Building Stablecoin Infrastructure Through Crypto Winter | The Further, Faster Podcast

0:00 You know, you basically went to market about a year ago now. Yeah. So, it's only been one year and you are >> running something like two and a half billion dollars in transaction volume, maybe looking to exit this year close to 6 to8 billion dollars it looks like. >> How are you seeing that kind of scale? Like why is there such demand right now for stable coin infrastructure and how are you capturing it? >> And for what it's worth, we'll probably exit about three three times that number, but okay. Well, >> if anyone's counting. [music] Welcome back to the Further Faster podcast. I'm Jeff Becker, your host and general partner here in New York City at Antler. This is the podcast where we talk to extraordinary founders about their journey from inception to scale.

0:40 We also talk to our portfolio founders who are in the middle of breaking out. Today we have Zach Walsh, the founder of Hi-Fi, a portfolio company that's been with us for three years and has reached $150 million valuation in an extraordinarily short period of time. Zach's building in stablecoin infrastructure and is here to share with us what it's like to build a company in today's environment. Zach, welcome to the podcast. >> Awesome, man. Super excited to be here.

1:06 >> I appreciate you coming on. >> But more as a friend. I see you all the time, so it's okay. >> It's hard to get you out of the office. >> No, I'd say so. This is interesting. I like this, though. >> Before we jump in, I think it's really important to tell people what Hi-Fi is. >> Yeah. >> Why you exist and what it is you're creating. I know that you're moving billions of dollars across stable coin right now in just a short period of time. You've become one of circles, if if not the largest, one of the largest uh money movers on Circle's payment network.

1:34 >> Um but can you tell people what Hi-Fi is? >> Yeah, so you know Hi-I is really financial infrastructure to build out financial products um with stable coins specifically. Um a great analogy is like stripe like APIs for developers to construct you know various money movement products. So whether that's remittance applications, crossber payments companies, Venmos, anything like that. Um a good mental model to think about it is, you know, when you're opening up your Chase bank app or Venmo and you're sending money to a friend, Venmo isn't actually transferring funds from, you know, one place to another. Uh there's back-end processes that they're actually built on top of. Uh, and that's really, you know, what hi-fi is is, you know, we allow, you know, end businesses like Venmo to move money from point A to point B.

2:16 >> Okay. And for people that don't understand what stable coins are or infrastructure, could you just describe a customer and and what they might be doing with hi-fi? >> Yeah, of course. So, I think first stable coins uh if you're not familiar with it, um, have really emerged as I think the killer use case in crypto broadly. Um, I think a lot of the volatility that's associated with digital assets uh is actually pretty antithetical in terms of what stable coins actually are. Um, but you could think of it as just um a digital asset that's pegged to a US treasury or some sort of asset that has a onetoone value in it. Um, in layman's terms, as you see, Bitcoin going up and down, stable coin is consistently flat. Um, you know, one coin can always be redeemed for $1.

3:01 Now, why is that important for a payments vehicle? Um, if you're looking to use Bitcoin as sort of a a method of payment, uh, it's it's very difficult to use an instrument that increases or decreases in value uh, between uh, the sender and the recipient versus a stable coin, something that's highly liquid, uh, always redeemable one for one. You can almost use it as just this tokenized form to move in and out of, you know, let's say a dollar or, um, a euro, anything like that. Uh mainly what people are building on top of us are you know these large business payments applications whether that's a trading desk or a crossber payments company or some sort of payments processor. Um to some extent always taking funds from an origination and moving it to a destination using stable coins as a middle layer. Um it's been dubbed the stablecoin sandwich. So um traditionally how do payments exist today? If I'm going from let's say US dollars into euros in a bank um both banks are essentially interacting and messaging with each other um with uh at market rates over some sort of like FX desk. Um well what stable coins does is rather than both banks interacting with each other on some uh you know deferring market pair uh you can take dollars uh transfer it into USDC or some sort of other stable coin one for one uh and then take USDC uh transfer it on the blockchain and then essentially sell it for euros. So the end result is the same. You get um dollars for euros and the payment transaction but the back end is actually not a traditional FX desk.

4:35 It's um uh bit of a a complex sandwich as you would say. >> Got it. [snorts] Okay. So, we're moving money across markets, across treasuries, >> fundamentally >> building applications on top of hi-fi. And >> you know, you basically went to market about a year ago now. Yeah. >> So, it's only been one year and you are >> running something like two half billion dollars in transaction volume, maybe looking to exit this year close to 6 to8 billion it looks like. How are you seeing that kind of scale? like why is there such demand right now for stable coin infrastructure and how are you capturing it?

5:07 >> And for what it's worth, we'll probably exit about three three times that number. But >> okay, well if anyone's counting [laughter] um no I I'd say the first transaction of when we moved I remember it was a B2B $10,000 payment was much more exciting than I think even as it exists today. I think first getting the product out into the market um you become a little bit numb to it and I know the numbers sound you know pretty pretty significant which they they feel um they definitely do feel like that but you know you're always I'd say there's different ponds right if you keep Stripe I think processes a trillion dollars a year and so if you look at I think an early stage startup you know we're doing I think quite well but if you look at us compared to Stripe there's still quite a ways to go so I think you're always going for the next thing and not necessarily you know, looking at the numbers at face value, >> but what what is driving that demand?

5:57 What do you see from customers and why are they adopting stable coins so quickly now? >> Um, there there's there's a few different parts of this. So, first is this idea, I think, of of dollarization. Um, in a lot of these emerging markets, their currencies are incredibly volatile. I mean, they're fluctuating sometimes 30% in a given day. So, when your currency, for us, we, you know, we take that for granted, uh, moves 30% in your bank account, what does that mean?

6:20 It means it's very difficult to accumulate wealth. it's difficult to send money uh stably to vendors and contractors. So, um the market that they're in essentially collapses around this volatility with a currency. And so, the US dollar is incredibly in demand all around the world um uh for trading, for commerce, you know, whatever it is. And surprisingly, it's fairly difficult to actually gain access to the US dollar. Like, I want to say something like a billion and a half people don't have bank accounts today, which is, you know, incredible. If you don't have a bank account, you can't even get currency and you can't even get the US dollar. And so stable coins are essentially this this tokenized form of a US dollar. So even if it's not uh I'll get into it kind of described previously. The second use case of the stable coin payment sandwich um being able to just hold um digitized forms of the US dollar uh for commerce and you know accumulate value is uh incredibly important.

7:11 >> We met sort of right at the beginning of crypto winter. So describing what you're describing now to someone back then sounded a bit crazy and you had to indoctrinate a lot of investors, employees >> and no one wanted to invest in us and you're the only one that wanted to. >> I appreciate you remembering that. Um I still want to keep investing if you let me. >> So of course of course I think for [laughter] you though.

7:31 >> Yeah. So uh for the people that are watching a lot of them are inception stage founders. So like maybe like rewinding back a little bit. >> Taking a vision like this now seems very obvious. We're seeing other players in the space. we're seeing lots of traction. Uh it's it's much clearer to people why stable coin should exist. But if you rewind, >> people didn't really understand in the beginning. And so maybe you can describe a little bit about like that journey of starting something that feels futuristic, >> getting people indoctrinated.

7:57 >> Yeah. I I think like the mantra of whatever business you're starting, I think if you can do it at these times of quoteunquote infrastructure or platform shifts and and sort of catalyze this new category, that's where you see, you know, the largest acrual of value. However, um with stable coins, it wasn't making a bet on stable coins themselves. It was making a bet on rationality within financial services. So, you know, what did stable coins enable? They enabled, uh, you know, cheaper transactions, they enabled, uh, faster settlement. So, I think in the ethos of entrepreneurship, if you can make things that are faster, if you can make things that are cheaper, if you can make things that save people money, um, it's directionally a good business to build in. So, I think stable coins hit all of those points. And so we weren't going after stable coins for the sake of it.

8:40 We were more so going after it for, you know, really what it enabled for businesses. >> Got it. And you weren't just going at it in 2022. you had decided to like leave college, work during the day, you know, sleep on a friend's couch, get into these cool companies, um, >> with basically without a degree and and finish your degree at night so that you could build up a track record in finance in, you know, hyperrowth Silicon Valley startups that you were part of, Sequoia backed companies.

9:11 >> You got this experience while you were in school that other people didn't, which gave you like what I would say is almost like a decade of experience despite, you know, being fairly young. And to me, it struck me that you were obsessed about this for a long time. I mean, is that what it takes to build something meaningful? >> So, when I look back on it, I I don't think it look I wasn't in stable coins 10 years ago, but I was always in when I unpack it, it was in in some form, I guess, of entrepreneurship. And um yeah, I think the path that I took and the things I did was more so a byproduct of just wanting to do things that interested in me. like I loved um being in big offices and the whiteboards and seeing some of the smartest people I've ever been around. Um you know just in that environment all the time and so you know it really wasn't like an end to a means to me. It's just um you know sitting and I think doing there mean there's lots of talks on this obviously but um whether it's homework or or papers and I think I was always naturally pretty good at school but I just hated studying. I just hated any sort of effort. it was like the least amount of effort that I could find as a path to get like the best results. Um, you know, I just sit there and be like I kind of saw the next 10, 15 years in front of me of uh, you know, getting a degree and then just doing that that whole consequentially, which is not inherently a bad thing. Just wasn't interesting to me.

10:27 >> Yeah, cuz you mentioned like not wanting to work hard at school, but you're one of the hardest working people I know. You're kind of seven days a week, you're all hours of the night, you're an instant responder >> some days. Yeah, I hope. I hope so. Well, that's how [snorts] I've experienced you. And so I'm wondering, >> obviously it wasn't that you couldn't work hard. You didn't want to work hard at school, but now you you're I would call you quite obsessed with this >> and and quite hard working. Like can you talk to the listeners about sort of that mentality, what it's taking to build?

10:57 Yeah, I've always had I think an pretty strong work ethic or a maniac as you might say. But I think it was towards things that you know I was incredibly interested in and then I think as I've gotten a little bit older you realize almost the systems of the type of work that you want to output and the results that you want to get. So it's like choose the games that you want to play, right? Um you know I did it like 24 years old. I remember I was out of college. I think I was making like 275 300,000 which is a pretty you know great amount I'd say for like someone like early in their 20s which is what some people want to do over 20 years and climb the corporate ladder and I think after like third three months I was like this is just not for me you know maybe you get a little bit of a bigger apartment um you know a nicer car but that's really kind of about it for the most part which don't get me wrong is still an incredible amount of money to the the average income in the US um but for me it was always just like thinking in systems of you know you have a very short life to live and you know if you can almost sort of do things that you know really excite you that's kind of where I want to devote my work and time.

11:58 So you know I kind of got to the peak of corporate world I guess I don't know not really I was 24 not really the [laughter] peak you're going to work for like 20 years but um I kind of just saw the the path in front of me and um you know really wanted to just take the plunge. I wanted to cover that first part because I think helping people understand the mindset and what it takes to start a company, how you think about the future is important. But then fast forward, >> one of the fastest growing companies across the entire Amler portfolio.

12:25 >> You're like very clear path to >> 9 10 figures in annual revenue. >> Um how are you thinking about the next stage of building hiring product? It's constant context switching honestly of um very clearly seeing where you want to be in five years but then also zooming super um you know super deep to the problems today. So you know I'm not uh waking up and saying oh I can't wait to be a $10 billion company where that may or may not be the case but that's usually just it's I think it's impossible to really ground yourself like that. Um, I think if you you start to almost like unpack and dissect the goals that you want to be at, like for me personally in the company in a 12-month period and look towards, okay, what do we need to do in the next 3 months? What do we need to do uh in the next month, week, day, what is the next task that I can do to provide the most leverage to move us forward in that? Um, I think that that's a much better way to compartmentalize it. Um, I think if you actually get too much into this like long-term audacious vision thinking, it's almost like not really grounded in reality and you you see a lot of these like really early stage founders and they're like, "Hey, I want to go be the next Zuckerberg." But, you know, to be Zuckerberg is like level 100 and there's 100 levels to get there and you're not even on level one right now. So, you know, I think it's you can have that as a motivating factor, but um, you know, think about, you know, what do I have to do to get to level two?

13:45 >> Yeah. How did the levels change between inception? You raised uh you raised more than $10 million now undisclosed kind of unannounced. >> Didn't make a big deal out of it. You just kind of kept building. >> How has it changed from raising that big seed to now thinking about the next I guess level two, level three. [sighs and gasps] >> Um I think the anxiety is always there. I just think the problems change and the problems actually get bigger. Um, I think that was actually like one of the biggest learnings for me. And, you know, I'm still learning a lot every day. But, um, capital, you know, helps solve problems, but it also introduces bigger problems to you that you have to solve.

14:20 And I remember you told me pretty early on that, you know, when you're the CEO, um, the problems that you just have to solve get harder because the problems that end up reaching you are the only ones that you can solve at the end of the day. So, you know, if you have 100 500 people at your company and a problem gets to you, that means 500 people couldn't solve the problem. And so, I'm starting to feel like little inklings of that now, which has been uh I think pretty pretty interesting to unpack.

14:45 >> It strikes me that you are thinking about >> how do I build a culture? How do I build a team? How do I get the best people around me? >> Who do I raise capital from? You have a lot of options. Yeah. >> Which is a good position to be in. And so, you're making some >> pretty consequential decisions. How are you approaching >> that part of the job? I I think there's a lot and I think that you can get pretty easily bogged down in the complexity and the anxiety of everything, but um I think almost from a cliche perspective if you go at it from first principles and you I actually think about this pretty often, Warren Buffett says uh focus on the people first, the product and the profits in that order. Um, and so oftentimes you you find people do the reverse. And so, um, this was something I actually didn't really notice as much when we were building the business because it was myself and Mo, you know, a friend of 10 years and a co-founder and, you know, eventually a few engineers who end up joining us. But, um, you don't really think of like the culture and you don't think about, you know, necessarily like the people you bring in. But, as you start to reach 15, 20, 30 people, it's incredibly important. It creates this talent density of like the next 50 people, you know, who continue to join you as a company. So for me focusing on the people of I think first who are we bringing into the company uh we have an incredibly high hiring bar. I think like Brian Chesky says it's like pulling teeth to essentially hire and it was like three years before they got like their first person. And that's kind of like the mantra that we take. Um and we aren't necessarily as concerned with like hey this is actually a a Google researcher researcher or something like that or I think like the resume golden goose but it's I'd say more so um like are they hungry? Are they intellectually curious? Um, and do they want to actually do something and around other people? I don't know, something like that.

16:26 >> Um, >> do you have any tricks? Any things that you do in your hiring process or things that you're screening for? >> Um, I'm always really interested in um like what are their hobbies or things that they're doing like outside of work. So, I think that whether you're like, "Hey, I was a world-class gamer or like we just hired someone who said, "Oh, I I make uh furniture in my spare time and I like go to the store and I like I carve out the parts." Which for me is so interesting where like if you're actually deeply curious about something and you're very obsessed with it, I think that that can like expand into your work.

16:58 >> Interesting. Like the translation of obsession into like the care they put into the code they write or the customers they >> they they call on. It's funny. I look for that in founders too. I want to see that obsession. I want to like interrogate them on their personal lives. I want to understand a bit more about like how deep have you gone on something? How well researched are you? How willing are you to push the bounds of what's possible?

17:18 >> And this idea that like the CEO is always >> managing the hardest problems, I think requires a combination of resilience and creativity. You have to be >> willing to solve everything. Like like no is not an answer. It's just like >> one step closer to a yes. >> Exactly. And I think that's it's sort of like what you mentioned you are doing as a CEO, but what you're looking for a bit in the team of like it's going to be complex. It's going to be endless, but like that's the pursuit.

17:45 >> Yeah. I I' I'd say finding people especially every stage of the company is like a different company. That's what we've I've started to see now. So like the version of us, you know, preede versus seed versus series A is um the DNA of like how we operate is the same, but the way that we operate is incredibly differently. And >> so I I'd say that the core values of being like in humble, being intellectually curious, being hardworking. Um those are going to be consistent throughout every life cycle or the life cycle of the company. But the things in terms of how we work together. So, first of all, when you're like five people in a room in a precede, everyone can just go talk to each other in the room of, hey, here's what I'm working on. When you're at 30 people, it's um how do we actually distill information incredibly fast and make decisions? So, you know, even if it's like myself and a co-founder, how do we, you know, populate information down to, you know, the person who might be lowest in the chain, let them understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. Uh, take their feedback and then funnel it back up to the top of the chain as fast as possible. Do you have systems for that and things you've built that make it really effective internally?

18:53 >> Um, yeah, I'd say so. Um, so I mean we do department meetings every Monday and we just go back toback. So we go from go to market to compliance uh to marketing to engineering of uh here's what I did last week for the department. Here's what I have to do uh this upcoming week. And if you say you're going to do something this upcoming week, it has to be done by Friday. and don't put something on the Google docu uh unless it's going to get done by Friday or else we'll probably you know recognize that or you know not be too happy and everything that we have to do has to drive up to you know our broader goal like I said before of what we're trying to do for the quarter what we're trying to do for the year um and everything is almost very much systemized um which everyone is like working together on their various work streams but um you know they're rather independent >> yeah it's so interesting I think people that are building companies today have like a different level of technology available to them.

19:41 >> Yeah. >> To like automate things, be across and transparent across departments. >> It sounds like the level of accountability that everybody has is almost like um >> it it feels like a very flat organization and everyone's committing to daily goals or weekly goals almost like um when you're a small team there's daily standups. Sounds like that has >> transcended into the team and everyone has that sense of urgency. Yeah, I I'd say having a method to um uh convey in information rather quickly is is incredibly important, but I also think having a written culture is um something that that should be taken seriously by most >> written culture.

20:17 >> So in terms of um like the decisions that we're making, why are we doing what we're doing? Uh whether it starts like our core values to um a product release on a or release notes that come out every Friday to um you know hiring docs. I think it's incredibly important for people to actually pull into resources and understand you know why people are doing what they're doing and you know even in terms of like emails themselves like long form memos um uh I think just help people conceptually understand um I think the thought process of people who aren't like you.

20:49 >> It's interesting. It's it's counterintuitive. A lot of people talk about brevity and cave and and speed of communication and here you're like long form memos depth of thinking. It's a it's almost counterintuitive to the speed at which people are moving. Why do you think it's so important that people spend time to clarify their thoughts and disseminate them versus just kind of move at the speed that >> No. So I I think um >> speed and like efficiency broadly is not binary to written thinking but you know for example >> um on a Sunday night I can send out you know an entire a pretty long memo in terms of what's on my mind what are the most important things to get done this week um just what am I even thinking whether it's the state of the business things that are happening within the market um so people just really aren't guessing in terms of you know what is Zach thinking why are we doing what we're doing um and be able to just reference that and having like this culture of like radical transparency in terms like no it's written down and that's what we were thinking 6 months ago and that's what we were thinking last week. Um I think it's incredibly important but the decisions that you make are these like super closed source vectors of are we going to do it are we not going to do it and that's it. Um so I I think they're actually pretty interconnected.

21:57 >> Yeah. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. >> Um at LinkedIn I was there for nine years and the leaders there were so unique. They communicated in frameworks. They talked about this is how we think about something a framework for everything. >> Exactly. And I found that they were basically, and I didn't know this at the time, but in hindsight it's very clear, they were teaching people how to think, not what to think. They were giving people a framework for make to make decisions through. And so it sounds like by codifying your thinking, by disseminating long form, you're helping the team make decisions in your absence because they understand the lens. They understand the context. And it's less guesswork on what would Zach do in the situation or what should the company do?

22:35 It's more >> uh clarity across departments, clarity across people. And so for that reason, you probably get a great velocity and speed of quality decision-m happening across all all people. >> Exactly. Um and if there's any objections to it as well in terms of my way of thinking, you know, absolutely welcome it. You know, leave comments in my Google docs, you know, respond everyone CC into the emails and you know, it's something that we welcome. >> I think just cuz because we're on a podcast and you're a tech founder and I'm a VC, I should ask you about AI.

23:01 You're building like at the end of crypto winter. Yeah. you're building at the beginning and through the height of this AI boom, >> there's a lot of noise in the media around these mega rounds, the bar has shifted for what VCs are looking for in terms of traction. >> Yeah. >> Does that affect you at all? How are you thinking about the cycles and what's going on in the market? >> Okay. So, I'd say generally yes and no.

23:21 Um, so generally no in the sense that like we've gone through this with digital assets of meme tokens and shilling. Um at the end of the day, build a good business and focus on good unit economics and uh products that people want. Um and I would apply that to AI or whatever the next cyclical trend is. Um I mean you see some of these articles about like 90% of enterprise adoption of AI has failed and you know these applications are essentially rappers on some sort of infrastructure and I think that you know focus on I think solving the core problems and um you know fundamentally it works out. Um in terms of like how it has affected us um yes I think generally speaking um we've seen like an acceleration of revenues just as higher benchmarks in the market. However, I do think it's it's a little bit of a like a fugazi, right? And we were actually talking about this in the elevator up here, too. And you know, you do see the lovables and the cursors and um you know, it's it's looking at like, you know, I don't know, the Aaron judges or some sort of like freak of baseball and no is everybody in the MLB Aaron Judge like absolutely not. But you have some really amazing players who, you know, can develop in the minors for eight years, end up having, you know, a really fantastic career and go into the Hall of Fame. And, you know, maybe you know, weird constru misconstrued analogy. Go apply that to tech startups as well where yes, you're going to have these ridiculous breakout companies, but um, you know, I was just reading like the Bonobos founders biography in which like no one wanted to do his series B and he someone led the round with a $1 million check and like a $30 million round. So like if you take like a company like Bonobos which is this you know historic and you know really great clothing company and and say oh they're not going to 100 million in AR in a year are they a failure? No. I I I think that like the benchmarks as an aggregate have gone a little bit higher but um you know we good for cursor but like we don't really look at it as much >> for people that are watching this because of stable coins because of you know crypto >> um infrastructure primitives where you see things going what you're hearing.

25:20 Mhm. >> in the industry. Like to me it feels like it's really heating up from the big banks. Large corporations are taking notice. Like what's it like being on the front lines talking to people? >> Um it's really exciting the rooms that we get to be in relative to our size. um you know these are some of like the biggest honestly uh companies and financial institutions in the world and some of them have invested into us and so I think that maybe like 15 years ago you know we would have to be you know probably 5x the size that we are to maybe even just get like an intro conversation now the fact that we're going into pilots and have some of them as customers it's been super exciting and so that we really are on the the cutting edge of this space um >> do you think those big banks and large customers are moving aggressively into stable coin or are they going to continue to move slowly the way we've seen >> well I think banks relatively speaking are always going to move at a a snail's pace but um I'd say it's a part of their mandate now and um they're really understanding whether that's treasury whether that's crossber payments whether that's um accepting stable coin deposits for international migrants what whatever the use case is um there's definitely a lot of exploration and starting to really go into the space which um you know these are trillion dollar balance sheets um you know the entire market cap of stable coins today I think represents the 300 billion or so, which is, you know, a great amount. It's like a top 20 uh T- bill holder, but you know, relatively that's maybe a few large hedge funds in the US. This is nothing compared to what it's going to be in a few years.

26:45 >> Do you think it's going to eat the entire financial infrastructure? >> Um, I'd say over the course of decades, yes. But you also have to make a bet on the time horizon. If uh can you go build a stable coin company for where the world's going to be in 20 years? No. You have to build great products for where the world is going to be today in the next few years. >> What's the next step for HiFi? Where do you guys go from here? There's a lot that we're going to be doing this year where we're very interested in card processing. So, uh launching credit cards for businesses in which they can actually use a stable coin wallet to um you know pay for things in real time.

27:12 So, rather than uh taking like a debit card and connecting it to your checking account, I can actually connect it to you know a MetaMask or a coinbased wallet and start spending with stable coins. Um that's something that's very interesting to us. >> A lot of people watching are building their own companies. >> Yeah. >> I think there probably are like one or two key things that they should know that you probably believe deeply. Mhm. >> I'm just curious like what your one or two go-to are for uh for early stage founders.

27:36 >> Yeah. So the first is this like Paul Graham of YC like some variation of if you're proud of your product when you launch it like you've launched too late. I think like get something out there that's super shitty or even just like ask people hey would you buy this and go build some version of it and see if they'll even give you money for it. I think that's like the biggest thing I think people try to um or first-time founders more so try and like build this road map of like here's how my business is going to succeed and here's every step that I'm going to follow and here's how my product's going to look and we're going to go out and here's the marketing plans around it. Like no, just don't think of any of that. Just go try and build something and someone's going to give you money for it. Um I'd say that's the first thing. Uh the second is that like carry like one mantra with you is that the highs are never as high as they are and the lows are never as low as they are. So, like when things are really great and they're riding high, if you zoom out, they're probably not as amazing in the relative market. Um, not to tear you down, but yeah. And still enjoy the low wins. Um, and then the lows are never as bad as they are.

28:33 Whether that's, you know, even like an employee quitting or, you know, some investor telling you no or like a term sheet getting pulled, like it's it's okay. Thousands of people have gone through this before and you're going to figure out a way. >> Yeah. We were talking about this the other day, just like managing your time, running the marathon, >> managing the intensity of it. >> Yeah. I mean, from the outside looking in, you work insanely hard, but you do talk about sort of being even keel and being being steady with your energy.

28:59 Like, how do you manage it? >> Um, I mean, it's something I think I' I've probably gotten better at over the years. Like, definitely I was like a maybe a hotthead in like my early 20s, but >> um, from like a rational perspective, like emotion doesn't do anything. And that's kind of what actually get gets me um drives me more than anything where it doesn't matter what I feel about a specific situation. Um that feeling isn't going to help me find a solution.

29:24 And so I think that that is actually a lot of my my driving force. So whether I'm upset about something or whether I'm super happy, I call it actually with my co-founder feel the feel. So feel it for 30 seconds. Take a deep breath whatever you need to do and then after the 30 seconds compartmentalize it, get to the next thing. try and find the solution to it. Um, >> where'd you pick that up? >> I don't know. It's just something Maybe my mom, honestly.

29:48 >> Your mom? >> Your mom is like a well-renowned EMDR therapist. >> Yeah, >> it's funny you brought up as a side. I always ask founders now uh like what would your parents tell me about you trying to like pick up on their psyche >> and I didn't do that with you [snorts] um at all. I was just pretty enthralled by what you were doing and how you were working. But later after I invested, I did meet your mom and she told me like all these funny and cool stories >> about like >> you know and honestly if I just met her I probably would have invested blindly because she told me all these stories of like resilience and work ethic and you know creativity and >> I swear it's a mom though. probably a little biased.

30:22 >> Biased or not, I think she was right, you know. Um, everyone, every parent is proud of their kid, I think, or most are. But, um, there were stories you couldn't replace. Like, she shared the story about like this basketball team you wanted to make and like hours of shooting in your driveway for like months and months and months and months on end. And like that's not something a kid normally does. That's that's unique. Um yeah, like like I said, there was always these um what I take as now is is entrepreneurship. There was all these these things that have existed. Um whether you hear these stories of like, you know, Mark Cuban selling uh garbage bags to people or or Gary Vee doing his thing with baseball cards, like I think these signs pop up at an early age, but you're a kid like you don't know what it what you don't know what it means. And um I think if you take the drive and you um you know put into something in a good way and you understand people and systems um it's it seems to work out or be a good equation. So why'd you invest in me? This is what I'm most interested in because it's so interesting like it's you know I mean we've known each other now for three years now and I actually remember in terms of like you you've talked about like the life cycle of the company and everything that we're we're facing right we're in right now. Um my first check um was a happier moment than uh getting like a $5 million check. It's like you become a little bit like numb to it, but that first check it was $175,000. It hit our account and this was after like 2 years of like no one listening to us and everyone was like, "What the hell is this?" And like my bank account went to nothing. And obviously my loving mom was um saying, "Oh, you're doing a great job." And she's like, "I don't know what what he's probably up to that much." and like everything's going wrong and you know someone wires you 175,000 and it's just like the most meaningful sum of money.

32:08 Um and I was like actually my brother was visiting that office at the time he saw and I had like almost like tears in my eyes and all that and it's um it's really awesome where we've come to but um you know I think for everyone who was aware of Anler you know they bring in what like 50 60 founders at a time and you know you invested into us and nobody wanted to invest in us um all the all the other partners uh said no but you silver bulleted and you said yes. Yeah, it's funny. I This is the value I think of Antler and the style of investing of being in person with people.

32:39 >> There are just things that are tactile and visceral and however you want to describe it that are irreplaceable in underwriting a team and an operator. And so spending time with you in that office, especially amongst other people that are like objectively highly qualified, their resumes are amazing. They've done cool things in their lives, >> but being a founder is a different kind of job. And so you like stick all these people in a room and you observe them and you help them and you do it without any exchange of value. Like I'm not I'm not taking any equity or giving any money. We're just there to help people succeed.

33:12 >> But then like in that group >> you were much more serious than other people. You were working much harder. You had a real long-term vision of something that was unique. In my opinion at the time it was a bit of an N of one. Not many people I was meeting were talking about a stable coin future in you know 2020 2021 time period. They were talking more about like NFTTS and some of these like non-durable assets and you were very opinionated. I found you to be someone who like had a vision, had the work ethic. I had to do some deeper diligence. I called some people at Polygon. I like I had to understand what you were talking about.

33:47 >> Yeah. >> Um but part of this value, you mentioned the silver bullet is that at Antler all of the partners can reject it. And if there's one partner who sees something in that person that's special, it's your responsibility to silver bullet it and take that shot. And so, you know, I did take that shot, but I don't think it was it wasn't like a risky career move. It was like, how could we not back this person? It's very clear in the room that he's going to run circles around people and never give up. Your like emotional fortitude, your resilience, your your seriousness, all those things really shine through. Even though at the time we were working on like e-commerce checkout as a as a >> completely different product. Yeah, you mentioned that. You mentioned like building a lot of stuff, shipping it, just trying to like make moves and take action. Um, you went through a few iterations. Like what was what was that like to get to what is now APIs and and you know, infrastructure for anyone that wants to build?

34:38 >> No, I appreciate those sentiments. I would say that, you know, we wouldn't be here today, but I mean, we definitely wouldn't would not have gotten here as fast as we did, I think, without the help of, you know, your yourself andler along the way. Um, very different the model than even like YC. So like you know people who are going to YC are now having like 500,000 in revenue and their traction is so much more further along.

34:57 Like I had nothing. I was just like super you know work ethic as you would say and um so it's always very deeply appreciative. Everyone says you always remember your first investor and so that's always you know big reason why I'm here today. um in terms of the pivots and I think what you're describing I think that always that what I found is that um goes to what is being a good founder is knowing when to pivot also knowing when to quit and so I I think that's like almost like taboo um look at like Travis Kellick I think that you had like 19 companies before he founded Uber and so I think you you had these founders who were like hey here's my idea and you know I'm going to go work on it for five years and you know I'm going to make no revenue in that entire frame I'm going to get like two customers, but um you know, I'm not never going to give up. Like, no, that's that doesn't I think quitting is just one area of pivoting into another different thing. And so, >> like a hard quit and a soft quit.

35:53 >> Yeah, exactly. So, like we were looking at cards, right? And so, um uh to launch a credit card program was incredibly intense. Um whether you have to be regulated, achieve your licenses, work with a BIN sponsor. um in the US, stablecoin wallet adoption is still relatively low in terms of emerging markets. Um and so we had all these data points that we found pretty early on and so we thought okay maybe cards isn't the right choice. Um you know let's go try and pivot into you know various other you know um payments instrument. Um and so you can call that quitting or pivoting or whatever. And so we were just figuring out like what is the best direction to go in or you could be that founder who's um like no I'm going to go build cards for 5 years and sometimes it works over a long enough time horizon.

36:33 Um, but I think you just need to know when you need to change things up. If that makes sense. >> It does. Brian Armstrong's quote like action creates information. Yeah, exactly. This idea that you're sort of like bouncing around this like product market fit force like bumping into trees, getting hard nose, but eventually like seeing where the value was and realizing that there were a bunch of companies coming online that wanted to leverage stable coin that didn't have the banking licenses, the infrastructure they needed. And then on top of that, large institutions that saw what you saw, which is the ability to save money, do it instantly, really alleviate what is like an archaic infrastructure on the Swift network.

37:07 >> Yeah, it's been pretty incredible. >> You've like now risen to be the number one mover of stable coin on the Circle network or close to it. You're rising in the the Tether ecosystem to one of the largest. You've uh created partnerships with Visa. like you have really amassed some amazing accolades as a small company >> like is that is that luck is that practice is that how does that come to fruition in such a short period >> so this actually goes back I think probably to my my co-founder relationship Mo you know Mo we've known each other for 10 years and and probably one of my closest friends honestly if not my closest friend um but we're both non-technical founders so we don't know how to code um in the early days that's very difficult because um historically speaking you have a technical founder who can build the product and a nontechnical founder who can ship it or who can sell it. Um, but you really just had these two guys who were really good at selling I'd say for the most part.

38:02 And so we had to almost sell to get engineers to come and you know work and build and you know really build a team around us. Um, and so we had a lot of maybe like five different iterations of engineers of like going and leaving and it was like very difficult in the building like oh I just wish I knew how to code. But now I think that we're at at the scale that we are um we can just go out for so many more opportunities and you know he can take core partnerships and you know he ran the entire Visa deal for us and you know I can go lead um you know our circle relationship um and doing all of um you know our interactions with them or you know we're both going to like the tether offsite you know speaking with them and so I think just goes to show is that we get so much more surface area u having um you know non-technical skill sets but still we're we're fairly yin and yang to each other with what he's good at and and what I'm good at. Um, but I I think just like the breath of opportunities we're able to bring in once you get to a scale approach is actually a a force multiplier for the business versus in the beginning it's very difficult and that's actually probably like one of my contrarian ideas like YC like oh two nontechnical founders like once you're scaled it's like a superpower but in the beginning it sucks.

39:08 >> I love that. I never thought about it that way. It's interesting especially today because you have a relative ease of shipping code and like getting to that first version of proof and and amassing some kind of credibility that there is a product and a market where there's some kind of fit even if it's not >> you know exit velocity level. Um but yeah, I haven't thought about like that. It's interesting that you guys are like a superpower after you get through the hard parts of building even though non-technical.

39:33 >> Yeah, that's what I'd say. But the first few years are not uh little little difficult. >> Yeah. Yeah. If you could do it again, would you change anything? >> No, absolutely not. I mean, I would change now if I knew the data that we had. Like we would get to um you know, our product faster because we have those data points to go on, but in terms of like who I'm building with or anything of that sort, like absolutely not. Like me and Mo could go build five more companies together. I think that probably if you want to like touch upon the the co-founder relationship generally speaking um I think yes you want to have very almost like deferring traits of each other right of someone's good at selling and someone's good at building but I think the bedrock of all of that is trust and respect for one another and I think like 70% of the reasons that startups fail is uh actually be due to um you know co-founder conflict or breakup. It's not you know competition taking you out.

40:21 It's not like lack of funding. it's just because you can't get along with the person next to you who you're spending, you know, 12, 14 hours a day with for years. Um, and so we just have this really strong relationship of just respect and indefinitely care for one another and assuming positive intent where, you know, most of the times we're directly aligned and sometimes, you know, he looks at the problem differently versus how I look at it, but we're not at odds at each other. We're incredibly incentivized um in the same manner and, you know, we sort of like carry that ethos with us and I think that's the most important thing than anything else. Yeah, I do see a lot of co-founder breakups or in my job co-founder therapy, right? It's like things are not going so well. So, how do we get through this together? And like they come to me as opposed to like what you mentioned going to each other like how do we get through this? What do we do? What's this like optimistic >> endless resilience kind of approach to building?

41:09 >> Yeah. I mean, from like a I think it's a little bit like little kid behavior, too. Like I said before about the just like knowing when to quit. like if you're not getting along with this person, you can have direct conversations with them. Like maybe go and therapy and figure that out for yourself, but then also, you know, find something that that works out more suitable for you. Um don't don't go to your investor and say, "We're not getting along." That's that's an interesting way to go about it.

41:33 >> I got it. [snorts] We got a couple cool uh tidbits that are like very counterintuitive. The double non-technical co-founder, the long form writing as a function of disseminating >> process and thinking and decision-m. Are there other things that you are starting to evolve into or learn or adopt as how as principles in operating a business like this? >> Yeah. So in the early stage of the company um you call it a company but like it's not a company and that's always like one of my things that people are like um you're literally sitting with two other guys in this like shabby room and like your Wi-Fi is not working and you're like yeah this is the company we're at. Like you're not at a company you're almost like like a project at that point. Um, but the things that you're like working on together are like, hey, I'm gonna go take out the trash or you're gonna go do this. Um, or someone else is going to go write some code. But it's it's always individual things that we're all contributing. Um, as you start to grow, for the first time, I'm really thinking almost in in systems of how can you manage people across an organization to accomplish things in a super fluid manner. So, you know, rather than me for the first time going out and like, hey, I'm going to go sell this product, it's how can I actually build um incentives and find the best people um and organize them in a way that, you know, brings in a wealth of opportunities into the business. So, you're thinking at a much more of like a high level of moving chess pieces around as opposed to like I'm the knight moving across the board.

42:59 >> I think that you are a an outlier when it comes to product design, which is a unique trait for a founder. You see some of the best with it, but I think it's something you're really good at. And so as you were talking about org design, I imagine that same OCD of product design translating to org design, if that makes sense. >> Yeah. But I I I think as you say, it's probably some dissemination of just being too OCD and in little detail.

43:26 >> Just OCD as a superpower. >> Yeah, maybe OCD is a superpower. >> Yeah, it's interesting. I um I Yeah, I mean I have OCD myself and it's like it's one of those it almost like controls you a little bit. like I need this to be straight or organized or this way or clear. >> I can't describe it, but it's like a >> it's like an intrinsic motor or something. I don't know. It sounds like you share that and have that.

43:49 >> Yeah. It's like, you know what it is? It's like when you you see something that's out of place, it's like an itch you can't reach and that's kind of what it's like. It's like you're just really trying to get to that itch and that's that's like my best physical version of it. >> Yeah. It's like a natural You're right. It's like this natural need to like scratch that thing or change it or fix it or make it perfect.

44:06 >> Yeah. I think that um when I've I've been in your office, it feels like very chill and very calm, but it also feels like everyone knows exactly what they're doing and has a purpose. >> It's interesting setup and I imagine that's intentional. >> Um I was very intentional about the design of our office, too. Um wanted it to feel like very fune against this notion of um you know, the work has to be this laborous effort. I think that if you can make work feel like play, as they say, um then you're in a you're in a pretty good pretty you found the equation or you found the solution to the equation. And I think that's like what we've always what I've always try and build a company like like when you're coming to the office like you're not having your Sunday scaries, you're not dreading in the morning like I really want to go there and I really want to work. And obviously that starts with the people you're around and that starts with the ideas that you're working on and the problems you get to solve. But it's also your environment.

44:58 like we looked at 40 50 offices before even you know deciding on our space with you know lots of natural sunlight and you know the way that we designed it and carpets everywhere and like looking at yeah I want this sort of art on the wall and snacks like I think that's really important actually. >> Yeah, >> it's so interesting. I I think that when people the way people do one thing is the way they do everything. It's like if you obsess over like something that seems as small as the art or the way it feels to come to work for sure you're obsessing about your customers, the quality of your revenue, like all the things that are very meaningful, but to care so much about something that may seem so small to other people, I think is also a sign of how much care you put into the business. Are there things that are below the fold or things that like let those fires burn, they're not important, or is everything as a founder as important as everything else? I'd say like the things that I I don't think are as important is that um acting like a boss quote unquote of like these like how you're supposed to act like I don't really care and I don't really care how people talk or or really you know emphasize themselves in the office like if you're not client facing and you want to wear sweatpants to work in your gray you're like or pajamas like I don't care or like if you want to just like sit across from me and you know you're like oh he was talking about like my my hinge date like are you supposed to talk about that with boss, but like who cares? Like I think it's like those little things like focus on the first principles on what needs to get done and you know I think paying very close attention to the things that actually matter uh versus like um oh hey I'm going to be a few hours late today. Um you know I have a doctor's appointment or like that's just that stuff doesn't matter.

46:36 >> Most of my founders when they raise they're like let's go to LinkedIn and tell everybody you did the exact opposite. Yeah. You've quietly raised over $10 million. you have not announced it. You've just continued to build. >> Like one, uh I imagine fundraising was not that easy, but also after all of that, why not announce it? Why not share that with the world? >> I think there there's there's a few parts to it, but it's wanting to always like be bigger than we are. And it's it's the perception of wanting to get into rooms where, you know, 10 million is great to I think like the early stage community, but you know, where we want to go in the next few years, it's it's really a drop in the bucket. So, like I'm really proud of what we've done, but um you know, we still have a lot more to do. And so, it's nothing that, you know, we definitely want to uh get on our soap box and and you know, really shout out.

47:21 There's there's more important stuff to talk about. >> Yeah, I think that's so interesting because we see all this like valuation maxing and like LinkedIn ego games of people sharing their rounds, but I think you texted me a photo. You were holding up like a piece of paper. It's like 10 million. You're like, should I post this? No, let's just move on. That was great. >> No. Yeah. There's uh like I said like the journey itself is there's a hundred different levels that you have to get to and so you know happy of like the level we've gotten to but you know it's it's not sufficient yet.

47:52 >> This has been the Further [music] Faster podcast and if you like this episode please remember to like and subscribe and share this with your friends. There's so many amazing episodes from the founders of Superhum to Rent the Runway and BetterCloud and beyond. There'll be many more of these coming your way. So, please uh like and subscribe and we'll see you on the next one. [music]