Here are my notes from Week 7 of a16z Crypto's CSX. This week focused on Go To Market, Community, and Partnerships in Crypto.
Talk: Alex Blania (Worldcoin) with Jason Rosenthal
Got into Crypto through AI
Grew up in rural Germany
Theoretical physics before → LLM → Worldcoin
Being recruited by Sam Altman
Got a two-pager email from Sam and Max
The best startup ideas sound like horrible ideas.
It will likely fail, but if it works, it will change the world.
The interview
Explain physics model
Sam liked that he disagreed with a lot
A lot of questions about childhood
How to piss off investors 4.5 years ago
Bitcoin failed
AGI will happen
That's what got a16z excited
Why Tools for Humanity
What will be the things we need on a global scale that the government will not be able to do?
economically reach everyone
global form of proof of personhood
Worldcoin Pre-launch
Spend eight months of research
Talked to a lot of AI and crypto experts
Crypto (tokens) allows you to incentivize alignment.
Crypto has been around and is still a niche thing
What would be the incentive mechanism?
Paypal inspired GTM
Email $20 invite links to kickstart and scale the network
It is a network; if it doesn't scale, it doesn't work
Interviewed the Facebook Web of Trust team
Facebook is already struggling with that
Ignored because AI will become increasingly strong and break any web of trust
Spent $50M and lots of prototypes to get to Orb
Worldcoin fully-realized
Proof of personhood is important in an AGI world
The majority of the population will have a WorldID
Worldcoin will be the most owned digital asset and the largest financial network.
Twitter bots
This is a super early warm-up of how the internet will be
Almost everything you do will be enhanced by AI
Cool for most things, difficult for other things like social media
It will be hard to distinguish between human vs. AI
AI will interfere with elections
Why Worldchain?
Worldapp now at 10M users
On many days, 80% of OP mainnet
"We just need the blockspace."
We could not compete anymore with other apps
On government interaction
A lot of founders and startups shy away from gov; Worldcoin has taken a different approach
They didn't have the capability/function to interact with the government at first - now starting to turn
Growing as a CEO
Coaches can help. Alex coach setup:
1 VP of door dash, one scientist, and one exec coach
2hrs a week, every week, told me how I sucked this week
Talking to other founders won't get you far because they don't know what they are doing. Look for successful people in the things you're trying to learn
Different learnings each year
Year 1: hardware
Year 2: scale team
Now: policy
Matt Majorie blog post - turn the ship around
you don't come to the CEO with a problem
you come with a problem, solution, and decisions - raise your hand if you disagree
Wish he had known earlier
All decisions in the beginning compound more than you think.
Examples
The first eight people should be complete rock stars, work day and night, and be a perfect cultural fit.
There is a massive difference between top-tier and non-top-tier investors, so optimizing on series a lead matters more than founders think.
Those who have not been a founder should not advise founders on how to run a company - Khosla.
Q&A with Chris Lyons, moderated by Maggie Hsu
Path to Web3
Started in music
Producer for Jermaine Dupri
On Kevin Hart
He built an empire by thinking of his career as an entrepreneur
Relationships
Always look for long-term relationships
It's not who you know; it's who knows you
The more you can create a halo effect, the more you can naturally generate success
View life as art
Your job is to paint pictures
Maximize what each moment can be
You can make 1 + 1 = 2 or 1 + 1 = 11
What is the next best situation?
"There is always a move. If something is a little boring, you need to shake it up. There is always a move."
Creators
85% of all streaming revenue goes to centralized systems - it is impossible to have a full-time career by just making music
Read, Write, Own — The only word cdixon uses more than Cryptohain or crypto is creators.
If you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, "I want to be a TikTok star."
Hide the wires in crypto
Life is like a restaurant — If you're in a restaurant, how can your application be valuable and be used by each person
IQ + EQ
Realize they're regular people.
Making a connection — Always figure out the things that have nothing to do with the profession. Find the commonality.
It can lead you into a familiarity of trust and then lean back and talk about the business
Leadership
What do you call a leader with no followers? Someone taking a walk.
You have to be a leader, be a star, sell the dream
Founder Talk: Shane Mac (XMTP) with Pyrs Carvolth
Shane background
Appreciate moments where perspective changes
Arc: grew up in a small town, went to western Illinois
Whole career got rugged
Zuck/Jack - do whatever you want with our social data
Then Twitter API changed, and Facebook changed
Whole career was built by being the best expert
Building on blockchain
2019 defi summer — Why can't I message a wallet?
To not have to trust me is to be able to trust us
Spent so long not being able to trust web2
Best way to kill a startup
Zaarly: raised 35M, magical demos
Problem: went horizontal instead of vertical
Thought dog walking was too small "were not just a vertical app were bigger and better."
Think smaller to go bigger
We didn't pick a small vertical to nail experience
We couldn't have picked a small enough community
Key insight
Not going broad, Going less
If that doesn't work, switch to a vertical
On VCs
Don't want to get shot? Just commit suicide.
If you don't have user growth, focus on that
Be honest about bad things about confidence in the mission and rituals.
On Language
Language almost killed startup - blog post
Change the question and the environment to get different outcomes. Don't ask binary questions; ask how.
To employee: "On a scale of 1-5, how much do you wish I was there?"
Your company's culture is its language and rituals.
Vulnerability
Doubt is the greatest way to let someone help you
Building Toys
Everything starts looking like a toy
You have to be confident in building something everyone thinks is a joke.
On writing
Be more present, listen to things I cant here
Thinking about writing: connecting disconnected dots
Process: Sit at a hotel and write. Then, resist publishing. Edit for the next few days
Impact vs. output: What's the smallest show-and-tell
Every time I publish I edit publically for four years
Being an imposter
Don't worry about imposter syndrome because everyone thinks about themselves.
Insignificance theory via Tim Ferriss
Ask to web3
Just build something usable. The bar is so low.
I think we've gotten lost in all the words and jargon
Links that came up
Here are some links that came up this week.
Launcher Labs Progress
You can now collect a board on Base to unlock it.
Choose the board you curate to with the Frameboard cast action. This also allows you to collaborate on curating casts!
