What It Takes To Build In Crypto | Stani Kulechov & Jack O'Holleran

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How's everyone doing? How's day 2? Nice!

To the guy who yelled loudly, nice.

So apparently there's, uh, 32,000 people in the livestream.

33,000 now in the livestream. Yeah, it's great.

It's good.

Great. Um, so there's actually a fun— so this is a live Empire— Santi and I are the hosts of the podcast called Empire. Uh, we Santi, founder of like, I feel like 17 different companies at this point in crypto, but no, not that many.

Yeah, just a couple.

Lens and Aave and some, some other things that we'll talk about. We have Jack, who's the founder of Scale Labs. Scale, I don't know the right way to put it. Scale. We can just put Scale Network. But actually there's a funny backstory. So Santi and I, I launched the Empire Podcast by myself and unfortunately, because I'm really boring, nobody listened to it. So I was trying to court a co-host, and I found Santiago, who is this like big name in the industry. I was like, oh my God, how am I going to get Santiago? And so I kind of knew Stani. And so we did a test episode in 2021, which was Santi and Stani on Empire together. And Stani didn't realize that we were trying to court— I didn't actually care about Stani in this episode. I was trying to court Santi to be the co-host. And the episode went well. And so that's actually what led us to do the Empire podcast. So that was a pilot, basically.

It was a pilot.

Yeah, it was a pilot.

So it was funded.

Yeah.

We've been running this for what, 5 years ago?

Yeah. Year— this is year 5 of Empire Podcast.

That's a marriage right there.

Yeah, we got a marriage. All right. So we're talking about founder mode and what it takes to build a company in crypto. Maybe I'd throw it over to you, Stani. You've been building Aave since— well, since it wasn't called Aave, it was called, I think, ETHLend back in the day. What is the most maybe misunderstood thing that people in this room might not see about kind of what it takes to build a crypto company?

I mean, it takes a lot. I think that's not— it's no secret that, you know, building any company is really difficult. And I would say, especially when you think about our space and crypto blockchain, a lot of this technology is very novel and there's a lot to build just purely from like infrastructure perspective. And a lot of the startups we have, they have a very long time horizon. So things can't really be built very quickly. It takes time to mature. And we are living in decentralized communities where, you know, there's a lot of dependencies. So, for example, if you're building something on Ethereum, you might be dependent on future roadmap of Ethereum and a bunch of other things that might be there. I think on a personal level, my journey to, to startups and crypto happened when I was still studying in university. So in my dorm room, basically where a lot of the ideas came out and we started to experiment on, on Ethereum, building basically financial smart contracts and trying to like kind of replicate financial transactions and functionality that exist already in traditional finance. But doing it on-chain and making it just more like transparent, efficient, and natively with crypto assets. So obviously my kind of curse is always that I've never been able to achieve anything really good, at least in the beginning, in the sense that I have to iterate with the product quite frequently and find actually what people like and what the users like. And that kind of a process takes usually 2 to 3 years for me personally. So we started with Eatland, which was effectively more like a peer-to-peer model. And we realized that one of the benefits of DeFi and on-chain is that you can group liquidity together and pull that liquidity. And then when you do that, you get incredible network effects and you can build incredible products. And that's where basically Aave was born. And that was a really successful product that became the market leader in our space.

Jack, you built successful companies in Web2 for, what, 10, 15, 20 years, and now you're building in crypto, obviously. What are the main differences between being a founder in Web2 versus being a founder in crypto?

And only 10 years, not 20 or 30. Sorry, 30 years. Gray hairs. But yeah, so I mean, I would have to say I was incredibly surprised when I started my first crypto company because I 10 years prior of founder experience building a, you know, one of the world's leading machine learning AI SaaS platforms. So, you know, I'd been in the meat grinder as an entrepreneur. I kind of knew it, felt like I knew what to expect. But then crypto is actually 3 companies. If you're starting something in Web3 blockchain, so you have all the challenges of any traditional company of building great product, finding product-market fit, doing business development, doing sales, doing marketing, core marketing. And but then it's coupled with this entire token world. It's almost like a financial entity that is laden with legal challenges and, you know, all these components around decentralization and community ownership and community governance. That's frankly a business in itself. And then you have this marketing engine that's not just core marketing, it's almost like running a rock band or something. You've got to like, you know, build community, be hot, be in the narrative. And it's so you have to manage, frankly, like 3 really distinct, all-encompassing things. And yeah, it's not easy. And I think, I don't know, the strong survive, I guess.

Yeah. Do you guys think that having a token makes your life easier or harder? —because in some ways it's easier because you've got a bunch of capital, you've got a big treasury, you've got tokens to incentivize things to happen. And in some ways it's a lot harder because your employees get demotivated if the token's going down. There's all these legal challenges and the whole host of other problems. You guys think having a token is better or worse for being a founder? Makes your life easier or harder?

Well, I mean, I would say harder in many ways because it can be a distraction. To be honest, like it, especially if it's in a place where there's no like protocol market fit or network market fit or so. And you know, then having a token component will, it can be very confusing, but at the same time it might be counterproductive. So I do think it's a token is a really valuable tool to actually distribute governance power and ownership of something that shouldn't be relying on one single entity. So if you are building a, you know, future financial system, whether it's payment rails or let's say a lending and borrowing protocol or some sort of trading protocol, it is very important that there is no single entity that you can— you have to trust and go to. But actually the governance is decentralized, it's transparent, and anyone can contribute. So So from that perspective, it's really helpful. But having a token very early can be very confusing. And also you get an audience that basically is kind of like assessing a product that might not really have its product-market fit. And I think that can be really hard.

This episode is brought to you by zkSync. In 2024, zkSync took a step toward a multi-chain future by transforming from a single L2 into an ever-expanding network of ZK chains, the Elastic Network. To onboard the whole world into crypto, many specialized chains must be able to coexist, work together, and share liquidity. Institutions and global financial leaders choose ZKSync for unmatched security, scalable infrastructure, better onboarding, gasless transactions, and privacy-first design. Join over 20 chains including Abstract, SoFon, and Cronos in the Elastic Network today. Behind zkSync is the zkStack. It is a one-stop platform for building private blockchains on Ethereum. The stack solves all the typical privacy, regulatory, user experience, and deployment concerns of blockchain without compromising performance or security. Join the Elastic Network today at zkSync.io/empire. Thanks to zkSync for making today's episode possible.

I think one of the key things about this industry, it attracts like the best, the brightest, but also the other end of the spectrum. And from your standpoint, I mean, you guys have been building for so many years. What would you tell a younger version of you if they were trying to do it again? That you would want to know if you're starting in your journey of building a crypto company, like what would you want to have known back then? That you would tell to someone in the audience, someone that's listening? Hey, listen, I want to start something.

Yeah. So I think, you know, I'm going to combine an answer here because I think it's like something that it took me a while to figure out is crypto is a world of double-edged swords. Okay. And I think the more you understand that, the more you can get ahead of the other side of the sword. And a token is a really good example of this where when the market's up, when the prices are up, when the community is happy, it is the— is a powerful tool. And the token— everyone frankly works for the token in these decentralized systems, right? No one's really in charge. Lots of people are working, lots of people are paying and getting value. But then, you know, when the opposite's true in terms of market, you get the other side of the sword and you've got to be ready for that. And so I think you have to be emotionally ready. You have to be ready with a communications plan. You have to be ready with like new plans to execute and improve. And, you know, that double-edged sword also lives with decentralization. Decentralization is one of the most powerful growth tools out there, but it also means you have to give up a lot of control. And there's other examples like that. And I think you don't— one, in like the prior world of Web2 and SaaS, you could just go and read blogs and books and learn how to start companies. And in this world, we're figuring it out. And I think it's probably easier now than when we first started a while ago.

But It's been an adventure. Yeah, and I think I would probably say to myself to focus more in the sense that there's a lot of distraction in the space and a lot to actually do, and that can be really distracting from whatever you want to achieve. Because when you come into the space and you have some sort of goal and objective, you know, it's very important to actually stay on that track. So what you're trying to really achieve. And obviously, products change and ideas change, and that's totally fine. But you have to really trust your guts and go with your own kind of like assumptions of what you want to achieve, essentially. And that's where like focus is really important. And because there's that community element, it can be quite difficult because everyone obviously has an opinion. You as a founder and as a builder, you have to create something opinionated because you have to have a vision of what the future will look like and build that. If that future that you build isn't something that isn't actually getting traction, then you might reimagine what the future must look like. But I think having that focus is really important on what kind of problems you are trying to solve.

Santtu, maybe I'd throw this to you actually because you're You're the new founder on the stage.

I started this 3 months ago. I mean, I—

Yeah, you're getting off the ground. How do you think about, like, what are the lessons that you've taken away from seeing— I mean, you were, I think, seed investor in Aave or early investor in Aave and early investor in, you know, over, I think, 100 crypto companies at this point. What are the lessons that you've taken away and how do you think about applying those to Inversion?

Yeah, well, listen, I never thought of myself as a builder, and I think it was the biggest scam that I was sold on this idea that investors can't build. And I think you hear this a lot in crypto, which is VCs just don't add any value. But I think like a founder and an investor, you're doing fundamentally the same thing, which is you— your role as a leader of an organization is to inspire people to bring out the best in themselves. And if you do that well, whether it's because you have a clear vision, then I think you will succeed. And, and I think that starts with leading by example. But yeah, it was sort of one of those things that I, you know, a lot of what we hear are just the success stories of the most successful founders or people on stage. And we don't really like go into the process of how hard it was. But I can tell you in conversation with Stani, it was hard. You're launching Aave, you're doing the migration. It is nerve-wracking. Like you have billions of dollars on the line. This is not like let's move fast and break things like which makes, to your point, you know, an added layer of complexity in the space. You're building in the open and it's, you know, your community's there. And it's just— I think being a founder, no matter what industry you're in, is super hard. But crypto just adds another layer of complexity to it. But honestly, fundamentally, it's been an incredibly rewarding journey over the last— you know, I'm building in the open very intentionally to inspire people that believe in the mission, that want to come join and You know, it's just people that I think this is why you go long crypto, because I, again, I said in my last talk, it is the most impactful socioeconomic transformation of our time. We— I consider myself extremely lucky to be born at a time where the more I spend time in this industry, the more I realize that it just fits so closely to everything that's happening. Like AI, some people say, wait a minute, AI is more important. I'm like, yeah, but like AI fits into like you want to do AI agents, like you want to have immutable data, like all of that is super important. Like so Crypto is just important because it touches a very fundamental thing that the most important technology allows us to coordinate better. The internet, the radio, airplanes. Crypto is that. And, and I think you always go long open source because it attracts like brilliant people want to work on difficult problems, whether it's reinventing the financial system or creating core primitives to allow everything else to be built on top. And I think that's the most exciting thing about this industry. Like, I— why would you be doing anything different? You know? Yeah. You're building in the open. You're attracting the brightest people because smart people want to work with smart people. Smart people want to build and solve difficult problems. There is no shortage of difficult problems in this industry. And that's the most inspiring thing.

This episode is brought to you by ZKSync. In 2024, ZKSync took a step toward a multi-chain future by transforming from a single L2 into an ever-expanding network of ZK chains, the Elastic Network. To onboard the whole world into crypto, many specialized chains must be able to coexist, work together, and share liquidity. Institutions and global financial leaders choose ZKSync for unmatched security, scalable infrastructure, better onboarding, gasless transactions, and privacy-first design. Join over 20 chains including Abstract, SoFon, and Cronos in the Elastic Network today. Behind zkSync is the zkStack. It is a one-stop platform for building private blockchains on Ethereum. The stack solves all the typical privacy, regulatory, user experience, and deployment concerns of blockchain without compromising performance or security. Join the Elastic Network today at zkSync.io/empire. Thanks to zkSync for making today's episode possible.

So maybe for Jack and Sonny, how do you take— I think you guys would probably both agree with what Santi said— big thorny problems, 10-year visions, 20-year visions for solving these problems. You basically have to marry that with extremely, like, memory of a goldfish people on Twitter and, like, very narrative-driven industry, people who are always chasing a new narrative and, like, price action. How do you basically, like, balance these two different things where you're trying to solve this big problem, you're trying to build amazing products, trying to have a very long-term vision with, you know, you've got thousands of— uh, Stani, I was following what happened last week with your guys' governance proposal. That seemed like a big debacle. Um, how do you balance these two, these two ideas?

Yeah, I mean, um, in this space, definitely everyone has an opinion, and I, I, I think it's actually a good thing, um, because we're as Sandy explained, we're building everything publicly and open. And when you're really doing things like, for example, if you're building a company and providing a service, it maybe matters less. But when you are actually building a financial system where you want every single person to be on and rely upon, you know, you have to— it had to basically stand all the pressure that, you know, all the opinions that might come from, from specific community or wider the industry. And I think that's a good thing. I will definitely think it's the right way for path for resiliency. It's not really easy, obviously, because there's so much noise at the same time to understand what kind of opinion really matters. And one of the big reasons from founder and building product perspective, it's good because typically companies have problems of actually finding the first users. That actually can give some sort of value and feedback for what they're building. I think in our space, in our industry, it's very easy to find your first users. And the reason why is that everyone is so connected on-chain. So you can just connect your wallets into a new application and then start using it. And, you know, the onboarding is super easy once you are in the space. Space. It's, it's the kind of like a bridging part that we, we are still, uh, figuring out, um, as a wider community. So it's about, um, facing all the, uh, opinions and then deciding yourself which of these opinions are what you need to value. And sometimes you get a really good takes that actually changes the course or ideas that you have, and it happens quite more frequently than, than, um, I usually expect. And it actually creates a more resilient protocol down the line because I see that everyone who contributes from the community perspective are also owning the protocol. So they have a voice and that voice should be respected. A lot of people trust me personally, but there's also a lot of other community members that basically are working hard to that common goal. So in overall, I think it's just a matter of understanding what's valuable, important, and then using that feedback to, to build something more, more better. Jack, how do you think about this?

Yeah, I kind of see this crypto as two separate animals at the same time, and you have to honor both and realize they're both really important or you're going to fail. And one is traction, fundamentals, execution, and that's like kind of like being an enterprise software company. You've got to go put points on the board, you've got to post revenue, you've got to get users. You've got to show all these, like, you know, economic value capture metrics. But if you only do that, you will not be successful. And, and SKALE is an interesting example. We're, we're top 10 in the world of all blockchains, all Layer 1s, all Layer 2s, in terms of, uh, transaction volume and unique active wallets. But what we realize is no one— not enough people actually knew about that. Um, and so a few years ago, we said, hey, like, we're we're losing this other category. This other category, it's almost like being a rock band. You've gotta be like hot, you've gotta be part of this narrative, you've gotta be in the community, you've gotta be on the timeline. And you know, we went out and hired a world-class CMO. We went and, you know, really changed some things and kind of leaned into that. But you have to do that without losing, you know, the other piece. So I think we're getting ready to, and what's more important oscillates. But I think the pendulum's really swinging back to fundamentals. But you can't just have fundamentals and not have like that other superpower.

Yeah. Um, let's maybe switch gears. Let's talk about fundraising. So you guys have each raised, I think, like hundreds of millions in your careers. Um, and Santi, I think you're, you know, you'll, you'll do that at some point. Um, I'm sure you've— I know you fundraised when you were at ParaFi and stuff like that. But there's, I think, this idea that in this AI-driven world, you can build software very quickly. What used to take 3 years to build now takes 3 months to build. What took 300 people to build now takes 30 people to build, and in the future will take 3 people to build. How do you guys think, if you were just starting out today, how much capital— let's say you were launching a new L1, let's say you're relaunching SKALE or something— like, how much money would you try to raise? Do you still think that we'll see these big mega $100 million, $200 million, $300 million raises in crypto, or is it, look, we only need $10 million keep your dilution low, um, and just sprint.

Yeah, you know, I think, um, I saw someone the other day, I forget who it was, they posted, they're like, a layer 1 should not have more— raise more than $40 or $50 million because you can't really spend more than that in any meaningful way. And I kind of look at it, you know, in traditional company building, if you raise it too high of a valuation, you really paint yourself into a corner. And so it's a little counterintuitive thinking, oh, give me all the cash and more ownership. But the reality is we see this in the market today where that valuation is, you know, if you start here and it just goes here, that's not a good, not a good look. It's not good for the decentralized efforts of the community. So I think, I think there's an element of, you know, what is the right amount bottoms up you need to be really successful, which is, you know, in probably the $50-ish million range. Um, in this day and age, maybe it took hundreds of before, But, you know, I hear— you hear these mega rounds. I actually become a little bit pessimistic when I see that, and I get more excited when I see people raising something like, wow, that's a practical amount. And yeah, hey, you still have treasure. You could sell a lot more later, but it's done in a more logical manner because when people— when there's that much money in a, you know, a company or an entity or a project, it starts flying around and it— I don't think it gets utilized that well either.

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What do you think about this?

Yeah, I think kind of like the— in some way, I think that with blockchain, the idea is that, you know, you can raise— you need less capital because you can automatize a lot of things. I think realistically speaking, probably the Aave protocol by itself, its programmatic, automated, autonomous nature, you know, does something similar today that 2,000 people do at the same time in one bank. So I think it's about using better resources and building something where you actually need less people, but you still need people. And I think that's where the biggest kind of like OPEX is on the engineering side. And especially for us, it's not just engineering, but also design engineering as well, and building really good interfaces. Because our eventual goal is to essentially get yield to up to 8 billion people down the line. And I think DeFi is the vehicle that you can distribute yield globally the most efficient way and produce the best financial opportunities that it's hard to compete off-chain. I think I also think you don't need to raise that much to build most of the things in our space. And what actually is more interesting is that what is the audience that you're raising? Because one of the things that the blockchain provides is fundraising rails, and that means that it creates more accessibility. So do you want the investors to be, for example, venture capital, growth funds, or, or actually people who really want to live in the future that you're building. And if it's the, the last bit, I think that's fascinating because this is probably the one of the rarest spaces where, um, the, the, the audiences that really use these products, they have accessibility to owning these protocols. And, and even, um, you can fundraise from them. So I think I think being able to fundraise from a community is one of the most bullish signals to me personally, because you get people who really care about the product or are interested in— they might not necessarily have, you know, the same type of experience with investing, but they really care what you're building and what this technology can actually do. And I think that's the whole point, Axis. Like, you know, if you're building DeFi and accessible protocols and a new financial system, why don't we also change the way we, you know, raise funds? Let's raise from people who really believe in the future.

Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you how I thought about it. Look, you always want to hire A+ people. A+ people hire A+ people. The minute you hire B+, you go to zero. So the B+ hires a C. A+ people are not cheap. So I, in Vernon, set an exercise. How many people do I actually need to execute on the vision? That's 10, 15 people. And from as an investor, you always hear from founders, there's always that 10x engineer. It's like that we can, we can let go of like 9. If you have 10 engineers, you can let go of 9. But there's one engineer who does the 10x work. That person should be compensated appropriately because the way I think about hiring is I never want to give that A+ person a reason to leave. So, so again, but you know, there's, there's market comps out there. You're going to pay an engineer X amount. And you're going to give them skin in the game and equity. But, but I will say there's been no semblance in the industry of capital efficiency. We don't need $100 million rounds. I'm not raising $100 million. Maybe I will down the road. I'll eat my words. But, but there is a natural sequence and progression to companies. Right. And it's like that scene in The Big Short where they go to that conference, real estate conference in Vegas, and they're like, you know, all the real estate brokers, subprime brokers are like going crazy. And he just gets on the phone, says short everything. And I think like sometimes I don't like to come to conferences because I feel I'm like, you know, you know, I love DAS, but there's sometimes a lot— I see a lot of wasteful spending from teams and you see it not just in crypto, like, you know, you go to Dreamforce, which is Salesforce's largest conference in San Francisco. And I think there's like the curse of if you're the title sponsor for Dreamforce, you will go out of business in 4 years. But you should definitely be the title sponsor for DAS.

It's a great conference. You mean you should always be the title sponsor?

It's a reverse effect, right? If you're a title sponsor in DAS, you will be the best crypto project.

But yeah, no, how do you think— how do you think about— so that's on the hiring front. How do you think about who you should raise from? Because you're a VC, right? You're a VC at ParaFi. Then I think you're one of the most allocated angels in the industry. Institutional angel. Institutional angels. Good branding. How do you think about like, you know, now there's Echo and Legion, right? So you can raise— you could raise a whole round just from the community. You could skip the VCs altogether. You can now raise from financial institutions who are allocating to crypto. You could raise from like, you know, the Coinbases of the world have Coinbase Ventures and Circle Ventures and all these firms have venture firms now. Yeah. How do you think about where to get the capital from?

Yeah. Until you do it, you really appreciate that there's a very big divide between investors that actually get it there, that are there, are going to help you. So for instance, the fund that is leading my round just got it immediately. I've worked with them for years. I've known them. But it was just until I kind of was on the other side of the table that it was so clear that it's such a massive divide between an investor that is asking the hardest questions. And that's how I, I picked the lead investor in my round because it was like I want you guys on the team because I feel like you're part of it. You're asking the most difficult questions. And then they just have provided immense value. And I think as a founder, I've just been very intentional in saying, okay, what are my biggest problems? What am I not good at? And that's how I'll supplement, you know, an investor as a partner in the same way that you're the first 5 hires that you make really dictate, I think, the outcome. And so I was just very conscious about that because I've worked with most funds in the space. I've interacted with a lot of funds outside of crypto as well. And so— but I will say there's a massive divide. Yeah. And this whole idea that VCs are not value-additive is, is not correct. I do think that there's the beautiful thing about Echo Legion. It is very important. I think there's incredible proof points around that, you know. You know, in a perfect world, your customers are also your investors, as your employees are also investors. So everyone— like, you want to talk about producing alignment and skin in the game in the tightest way possible. And I think community is so important. But, you know, there is a— there is a place and a role for traditional investors because they bring an immense amount of value. And sometimes in the cycle we hear, oh, VCs are just dumping tokens. Like, what are you talking about? They're locked up for like 4 years. The community gets an airdrop, can sell immediately. So it's a bit of a challenge. As I think about what I'm doing, there's a place for everyone. Of course, regulation has been sort of like a limiting factor in what we do. But in a perfect world, like, I do agree, like everyone— I think there's like from first principles, you think everyone should be under the same terms. Same lockup schedule. Like, there's orderly things that you want to do as an organization to set the tone, because the way you build things is like— you just imagine if the way— like, my mental framework is, if someone were to discover every legal agreement, every cap table, every advisor, like, you know what I mean? Like, if this all of a sudden becomes public, will I have a problem with that? And if I don't, then I've done the right thing, because that sets me up for success long term.

I would also say that, um, um, in the sense that there is a lot of value in VCs because they do a lot of due diligence. So like, kind of like, uh, the other part of the accessibility is that when there's more actually investors in the space and more access, some of the deals that are maybe kind of like, uh, they aren't like the highest quality might go to these investors that really gain this new access. So I think one of the challenges I see is that the actually low-quality deals might go to communities, which will be kind of like the counterproductive effect of access. And I think that's where VCs or any other types of services can actually help, where there is— that triggers the process and understanding of what that company is looking to do and being able to actually assess the quality. So the access component always goes both ways. So you can have a lot of access and people make a lot of mistakes and they get upset about, you know, the whole idea of being able to access new financial opportunities. And there's this other idea of basically you have all this access, but at the same time you have the best tools to choose amongst quality opportunities. We're definitely—

yeah, I was going to say, we're definitely at this point of transformation. Where the exact model we've been using the last 6, 12 months, things launch and they don't work well. Part of that is macro-driven, obviously. But so I think you're going to see some blend of this where you start giving like intelligent, smart, engaged communities better access, lower prices, but with longer lockups. And VCs may start to get, you know, have to, you know, come up a little bit as well just to in terms of price and access and exposure because things aren't working perfectly.

Yeah, 100%. Uh, that's all the time we have. Uh, hopefully you guys have been enjoying the Empire Podcast. Thanks for listening. Thanks for, uh, enjoying this panel. And yeah, thanks for coming out.