and meaningful for you. Uh, thank you for your impact on me and crypto so far. It's funny, actually, you didn't— there's another thing that Fred is involved in that he was on, that he's on the board of, um, where he recently stepped back as well. And so I've seen Fred do this a couple of times. Now this is his third time, and I'm just curious, like, why you decide to call this out.

Yeah, so I tweeted this last year. I have more appreciation for the stepping back at this point, obviously. But you can see it is something that's very hard to do, especially when you start to have so much success with something. And Fred is a co-founder of Coinbase. And to have the thing that you've built get to that point and know that it has so much more potential and that it's almost definitely is going to get there and really believe in it, but still step away and try to create something of that value, but that is different again. That I think is really bold. And, you know, I haven't even done that at this point. Like, I'm coming back and continuing the journey with dYdX, and there's no right answer here. Like, actually, I think it's equally as respectful to come back to the thing that you started and continue building that as build something really new. But yeah, I mean, it's hard to build a billion-dollar-plus company, VC firm, anything, and he's done it twice. I think the thing that I respect him a lot for is, first of all, being authentic, but then doing what he believes in, right? It was really not obvious that leaving Coinbase at that level as a co-founder and then just starting a firm to invest in tokens and stuff at the time he did was going to be big, but he made that call, he did it. And, you know, again, with leaving Paradigm to pursue some of his other interests, I think that's going to be big and at least really resonates with him too. So I think you can see when these people are just very empowered and also being very authentic. It's like authenticity is something I keep coming back to, but I think pretty much all the people I really resonate with are authentically themselves. And people are different, so people choose to do different things, but Fred is authentic and I very much respect that.

Yeah, there was a, um, it's a weird question, but there's a word here, which is sad. You said, I'm proud of what we've built so far, sad of what we sacrificed to get here. And then there's this other tweet from several months later. You said, it's been incredibly hard and sad for me. Why does this word sad keep coming up in relation to building dYdX? Hmm.

Yeah, I mean, there is just pain and there is sadness in life, obviously. But if we're again, looking at life through the lens of a company, it's hard. Like people talk about the hardship and they talk about it. But I think if you go into that, that the first level you usually find hardship is fear. Like, you can be really worried about something, you can be scared of it, you cannot know what to do, you can be confused. But that's actually not the deepest form of it. And I was in fear for quite a long time, but I think in a lot of ways I've gone past most of that. And, and you still feel the pain, you feel the sadness, you feel the friends that you fired, you feel the the late nights and the hardships and the calls that you made that didn't work out. And honestly, I mean, I guess we're getting pretty philosophical here, but if we want to go all the way down to it, I've come to believe that everything is balanced and that's the most fundamental truth. And so if you want to build something that has impact and that is great, like there will be a negative, a hard side to that. And it's sad. And even if you experience like the positive times and there's been many of them at dYdX and I feel so grateful for for that, they're gone. Like they will never happen again. And those generations of the culture, those people, they'll all leave. I was talking to Avichal, one of the other investors who's at Electric Capital that I most respect. And we were talking about this thing that we've experienced ourselves and that we've seen happen in others that we respect, other founders that we respect, where every single person will leave your company. And you will be left alone, like, at that company. And there is just sadness in that, but there's also a lot of joy, a lot of the journey. Um, and I think at times I really haven't wanted to accept that, but now I feel like I can. Um, and I say the sadness with different connotations at different times, but today at least I feel the sadness, but it's almost like a beautiful thing where, you know, it is what happened and you feel sad for having lost it, but you move forward.

Yeah, there was this thing that will— has forever stuck with me, which is we had a— we had someone quit Blockworks who was one of our best, our best people. This was a couple of years ago. And he— the day he told me, he sat me down, he said, I have a lot of respect for you and I don't envy you because I can make this decision to leave. And you can never leave.

That's right.

Yeah. Did you do anything when you— in those 5 months that helped you reflect? Like, I don't know if you're comfortable sharing this, but like, do you do like— I don't know, I saw ayahuasca going viral on Twitter last month. Like, did you do a bunch of mushrooms or like, did you do like therapy or did you get like a coach or did you— Yeah, I'd love to hear about like, I mean, you clearly spent a lot of time reflecting.

Reflecting, reflecting aggressively. But yeah, I've been working with a couple of coaches, but most notably a coach, Matt Moschari, who's like Naval and a number of other people. He's the guy. Yes. And honestly, he's made a huge impact on me. So a lot of this comes from him, much credit. So that's really helpful. And I think if you have a deep relationship with a coach or it can even be a friend or an advisor, Um, once you get to a certain point, you really just start thinking of them as an extension of yourself. Side note, I feel like this is a deep form of love too. Um, but then you can really just use them as part of the journey and it's, it's a superpower. So that's been really helpful. Um, yeah, I think the traveling was really helpful. Um, honestly, just the, the letting go was the biggest part of it. You know, we're getting pretty philosophical here, but, um, if we want to talk in those terms, like that's a big part of meditation. That's a big— is just the letting go of whatever happens. And, you know, to some extent, I feel like this journey, at least this year, has been meditating in real life. Um, it's like letting go of your relationships and your business and your purpose and all of this. Like, what is there when you actually let go? Um, and I think that's, that's been the biggest thing that, for whatever change there has been, has, has brought it on.

Moving forward in the outside of DYDX, any like big personal life? Like, I'd just be curious how, um, these big risks actually start to apply to your personal life other than like, you know, making the decision to step down from DYDX and then come back.

Yeah, for sure. Um, to get, to get a little more personal here, if that's the direction that we're going, I think these, these changes and these things really do start to rub off on your relationships in a big way. I mean, that can be friendships, can be romantic relationships. So I do think there's been a lot of change there. But I think as you really start to let go and do a lot of this investigation, it's not a novel take, but it brings you back to where you started, brings you back to your family a lot, at least as you introspect on things. Um, and, and for me, I, um, I'll go too deep into it, but yeah, there's been quite a lot of family trauma and, you know, mental health issues and stuff with my father and stuff like that in the past. So I think it's bringing me more towards confronting that. And I have in smaller ways. Um, and I actually had this conversation with Matt, um, and it was with Matt Mosheri. Um, and we were saying like, you know, we're feeling good or at least proud to like be doing these big things in our life, like these big things in our journey. But he was like, Antonio, like, you're living life on easy mode. Like, you're not actually— you're like, you're doing these things with these newer relationships, with these people, with this company even, that have only existed for the past years. Um, but if you go all the way back, like, intermediate mode for me, I think, is maybe my relationship with, call it, my mother, like, my siblings, and going back. Can you fix those things? Um, hard mode for me is my relationship with my dad in a big way. And for Matt, like, you know, he has gone through like a divorce recently, which he's been public about. So he was like, yeah, intermediate mode for me is my kids, and hard mode for me is can I find peace, can I find acceptance with my ex-wife. And you just start to get to a point where, yeah, like your general life actually starts going better for you, but it starts not to be about that so much. It's not that you don't care about it, um, it's just like the, the actual hard things are, yeah, fuck, am I gonna like reconcile with my father who did XYZ, or like these sort of things, um, and you start to focus on that. So yeah, I think that was, that was a good moment between us and a good recognition, um, and trying to orient myself, like be confident enough to, to start investigating more of that and see where that takes me.

That's tough, man. That's a tough— Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just kind of reflecting on that. One of the things I've noticed is, actually, this isn't even a question. It's just something that you just made me realize is the times that I've been the most frazzled at Blockworks There's actually not a trend in a thing that frazzles me or like rattles me. It's not like, oh, people issues always rattle me and product things don't, or like, you know, competition rattles me. It's actually different things at different times in the last 7 years. And actually something that you just made me realize is it comes back to what I'm feeling insecure about at the moment. So if I'm feeling very insecure about like our position in the market, maybe someone, maybe, you know, like a couple of years I was, I was feeling insecure about our position in the market and we'd recently launched the media brand. So if someone compared us to like The Block or CoinDesk, I'd get very rattled by that, right? Because I was feeling very insecure. But now if someone does that, it doesn't rattle me at all. There have been other points in time where, you know, if someone leaves the company, I really get rattled by that. But like now, I, you know, it doesn't faze me at all because I feel very secure in like our team. So Actually, it's not even a question. I just, uh, just want to call— you just made me realize that.

So that's exactly right. And I think that it's this connection in what those things rattle you and who you are. And so one of the powerful things I started to realize is I should actually investigate those things that rattle me and be like, why is this? And go towards them and do more of it until they don't rattle you anymore.

Yeah. Antonio, this has been great. I actually had a whole nother section, actually, like several other things I wanted to talk to you about, including the future of dYdX, appchains, and a million other things. I think I'd prefer to do it in a separate episode. Maybe we can do a part 2, not about— I feel like I got pretty personal here. Maybe we could do a whole nother thing about the future of crypto. We had an amazing chat on stage at Token2049 about Go build apps, go talk to users, don't, don't go build shitty infrastructure still. Um, so let's, uh, I think we'll do a totally separate episode, but anything else on just like leaving, coming back, founder mode, your personal journey that you think you'd love to share or would be helpful for another founder listening to this that we haven't talked about yet?

Yeah, it's just, it's been such a journey. I would just encourage others to whatever it is for you in your life, take the next step on the journey, do the big thing. And again, if we're going to talk about founders, one of the things I often say, and this is going all the way back to the very early stages of a company, is probably 90 to 95% of founders never start a company. Just think about that, like, and why do they not do this? It's like, it's, it's just scary. It's hard. It feels like a big change to even get started. And then, you know, as you and I have talked about in this podcast, it doesn't stop there. It only accelerates. And so it's like every step of the journey and every phase of the company, there's drop-off and, you know, maybe you sell or maybe you leave or maybe you do all these other things. But it's just, you know, I was having this conversation with Avichal before, and the thing that he really believes as to why electric and he will be successful and also the thing he finds fulfillment in is he's just going to be here longer than everybody else. And that's kind of what I'm talking about too, is if you can just continue on the journey, like even just one journey, whatever it is, there is real aliveness that you find in that journey. And so whatever it is for you, I would just encourage you to do that and continue to do it and continue to let things go and continue to find what's there. And we've talked a lot about being a founder, but we've talked in general terms and this is, I think, applicable to all of life. So yeah, just do, do the things you feel afraid to do. Find the acceptance, the peace that you will along the way. And yeah, just continue on the journey.

Yeah. Do you— you mentioned Avichel a couple of times and Olaf as well and Fred. Do you think that founders of investment funds are cut from the same cloth as founders of companies? Do you see them as one group of founders or do you think of them as two totally separate groups?

I think of them as two separate groups. However, all of those people, you know, Olaf was the first employee at Coinbase. You basically who is kind of a founder too. But the best investors are all actual founders of real companies. And I think that that journey can be extended in different ways. And for like a Vitalik or an Olof or something like that, it's even a longer form of the journey that I haven't gotten to yet, where I think it really starts to be about investing in other people and seeing an entire industry mature rather than just one company or those sorts of things. And it's really just finding whatever level of scope resonates most with you. But yeah, building a company in particular is fucking hard. And actually that's the thing that leads you on this journey in the first place. So those at least in this world that haven't done that, it's a different path. Yeah.

Antonio, appreciate you for sharing the story and getting so open. And I'm glad you're back in the CEO seat, my friend.

Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate all the questions and the ability to talk about this. I am looking forward to doing a more tangible podcast on crypto and dYdX.

Yeah, people got bamboozled here. They're like, I thought I was listening to a crypto episode of Appchains and dYdX v4 and stuff. But yeah, so next time. All right, folks, be well.

Thank you.

Thanks for watching today's episode. Just wanted to quickly mention that the wait for crypto's killer app wave is nearly over. Thanks to today's sponsor, Anoma, the universal intent machine. To stay up to date with Anoma, you can follow them at x.com/anoma or sign up for the newsletter at anoma.net. Thanks again to Anoma for sponsoring today's episode.