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

Transcript

only the founder can unilaterally make some of these decisions and if they're bold decisions then 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 nine 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 scale is the blockchain that is Simply Built different other L1 networks have costly transaction fees clunky user experiences and lack true adoption in Ai and onchain gaming explore the gas-free

ecosystem at scale. space ecosystem and follow their Journey on X at scale Network that is scale with a hit the link in the show notes to get started let's face it building on crowded l1s or expensive l2s is just not going to unlock the next generation of applications super containers offers dedicated customizable app spaces running on supra's 500 ktps layer one blockchain giving you complete control over gas tokens and fees get notified when super containers are ready for Builders at super.com containers tired of losing track of all your tokens Unis swap wallet is designed

to easily manage store and swap your crypto all in one place access thousands of tokens across ethereum and more than 10 other chains instantly by using Unis swaps wallet today download it today it's available on Chrome IOS and Android hit the link in today's show notes to get started hey everyone just wanted to let you know that mantle is releasing two new assets cm eth and cook these tokens will allow the community to more easily participate in reaking and earn cook rewards in add addition to other yields through meth protocol be sure to give at meth protocol a follow and X to stay up toate with the latest news in

the ecosystem all right everyone we uh are recording with Antonio uh been on the Pod before been on a bunch of blockworks PODS before I thought we were never going to hear from him he was founder of dydx stepped down sailed into the sunset and uh recently announced that he is coming back to DX's CEO so this podcast is going to be me asking Antonio what happened why he's back in the hot seat so Antonio welcome to the show thanks so much for having me good to be back is is it good to be back it is actually yeah I we can dive more into it but both here in 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 um basically exactly a year ago you said for myself I have truly never been happier as 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 um in May of 2024 so like seven months after this tweet you Ste 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 ision 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 um I think being a Founder is just something that makes you experience more of life more quickly um 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 um I was at the company for about six years at that point um 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 were getting a lot of attention um the value of the company and what we felt 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 stop caring about money now um well I've had more success than I ever dreamed of I guess I don't need to

care about that anymore um and really that started this 2-year Journey for the past two years of introspection um 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 um and 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 um but it was also scary because I was like well what the hell am I supposed to do now um because there was no clear objectives clear goals I was still here I still very much cared about dydx and the people especially that I work with and are users um but outside of that I

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 um 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 um and I think when 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 since I think I 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 six months ago and then we'll

talk about where I am today but I went on this whole journey of just investigating what this connection 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 seven years or so you start to say wow like this actually might be the entire rest of my life um and that's a very scary thing right um because you're 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 um but then you're like oh wow like was I sure about this like why did I think this and you started asking yourself all these big questions so that's what led to the leaving was was really just this like long-term existential loss of motivation stemming from my journey with connection as as it is with co-workers and the company itself um how got leaving Antonio what 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 PE actually the people as well but the way

that they describe it is very different like the 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 uh PE Founders I've spoken with who leave their companies describe why they left their companies um and so yours is also related to people but you're describing it in this language of connection and I'm curious H yeah how how that's yeah so I fa that as well and I think what I'm saying is actually very aligned with that um it's maybe just one step deeper in terms of of introspection and how I personally deal with it and I don't

think there's any Right Way um but of course we've had people problems at the company too every company does um I've heard it described like every human basically has one really significant issue in their life for year right we talked about this exactly um and so if you're managing enough people for you as the leader eventually gets to a point where you're dealing with that almost every day um and that was hard I did had to 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 I the way I dealt with that first was really introspecting on what does it mean to have a problem

with somebody um and I think I at the beginning it'd be like oh man I have to have this really hard conversation with somebody or you know you have to let somebody go or somebody's having a problem it's like problems problems problems um but when I sat with that I I really founds 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 um but it's really that's that's

an expression of Love um even if it's you're letting somebody go or you're 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 I think that I 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 did you ever think about solving the so the way that you solved the problem was stepping down a CEO um did you ever think about solving it in a different way like did you ever think about taking a three-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 a chief people officer to Opus skate yourself from some of those people issues um did did you try those things and they didn't work I did do a lot of those things actually um and one of the things I had done for basically my last year or so maybe even two years at dydx was I wasn't managing the team as directly I was still there every day and still involved um in a lot of different things but we had like a COO um 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 um 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 um and then I think the second thing in terms of why just outright step away why not take a sabatical or something like that I had tried like a few monthlong sabatical or so and those actually were very helpful and were important points on the path um but again this is I think just comes down a 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 um and so I like to just jump off of the

cliff you discovered this you discovered this in the downtime after you stepped down or you had discovered this discovered this in the past two years um of introspecting on myself um and maybe I should have known it the whole time right like and probably all of us in crypto are to some extent like we're working in this really exciting but sort of ridiculous at times field um and for myself you know starting this leveraged derivatives product um in crypto that's that's obviously a big bold bet but it took me a little while to realize that extends my personal life too um so yeah like I could have just made it like a six-month sabatical 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 because like that's all you have um but leaving the company for me and for any founder especially after this long is 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 um and so I just felt like this was the thing I was most afraid to do and leave the company um and so I did it um 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 um it really

felt like I didn't know who I was um just because most of my relationships were at the company most of myself was at the company um even when I wasn't there and and so that brought me to one of the lines that I wrote in my coming back blog post but I realiz one of the reasons why I left in addition to not feeling connected was feeling trapped um and and I think anyone feels like this I think being a Founder is yeah just probably a lesser version of of being a parent perhaps but I felt like I couldn't leave um or at least that the company wouldn't be successful if I left um and so in this leaving in this letting go I 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 nine 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 um and so I I can find a lot of Pride like a lot of peace and that and and I feel

very grateful to be able to continue yeah so you were away for five months what tell me about the first couple 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 weeks the first couple weeks honestly just felt like a bit of a vacation um felt like a bit of a dream like I think it took a month or two for it to actually settle in let's maybe set the context sorry to interrupt there but did did did you fully like were you out of the slack channels were you in the slack channels you you had hired a see you had promoted someone to CEO so like what what was your level of involvement basically so I had promoted somebody to CEO um who'd

been my longtime friend and cooworker and he you know had been doing an excellent job and continued to do so um but yeah it was completely out um and especially in those first few months that was something I really intentionally tried to do I uninstalled slack from my phone all this stuff um and the reason for that was twofold it was both for my know 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 you know give our CEO at the time Evo just complete authority to to operate the company in the best way he saw fit um so

yeah I was fully out and and that was tough um and I didn't even go back to the office I wanted to like 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 um I did a bit of travel as well um I went to Paris and saw a Taylor Swift concert um side note I've been told that me being really into Taylor Swift is the most surprising thing about me but yeah I have a more surprising thing which is I saw on your LinkedIn that you were in the Glee Club so I think that more yep lots of singing and dancing and uh love stories um you travel 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 and a lot of this travel um and you know I met some interesting people along the way but I think this whole six months has has been a few really important like characters and relationships but but also a big amount 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 nitification to oh my god I've got the itch to build something again and you know because because when we caught up in

maybe whatever whatever that was at some point in this F Monon 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 had talked about some interesting ideas around social like tell me about that Journey over the five 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 um and that moment came about a month or two to I think it was about 1 month after leaving um so I graduated from Princeton in 2015 and one of the cool things about Princeton is that we have a

really awesome reunions so I've gone back every single year and the reason I mentioned this is because it's always a big time of reflection um like it's exactly the same every year like and and so I use it as this moment to say what has changed oh it's me um and during this time I was there on campus and I was just like I I don't know who I am anymore um and I think I described it to somebody is I'm going all the way down to blank um 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 they're 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 like retiring for a Founder track is going and being like an angel investor or something like you know anybody who's doing that for for the most part I think is on the retirement path um so I was asking do I want to keep doing that uh do I want to

keep building something or am I retiring and with all of this um 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 there I was also seeing some of these new possibilities of what I might build or what dydx might build in the future um 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 a hugely long-term approach to

crypto especially in this day and age but I try to pride myself um and 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 bsky who I have a lot of respect for

commented on your post and uh Scott Scott's the founder of behance um and they sold to Adobe I think it is um and I don't know what Scott's doing these days I could see him being CEO of adobe one day a phenomenal writer and has a great book and great founder and he uh commented he said I can I can resonate with the quote biological parent sense of responsibility for a Founder uh having also come back to behance many years after leaving even after an acquisition uh 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 Evo because and I I don't need you to share personal stuff here but you know I I can imagine

if we if blockworks ever hired a CEO they're 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 Ste 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 block works way or like that's not how I would do it and um 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 has some history in terms of why Eva 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 um and the reason I felt comfortable with EVO doing that and I don't think I would have felt comfortable with literally any other person in the world doing it besides Evo which is hopefully one of the highest compliments I can give um was because we did we were very lines like we had been best friends at that point for 12 years um we had worked at dydx together for about three um and so we were very aligned but even given that what you say is absolutely true um and this was probably the hardest thing as to uh just literally like holding myself back from being involved in things at dydx started

to become so challenging um and it wasn't even massive disagreements or things that I wanted to change it's just like oh my God like even this little feature like I would have changed the copy this way or something like that um and it really just starts to show you how much you care as a founder and other people can care too um but nobody is going to care any much anywhere close to as much as as you do or at least be as bought in as you are um and one of the things I I think is interesting about the biological parent uh framing is it does you know I've never been a parent and the people who have been both Founders and parents tell me paren hood is a hell of a lot more of this but

maybe I'm getting a glimpse uh just by being a Founder but you start to have this View and this context on what you've created in your company um that feels continuous and it's like you've been there from the very beginning and you've seen every step of the IMM Ma 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 um and I think that's very different from any other person that's not the founder um I think anyone who's not the founder looks at a given company for the the broad most part and ask what is this thing today and and maybe like it's interesting where it's going and where it's been in the past but that's it's a

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 um so that's one of the big things that I came to realize um that and and some other things that I think make the founder basically Irreplaceable um and and that was a big question that I asked and I think a big um 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 idx 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 [ __ ] move um has to come from the founder because you need to do that on a continuous basis um so that's really what I saw and again like I have a huge amount of respect and gratitude for Evo I wouldn't have left this company to any other person in the world um but yeah it's it's I won't go too much into it but it's it's a challenging thing right um 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 um and I give Evo a huge

amount of props um and anyone who's kind of stepping into this this kind of role it's hard you know stepping in and you don't have the experience of leading that thing um and each particular thing is different and you just feel so emotionally invested in it that I think for him like the the clearest and most honest way I can say it is he felt um just that how impactful leadership is and how hard and how fulfilling and all these sort of things can be um 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 sorry the founding team um 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 Evo you know just even as an example is is a really pass very inspirational person with a lot of vision but it almost doesn't matter like it has to be the founder um 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 um and so you know I think that the company

struggled with vision during that time and and the execution actually went pretty well at dydx while I was away um but really everybody at the company and perhaps in the industry um started to ask like wait what are we doing here again and that 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 you know I can say I don't know where we're going but I know I will be here um and I feel so passionate about this thing um that just really resonates with people and I think the unification is almost required for outside success yeah uh there's a Haka Saka tweet in August that said be market leader get complacent

with dominance become lazy about to get lapped by hungry competitor frantically copy their features posted a picture of Dy DX's logo and you actually screenshotted it and said there is some truth to this actually um I believe dydx did become complacent primarily led by me um maybe you could just expand on how you let dydx get complacent um yeah I got complacent um and so I take all the responsibility for that um was that because 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 mo the financial motivation or it was a result of all of the things I've talked about so far on this journey um and I think in that last two years or so period the it was like that inflection point for me of finding that level of satisfaction with ambition um I think ambition can be a really powerful thing and there's nothing wrong with it um but I was very motivated by that I was super involved and then around that time like I talked about I I started to we hired like a COO and other people were running the company and I was still there um and I still cared quite a lot um but not in the same level of passion probably um and I think that was part of it I think to some extent um

there was a fear probably even greater than that was yeah just this complacency that starts to set in um and we've been around for a long time seven years in defi um and there have been quite a lot of different competitors in defi plus derivatives over time um but honestly I haven't felt like any of them were super legitimate until more recently um 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 um and you're not making really big bold bets and we did make some actually like we moved to um to Cosmos chain from nl2 and all these sort of things um but yeah we we started to

think too long term probably and started to get too complacent um and that's really what I realized and I think that was also a big part of the 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 two years um and it like started to go down over time and then really dropped off a cliff right before I left um 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 um to to go forwards and compete um 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 um really needs to feel

like we have Absolut we've built nothing um 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 um if we don't have exactly you know the right company and the right people going forwards then we will lose um 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 first like serious project to build on L2 um one of the first serious projects to build our own chain and and so even if we don't

ultimately win we brought a lot to the space um but I want to win like and I want what we build at dydx to make a huge impact um and we have a big opportunity to do this like the reason that there's probably like literally 100 competitors in D5 plus derivatives at this point is because it's it's a very obvious Market that it's going to grow over time and now there are other legitimate competitors like hyper liquids um drift is decent a couple other ones um and I think this competition 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

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directing the Strategic future of the protocol give meth protocol a follow on X to stay up toate with the latest news in the ecosystem let's talk about the return to dydx and how you're going to run the company different than how you ran it before um it's it's something that Mike and I T have talked about before which is you know we we've been running block works we started December 2017 so we're coming up on in two months well it'll it'll have been seven years of block works and there are these things that get ingrained in your company uh the way that you operate the way that you your culture the amount of meetings that you do the times when you do meetings the

way that you track kpis uh your product cycles that all at some point just kind of get like gets built and a lot of people don't really stop to think about that and Mike and I have talked some sometimes on and off about you know if you could just start over how would you do these things um and I I imagine that's something that you thought about over the course of those five months and I'm I'd love to hear how you how you yeah just how how you've approached that yeah um and it's 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 um and we're going to start over um and you

know go into founder mode as they say to run the company myself um it's just required at this point yes is interesting like aside on the founder mode I think some times the there's these synergies where a lot of people start thinking about this before that became popular on Twitter like I was thinking about this a lot for for the month prior but yeah like we've been talking about there's just something different about the founder of the company running the company themselves um and busting through all the [ __ ] um like 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 at as a Founder um 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 to act more like a Founder um at the company that is a very powerful thing um it's just it's just hard like 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 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 and you have to do that with compassion and with listening and care um and actually you have to take into account what people are saying but you don't have to listen to them um and I think nobody else at the company is is sort of able to do that beside the founder um 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 um and just walk the idea

may as faster towards building something that's fundamentally a new product um 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 D dydx um but I I have a few other questions on just like running the company what 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 five 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 if only I had KN known this in the first seven 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 I'm I'm curious how you if you have any advice for I mean me or other Founders out there who are uh you know in your six your seven your eight 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 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 um it's not like you can just go to the end State and be the same um 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 as I did um but you know there has to be marketing though Antonio I mean just like you guys you're building your own chain before everyone else now you're gonna see all these Founders step down and then come back you know a trend I would love that and if you know there's ever a Founder that's in that part of the journey and they they want to talk um I I I hear and I've been there um but yeah like you

don't necessarily have to go and and do all those things to 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 um and people say this in different ways um 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 do things that don't give you energy because you're just not going to succeed with them but take a step further and be like why does this give me energy like where is this motivation coming from um maybe like I I really take pride in

product development why is that oh okay I guess this 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 in the introspection and trying to figure out what it is um so that's a big part of it I think another big part of it is never getting trapped um because I think I I see this is just a life thing but we're talking about the talking about life through the lens of being a Founder right now you can look at that as um yeah there steps on the journey but you can get trapped in any one of them um and you might be like oh man I I really

want to do this thing but it it feels too scary or um I 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 as the leader of that company and then just always challenging yourself um 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 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 [ __ ] 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 how like what what is the [ __ ] like having like execs like having um you you will have no execs at dydx um I think we will have fewer perhaps none besides me um I think we'll we'll see how that that works going forwards um how how many direct reports will you have in the in the end State it's something I'm

figuring out um but for the past two or three years I've had like two um and I think I'll probably go up to like five or six doesn't have to be the company there can be a management layer um but I think I've I've learned how to be really involved with things by 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 it's given where I am where dydx is in the market for us right now I really think that's what's required um and that's hard like I think there will be changes that are required to to get to that place um but I think it's something I feel really passionate to do um and one of the other things I wrote wrote in my blog post

that I think is sort of rare is um now I sort of feel like I have this passion and this drive again like I felt for the first five years of dydx to actually build and get my head and sturdy 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 um but it feels so [ __ ] hard um and every decision that you make is so scary um and you're in your apartment for a week at a time before you make every decision just stressing out about it um now you know I'm not perfect not enlightened yet um but I really feel like I have gained more wisdom in a relative sense over the last two years and now it just feels like

this Clarity like yes I see that we should do this and [ __ ] yeah that is going to be hard um but actually that's you know again like a sign of of compassion and love for the company and for the people here and for our users to to do all these things to do them quickly um and to do them with both both passion and wisdom how big is dydx right now in terms of employees so it's about 50 people um and this is one of the other things that I feel good about is we've always tried hard to keep the company small um 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 I I will

pivot this in a in a second into dydx and you know there's i' be very curious to get your take around app chains and stuff like that because you guys were there kind of first but um 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 [ __ ] that I'm getting rid of like I don't care about like goals or kpis or anything anymore um all I about 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

[ __ ] 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 quarter League 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 um so I I mean I guess I guess we'll see how how it goes I think we'll see yeah check in with me in like a year or two my hypothesis though speaking in I'm like purely in the state where like I just came back where I 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 six 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 again no but I think it's clearly insane value to to be in that state as a company as a Founder as long as you possibly can um because it's just like you've got to you have to like stand alone as a Founder

that's the challenge and that's the hard part about it it's like every single person that your company will be like oh but like I want performance reviews and like I want like clear goals and yes like absolutely like people deserve those things um but it's 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 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 um it there's this idea that

you're kind of a I need to figure out a better word for this but like a you're kind of a dick if you just like make the decisions by yourself S 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 go go do it um 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 I am telling them what the goals for 2025 I I 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 um like I don't know maybe you can be on a power tra 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 a 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 um 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 um but they actually listen to people and I think that's the the big thing that I I do my best with and you know again I 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 um where you know it's the strong beliefs held weekly thing um 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 [ __ ] the committee um don't ever do something that you don't want to do as as a Founder um take feedback and take it seriously but do what you want yeah um what did your guys as investors think about both you leaving and and you coming back yeah I mean I think there's a mixed bag um I think there is some of them um like call I one in particular like Olaf when I left at Poly chain he was very Zen about the whole thing which is classic for him but he was like yeah man you know it's 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 where where when I was leaving we're like okay like the founder is not here like the idx is done like I'm sort of done being interested in this um and now we're at this other state where I'm back but you know there's been some turmoil so trying to figure out what that looks like for the foreseeable future I think the the lucky part of this um is and one of the things I I feel really good to have done is for the company behind DDX to have maintained a lot of control over it um and so you know I basically have authority assuming

I have some reasonable amount of trust um to do what feels right and feels authentic over time um and then also this combination of that with a decentralized project right where actually it it really is more about the community for a project at dydx stage than it is about the investors at this point and the community can make of it what they will nice um there was a tweet who who like your last round Paradigm yeah got it okay that adds more context um why do you respect Fred ersham Oram or Sam so much um and maybe for people who missed it there was

a tweet that you said if I uh this was actually before you stepped down you said if I ever decide to step down as CEO of dydx do not congratulate me um in uh 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 where he recently Ste step back as well um and so I've seen Fred do this

a couple of times uh not now this is his third time and I'm I'm just curious like why you decide to call this out yeah so I tweeted this last year uh more appreciation for the stepping back at this point obviously um but you can see it it is something that's very hard to do especially when you start to have so much success with something and frad is a co-founder of coinbase and to 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 um and really believe in it but still step away and try to create something of that value but that that is different again that I think is really bold um and you know I haven't even done that um 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 respectable to come back to the thing that you started and continue building that as build something really new but yeah I mean it's it's hard to build a billion dollar plus company VC firm anything and he's done it twice um I think the thing that I respect him a lot for is first of all being authentic but than 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 um 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 this 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 differ through 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 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 he said it's been

incredibly hard and sad for me why does this word sad keep coming up in relation to building dydx 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 but I think if you go into that that the first level you usually find the hardship is fear like you can be really worried about something you can be scared of it you can not know what to do you can be confused um but that's actually not the deepest form of it and

I was in fear for quite a long time um but I think in 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 um you know the late nights and the hardships and the calls that you made that that did work out and and honestly I mean we're 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 um 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 um and it's sad and even if you experience like the positive times and

there's many many of them at dydx and I feel so grateful for that they're gone like they will never happen again um and those generations of the culture those people they'll all leave um I was talking to um aichel one of the other investors who's at Electric Capital that I most respect um 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've 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 so a lot of Joy a lot of the journey um and I think at times I I really haven't wanted to accept that but

now I feel like I I can um and I say the sadness with different connotations at different times but today at least I feel this sadness but it's almost of like a beautiful thing where you know it is what happened and you feel sad for having lost it um but you move forwards yeah there was this thing that will has forever stuck with me which is we we had a we had someone quit block Works who was one of our best our best people this was a couple years ago and he uh the day he told me he sat me down he said I have a 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 so um did you do

anything when you in in those five 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 iasa 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 love to hear about like uh I mean you clearly spent a lot of time reflecting yeah um reflecting and reflecting aggressively um but yeah I've been working with a a couple coaches but most notably a coach Matt mosari um who like nval and a number of other people he's the guy yes and honestly he's made huge impact on me so a lot of this comes from him much credit um so that's really

helpful um and I think if you have a deep relationship with a coach or 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 a big is is just the letting go of whatever happens and you know to some extent I feel like this journey H 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 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 D dydx any like big personal life like I i' 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 in these 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 don't go too deep into it but yeah there's been quite a lot of family trauma and you 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 with

Matt Mosher 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 called my mother or like my siblings and going back can you fix those things um hard mode for me is my relationship with my dad um in a big way and for Matt like

you know he has gone through like a divorce recently which which he's been public about um 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 um and you to 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 [ __ ] am I going to like reconcile with my father who did XYZ or like these sort of things um and you start to to focus on that so yeah I think that was that was a good moment between us in 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 I'm just kind of reflecting on that one of things I've noticed is uh actually this this isn't even a question it's just something that you just made me realize is um the times that I've been uh the most frazzled at block works there I 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 it's it's

actually different things at different times in the last seven seven years 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 uh maybe someone maybe you know like a couple years I was I was feeling insecure about our position in the market and we'd re recently launched this the media brand um so if someone compared us to like the block or coindesk I 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 um there have been other points in time where you know I if someone leaves the company I really get rattled by that but like now I you know it doesn't phase me at all because

I feel very secure in like our our our team so actually I it's not even a question I just uh just wanted to call you just made me realize that so that's exactly right and I think there'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 this and go towards them and do more of it until they don't rattle you anymore yeah Antonio this has been great um I actually had a whole another section actually like several other things I wanted to talk to you about including the future of dydx app chains um and a million other things I think I'd prefer

to do it in a separate episode uh maybe we can do a part two not about uh like I got pretty personal here um maybe we could do a whole a whole another think about the future of crypto we had an amazing chat on stage at token 2049 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 such a

journey I would just encourage others um 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 um but it's just you know I was having this conversation with aichel 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 um there is real aliveness that you find um in that Journey um and so whatever it is for you I would just encourage you to do that and and continue to do it and continue to let things go and continue to find what's there um and we've talked a lot

about being a Founder but we've talked in general terms and this is I think applicable to to all of life um so yeah just do do the things you feel afraid to do um find the acceptance the piece that you will along the way um and yeah just continue on the journey yeah um do you you mentioned aichel a couple times and and Olaf as well um 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 two totally separate groups I think of them as two separate groups

however all of those people um you know Olaf was the first employee at coinbase he basically was kind of a Founder too um but the best investors are all actual founders of real companies um and I think that that Journey can be extended in different ways um and for like a Vil or an Olaf 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 um and it's really just finding whatever level of scope resonates most with you but yeah building a company in particular is [ __ ] hard and actually that's the

thing that leads you on this journey in the first place so um those at least in this world and that that haven't done that it's a different path yeah Antonio appreciate you uh for sharing the story and getting so open and I'm glad you're uh 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 Krypto dyds yeah people got Bamboozled here they're like I thought I was listening to a crypto episode of app chains and DX V4 and stuff but yeah so next time exactly 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 wve 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 ana. net thanks again to anoma for sponsoring today's episode [Music] oh [Music]