Reimagining Savings: How Blend Is Redefining Finance for the Global Economy

Transcript

GMGM. Welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of Devantel. So, if you didn't know, Devontel is a 30-minute podcast held every week, allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between the opportunity to come on the show and showcase what they built. And today, I'm ecstatic to welcome a couple of DD legends, Manny Nang and Jamie Morris, who are the co-founders of Blend. So, if you don't know, Blend is a global savings account that adapts to your currency yield and market exposure. So, if you stick around for today's episode, you'll get to meet Manny and Jamie, learn about Blend, get a peek at some of the latest alpha around the platform, and how you can get started with them today. All right, let's get into it. [music] [music]

>> GMGM, welcome to the short show, Jamie and Manny. Uh, excited to have you guys on. Thanks for having Glad to be here. Yeah, we're excited. >> My pleasure. My pleasure. Uh, yeah, I'm I'm always quite fond of the stories of uh DD members uh starting their own company. There there's been a lot. The DD factory, DD Community Factory has been sputing out um these awesome uh awesome startups and you guys are no different and I'm ecstatic to have you guys here to uh tell the story behind Blend. Um, but before we get into that, uh, would you guys just like to give a brief introduction about yourselves?

>> Yeah, I'll kick it off to Jamie first. >> Of course. Hi everyone. I'm Jamie, the CTO Blend. I got into crypto in 2014. I spent a long time there, mostly personally. Um, I made it into crypto professionally in 2022 where I joined UMA and Across. Spent three years there. Um, and then I realized why why not actually make an impact with DeFi and how it works? We know I noticed that DeFi is fundamentally um there's no common interface. So I wanted to to be able to actually help that.

So yeah, thanks [clears throat] Jamie. For me, um, it's a story of how all developer Dow members got into crypto, right? Um, and that's shout out that's, you know, everyone knows who this person is. Shout out to Nat, you know, this beautiful like NFT that appeared. No one really know what to do. You went to Ether Scan, you you blew way too much gas on this thing. Um, but you minted it. You got into this community. It made you feel like home and it taught you like the first things of smart contract development. We all made NFTts. Uh developer DA was an NFT, you know, classically trained quote unquote

educated in like computer science and discrete math. Did the whole web two things. Some one big notable company I guess I've worked at a few I worked at Blackberry. Um did the whole like the web two grind there. Um I'm Canadian so shout out I love my Canadian companies. Um and then there, you know, developer that was a natural fit. I bounced around as like this what's this like cool DAO thing. You know Dows were like a way that we thought like you can congregate as a collective and get cool things done and developer Dow got a lot of cool things done and I got to contribute at like a lot of other cool dows arbitrum you know all these other places. Um and then naturally slowly get into like get away

from web two and say hey I want to stick my feet into this. Um and you know that's kind of where I landed into a journey of you know meeting Jamie at risk labs. Um also like the founder is Canadian as well which also helps Canadian vibes everything through. So that was like my whole story. same idea was super interested on like solving that problem of you know I like like prediction market is something's powering prediction market this was cool so let me go help grow that I love like the idea that bridges are like existing people are not going to be on one chain so that kind of made me really like eager to go and contribute in this space >> amazing amazing and yeah uh you hit it

hit the nail on the head there is just like a lot of people that started in the Dow um came in there out of curiosity like like myself. Uh I indeed blew too much gas on those NFTts, but the NFTs were free. Uh I didn't have to pay $100,000 to buy a JPEG. Um but it it was um that gas investment uh was one of the best I think I I've made in my in my lifetime so far. Um uh you get to meet a lot of friends, get to learn a lot of interesting um um interesting technology and the vibes in the in the DAO are immaculate. So um and uh it kind of brought brought us together uh in a

way. So um yeah, that's amazing. And and you guys mentioned you're you both used to work at Risk Labs. Um, I know, uh, I know Manny was always always tooting the horn of of Uma and and and whatnot. So, uh, just curious like, um, from your time, you guys, your guys' time working together, was there ever a point where you're like, oh, like I think, um, I think I can I can contribute back to the world a little bit more than I can here.

And like what's kind of the inspiration between you guys um kind of breaking off um from this labs and kind of starting your own thing? >> Yeah, I think Manny you can take that one. >> Yeah, you want me to take that one? Okay. Um the risk labs like you know great company, great culture, all that great stuff there. Um but what lended landed me and Jamie closer is like this common thing of like commodery. So we hung out, played a lot of Fortnite together and it just like it just started off as like very humble like friends and say hey what are you doing in the evening after work like like the DAO right what are you doing let's play some Fortnite then it's just like hey I made this I

made that where are you sticking it in DeFi and it's like a this is so like this experience is like really horrible like can we like do something here and we're like yeah like we work at a product that's so like cryptonative what if we thought about like this awesome some promise of bringing normal people into DeFi. Like we like it's almost like a fundamental right for us um to have like savings. Like how do we move humanity past like day-to-day paychecks and like and like not worry about like oh my god is this like centralized [snorts] body going to take my money? We have this like decentralized body. So like why not take our expertise minus growth? Jaimes is like building these really robust systems and like let's

start conquering this world. It was all fun in games on Fortnite. We play we like tinkered around and talked about it and then we just got serious about it and said like okay like the at one point of like dreaming about it and then other point of is putting pen to paper or code the smart contracts and say let's push something out and let's talk to early customers. Is there interest in this? And then it was just this natural curiosity. Um and you'll see me quote this a lot like action provides information. Shout out to Brian Armstrong from Coinbase. And I just keep that's like the motto of blend.

>> Yeah. And yeah, I I I have that quote stapled in my mind um every day. It's like you got to do things and after you do things you'll you'll get information. Um and uh yeah, and I guess you touched on it briefly. Um a lot of the um a lot of DeFi ecosystem um it's getting better now. Um, but it's very tough to go from that 0ero to one of like, oh, I've bought my first SAS, bought my first ETH. Um, in your in your guys' opinion, um, what are some of the the core issues maybe still at play that are hindering a lot of people from um, going past that that first stage?

>> I think a lot of it is accessibility. It's hard to reason about connecting to an application when you need to have an like an extension to even to even get started. Um, it's also hard to get money onto a service in the first place if in order to get money into an an economy is is a YouTube tutorial on how to even connect and where to send money and how to send money and all of the the steps in between. So, I I'm confident that the improvement of UX there is is really going to come from people being able to connect directly to the the systems that

they trust and where web 3 acts almost as a companion to start to these web 2 technologies so that people can more easily onboard. So, I think it's in general an onboarding problem. >> Yeah, I would agree. I would agree with that. um onboarding and then you know we're trying to like shift the paradigm and we can go deeper in the technology how do you build like in this newer paradigm but one thing you'll realize is that like we try to make sure that you can come on to blend the most comfortable way and so we like to think ourselves as like a web 2.5 company Google log in um come from your coinbase like sex you can do like you know

revolute coming on, you know, other like onboarding products. That's just because like the demographic that we're chasing are people that are comfortable with these services. They may not even want to connect their bank account because that's always like a little bit iffy. You we'll connect your Revolute or your Cash App or your other like app into the thing, but don't want to connect your bank account because like it's your sacred like spot. So, that's what we kind of been focusing on is just onboarding um and then meeting the users where they are. Um yeah. Excellent. Excellent. And uh yeah, I I guess this is a nice segue. Um what what's your guys' uh elevator pitch of Blend um for uh the non DeFi native uh uh person that might be watching the

show today? >> Yeah, I mean it's it's a it's a quite simple pitch in the sense that we want to meet you where you are and that means like this can be a companion product to whatever you have right now. So if you are a Revolute user, you can only hold about $20,000 at 2% on your account. Where do you want to remainly keep some of your other money? Onchain is the next services and it can move money back and forth to your revenue account very seamlessly. Um it this is the bridge between like a defi where we give more different types of yield if you are looking not to commit to one service. So I am a big fan of A, big fan of Moro, big fan of so many of these products, but also I'm a big fan of diversification because we're slowly but

surely maturing as a one like as a as an industry. So you don't want to stick your eggs in one basket and Blend lets you do that and have the best things, but you also don't want to be a DeFi like person and manage all this stuff. And so that's the goal with Blend. It's like gives you diversification. Come in anywhere you want, any market. So USDC, if you think in euros, if you think in Brazilian realale, we we meet you where you at at any economy. Um, and then simply as we grow, we'll help you get yield on other cool assets like Bitcoin, natural gas, gold. And this this is a product where basically we're in the middle of between not a per trader and you're not just a yield farmer. You're something that wants to take some kind

of like you have an educated guess where you want to go. And if you don't, you can come in the conservative side. So >> yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um and and yeah, well said. Uh I I've been uh playing around with Blend a little bit uh deposit a little bit of money there just to see the the look and feel and and to support uh the friends here. Um and you guys have taken um at least your your first iteration it looks like is um towards the stable coin end and um you guys are big on being able to support people globally. Um I guess for people um people that might not realize um why why is it important to support um more

than just USDC and other glob and kind of expand to other global currencies? Yeah, one of the things that we don't get to choose in this world is where you're born. Where you're born, what language you speak, where where you hold your money, and what money you actually live and breathe in. And for a lot of people, if their native currency isn't USD, you're effectively taking an FX hedge every time you on board into into DeFi or an FX risk rather. And at some point, if you're earning these DeFi yields or you're playing with DeFi in general, you could be losing more in total if you happen to be in a currency

that did not do well against the US dollar. And given that lens, if we want to onboard the next billion people in the middle class by 2030, you need something that's not going to feel like an FX risk every time you open the screen, every time you install that every time you connect with a stable coin. Um, and conversely, the other problem is right now the liquidity of nonUSD stable coins is quite low. And so the reason that Blend has stepped in to fill that wedged stop gap is is simple, right? We found out we we kind of published our white paper and that's how

we decouple exposure from where your yield is being generated. So we want people to come on chain. We want people to be able to express their balances in terms of their local currency because this way if you have a flat tire, if you want to go out to get drinks on a Friday night, you can pull that money out. It feels like savings, but at the same time, you don't want people to be exposed to yield that's 0%. Right? Like if you wanted to, some of these stable coins just don't have yield products. So, how do we get that USD yield with the stable coin feel of local regional currencies? And that's sort of where Blend sits. And we just we just don't want people to lose out on that opportunity if they happen to live in a different region where their bank

account does not reflect US dollars and they're just kind of priced out of the market. >> Yeah. I mean the other side of the story is like [clears throat] that's why we also if you do want shelter, you can come into Blandon saying, "Hey, I live in a currency that is doing poorly. I want USD, but I don't think in USD. I think in Brazilian realale, for example, and now your screen and your FX gains and all that stuff is like correlated with it going up and down and deep liquidity. But if you live in Europe or in Japan, you don't want to hold a US thing because the if DeFi generates you 7%, the currency got stronger or weaker and

you've lost all your 7% gains. So that was where our architectural choices where we believe that singly managed accounts in traditional trady should come into DeFi. So we have created a newer paradigm for DeFi which we call SMAS that does not rely on pool structure. So your money is your money and it's not co-mingling with other people in the pool and we think that's the correct paradigm for global savings. It's like you shouldn't be in a gigantic pool. It's your thing. And Jimmy has one good analogy which is we like to think of things as cookie jars which is if you think about traditional DeFi you'll rip the lid off of one cookie jar it takes all the cookies with it. Someone takes it. Now if a blend takes if blend is

basically 100,000 small cookie jars cookie jar is separate from Manny's cookie jars. If you take Manny's cookies, you don't touch Nar's cookies. And that's the way savings kind of scales. Um, and that also lends well why we can decouple yield from exposure because Narban and or Manny lives in Canadian dollars. So I want exposure in Canadian dollars. Jamie lives in US. Jamie wants you some uh one of the listeners list live in Europe. They want Euro exposure. But guess what? The liquidity still lives in USD. So we want to give you safe savings. So we have to do it in a way where there's enough liquidity. And that's where Blend steps in to solve that problem. that kind of kind of jumps into like what blend is

and our unique positioning, but I kind of teed you up there. Nar, >> that's excellent. That and I love Yeah, go for it. >> Just jump in one sec. Like the really cool bit is your cookie jar on mainet is a different cookie jar than your position on base. So, we're even fractionalizing the individual user. So if something goes wrong on one chain, the user in maybe a different savings account of that same user is isolated. So like the isolation is is like a fractal, right? We we kind of recursively generate cookie jars, so to [laughter] speak.

>> Awesome. Lots of cookies. Yeah, lots of cookies. That's what we want. Um the audience likes cookies. [laughter] Um, yeah. And, uh, yes, uh, I would love to kind of see this in action, and I'd love our audience to kind of see this in action as well. Um, if you guys want to bring up your screen and kind of take us on a tour of, uh, Blend and, uh, some of >> Do you want me to do that, Jamie, or you want >> I think that would be great. >> Let me do it. >> You might have a better better balance than I do right now. [laughter] I've got the dev account.

>> All right. Let me know when you see my screen. Uh, can you zoom in just a bit uh on your screen, Manny? >> I can. >> How's that look? >> That's good. That's great. Yeah. >> Okay. [clears throat] So, we can start with blend on like a logged out state. We talked about this and I'll go pretty quickly. The logged out state is like we still want you to feel web threeish, which which means it's like you can still feel preview of the app without actually signing up. I think that's like a de facto thing that we've learned. A lot of people hide that away, but users still want to see what they're going to to play with. But what we do is we allow you to see all the types of accounts that you can create. We let you do all

the fun things because like long-term savings and is healthy habits, which is deposits and like time in market. So, we let you play with this. You can see that I love for demos to think in Brazilian real because I think it's a really fun currency to kind of think about. Um, so when I come in and my positions, uh, my dashboards already set up, but you could set it up in what we call the USD protection. This is the soft, this is the launch on the USD protection. These are some of the weaker currencies that potentially want uh, to come in and save their money in US dollars, but they still think in day-to-day in Brazilian real, which is completely fine. You sign in, we want to give you like a very nice sign in experience. Uh, you can sign in

with your Google account, which is nice. um make it really easy for the users to come in that it automatically generates you a privy wallet and then what you don't see right now is because I'm a ready user you can create it'll let you create what we call a onetoone nosis safe so that's what we said these are all individually singly managed accounts so my nosis safe is already created and this wallet is the owner of that nosis safe so you have all that abstraction um but right now we're offering USDC And all these native pairs will come on board and then we'll keep going into other markets. Gold, natural gas, spy, the list will go on for types of

exposures that you could create on blend. You can you can deposit via debit card or um bank. That's all seamless. You pick your on-ramping. It all comes in uh with one click. um external wallet for people that have wallets that they have money outside of uh like an already a crypto wallet and then they can bring that into blend and when it comes into blend it sits in your blend wallet. So we what we've said is like we understand from our users that you don't want to keep your external wallet always connected to the website. You just want to bring in maybe 50 bucks a week and you'll drip it in how you please. And so you can do that. So here I have $10 of USD.

I want to I have that in. I want to bring that into blend. Everything is gas sponsored. Everything is taken care of. You don't really think about this. We can even keep extracting this further. But for now, we're in this like nice like state of like crypto. Um people still want information. And so that all is going to be allocated. The funds are in transit. You can see all the allocations that we're going. We're very clear. One thing that blend is is that we have a full quantrop that does a full due diligence report. Transparency. Transparency. If you think of like ETFs, you think of other things, they publish reports. What are they doing? What is a risk profile? That's all available here in this due diligence report, which will just take a little second to load up as it's like uh ties into our back end

here. And you can see everything that from risk profile um you can see change logs, you can see what the quants are thinking, you can see all those things like blend is very very on top of everything. We even caught like stream finance stuff three four days and the users were all like everybody was like it already knew that something was acting funky. So it's like like we said everything is positioned for long-term savings. You should be able to press that withdraw button anytime you want. No constraints. Um yeah and so then we go into more gamification. You can have your daily rewards which people love. You can come and spin for more like points. There's a dashboard as well. Um,

>> yeah, >> let's maybe bring up the blend intelligence. >> Yeah, in a second. Um, and we'll go through this like a leadership board. You can have all the leadership board here for the users. They can see all that. Another thing that we're working closely with base is like local stable coins. So, you can swap into your Brazilian Royale cheaper than you can do on on like offline offchain products. Um you can do your euros uh Singaporean dollars and we'll keep adding more and more currencies for your global FX and then you can offramp them directly to your bank. So you're going to go visit Brazil, take your USDC, swap it to Brazilian real offramp it and you have Brazilian realale access. Um and then one step further is how do we bring this

normie feel in? Everyone loves their LLMs, their favorite LLM, whether it's Claude or it's Chat GPT. And now we've gone further. And so you can you can just say like talk to Blend. You can ask things like how do you manage risk? And so that's like a predefined one, but you can ask him more things like, you know, I want to swap. And it's like, okay, what do you want to swap? And it'll walk you through that whole process. So we want to like normalize DeFi in a nice comfortable way so that people that don't really want know all the nitty-gritty stuff can just go to the blend intelligence ask it to do things like withdraw deposit what is this oil or earn what is this thing ask

tell me in normie languages. So, that's kind of the goal, like lower the barrier, have a full like bank account feel, um, and just make you have another companion product in your savings journey. >> That looked amazing. And, uh, yeah. Uh, just curious how how, um, how long has it been since you guys started working on Blend? Is it a year? More than a year, less than a year? >> It's been a it's been a while. We officially launched in January and every bit before that has been 16-hour days.

[laughter] A lot of cursor credits, a lot of a lot of back and forth internal feedback. We are really really like specific about intentionality. So everything that you've seen on the site, we've probably debated whether or not that pixel should be there three or four times over. And in a lot of ways that's created the site you see. But honestly it it's a lot of weekends. We uh we're really passionate about this.

>> Just add a little bit. >> Eight audits. >> Eight. I was just going to say one thing that one thing that I love Jamie, you know, being the CTO, never a skimp on an audit. Eight audits. Deep. Trust me, as a startup company, there's nothing more in web 3. why they think web3 is expensive to build is audits. They really hurt you. Um, and shout out to some of our audit companies. They've done a really good job. Shout out to Sherlock. Thank you so much. You know, shout out to even Cantina. I think we worked with what a few other ones class act. Everyone's been a class act.

>> Everyone's been a class act. We really recommend some of these auditing companies and uh go and yeah, go. They give you fair prices when you're a startup company and that's key. They don't make you feel like you're going to get crippled by doing this audit, which I think is like an important paradigm in web 3. It's very hard to build in web 3 for that reason. >> Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And uh yeah, I've gone through a audit process as well. And it's Yeah. Uh it you can really get into um uh a lot of complexities if you don't choose the right one. And a lot of a lot of them um are are pretty good at um kind of guiding you along. Um, so, uh, shout out to you guys for taking

security seriously and, uh, the UX looks looks good. Uh, and, uh, the the the sweat equity shows, uh, in [laughter] in it. Um, and I guess, um, so that's so the front-facing side, um, um, was what you just showed. Um, for our developer audience, um, are there any available SDKs or APIs people can tap into um, Blend's infrastructure and kind of build their own version? Yeah. Um, so Blend has an API, a full API and a full SDK. What we really wanted people to look at that app that you see is like the canonical implementation. It's it's the kitchen sink in a lot of ways. You can see all

of these features that have been embedded and how the adaptive savings account iterates through all this process. But the really cool thing is everything you see is a thin client over our SDKs and APIs. So, if you go to our docs, we have a full API. We have an a TypeScript SDK. Um, there's a lot that you can do with those alone where you can integrate a savings like an I think a seven or eight% savings account rate right into your DAP with minimal uptick. um with that privy wallet. That's just something that we do for our own DAP, but Blend is set up to be export or like anyone can

own that safe. An EOA can own that safe. A smart contract can own that safe. So, in a lot of ways, you have a full set of like who can own what, where, when, and why. And the SDK lets you do that which gives you a lot of control when you're building like yield services where or if you're a neo bank or a fintech where you want to be able to provide yield the SDK will help you get there. >> Yeah. That they also get to tap into like the SMA technology in AR which is like I think for a lot of things and you know there's two uh three stable coins that are building on top of land right now. So you know these are these are robust things. Um so they're they don't want to do the heavy lifting. They also

want each of their pro each of their users to be in isolated safe going all the extra safe define. So this kind of this is what blend enables for them to do and like there's a curator layer. So if that stable coin wants to curate different types of strategies using the blend infrastructure that is also possible. You don't have to use blends um vanilla strategies. You can say hey we are building a product that only wants this this and this as our yield sources. There you go. >> Yeah, Narb. In a lot of ways, what we did was we created one unified interface for DeFi where theoretically a provider like a a company could create these

yield constructs and give it to their downstream users and they can interface with that those SMAs with a web 2 API all non-custodially. So, we're calling the concept isolated cohesion where everything is isolated. Everyone's in their own cookie jar, but the cohesion bit is this intent, right? Like the system creates an intent of what your basket should look like. And then our execution layer executes that and puts where things where they need to be. every chain is operated independently so that we can do ma like rapid uh rebalancing across every chain in isolation. So it really is an intentbased framework we designed and

it's really to bring that SMA technology into DeFi because frankly vault like vault and pulled funds are cool but they're very prone to things a whole gamut of risk and that's why our we've decided to make our implementation very easy to integrate. [snorts] >> Love that. Amazing. Amazing. And um you you guys have done such a great job up up to this point. I'm just curious what what's your guys's um northstar vision uh long-term roadmap for for where you see Blend uh heading either this year or uh and beyond.

>> Yeah, I'll give like the growth answer and Jamie you can give some of the technical answer. [laughter] So the growth side is like we realize that we're in like this evolving world um and where people want more custody, more freedom or and so that's kind of the goal with Glenn is like being able to come on chain from every parts of the world and give them this financial freedom. Like I keep saying this sounds sappy, but if you want humanity to scale, if you don't need to think about where your next if you have your enough money for your next meal, there's less harm that happens. The world we're all kind of like chippy and cheery if I'm a fed if you know hangry is a real is a real problem, right? Um and so we want

to our like ideal goal is to bring a one million users to use blend and have an average deposit size of $10,000. We think that's a nice like little nest egg that everyone should shoot for that gives Blend a roughly a10 billion dollar aumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumum. We want to be part of this whole um growth and the next thing we want to see is integrating with web two neo companies, web 3 neo companies and let you guys do what you do really well which is maybe some of the times your cards whatever and we help you all on the yield side making sure that your users are safe and they have this experience that can like level up their life.

Yeah. And I think from [snorts] the technical side, we're trying to do two things. One, we think that continuing to build this system is going to generally raise the floor on how web 2 companies and web 3 companies can interface into DeFi. We don't want to take away the primitives. I think primitives are amazing, but at some point you need glue. you need some type of glued product to kind of bind it all together and package it into something a bit more easy to digest. And that's what we're working that's kind of our tireless north star. The other side is simply like we we've been working closely with

this concept of decoupling yield from like decoupling yield from exposure. And what you can get in those types of situation is you can create as long as there's a per market or some effective trading volume and liquidity depth for something you can you can take a position where your total basket is exposed to that position and still earn yield. And like the TLDDR there is we're basically going to in in the next 2026 we're going to be able to create yieldbearing assets for any asset that can be traded. So Bitcoin ETH like Bitcoin with 8% yield, ETH with 8%

yield, uranium with 8% yield, gold, silver, like the S&P. We're basically going to create any asset, any asset with a trading position, like anything that you can trade, you can earn 8% yield on. And that's that's the goal. That's the unlock that SMA technology gives the world. Um, and you'll see that in 2026 when we roll that out. >> Awesome. I I love that. [laughter] That's amazing. Uh, and uh a little bit of alpha alpha for for the folks watching uh watching today.

>> Stick around. >> Um, stick around. That's right. Um and uh as we're kind of closing uh closing in on time here, um just wanted to uh I'm always curious um to to hear from um the founders perspective like for our audience today um if there's someone in the crowd that might be thinking about starting their own project maybe maybe with their friend or a group of friends um what's I guess one key piece of advice um you you'd give to them um to to to help them get on their way.

>> Um, I can go first, Jamie, and then let you go give your um version. Um, a find a cool group of people to hang out with, which is like developer. Now, like having a I sorry, I got to plug in the the the community that is a really thing you need cool people that understand technology and understand like what's going on to build the right product. So, like I am a pretty sap for this, but build something that solves your own personal problem first and then expand from that. That's literally what we did. I live in I'm I'm Canadian. I wanted to have like yield in Canadian dollars, but and so I was like, how do I do this? Um, that was like the first thing we wanted to solve. and and and then I wanted to

like teach my parents this cool idea of like what is like crypto and what's the easiest way for them to give in like build something that they can use as well. So I always stand as like build something cool for yourself and if you build something for yourself then you're much more entitled to keep working on if you're building like oh I'm going to raise a billion dollars doing this uh you we've all seen people raise lots and lots of money it doesn't mean that the product is going to make things least if it nothing goes further you build something cool that you're proud of I think that's like the northstar >> I I like that right that's why every developer starts with a calculator I like you build something you can use. Um genuinely Narb I would say my advice to

everybody and to anyone who wants to start a like create a startup who's in the process of creating a startup and who has gotten at least their first no is to really develop condition yourself to accept no because that person may or may not just see the vision. Right? Everybody at some point has to be tested on this. And I think the biggest takeaway that we've had with Blend is just to remain highly convicted. Really be like fueled up by your idea, right? Because it's it's kind of what you're hanging your hat on. So make sure that it's something that you are completely and wholly convicted to

because you are going to get nos and your job as a founder will be to either prove them wrong or explain to them why your conviction is going to be the most held solution. So yeah, I would just say I guess just that just keep keep at it basically. >> I I think that's wonderfully said. um from both of you and uh thank you for sharing that and hopefully that uh ignites a spark under somebody watching today uh maybe in the DD community uh to get going with their startup. Um no better time than now. Um and uh just before I let you both go, I know you're very busy. Um how can people um get

started with Blend? How can they keep up with all the news? I also saw that you guys have uh recently launched an ambassador program. Um what's the best way for people to get involved? Yeah. Uh, fly, you know, follow the Blend Money account. Obviously, Discord is a cool place to hang out. Um, and but if you're not, like if Discord is not your thing, you could just follow the account. Um, we started ambassador program a because we think that like there's a lot of like DeFi enthusias enthusiasts out there and they want to learn about DeFi. So like what's the best place to learn from DeFi? You want to like contribute to a project? Um, and like I would say a good chunk of everyone that's probably listening that

has a job, you contributed at at some company or some product that you loved and now that expertise turned into a full-time job. And so that's the key. That's why we built the ambassador program is curiosity. If DeFi fuels you up and you want to learn everything about DeFi, then we're one team you we are happy to like take you under the shadow, be our ambassador, preach what we're building if you think it's great and that's how you actually harden your skills. We're learn we're in a new society where resumes are built by being participating in getting your hands dirty and that's why we made the ambassador program.

>> Well said. Well said. And uh all that information will be in the description of um the this episode below. So definitely check that out. Uh and with that uh Manny Jamie uh thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come chat with us today. This was really fun. Hope you guys had fun as well. Um and uh yeah, really looking forward to seeing how Blend evolves uh into this year and beyond. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. >> Take it off. >> Sure. >> All right. Uh hope you have a very uh great Wednesday uh Thursday ahead and we'll catch you back here this Friday uh for another episode of D and Tell. Till then, have a good one, folks. Cheers.