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CSX: Week 2 Notes

Crypto infra, talks with Aptos and Optimism, Collaborative Frameboards and browser extension

Here are my notes from Week 2 of a16z Crypto's CSX. This week, which focused on infrastructure, included an infra expo and multiple talks from top infra founders.

Talk: Mo Shaikh (Aptos)

  • Why crypto?

    • Financial freedom for all is important because of childhood.

    • Grew up as an Immigrant with hard-working parents, first in Abu Dhabi and then in Brighton Beach, NYC.

  • Founder journey

    • Learned to hustle selling iPods to NBA players

    • Learned financial system from RBC → Blackrock

    • Learned frameworks for thinking about GTM from consulting

    • Joined Consensys to help scale Ethereum, and then to Facebook to found Novi.

  • Spinning Novi out of Facebook

    • Why another L1? The existing systems were not designed to scale—3.5 years of pursuing ... didn’t see anything evolve.

    • Spinouts are rare because either because part of a product line or the internal knives kill it.

    • Brought a lot of Novi team despite being hard to convince “we like it at FB”

    • The mindset of “just figure out how to continue on this mission” allowed Mo to recruit a talented founding team.

  • GTM

    • Aptos works with two worlds

    • Innovators

      • Startups = disrupt existing business

      • Disrupt existing systems so there is more efficiency

    • Old guard

      • Large companies = not going anywhere

      • Pros: Still retain massive distribution

      • Cons: Large companies on a timeline, Partner risk is very real

      • Example: Google earns APT tokens by running a validator

  • Web3 is the hardest place to be an entrepreneur

    • The market is “neck-whipping” fast

    • You get to “be really close to the customer”

    • Everything is open (Twitter, Discord, Telegram)

    • You get market feedback immediately, faster than anywhere else. You can get feedback without having a product.

  • Dealing with haters

    • If not 7 new haters a week, not doing our job

    • Always a major move forward in the wake of hatred

    • Respond with marketing jujutsu

      • Use the moment

      • Embrace the discussion

      • Pre-plan attack vectors — “If you had to talk shit, what would you say?”

  • Positioning Web2 vs. Web3

    • Can startups go after both? “double down on web3 but operate with web2 principles.”

    • Why?

      • Faster adopt

      • Higher velocity

      • Variety of use-cases

      • If you had tried to partner with Blackrock seven years ago, you would have gone out of business. Eventually, Blackrock will come around.

  • Competition

    • A crowded market in web3 doesn't matter

      • There are barely 1m users. 5B users are not using your product.

    • Flex your advantage

      • Google: “Search completed in x seconds” = reminding you that its the best tech

    • What Mo respects about other chains

      • Community building

      • Founder-led personality

  • Status of web3 today

    • Crypto’s PMF today is obvious — just go on Twitter and see what people are doing.

    • What’s going to onboard the next 1B?

      • NFTs? Don’t see it yet.

      • Stablecoin for moving money? Would move (money) faster than anything.

      • Aptos thinks: finance → game → media

  • Book recommendations

  • Where to find Mo?

Talk: Jinglan Wanga and Karl Floersch (Optimsim)

  • Founding Optimism

    • Dropped out of college to become a Bitcoiner

    • Attracted to Ethereum

      • Humans trying to build something together

      • Vitalik on why unicorn shirts “keep out a particular type of toxicity “

    • Karl’s project “Jing write the book, and Hayden go build Uniswap”

    • Fighting for Karl: work on this thing with signs of PMF, or take a risk and change the internet

    • Optimistic Ethereum was the original name

    • “Ethereum is not a particular thing — You are ethereum” - Karl

  • Moving on from Plasma

    • Why move on?

      • No one was using it.

      • Shocked because had thousands of likes on social.

    • Discovered user interviews

      • Users cared about cost and latency

    • What's an MVP?

    • Taking a step back

      • What is the common objective we’re trying to achieve?

      • For all these objectives, what are we trying to achieve?

  • Seeking out advice

    • Jing is “a Jedi Master at seeking out networks and getting advice” - Jason

    • How? Ask a lot of questions. Over time, develop a sense of who’s high vs. low signal and on what topics

  • Teamwork/building

    • Communication can be a challenge - opinion and language can be different on things like volume, scope, and timelines

    • Invest in each other and how you communicate

      • cofounder coaching

      • business coaching

    • Everyone should be in a high-leverage role.

    • Be generous with comp

      • If not, they shouldn't be on the team.

      • Why have the stress of trying to balance equity?

  • Pushing without discomfort

    • If something doesn’t make sense, push on it.

    • Know that pushing creates discomfort.

    • How to overcome:

      • Learn how to push without creating discomfort

      • Have the conviction to endure other people's discomfort

  • Making tough decisions

    • The worst part is the “anxiety of uncertainty” … “I try to avoid that” - Karl

    • How to overcome?

      • Write it down and/or go for a walk

      • Make the tough decision

      • Save energy and live a “life without conflict”

  • Vibes

    • How does Optimism have such a great community?

      • “We genuinely give a fuck” - Jing

    • What are vibes?

      • People are having fun.

      • “Life is meaningless, we’re mostly water, life should be fun” - Jing

      • Vibes are the outcome of a bunch of early decisions

  • Decentralization

    • Protocol:

      • Build modularly so we can punt

    • Governance:

      • “This Governance Will Self Destruct.”

      • We hadnt seen teams build it right, we knew we would get it wrong on the first try.

    • Decentralization should serve a purpose.

  • Superchain

    • Ethereum + L2s vs. World of L1s

      • There are definitely network effects around standards - Karl

    • “Interoperability is cool”

      • Chains are different threads

      • Horizontal scalability

      • Now, getting into the nitty-gritty of the Superchain vision!

    • The Superchain SDK

      • MVP = non-protocol

      • Future = protocol-level message-passing

  • Shipping

    • We didn’t ship anything to production for 1 year, then 6 months, and now 1x month.

    • "Shipping sub-optimal on a regular basis beats not shipping for a year" 👏

  • Waive magic wand and fix anything?

    1. Scale Ethereum - Optimism already working on that 🙂

    2. User onboarding - You should not know you’re using crypto. We have to replicate Web2 if there's any chance of surpassing it.

    3. “Wish more people knew about jobs.optimism.io” - Jing

  • Where to find Jing and Karl?

  • Bountycaster

    • Bountycaster is a tool for creating bounties and services on Farcasers. I recommended it several times for recruiting and feedback.

    • How to run a good Bountycaster? My flow:

      • Get inspiration from completed bounties

      • Use the Create a Post tool on Bountycaster

      • Cast to the channel that makes the most sense for your use case (i.e. jobs)

  • Once Upon

    • OnceUpon is the best block explorer for the Superchain. I recommended to a couple of founders for user research.

  • Splits

    • Splits are the easiest way to build payment splitting into your product. I think of it as marketplace rake as a service. The Splits team is working on several new things I’m excited about.

    • Here’s a Splits protocol chart after the Titles (by Soren + Parker) launch.

      https://dune.com/splits/ecosystem
  • Screen Studio

    • A couple of founders asked about our GIF game. Screen Studio is the best tool I’ve found for creating simple product videos and gifs. H/t Jonny Mack for the rec.

  • TYB

    • TYB is crushing with adopting non-cryptonative brands and consumers.

    • Emmanuel reminded me their mobile app has a great onboarding experience: “Crypto is in the background”

  • Crowdmuse + IYK

    • Crowdmuse and IYK came up a couple of times for doing cool things and having a great user experience.

Launcher Labs Progress


👋 See you next week - Jayme

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