CSX: Week 7 Notes

Here are my notes from Week 7 of a16z Crypto's CSX. This week focused on Go To Market, Community, and Partnerships in Crypto.

• 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.

• 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

  • We (web3) have to do our job so well we don't have to talk about it ... "I never went to an MP3 conference."

• 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

• 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

Here are some links that came up this week.

• FIT21 passed!

• Farcaster raised $150M

• Polymarket raises $70M

• Collectible boards

  • You can now collect a board on Base to unlock it.

  

• Cast action settings

  • Choose the board you curate to with the Frameboard cast action. This also allows you to collaborate on curating casts!