The New Rules of Crypto Fundraising | Roundup

Transcript

And so I think right now the advice I give to all founders, especially at pre-seed, is just don't even actually worry too much about the vision, worry about the market being big enough in the first place where if it works out there's a massive outcome. That's it. Then you can sell the vision. Hey everyone, quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode. Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the companies, or projects discussed.

GM everyone, welcome back to another episode of Bell Curve. You got me, Zev, Miles. How's everyone doing? Doing great. Doing great. In New York. I think we got three different time zones working again. So. Always good. >> What's in What's in New York, Miles? Is this a BD trip? >> Our Our office. Uh yeah, just go working with Olaf, our founder, um talking to some design customers, doing sales calls, all the good things. Hell yeah. Yeah, New York is really the moment I mean we were talking with Zev and I were in Khan. It's definitely an amazing place to host a conference, but there's a lot of uh momentum in New York, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Um speaking of momentum, this is going to be an interesting episode. We have I think three pretty unique perspectives represented on this call for uh what we're going to talk about, which is go-to-market and how to raise as a either first-time or early-stage founder. Um so, hopefully this is going to serve as a little bit of a kind of like a general how-to and my hope is that we can actually get into some of the tactical questions that kind of end up being glossed over in higher-level strategy-type podcasts around what are investors looking for, that type of thing, and um you know, we have obviously an investor um represented here from Zev, so you can bring the early-stage VC perspective here. Um

Miles representing Delta and kind of an earlier-stage product who's, you know, navigating um raise, but also finding go-to-market that's uh product-market fit, that type of thing, and then um you know, my own perspective from a couple years at at Blockworks. So, yeah, I don't know, maybe I thought we could kick it off here with just um just like from a very high level the first section, uh kind of a reality check, because um we're at a very interesting I mean we've talked about this almost ad nauseam on the podcast at the moment, but it seems like both from an overall investment um investment levels going into crypto, sentiment levels, uh like things are changing um in crypto, and I think the the um

barrier to entry or what founders are required to to put up in terms of early traction is very, very different from what it's historically been in the past. So, either Miles or Zev, I'd be curious Maybe Zev you can kick us off here cuz this is, you know, your bread and butter in your world, but now talk to us about the, you know, sentiment. What are you seeing from early-stage founders? I How many good founders are coming into the space at the moment? Like what does that whole ecosystem look like? And then what is the general change that we've seen over the last couple years? Yeah, absolutely. Um I think in general the inspiration for this podcast was really around, I guess, my time right now in the private markets in the venture space, speaking with many founders. And yeah, very clear right now that the bar is really high for founders

to raise even seed capital. Uh we've spoken about it a bit on the podcast before as to why that is. Of course, venture funds aren't raising as much as they did in the past, and the ones that are raising are usually a bit larger, and so they tend to invest at later stages. However, as you guys both know, as we'll crack into in a little bit, uh of course projects start at all stages. Um and, you know, Miles at Delta, I know you guys at a pre-seed once upon a time. We at Fractus, we primarily invest in pre-seed rounds, and I think actually right now in terms of like the interesting ideas at pre-seed, they're still quite high, but they're not raising the capital they need to get to that seed stage and go on from there.

And so there's a quite a big graveyard right now of pre-seed startups that aren't making it from pre-seed to seed. And also quite obvious actually now in terms of like what investors need to see at seed, which I feel like a lot of founders don't really understand exactly what investors are looking for at different stages, and do I how to pitch it like a pre-seed versus like a seed. I can't talk about series A cuz I'm not a series A investor. But yeah, the the sort of inspiration for the podcast was just talking about, I guess, the different ways that, you know, Mike at Blockworks, Miles at Delta, and and working through from pre-seed to series A, and then myself at Fractus, working mainly with pre-seed and seed founders, like what's working, what's required, how's it changed? And I think like to really touch on that in terms of where

we're at right now in this current market cycle, of course, you know, we're probably in the depths of a bear market, and so the standards can change across stages as well, as we've seen before in the past. Sometimes maybe a seed is raised, which is maybe more of a pre-seed, and people get ahead of themselves. Whereas right now I think there's a massive reality check, as we've spoken about before on the podcast as well, when it comes to like it's very, very clear what founders need at different stages. And so I thought it'd be worth recording a podcast talking about the different stages, what's required what's required, and, you know, what's actually working from founders I see raise capital, from from who are they raising. And also, yeah, hopefully we can give some advice around like, I guess, going from one stage to another and hitting those KPIs

in between to make sure that, yeah, founders can grow great businesses. So, that was a bit of context for the podcast itself. Yeah, um I think it's a good time to do the episode. Um maybe I'll just share like a perspective of how things were before and now like how they are now. Um so, when I'm talking about like I think a lot of people are still grounded in like the 2021, 2022 market where at the time, especially if you were like an infra project, pre-seed could be you could get funded with um a killer white paper and as a solo founder. Or you could be funded with uh just by having a really, really strong

category in a given field that you say you're now going to go build towards, right? That was pre-seed. Um okay, so then what would you need to get funded for seed? That would be like, okay, I've taken this white paper, I've hired a team, we've started building. This team is strong, it shows that I as a founder like can hire good people. Um and then you should be able to raise a pre-seed, or you were pretty easily able to raise pre-seed pre-product, you know, pre-traction, everything. Um and then you would raise an A like like as the milestone for the seed would just be like to get to meet that, right? Um and so that's changed quite a bit, the uh the pre-seed is now like what a seed used to be. Like you usually have to

have a small team, at least like two co-founders, you know, a prototype product that you're now talking to customers, at least about like doing customer discovery research and having like true insights about market. Um and the seed, I think increasingly is now like post-launch traction. Um and this to be fair differs between like apps versus infra. Um and if you notice like in AI land, you know, they're doing huge seed rounds with no product, just like it's 2021, you know, and in crypto land. Um So, Zev, does that feel right? Like directionally at least of in terms of like >> Yeah, I mean absolutely. I think you made a good point around back in the

day. I think a lot of it was technical, a lot of technical ideas, and in AI you can argue the same right now. There's a lot of research and development and, you know, technology infrastructure being built in AI, and I think you can sell that dream a bit easier when you don't really know how high it can go, and that's certainly what happened in crypto, I think, back in 2021. Right now, I think in terms of like what works and what doesn't, of course, you have the infra teams like Solana and Ethereum, etc., which are working very well. But if you want to come and pitch an infrastructure project right now, it's going to be extremely hard to raise capital at seed stage with like nothing to show for it. Cuz we've just seen a massive graveyard of of projects that didn't achieve the distribution they

wanted to achieve on the distribution side, and now, you know, they're trending towards zero. And then we've understood that the market maybe for some of these things actually isn't there. And so therefore the bar from all kinds of investors is much higher in terms of like what they expect at different stages. I do still speak with some pre-seed founders like now in the infra space, even though it's like a bit cold. There are still some really interesting founders and ideas out there. Back in the day, if you think back to like 4 or 5 years ago, if these founders pitched me back then, like I would probably be nose sniped and and want to invest. And I feel like a lot of other VCs are very similar, where they would have gotten these pitches, been nose sniped, thought about how big this could be, and then believe in the

vision, and then invest. Now it's like I think you know with a pretty high degree of certainty that most infra things being pitched you won't work. So, what is that a very unique wedge or go-to-market or distribution strategy? Or what actually is it that is unique about the market they're targeting, and how large can it be to be an actual venture outcome? Um which surprisingly as an investor you'll find that many teams don't have the right go-to-market, don't have the right target market, don't have the right distribution strategy, and don't have the right edge and/or moats long-term. This is on the infra side. To quickly touch on the product side as well, I actually think right now in terms of investing in apps, you know, and products, like if you look at pump.fun, probably one of the best crypto investments, you know, of all

time potentially as well, if you got into that pre-seed round, that was at a very like quite low valuation at the time and like quite an unproven team and an unproven idea as well. And in terms of like right now, could that team still raise at that valuation with what they had at the time at pre-seed? I I argue maybe not. Like I don't think there's enough pools of capital right now in crypto to invest in these in this kind of risk. Like we can see that this kind of risk can pay like a thousand X multiple potentially, but now it just seems like to me as an investor that there's not enough investors taking that risk at that very early stage, unproven teams, unproven ideas, and unproven markets. And this is making it very very hard for founders right now to even raise that initial pre-seed capital. You

need some traction revenue already at pre-seed, which wasn't the case in in previous years. So that's been a very interesting observation of mine. Yeah, it's a buyer's market. It's uh it's an investor's market. Um here because the bar has been raised, like because there's less capital here, there's less people searching for deals, you have more leverage as an investor to basically only invest if the um project has like really de-risked themselves by showing like PMF, right? And you're getting like the low valuation, which is the complete opposite like 2 years ago.

Um yeah, go for it, Mike. I was going to say there two other dynamics that I would just highlight here and point out. Uh actually three dynamics, which is one, uh there's a pattern in crypto and and most other industries as well, but it's very apparent in crypto because the cycles are shorter. Uh there is an overfunding in a hot category. This massive proliferation of many different bets that VCs are taking. It gets overfunded, multiples are too high, and then it consolidates. Um you've seen this in CeFi infrastructure. You're watching on-chain infrastructure that same thing happen, and it will happen and and anyway, so what what's the point of saying this? If you're a founder um and you're raising in one of these hot categories, uh it might be very easy to

raise now, but you should also also think through uh to a time in the future when it's going to be much more difficult to raise. Every single company in crypto that's of a certain age and vintage has made it and gone through this cycle. Um and so you should also, you know, think through that when you were negotiating and asking for your uh valuation and multiple. Um so just something to keep in mind as well. There are different which brings me to my second dynamic. There are different uh it's it depends, right? There are a couple of hot uh areas right now, um which I think are stablecoins, like RWAs more broadly, um and obviously anything related to AI. So it's not necessarily the, you know, the same for everyone across the board, uh but again, you

know, just keep in mind if you're starting uh a business in one of those multiples that there's almost certainly going to be a time when it's it's much more difficult and you're going to be placed under a much more of a microscope and much more scrutiny by your traction. Um and then the third thing is, I think that the there's always been like an extreme highly overweighted um focus on early and seed stage in crypto, and I think what we're seeing is an and the reasons for this is because tokens gave you liquidity so much sooner in the life cycle of a company than it ever had before that the incentives were basically and because, you know, there's no like all of this all of these reasons, right? There's no will track ever to creating a business where you

could drive value to the token. So essentially the model that the industry consolidated around was a bunch of actual like closet token flippers um who were masquerading as VCs. And what you had was there was a huge amount of capital available at the very early stages because what was going to happen is you're going to launch a token in 1 and 1/2 or 2 years. Don't don't actually need to build anything. Just pick a sexy narrative, launch your token, and get out. That is because of the performance of tokens, that is no longer working. And so capital is actually moving up the stack towards like series B, C companies. And you know, the the way the risk has been priced in crypto is always in been inverted for exactly this reason. Generally in the investing framework, like you take the most risk

at series, you know, your seed stage investments, series A investments, and it gets less and less risky. The the inversion is actually the true in crypto. It's been the earlier that you get in, the safer that you are because you'll get in at a low price that you can flip. Actually to the you know, there's a there's a really funny thing in um in uh M&A actually, and part of the reason why like just just to give you the the full uh just a strong data point about how crazy this inversion is. In traditional M&A, if you take a majority percentage in a company, there's something called the control premium. So the amount that you'd have to pay for a 51% versus 49 is much much higher uh because you have actual control. In crypto, it's the opposite. People didn't

want control. You you can actually raise you could you could sell, you know, 25% of the business for more than 51. I it's it's it's they're these very bizarre inversions, and it all has to do with this token flipping model here. And so the other reason why if you are an early stage founder, it's just more difficult than it is today is because capital is moving up. Um it's moving up the the stack towards more mature businesses. Um and that's just compounded by uncertainty in AI. And like I'm not really sure uh you know, what's going to happen here. So I I'd say just all of that is stuff to be thinking through uh as a founder as well.

>> Just to touch on that last point, Mike, as well. So when it comes to AI, I think a lot of early stage investors at the moment are still working out how it's going to impact the space long term. And so a lot of founders are still pitching software, which 12 24 months ago was super cool. And again, like tech in crypto used to be the coolest thing about it, and I still love the tech in crypto, but now with AI, people are shipping a lot faster. And so you have to be much more mindful of like exactly what your software is and how easily it'll be for AI to replicate that software. And I just think, you know, we're in the early innings of what this actually looks like and how founders would deal with it, you know, long term.

A lot of pitches I received in Q1, I've spoken with many other VCs as well, and what they tell me is there is founders out there, but in terms of like the quality and the defensibility of these businesses, like it's getting really hard to cherry-pick the right ones to invest in and and be a part of like long term. And so I think right now you're seeing a big reshuffle of founders in crypto, ones that are prepared to stick it out and, you know, try and build in this new AI era. And other ones that just can't raise capital and then eventually have to sort of pull up stumps and then realize that, you know, they might not have a path forward. And so I think that's why it's also super important to have like, you know, a session like this where we chat openly

about again, what is working and and what isn't because I think you you've got Mike, you know, obviously with a great business, you know, you've targeted a different market. Miles is a new infrastructure project. You know, learning I guess this new post-AI era as an infra project as well, what matters and what doesn't. And as well as myself, like, you know, just trying to share learnings of, you know, that I have from other founders I work with in terms of ones that have been working really well and ones that have not been working that great. And it might even make sense to just like have a quick segway here into I guess things that are working versus things that aren't.

So I think if I look at our portfolio right now in terms of the teams which are working really well, they're teams, I mean, it's kind of obvious, but they're solving a real problem. So there's no question about if people care or not about the problem itself. Like people are willing to pay for the products and or the infra. And now it's a question of how you monetize it as well as retain it essentially. And as soon as you realize people were hitting your product and or your infra and they're sticking around and there's volume there or whatever else it is, that is usually a good time to like at least right now to realize you're at seed stage.

Pre-seed for me right now is a demo, like a pitch that is super clear and focused, and a clear path to like, you know, hitting these KPIs in the next 12 months to get to that stage of monetization as well as retention. What sometimes surprises me in crypto is how long it takes for a team to go from like no product to product, especially in the age of AI. I think right now in the age of AI, shipping matters more than anything. Shipping fast and executing as well as building defensibility into the business as early as possible because right now everything's on speed run. Theoretically, you could have a great idea in a great market and build the product in like a few months. And then if you build defensibility into that, that's that could be a fantastic business. Like we haven't seen this before in crypto.

At the same time, because that's also the case, you have to think even harder at the start before you start building like what actually makes sense, what markets actually exist. How do you get to those customers in the first place? Like I'm sure I'll hear from you guys in a minute. But in general, I just think not enough founders kind of realize or they get stuck on at what sort of stage do they raise? Like Mike, you were talking about earlier before the podcast, do you raise venture capital or not at all? It's like a simple question. Another thing that like another learning from working with many founders is like especially now it's a very confusing question is is to do with how much do you actually raise in the first place? Like right now with AI, you know, the amount of resources you need

are way less. And so I like you guys have no idea the amount of pitches I get, which is like sometimes they're raising like 400k, sometimes they're raising like 4 million, but there's just two people behind the deck. And I quite often will ask now like what do you actually need that 4 million for? And they'll be like, "Oh, we need it for marketing or brand or whatever else." That could be a good spend, I'm not sure, but maybe you don't even need that spend anymore in the age of AI and you have agencies doing marketing for you. Like who knows what you can do like with a limited amount of resources right now. So I think the the sort of era of these big capital raises which we used to have in crypto, which is still going on in AI right now, by the way, I think they're

semi-done, especially at pre-seed stage and potentially seed stage. I think everyone has to ask themselves the question right now like what is the minimum they can raise to like have enough runway for like 18 24 months with like complete maximum efficiency of resources. I find right now at pre-seed, you know, in the AI era, this is probably somewhere between like 1 to 1.5 million if you're like a very lean team at pre-seed stage. Then maybe at seed like 2 to 3 million. Again, this is like an 18 24 month runway. I don't think you need to hire In fact, I think hiring slows you down now. Just like I I want to like finish with this before I pass pass the mic to you guys cuz I've been chatting for a while.

One thing I am noticing, and this is also might be interesting for you, Mike. There's definitely a trend of like cracked 18 to 20-year-olds pitching me uh just like a one-person business. And they have just agents running absolutely everything. And they come out and like they actually pitch me and they're like, "I want to raise like 2 million." And I kind of say like "Why why do you need to raise this 2 million in the first place?" And vice versa. Sometimes you have these teams which are like way too many people in the team and like lots of human resources and they need to be cut down and they're not raising enough. And they don't actually hit that PMF. They don't give themselves that chance. So, I think like there's not a real playbook in terms of how much you should raise.

I'm sure Mike you have your own advice in a second. But like I think founders could use a lot of help there right now at that pre-seed and seed stage with regards to like how they manage resources and what they need to go from one stage to the next actually get the PMF they need to raise the next round. Yeah, I have uh I mean two thoughts I guess to share. So, I think that um the mistake that most founders make on raising is they make it about ego. So, the most common thing that people do is you look in your category, who raised at the highest valuation? I'm going to do that. Um and I think that one like that's just generally benchmarking to like the nth outliers. Like not a good idea anyway. But the reason I mean again, I I think that it really should

be based up exactly what you said, Zev, is like how much money like there should be a model which is how much money do I actually need to get to the next stage of where I can raise and then raise as little as possible. Generally, this is people are And and by the way, I'd build myself a healthy buffer. I also wouldn't over like people obsess about dilution in the early stage. You haven't built anything, right? Like I generally subscribe to the idea that you are not I would not I would get yourself out of the mental model of I'm giving away another 2% of my company. You were The way that I would view it is you are de-risking.

Every single raise for you is de-risking that the business is going to fail. So, you know, I think you it should there should be the the input should be how what's the cost here and then what's a reasonable buffer so that if and when I [ __ ] up because you absolutely will, you know, it's not absolutely fatal for me. So, I think I think that's super super super important. The The other thing too that I'll just say is I'm generally short any business that raises just far too much money. This is like an old-fashioned idea. You There's a lot of disagreement right now between in more traditional like Silicon Valley VCs that kind of split on this.

But I'm a huge believer that uh necessity is the mother of invention. If you raise too much money, you will spend it. And like the best ideas at Blockworks have come from crisis periods where we are forced to make difficult decisions and figure things out. Small example, Blockworks doesn't spend any money on conference marketing. I think as far as I know, we're the only conference brand that doesn't do that. The reason is because Blockworks bootstrapped. We had no money. If you can rely on money, you will you will spend that money and you won't have to figure it out yourself. Um there are the rare counter examples cuz people point to Elon Musk and they'll be like, "Well, he raises a ton of money."

Well, he is Elon Musk. You're not Elon Musk probably. So, you shouldn't It's kind of like you shouldn't be basing your I don't know, your golf score on Tiger Woods or something. It's It's just you know, you're not one of the greatest of all time most likely. So, either you have to be a very experienced disciplined operator to allocate that capital or just raise less. And it's probably just raise less. Yeah. I mean, just on this topic of like how much to raise, there's like two approaches. There's like you could be do the bottoms-up approach like here is literally how much I need to hit all of these milestones that I'm saying are I'm I'm going after for this reason. That's going to like trigger the next one, right? Um or you could just kind of play the game as they say, right? Where

you're just throwing a number out there and then you're trying to get people to, you know, kind of bid it up based off of the competitive tension. Um I'm pretty pretty being straight with the first model. I think that's probably what leads to the best outcomes. Um And to be fair, there are times where like, you know, with like Uber or something like that. That was like a capital arms race. Like capital was a competitive advantage. Or like, you know, when Elon raised for SpaceX, like he was very strict with investors. Like, "This is going to be really [ __ ] hard.

We need this much for factories. We need this much for people. We need this much cushion cuz there's obviously going to be delays, right?" Um And I think yeah, it is the challenge is that it's an ego thing, right? That you're dealing with with the founder. Um And two, you don't You kind of want to imply to investors that what we're doing is really [ __ ] hard, right? Like it's not if if we can do this with 500 grand, then somebody else like you might get the impression that somebody else could do it with 500 grand, right? So, I think that's kind of why founders end up just taking like as much money as possible.

Um And yeah, I mean like if you think about some of these acquire exits, like founders are not getting anything if they raise too much because of the the, you know, liquidity premium going to investors. So, like all of this needs to be kept in mind. Think about like sideways routes. There's a great scene in Silicon Valley that's like, "I could have raised less? Like what?" I know. >> I had known I could have raised less." Yeah. Well, actually there's a great scene in Silicon Valley where when Pied Piper is taking off and there's initial signs of product market fit, some VCs trying to throw a ton of money at Richard and I can't remember her name. Monica, I think, comes up and is like, "Hey, no one would tell you this, but you should take less money." And I remember at the time, I mean this was back in

pre-Blockworks, I was like, "What? I would never do that." That is often the right the right advice for a number of reasons. The other thing too, I mean this is such a basic thing, but it's not super obvious until you raise money. But yeah, look at the liquidity preference, right? You just kind of think, "Well, you know, it's all equal." There's a lot of complicated structuring around pref stack. And especially as you get into later stages, you know, investors are going to ask for protections. The most basic one is like you know, the liquidity preference which basically means they get their money out first at a multiple, right? So, you know, you're locking yourself into a certain expectation of performance, I guess is the best way to say. So, if you raise at, you know, 200 million, your investor puts in 20 and they have, you

know, a 3x liquidity preference which should be high, but some of them do at the later stages, then you know, you better deliver a home run outcome because even if you sell that sold that, you know, 400, you know, you could be getting a lot less money than you think. >> Yeah. Like here's here's an example. I want to hear your opinion on this. The other challenge is that when you're when you're raising, you want investors to obviously see the biggest broadest possible like vision and outcome 5 to 10 years down the line.

If you're an infrastructure project that's like you want them to see a Solana-like outcome here. Um but the like going broad in terms of your actual go-to-market and your product has been like um you know, a recipe for failure especially for a for projects in life. You know, I remember when I joined Delphi almost 2 years ago, I was like, "Oh my gosh, like you know, there's so many things that we could go after with this." And it's like, you know, internet-native global asset infrastructure. That's not going to work anymore, right?

And so, how do you thread the needle between like finding the true like undeniable pain that you squash today even if that's super narrow right? Um and getting that traction and then how do you show the path-dependent, you know, success path like to that big broad outcome 5 to 10 years from now? Um I don't know. Like Zev, cuz cuz if you don't properly communicate the big broader outcome, right? Then maybe investors can't like you know, get as excited about underwriting this or think that there's no moat or something like that, right?

Blockworks co-founder Michael Ippolito here. Quick break to talk about something we've just launched, Blockworks Investor Relations. As the market shifts toward institutional capital, investors want more transparency, more standardization, and a higher level of professionalism. But the traditional IR model is slow, manual, and not built for how crypto works. If you're building on chain, your data is already live, your business is already transparent. The challenge is turning that into a clear, credible story for investors. That's exactly what we're solving with Blockworks IR. It's a single platform that brings together real-time analytics, branded investor portals, and hands-on advisory support so you can communicate what matters. If you're an on-chain business looking to level up your investor strategy, check out Blockworks Investor Relations at

blockworks.com/investor-relations. All right, back to the episode. Mike Mike has some some good words on this as well. So, looking forward to hearing that in a minute. But I I think the vision is important. The vision has to be bold and ambitious. Otherwise, it's like why are we here in the first place as startup founders and VCs? So, I think the vision can be anything though. So, like let's say a chain pitches me right now like a new infrastructure project. I'm not comping it to like Solana and or Ethereum. Like that might be what it could get comped to long-term, but I don't think you should be almost attacking that market right now cuz it seems like a very hard market to crack into. I'd rather think of some new market that might exist that brings on extra dollars on chain or

whatever else it is and like try and value it like that. And what's the realistic chance of that actually happening in the first place? Like you have to actually tweeted about this recently but you need to balance a practical go-to-market approach especially in a bear market with a bold long-term vision. And also, I tend to find that the people who know the most about what they're talking about always sell the vision the best. And they're no fluff, straight to the point, you know, very clear on on what it looks like. But they're also honest about the fact that like a vision is a vision and quite often visions change and quite often visions aren't executed on. I do think visions in crypto were sold like they're being sold in AI AI right now and you know, what's so bad that in AI, you

know, a lot of these visions don't come to fruition. Same same as crypto. I I think some of the best founders super strong on especially in a bear market making the money in the short term and showing the numbers, retention, the volume, daily actives, the growth, like doing small bits at a time, communicating with investors saying, "Hey, like here's how we're thinking about monetizing our cohort of users. Here's how we're thinking about modes longer term. Here are the different people using us for different reasons." I think it's very product based right now. Like you have to deeply understand your customer like someone like Mike does at Blockworks to be able to sell that to investors and then be able to sell long term cuz you know enough and you have enough of a vision from that insight being like, "Hey, long term the outcome looks like this and it's

exciting for this reason." Uh I I I think personally as an investor in what we do at Fractures like I'm personally the most excited by markets that like I can't comp to right now. You know, like a market for like an ID thing that like you know, we ID hasn't worked before in the past and how big is that TAM and how big is that market like realistically as opposed to just like a layer one blockchain. So, I think not enough like people are very good at selling a vision sometimes but then can't execute well enough or fast enough by the way. Sometimes you can execute well but not fast enough. And there's a small period of time in pre-seed especially where you have like 12 to 18 months to build momentum. How do you do a momentum and how much money do you need to build that momentum? Is

the key question here. Then I would say from seed stage onward seed to series A raise fun even in AI era, raise capital. If you're winning and the product is working and people are coming to your platform and you're solving a massive problem, go out and raise like 10 million and hire the best engineers or the best human resources you can. But until you get to that point like time it cuz you're going to go out, you're going to fundraise and then you're going to lose momentum and you're going to spend too many too much time trying to pitch. You're going to get turned down, you're going to hit all the investors and 50% of investors don't look at a deck twice.

So, you're actually like you know, making the pool go almost in half from just going out too early and not timing it well enough before you have PMF. And so, I think right now the advice I give all founders especially at pre-seed is just don't even actually worry too much about the vision. Worry about the market being big enough in the first place where if it works out there's a massive outcome. That's it. Then you can sell the vision. After that, you can start thinking about, "All right, like does that make sense in year one versus year three versus year five?" But you need to be directionally correct about a market being large enough for it to be a venture scale outcome. Then you also need to be directionally correct that you have a place in this market that is defensible as incumbents come up at to

eat your lunch as well as startups. And not enough founders I don't think think about this from from that sort of mental model. But that's really the best way of thinking about it, I think. Yeah. Actually, it's phenomenal advice because I think one of the things that Blockworks like I mean, we've talked about this you know, within Blockworks as well on kickoffs and stuff like that. But I think one of the things that rewinding back to some of the stuff that Jason and I got right was honestly we just picked crypto and built. Um but one of the things that we didn't do super well is think very critically about the market that we were entering. Um I'm happy with how things have turned out but like I feel like I could could have made it a little bit easier on ourselves um if we had thought a little bit more

critically about that. So, I think that's absolutely right. On the story, I have a lot of uh sympathy for founders out there who are like I'm struggling to tell my story. It's freaking hard. It's really hard to do. Here here's the the advice that's resonated most the most with me is to think about your story on three horizons. So, first horizon is like and this doesn't as much apply to seed if you don't have any metrics but like when you start to get into actually it doesn't apply to pre-seed but it starts to apply to seed series A. If talk about what you were doing right now. Then you pull out the metric which is the growth story, talk about that on a 12 to 18 month time horizon and then zoom way out. So, the person that does this the best outside of Elon is Vlad

Tenev. So, he's going to tell if you watch any of their earning statements um which is essentially storytelling that you do at his stage. Talks about this is the results of this is what we've done. This is our EBITDA. These are our business segments, you know, 5 billion, you know, this year whatever. Okay. But then he says, "Our growth story is the Gen Z investor." Then he pulls this little line item out and shows it up and then says, "This is all the stuff that we're doing to attack that growth story. Prediction markets, sports betting, Robinhood banking." You're like, "Oh, I'll buy that. That makes sense to me. I think that young young people are going to invest more. That's sensible growth story. Okay, all this stuff's pretty Okay, I like this growth story." And then he zooms way out and he's like, "And by the way, here's 70 trillion in

boomer assets that are moving to Gen Z." And you're like, "Oh." So, then you're like, "Okay, company's executing today. Okay, here's the growth story. It's Gen Z. Look at all this cool stuff. I'd buy this stuff. This is doing on 12 month and then you're like, "Whoa, it's going to be even 100x bigger." And the the difficulty that I find in telling the story is threading the needle between being pragmatic but painting a big vague picture. And that the part at the end should be very vague. Don't apply any numbers to it or they should be like comically huge numbers. Just a market, you know. I I actually counterintuitively we used to try to show a big revenue number at the end.

Never never show a big revenue number. Always show always do a big vague market that you're going to attack. A vague thing is so much better than a concrete The bubbles. The bubbles. Yeah, the bubbles. Go from a big bubble to a small bubble. Big bubble to a small bubble. Yeah. You're selling into FOMO. I it is like what I found. You're that's the underlying emotion. You're like, "Oh my god, if I miss this like I could like that's what you're that's the underlying core emotion of the sale that you're trying to sell. >> Exactly. But and and even before you get to all that like I would just say like to founders like you got to be honest with yourself and you got to be pulling external information into your orb to constantly be updating like your priors

and what you are I guess your your your your like version of reality essentially. Um they're like you will you will know. You have like you'll feel it when you're pushing like string up a hill basically versus pulling, right? And so, what can you do before you feel that feeling of like demand pull? Like just get in front of customers like obsessively, right? And if you can get a couple to like really believe in the vision and you can invest time in a really unscalable way to work really closely with them or like we did, you know, probably 35, 40 like research interviews at the end of last year just to like

pull it like actually validate our sense of the market, right? And then you're going to hit an inflection point at some at at a certain stage where like, "Okay, oh wow, these initial sales calls are going like really well. They're it's starting to feel a lot easier. It's not like a lukewarm, it's like a Yeah. Um okay, let's move forward, right? You start to hit a little momentum. Um and some point like, you know, after in the in the months after it becomes easier to sell you're going to feel a natural gut feeling of like, "Oh, I'm excited to raise. Like this is going to be fun.

Like this is going to be easy." Like versus I've also had the feeling of like, "Yeah, this feels hard. Like why why why are people not getting it like super easily? Why when we go talk to VCs is it like, 'Oh yeah, I don't disagree with anything you're saying but I you know, we'd like to see more. Come back to and it like those are just two very different, you know, realities and like you'll know as soon as you're in like Maybe Miles, I think great point and just to touch on that. So, you want to make it as obvious as possible to the VC. Like they cannot find any reason to say no.

It just has to be obvious this thing is going to make money. Very hard to achieve, of course. But as a founder that should be like especially at the early stage exactly what you're thinking about. It has to be like, "All right, this thing is making money." You have to be confident in the fact that it will keep making money and then you need to sell that to VCs. Funnily enough, there's a few funny portfolio founders I work with. You know, one trend I do see is like which is quite interesting I think if you're a founder listening to this. Some of our best founders in our portfolio, they struggled the most at pre-seed. Then at seed, they're like smashing it. Uh versus like the ones that were consensus early like some of us spoke about I think in N YC recently.

The deals that were consensus that raised more money, um they actually struggled quite a bit to raise that next round because they haven't actually lived up to the expectations and it was a bit too obvious and too easy almost. So, if you're a founder at pre-seed right now and you feel like you're directionally correct about a market that's going to be absolutely huge that you feel good about and you understand the customer very well, where they are right now, how you reach them, what they're paying for and why and you build a product that is just clean and easy to use and people come back to use it for a specific reason. But then you pitch a VC and they're like, "I don't get it or I can't see the market." Like my pitch to you as a founder is like don't even worry about the VCs, worry about making

the money. Like that's actually key tip number one right now. And definitely in a bear market yes, you need VC capital if you want to keep the lights on. You don't actually need that much especially at pre-seed stage and you have a cool idea. Just focus on making money. Like that's really all all that matters right now. Everything else is just like noise. So, yeah, I think some too much attention sometimes can be placed on what VCs think. I've seen founders a big graveyard of founders be like too focused on VCs and they're not focused enough on the product. That's another learning for any founder listening to this of like if you need money and you're running out of runway but you're too focused on pitching VCs and getting more money into the company and you're not focused enough on the product of why people are paying for it in the first

place well then you may as well not even go out and fundraise because VCs are going to push back and be like, "Who's using this and why and where's the PMF?" So, I think focus on the business and the product and then let VCs come to you. I know this is kind of ironic cuz like obviously founders want to go to VCs. >> That's completely right. Yeah. Yeah. So and then I think as a founder at seed stage at least from my experience is like you know like VCs will be in your DMs being like I need to chat to you like now. If VCs are not in your DMs right now saying I need to chat to you right now, you do not have PMF and you're probably not going to raise another round. Uh if they are, the reverse is also true.

Yeah, it's like if it's an established market like the best decks are just like really big font. Like just showing numbers, right? And like there's not a lot you have to convince them of. If you're like, you know, have these text-heavy like slides that's all like the tech and why this these other things aren't quite perfect. Like that's when you're kind of pushing string up the hill. Um I would say maybe if you're entering like a market that's not like you know, it's consensus going to be huge but it's not there yet. Then your job is to make your your solution feel inevitable in that future, right? Um and and I would say like for us that's kind of where we're at because the AI side is not like you know, the agentic economy

is not massive yet but it's pretty consensus like this is going to be massive. Uh so what is your, you know, truly must-have like solution. Why is that like and why is it defendable? Like that works too. I have two two more things. I I I think it might actually be helpful to talk about how to run a fundraising process um as well cuz there's a lot of nuance to outside of where to focus like product versus talking to investors. There's like a lot of nuance on how to actually run a successful process. Um and again, the I feel like the way to think about it is you're running an auction um and you are trying to create FOMO.

And founders who have successfully raised out there will know the feeling of go out and you talk to a bunch of VCs and they're like, "Yeah, this looks good but I'm not sure about the go-to-market motion that you have here. Like what what what pa- I don't know. Thank thank you." Um and then you lock your lead in and then you get like one blue chip and suddenly it's "Hey, uh you know, we we'd love to pick up the conversation." So how do you create that FOMO, right? How do you run a good auction for doing a a fundraise? You have You have to start with the lead, obviously. Uh unlock the lead in because the lead will then help you uh procure your other investors as well. Um one thing to keep in mind is that crypto's a very small space and every VC

talks. Uh they all talk to each other and they share stuff. So sounds like very basic but do not be inconsistent between different VCs and do not lie. Uh it will get surfaced. Um so most basic advice but just like any sale, like start with your leads and be as targeted as you possibly can. Don't do like a shotgun approach for everyone. Um be as targeted as you possibly can with the leads in the beginning because you're not going to get any traction with anyone else until you lock your leads in. Now ideally, you know, the further along you are, the more developed your product is, the more you know who's likely to invest. If you don't know that, you might need to do a little bit of a mix of a shotgun approach and more targeted. But you

know, you can kind of have an idea of where you're a fit um and do a bunch of research and figure it out. Uh like I would do research just like any any other important deal that you're trying to land. Um the other thing too is I have so much sympathy for this. It's so hard to do the advice I'm about to give but uh running a uh uh a fundraising process while at the same time you're running a business like two full-time jobs. You also need to find a way to be loud. Um like you should be talking about what you're doing six months ahead of whatever you're going to launch. Uh like three to six months is like roughly the right time frame. X articles, podcasts, like that creates a you know, literally a huge part of the investment sourcing

process is still X for early stage stuff. Write stuff. Be a thought leader. Never sell. Don't promote your [ __ ] at all. Barely even talk about it. Only talk about it on a thought leadership basis. That gets shared around and like that'll reopen stuff. So do a little bit of that. Have collateral to go to your leads with. Lock the leads in and then you do your wider approach. You can go with often times a good lead will help you actually go to the other people that you're trying to line up. Um and then finally the other uh piece of advice is like I would also think through strategics. Um like the the question that the the great crypto VCs like Z will be totally fine here but from a founder perspective as well, I

think there's going to be a lot of question of like, "Hey, what is the value proposition here?" And I think there's never been a especially if you're building in like the RWA space, the most savvy founders I feel like are very good at lining up uh strategics who are now very hungry and interested in investing in this space uh to be like investors that can also be customers and provide some sort of strategic advantage outside of capital. So I would consider all those things. Just Just one one thing to bring up the uh Mike, uh just to frame what you just mentioned.

What you're talking about is actually social proof. So I think social proof at the earliest stages are in particular very important. Um series A like, you know, series B etc. social proof's less important cuz you already have the proof from the earlier investors that are working with you that can vouch for you. But I would say at pre-seed all it takes is one fund and maybe a few strong angels. And then if you get enough traction, you can easily raise the next round and have those people vouching for you at that next stage. But that social social proof and that lining up you know, even with a fund by the way like a VC fund. Like the the way that you raise a VC fund is also with social proof and getting the right people in, you know, at the earlier stages and then it's like a domino effect. I think the

domino effect is what every founder should be targeting. It's very hard and I see many founders make this mistake of starting at the top of like Pantera or someone like that is like, "What do you think about my product?" And like, "Well, actually I've got a billion deals on my plate here. So like I'm not sure if I'm I'm giving you the time of day." I mean, yeah. I I would also add a couple like nuance points here um in terms in terms of like a playbook uh and let's say like you're already raised a pre-seed and you're raising a seed or you're you're going to it. Um one, lock lock in your previous investors, right? Have them double down on you um because they're going to be the first person that whoever you pitch calls. And so if they're not on board, that's again

immediate like sort of question mark red flag of um uh you know, maybe I don't even want to like allocate that much time to this. Two, I think um you said it, Z and Mike said it in a different way. Like if if you can get a strategic like or like a you know, industry thought leader, you know, this is like on the AI side. If you get like a you know, Google or something like that um even as a design partner and an investor or like um you know, Karpathy like angel investor. Like remember when Vitalik used to do the the angel investments a little bit? I was like "Oh okay."

Those are like just going to be, you know, FOMO points, basically. >> Yeah. Sorry, I should have said that. That's what they're mostly >> then then they then you get then you go to like tier B or like the you know, you start doing like practice pitches to like ones that you know you want you think you can get on board but and if you got them, you'd be really happy but like they're not going to be like your absolute top tier um You know, I don't pitch those guys first. And then I mean, you make your life super easy if like the dream fund you go to you're going to with a term sheet already, with a strategic, you know, in there, with angels, with your previous like round. It's just like okay guys, like let's get this done. Um

but uh obviously it's that's a perfect world outcome and like those are things just to keep in mind but likely not going to get all of them. I forgot to say the angels is really good advice um and especially for pre-seed and seed. Yeah. Also sometimes there's a there's a desire you're uh almost hedging yourself. You're like, "Well, I've never done this before and this is hard. Maybe I don't want to put like just shoot your shot. I mean, leave it on the pull every relationship you have and just try really hard. And also be earn- If you try really hard and be earnest and are honest, um people will understand even if you aren't successful. But don't like hedge.

I wouldn't hedge. Um Yeah. I also think it's about being honest about who your customer actually is and do you even have a customer in the first place? Um you know, I receive many pitches from founders saying, "Hey, we're going to work with this team and actually the team that they're working with, they have all the customers." And then all of a sudden you're reliant on their distribution and they can easily swap out your product or infrastructure for the next competitor if they give them better rates. And so one thing I look for now when I quiz founders and I'm always surprised that you know, their responses is like who are they actually serving? And I especially I see like two kinds of founders. One kind of founder doesn't think enough about owning the economics and the and the end customer

and or end developer. And the other kind of founder is more technical and less business-oriented and just doesn't even really know where to start when it comes to like the customer. They're They're so focused on the tech and what the tech does, they're not focused enough on like why someone would pay for it in the first place. And so I think you don't want to be either of those kinds of parties. You want to be very clear about like also timing. So like I'm happy being pitched if like something isn't happening now but there's a clear thesis as to like when it will start happening and there's a clear growth and tailwinds into that happening and then growing into that.

But it's a lot harder if something already exists which is happening a lot more now crypto like an existing market saying this is the market we're going to capture this, you know, this share. Well, then the question there is like why are they swapping from the other major incumbents to your startup? Like there's a very low chance of that happening to begin with. And quite often, even like user surveys and user interviews and like just evidence of like people wanting to pay for something, these aren't used enough like in pre-seed and seed pitches. It's kind of like all fluff. And I think in the bear market like we spoke about earlier in this episode, VCs have a lot of leverage right now and so they're going to want as much proof and evidence as possible that this team is going to make it and this market is

going to be big enough to be a big scale outcome and they're going to be the right team to win the category. Uh you need to provide as much evidence as possible. The data room we haven't even spoken about in this podcast but the data room needs to have a lot of data. I would say right now especially in the AI era not too much. Well, funnily enough, I would maybe make that point back in the day. Now it's good because we have AI. So it's like the the more data the more we can prompt it the better insights we have the better we can make a decision on it. So like if you don't share enough data now I think that actually puts you in a worse place whereas like maybe 12 or 13 months ago if you had a too big of a

data room it'd be too hard to comb through too confusing and you kind of lose interest. So yeah, it's interesting how AI also changes that like back and forth. Maybe another thing we haven't spoken about in this podcast as well is like you want to also make sure you're talking to the decision decision maker. And so like even as a GP pitching an LP you want to be talking to the decision maker LP not the necessarily the internal or the analyst etc. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's not quite but it's both. You you need like in you know sales there's a concept of a champion versus who the ultimate budget holder is. I would say it's the same that like in VC I feel like you usually end up getting a champion. Most VCs they screen you know for first call and you end up

pitching an analyst who will then they'll be your champion to the GP who ultimately makes the investment decision. I think I I do think you need to do both but just don't mistake the analyst as the decision maker cuz they're they're not right. Here's my take on that. My take is yes but it's a longer game. So you can get Well, it depends. Like sometimes it does work and you can like it's 50/50. I think it makes sense because of that 50/50 chance. Sometimes at worst I think the analyst helps you build that relationship with the senior decision maker and that takes time and you earn their trust through the analyst. At best sometimes the analyst takes you the whole way and it's like the you know sort of claim to fame and you build a

very strong relationship with that analyst who took that punt on you. So I think both do work but similarly I also believe that like it's probably an easier path to get closer to the decision maker than the analyst because you know they're the ones with the power at the end of the day. Oh 100%. So yeah, also write them a memo to make it easier for them. Investment analysts that just turn your memo into what they present to the to the partners. Yeah, I don't know. I go back and forth on this like I was that analyst in my prior role that you know raised dealt like like spearheaded Delta and then you know obviously I've quite a close relationship and actually joined Delta.

And then there was a lot of deals that you know I wanted to do in my young age that you know were were shut down like in in the in the final yard because of the older wiser you know partners who have more pattern matching like ability. What's the What's the retrospective? What's the retrospective on that Miles? Was it for better or for worse? Oh god. Like okay, this is the hard part. Definitely for better. Not like like most of the infra deals like from that era you probably preferred not to invest at any of them like to be fair.

But you know the hard part is the analysts they want to get points on the board. Like they want they get paid based off of how many deals they bring in and how many they can get over the line right? Whereas they don't actually have that carry exposure right to really really care if it goes well or not because they probably won't be around in five years right? And it's the partners that really have to care because those are the guys who are going to be around you know by by the time they raise the next fund and they have to actually see you know what the markup or markdown was right?

But that's the problem I think in general with like venture that kind of why I left is because if you're not the decision maker you're not the partner like don't actually have the right incentives and interesting. Yeah. And that's part that's partly why like Benchmark is so incredible as like a model. They have like six you know equal partners like and that's that takes an enormous amount of trust in each other but like when it works it works perfectly well. You know we used to we used to run into this problem with like SDRs and AEs. So like an SDR sales development rep you are just setting up meetings you're just and

you're comped by the amount of meetings that you set up and our account executives who actually had the meetings and tried to say like guys I'm getting a ton of shitty leads here. It's actually very counterproductive and it creates tension in between the two layers of the organization. We actually never cracked the code but maybe it was just as simple as like just split the commission. No, not a shoe portfolio here but we actually have a portfolio at your money which is literally working on incentivizing sales development reps and like verifying their work is actually leading to outcomes that the business is want using crypto. So like these kinds of use cases I think are very very interesting to think about and like in terms of like incentives for analysts and sales development reps and partners etc. At the end of the day the fund still needs to make money and

and you know obviously write you know investment checks and that's what we're all here for the analysts and and the partners. But yeah, it's it's interesting. What I would also say is like on the flip don't take the analyst for granted. Like some founders just want to speak with the partner and not the analyst and then the analyst is like well I'm not going to send them to the partner cuz they don't want to speak to me in the first place. So you have to like tread carefully and obviously manage your time but another thing I want to also mention in this podcast is like at the very earliest stage you you need a believer. I think we called it a champion earlier in this podcast but actually sometimes you just need someone crazy enough to believe in the team or the market or the

thesis and you need to do your own homework there in terms of like that person. Like I don't I don't know Mike if you had first believers were like they were kind of crazy and I don't know how you hustled for those first believers but I think any successful business had a first believer who was kind of crazy and that's where they are today because of those first believers. Yeah. Shout out Jim and Debbie from Figment. And this Matt and Maybelline being like and they invested in like Hollywood. He was a solo founder on a white paper who just got out of like you know doing a math like master's degree. Pretty pretty incredible. Probably like would be a lot harder today but I'm very glad to get.

And by the way yeah, I can shill it for you. That's Archer money. It incentivizes everything. They're an awesome team and yeah, side partners. I'm still sharpening my shilling skills. I'll do it for you. I love all I love all your podcasts. Sides Network. That's another one. Also just I mean this this episode's really intended for founders and you know I just have a huge amount of empathy. I know it's very difficult it's also very rewarding at the end of the day too. So hopefully some of this stuff was like helpful you know. A lot of stuff sometimes tends to be very high level. Hopefully this was a little bit more tactical for advice and support for people out there who are trying to do it. But yeah. And reach out like if you

have questions maybe never want to change. Also it's a good time to be building in crypto. I'm I'm really sick of the attitude that people have in general in this industry right now. It's just like oh there's no innovation. Oh nothing this. Come on. Come on. So you know one one thing too also that I will you know Blockworks has gone through big ups and downs and one thing that I didn't understand in the last down that we're going through cuz you know businesses aren't really meant to go through 50% revenue drawdowns.

That's a very painful thing. We've done it a couple times. I actually don't recommend don't recommend for the faint of heart. But at that you know what now when I have the benefit of hindsight and I look like we are survival allowed us to the people that we used to say we were competitive with or like 800 pound gorillas or we could never catch them. You can. You you actually can and it and it's during those extremely painful times and there was a perfect one-to-one inverse correlation in between when things feel easy and you think you're winning versus when they feel hard when you're which is when you're actually winning. So you know my my take on this moment in time when everyone's the sentiment is so bad and everyone's focused on AI and oh we haven't lived up to the promises. None of that's accurate

or true. Just throw that right out the window and if it's hard but still interesting if you still believe in the ultimate end state right and you can look at the positive data points and look through the pain great end state that you believe in plus painful moment equals moment of max opportunity. So just if you're a founder and you're going through it right now max opportunity even if it doesn't feel like it. And if you're a VC have some balls. Have some belief. >> [laughter] [clears throat] >> Like if you you can't if you don't take enough chances cuz you think you get to like de-risk everything in a low valuation you're going to miss [ __ ] So then you're going to overcorrect like we do every four years.

Also very true. Got to risk it to get the biscuit baby. I would say stay optimistic and incorporate feedback when you think it makes sense. Some feedback doesn't make sense and you shouldn't incorporate it but if you hear someone who you trust or who's made a lot of money before and they give you some tips very specific feedback, quite often they're right, whether you like it or not, so you should probably listen to those people if something isn't working, try and change it. I I totally agree. Can I add like one like new one I I actually heard Bill Hader um give his perspective on feedback in a creative endeavor, but it really resonated with me personally also. It in in business, I think this aligns as well. It what he described was when you show your work to someone, and he's talking about a comedy sketch,

and they say, "I don't like it." Um and then they give you like feedback on how they would change it, always listen to if someone's telling you something's wrong, it's probably wrong, but then the way that they would fix it is also always wrong. So, listen to the first part. If people are giving you feedback that something's not working, listen to that feedback, but feel free to throw away the second part and figure it out figure it out yourself. >> that's it. Fantastic point. And actually with my own fund raise, that you couldn't have said it better. I received feedback from some influential figures and I didn't necessarily take in their feedback word for word, but the fact is that consensus was that it didn't make sense, and so I knew I had to change something. And so if you receive this

feedback as a founder and it's consensus, don't listen to the feedback word for word, but try and find a way to make it make sense where they can't come back and tell you like this doesn't make sense and it's consensus. And if taking figuring out when to take feedback is one of the hardest pieces cuz sometimes you'll get this feedback I don't know, you it's kind of an emotional it's a going to be kind of in tune with your own emotions actually to figure it out because I I actually believe in your heart of hearts you know, um but you get in your own way, and I don't know, I can think of examples during Blockworks' tenure tenure when man, I'm so glad that we took the feedback that we were given, and I'm all I can also think of examples when I'm so glad that we did not. Um and

there's not a golden rule to it, we just have to I don't know. >> I think the feedback there would be back yourself. You know? Yeah, back you Yeah, yeah. You hear the feedback, take it on if you think it makes sense, and if you don't, then back your own judgment, and that's where winners are really made, including yourself, Mike, over at Blockworks. I'm sure you've made some great >> Dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, we're we're, you know, a lot of a lot of work, a lot of wood left to chop here, so >> Still the first inning. >> [laughter] >> First inning, baby. Um all right, fellas, this was a really fun one. Hopefully this was helpful for some founders who are listening in.

Yeah, this was great, guys. Cool. Thanks guys.