March 15, 2024
Hacking Innovation in the Solana Ecosystem with Matty Taylor, Co-founder of Colosseum
This week on The Index, host Alex Kehaya welcomes Matty Taylor, former Head of Growth at the Solana Foundation, who left to co-found Colosseum. Known for organizing some of the largest blockchain hackathons in the crypto space, including Grizzlython and Hyperdrive, it's a great conversation about hacking innovation within the Solana ecosystem.
Host - Alex Kehaya
Producer - Shawn Nova
Chapters
00:06 - Building Solana Ecosystem With Coliseum
08:58 - Hackathon Success and Ecosystem Growth
12:12 - Building Solana Ecosystem Through Hackathons
22:19 - Exploring Future Opportunities in Crypto
Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:06.229 --> 00:00:10.095
Welcome to the Index Podcast hosted by Alex Cahaya.
00:00:10.095 --> 00:00:17.800
Plug in as we explore new frontiers with founders, developers and investors, building the next wave of the Internet.
00:00:34.140 --> 00:00:36.027
Hey everyone and welcome to the Index.
00:00:36.027 --> 00:00:49.447
I'm your host, alex Cahaya, and this week I'm excited to welcome Maddie Taylor, co-founder and general partner of Coliseum, which runs crypto's largest hackathons, accelerates winning founders and invests in breakout startups.
00:00:49.447 --> 00:01:03.371
On Solana, maddie, I've known each other since, I guess, almost three years, because I started at Solana definitely after you, but we've both been in the ecosystem for a while, super excited for Coliseum and to hear more about your journey building it.
00:01:03.371 --> 00:01:04.563
Thanks for coming on the show.
00:01:05.682 --> 00:01:07.046
Yeah, thanks for inviting me, Alex.
00:01:07.046 --> 00:01:12.865
Yeah, happy to jump into what we're working on with Coliseum and just generally what's happening in the Solana ecosystem.
00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:17.829
So happy to be here, yeah, so maybe start off with just how did you get here?
00:01:17.829 --> 00:01:23.906
I think it's had kind of an incredible journey and I would love for you to share that Genesis story with folks listening.
00:01:25.421 --> 00:01:41.507
Yeah, I guess it starts probably for me in college, when I was going to school and I was studying economics and I was taking a fair amount of macroeconomics classes and it's pretty surprised at just how central banking worked.
00:01:41.507 --> 00:01:50.686
And at around the same time, I had some friends in my dorm room that were mining Bitcoin using the free power of the dorms before they shut it down.
00:01:50.686 --> 00:02:12.731
The confluence of those two things where I started learning about Bitcoin for one reason or the other, got really into it, was thinking about it in the context of, yeah, what I was learning about as part of my economics major and ended up writing my thesis about Bitcoin and some stuff going on in the mining industry at the time, and so kind of just fell down the proverbial rabbit hole at that point and never really got out.
00:02:12.731 --> 00:02:25.271
And so, yeah, at the time there weren't really any crypto companies other than, like Coinbase had just started at the time, but other than that, it was hard to work in that industry.
00:02:25.271 --> 00:02:28.489
I went to work at a payments company in San Francisco called Square.
00:02:28.489 --> 00:02:31.366
That's where I met one of my co-founders, so we were on the same team.
00:02:31.366 --> 00:02:35.969
During lunches, we just continued to talk about Bitcoin and crypto and what was going on.
00:02:36.099 --> 00:02:54.811
And then, obviously, the 2017 bull market rolled around and started to get more interested in Ethereum, and actually, both him and I we decided to jump to work at this DEX protocol called ZeroX, which is one of the first decentralized exchanges on Ethereum, and worked there for a couple years.
00:02:54.811 --> 00:02:57.487
And then, obviously, solano went to Mainnet.
00:02:57.487 --> 00:03:07.890
I had been following it somewhat closely pretty early on, but I always thought that what they were saying, or what they were claiming the system could do, was pretty outlandish.
00:03:07.890 --> 00:03:26.645
When I went to Mainnet, though, I mean, a lot of their promises came true, which was pretty surprising, and at the same time, raj and some recruiters reached out to me to be their head of growth at Solano Labs, and so joined their team kind of in the middle of the DeFi summer of 2020, which was a pretty chaotic time for sure.
00:03:26.645 --> 00:03:31.292
Yeah, I guess the rest is history, but I can jump into any part there if you want.
00:03:31.439 --> 00:03:36.580
I find that so interesting because, like me, we both came through really Ethereum.
00:03:36.580 --> 00:03:54.219
So I started out working at this company called Orchid and I knew a bunch of the guys that you probably worked with at ZeroX, and being at a DEX during DeFi summer and deciding to go to Solano is especially for someone who is skeptical of Solano's technology is kind of counterintuitive.
00:03:54.219 --> 00:04:05.006
I mean, especially today we see how the vitriol of crypto Twitter that's anti Solano from some people in the Ethereum space and I think that there's actually a lot more support than there are people anti.
00:04:05.006 --> 00:04:07.306
These are the anti, negative people are louder.
00:04:07.306 --> 00:04:09.667
What was that decision making process like for you?
00:04:09.667 --> 00:04:13.348
What pushed you over the edge other than just seeing it go live?
00:04:13.348 --> 00:04:15.947
What gave you the conviction to move?
00:04:16.502 --> 00:04:17.846
Yeah, I think it was a few things.
00:04:17.846 --> 00:04:26.769
One is just that I met Raj and Atoli and they're sort of like forces of nature and they pretty much soul-pilled me in a sense.
00:04:26.769 --> 00:04:34.507
And yeah, I mean, a lot of it was just meeting them for the first time and getting to know the early team and yeah, so that was part of it.
00:04:34.507 --> 00:04:48.326
The other part of it was that, even going back to the 2017 bull market, like there was obviously crypto kities got released and it was kind of one of the first applications or uses of Ethereum that was really in demand.
00:04:48.326 --> 00:05:26.983
In it Obviously skyrocketed the fees to the point where everyone was like, okay, we got to scale ability problem here, where, even like one moderately used application or game, I guess it was basically priced out the entire market of using the chain, and so people even before that were starting to talk about rollups and sharding and how the system was going to scale over time, and it just felt to me like that was not the right way to scale it and, as these things were coming to reduction, they were very underwhelming on the scale, ability and performance that they were providing applications and thinking about, like a lot of the startups in the space of the time.
00:05:26.983 --> 00:05:31.132
You don't have time to wait a decade for things to scale.
00:05:31.132 --> 00:05:34.894
You need the system to scale immediately to find product market fit.
00:05:34.980 --> 00:05:50.790
I mean, every day is a battle, right as a founder and so I just thought that like there had to be something else out there in the market, and obviously there was these next generation blockchains that were kind of being created in like 2018 and we're all launching around 2020.
00:05:51.319 --> 00:06:05.591
So I started to dig into that a bit and found that obviously, solana was very different in architecture and it was kind of hard to understand initially because it was so different than what I had been hearing over the last six years around, like how Ethereum was going to scale.
00:06:05.591 --> 00:06:14.612
Yeah, I think it was just that it kind of blew me away that it worked when it went to mainnet, and then there was also some initial traction.
00:06:14.612 --> 00:06:48.963
At the time, it was like I saw that like FTX had announced that they were going to build an on-chain order book, right, which was really appealing to me because that's, yeah, serum, which you know, going back to 0x, that was like sort of 0x's vision for Ethereum was to build this on-chain or this order book system rather than an AMM, and so I'm you know it was always partial to that design decision and so I thought it was really interesting that it was possible on Solana, and so it's kind of a confluence of all those reasons made me kind of make the jump and, yeah, happy I did.
00:06:49.699 --> 00:06:52.670
It's interesting to me how similar your story is to mine.
00:06:52.670 --> 00:06:54.966
I say almost exactly the same things.
00:06:54.966 --> 00:07:22.954
Back in late, like December of 2020, I started thinking about moving from where I was and I looked at every single L1 that was live at the time and Solano was really the only one that I saw that made any sense, in that I'm not an engineer, but I had read all the white papers for every single one of them and then I talked to dozens of teams building on those chains to hear what their experience was like and Solano was.
00:07:22.954 --> 00:07:29.538
Even then it was still like the easiest, actually permissionless place to go and build a product that could scale.
00:07:29.538 --> 00:07:33.074
And then I saw Serum and I was like, wow, this is actually working.
00:07:33.074 --> 00:07:35.415
It's actually working Like look at the volumes in Serum.
00:07:35.415 --> 00:07:36.314
This is all on chain.
00:07:36.314 --> 00:07:39.153
It's an order book, even the UI.
00:07:39.153 --> 00:07:42.735
Looking at the UI and watching trades go through in real time was amazing.
00:07:43.329 --> 00:08:07.043
Having experienced the pain of trying to do transactions on Ethereum and spending I think I've probably spent like $1,000 before doing a transaction during D5 summer but the one thing I want to double tap into that I think is really important for founders listening and founders that are going through Coliseum is Raj and Toley have like this incredible ability to sell why they're building Solano and to recruit people.
00:08:07.043 --> 00:08:09.398
Like it was one of the things that really stuck with me.
00:08:09.398 --> 00:08:19.980
I didn't even want to be hired, like I was looking at working in a space but I really just wanted to like run my own thing, and Raj like convinced me to just go all in on Solano.
00:08:19.980 --> 00:08:21.615
I was red-pilled on the technology.
00:08:21.615 --> 00:08:22.875
I kind of figured that out myself.
00:08:22.990 --> 00:08:24.154
Like Solano is going to be a winner.
00:08:24.154 --> 00:08:31.860
He and Toley like I feel like they have this really incredible ability to recruit talent and to retain talent.
00:08:31.860 --> 00:08:40.576
Like there's like hardly any churn that I've seen, like very little relative to how many people are there, and I think for founders, this is a really important thing to remember.
00:08:40.576 --> 00:08:51.616
Like you constantly have to be aligning the people you work with and the people you recruit with the mission and vision and they do a really good job on like a regular basis of making sure we all hear that.
00:08:51.616 --> 00:08:52.953
I think it's worth noting.
00:08:52.953 --> 00:08:58.475
I don't know if you have thoughts on that too, but no, I completely agree and I'm sure we'll get into this.
00:08:58.590 --> 00:09:08.817
but, like, a lot of folks coming through our hackathon are sort of like technical founders and they always think like, well, I need to hire someone that's like a salesman to go pitch my product.
00:09:08.817 --> 00:09:14.855
But if you look at like someone like Anatoly, he is the lead developer kind of formula is what Solano could be.
00:09:14.855 --> 00:09:17.518
He's also the first like salesman, right.
00:09:17.518 --> 00:09:21.234
He's out on Twitter every single day, marketing it, evangelizing it.
00:09:21.234 --> 00:09:31.240
Vitalik is also like this, right, where he obviously had the vision for Ethereum, built components of it and then was just basically on the road, right.
00:09:31.240 --> 00:09:40.755
He's been on the road for like seven years, right, just going to every single Ethereum event, evangelizing and basically being a business development person for the broader Ethereum.
00:09:40.755 --> 00:09:43.839
Because Anatoly is just the same right.
00:09:44.370 --> 00:09:50.938
I think that's one thing we always want to impart with a lot of new founders, especially if they're technical, is that you also have to be the storyteller.
00:09:50.938 --> 00:09:56.778
You also have to be the salesperson that gets people to care about why they should use your product.
00:09:56.778 --> 00:09:59.719
I think that's a good thing to learn from those folks.
00:09:59.719 --> 00:10:15.715
The other thing about the talent thing with Solano Labs and Solano Foundation is that, yeah, the churn is low and those organizations aren't very big in the first place, but even of the people who do leave, they're doing things like what I'm doing, which is like they literally are starting companies.
00:10:15.715 --> 00:10:24.057
But yeah, we're trying to build and grow the Solano ecosystem even outside of the foundation, which is probably the end state anyways.
00:10:24.057 --> 00:10:39.139
Right, like if you look at the Ethereum Foundation or kind of like, the direction that Solano Foundation's headed is like a lot of the core initiatives and the ecosystem are kind of being decentralized, right, and I think that's really healthy for like the broader, like social decentralization layer of Solano.
00:10:39.850 --> 00:10:42.011
At least the people I've talked to that I work with at the foundation.
00:10:42.011 --> 00:10:50.475
We all buy into that, like this idea that we want to work as much as possible, work ourselves out of the job and like and it's already happening, right.
00:10:50.475 --> 00:10:51.253
So I think that's what.
00:10:51.253 --> 00:10:53.663
I think Solano community is in charge of the network.
00:10:53.663 --> 00:10:55.308
It's incredible to see.
00:10:55.308 --> 00:10:57.937
Let's talk about a little bit about.
00:10:57.937 --> 00:11:01.827
How did you get pulled into that hackathon stuff and how did that start?
00:11:01.827 --> 00:11:13.629
Because it's been an amazing, I would say, center of growth for the ecosystem and, incredibly important, is one of the main, if not the main, funnel for attracting high quality developers to build.
00:11:13.629 --> 00:11:15.052
But how did that start?
00:11:15.052 --> 00:11:16.725
What was the process?
00:11:16.725 --> 00:11:20.322
I really feel like this is something other teams could replicate and need to think about.
00:11:20.322 --> 00:11:28.491
Just tell a story and then thoughts on what made it successful and maybe some of the things that didn't work, that you tried hard, lessons learned.
00:11:28.491 --> 00:11:32.246
These are the things I'm curious to learn about with the hackathon piece.
00:11:33.169 --> 00:11:33.471
For sure.
00:11:33.471 --> 00:11:53.955
We tried a bunch of different things that haven't worked, but the hackathons definitely have, and one mental framework that I think marketers and people in growth need to have is that a lot of Web2 companies have grown through one or two channels or programs that have acquired a Pareto distribution of customers.
00:11:53.955 --> 00:12:12.331
Like 80% are coming from one or two channels, and I think, if you think of L1 blockchains as the same, it's not surprising that when we ran the numbers recently and looked at all the venture funding rounds of all the Solana startups over time, 80% had their genesis in the hackathons.
00:12:12.331 --> 00:12:21.879
Where that started was that at the time when I joined, there were only a few developers and a couple independent teams trying to build on Solana.
00:12:21.879 --> 00:12:28.990
Whatever Chewing glass is what people said back then, because it was so difficult, and so we were trying to figure out one.
00:12:29.029 --> 00:12:31.985
How do we just get core components into the ecosystem?
00:12:31.985 --> 00:12:35.259
How do we get our first Barlin protocol, our first wallet?
00:12:35.259 --> 00:12:42.898
That's not solid, which was an open source, not a fully backed team at the time.
00:12:42.898 --> 00:12:48.652
So there was like individual things that specifically the BD team was working on to try to fill out.
00:12:48.652 --> 00:13:08.221
But more what I was interested in is how do we bring in a scalable and repeatable way, a bunch of developers and, specifically, startup founders that could bring their own creative ideas and product ideas and build them on the network, and so that was a genesis for the first hackathon that is carried on today.
00:13:08.423 --> 00:13:16.952
The first hackathon was actually called Wormhole and it was based around this the launch of Wormhole, the bridge protocol.
00:13:16.952 --> 00:13:26.142
So we named it Wormhole because we were like, oh, we're going to just have people build on Wormhole and try to get applications built using that system.
00:13:26.142 --> 00:13:35.558
But Wormhole never launched in time and so we just decided we're just going to call it Wormhole and regardless and just have people build whatever they want to build.
00:13:35.558 --> 00:13:40.798
And at the time I think we got over 60 product submissions, which was insane for the Solana ecosystem.
00:13:40.798 --> 00:13:49.288
They're just really, really thought that was magic and we decided to double down and obviously triple down on it with Coliseum.
00:13:49.288 --> 00:13:53.363
So, yeah, I'm happy to jump into more into the hackathon stuff, but yeah, that was kind of the genesis.
00:13:54.225 --> 00:13:58.823
It's been incredible because that was the first one, and 60 back then it sounds like a small number.
00:13:58.823 --> 00:14:08.114
It was 60, more than just a handful that we're already building on the network, and how did you get from there to where you are today?
00:14:08.114 --> 00:14:09.440
What has the growth been like?
00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:17.190
And I think also talk about a few examples of companies that have gone with just an idea and got fully funded through that process.
00:14:17.932 --> 00:14:21.042
Yeah, I mean we have some listed on our website, coliseumorg.
00:14:21.042 --> 00:14:40.524
It's like Tencer, the founders of, like Gito Labs, marinade, stepin, genopets a wide variety of different products and, in the ecosystem, their founders had their genesis in the hackathons and I would say how we've scaled it up from 60 to where we landed most recently with Hyperdrive, which is over 900.
00:14:40.524 --> 00:14:44.352
I'd say that we haven't treated it like a traditional hackathon.
00:14:44.352 --> 00:14:46.972
So, like, first of all, they're all online.
00:14:46.972 --> 00:14:48.480
There are a very long period of times.
00:14:48.480 --> 00:14:49.745
There are five to six weeks.
00:14:50.267 --> 00:15:00.687
Usually hackathons are something that you just go with some friends for like a weekend, drink a bunch of Red Bull and like sleep in sleeping bags or whatever and try to produce something like a proof of concept.
00:15:00.687 --> 00:15:06.030
But our hackathons are much more advertised and messaged and structured around being startup competition.
00:15:06.030 --> 00:15:12.711
So they're not just for developers, although, like, a lot of just regular developers use it as a way to experiment with the technology.
00:15:12.711 --> 00:15:29.431
They're very much focused and a lot of the awards are pretty much only focused on teams who are using it as their first engineering sprint to go launch their product, and so a lot of the structure around that has been developed and evolved over time to fit that specific target and goal.
00:15:29.431 --> 00:15:31.822
So that's generally what we've done.
00:15:31.822 --> 00:15:34.791
And then there's also like the marketing channels we use around it.
00:15:34.791 --> 00:15:37.849
We treat the hackathon not like an event.
00:15:37.849 --> 00:15:45.270
It's a product in itself and the product is marketed in a very specific way, with specific marketing channels that we've evolved over time.
00:15:45.270 --> 00:15:47.788
So that's kind of how we got to where we are today.
00:15:49.822 --> 00:15:54.821
And as far as funding goes, like, what's the latest on how much funding companies have raised in total.
00:15:54.821 --> 00:15:58.511
I just think that's a really good data point so people know how effective this has been.
00:15:59.799 --> 00:16:04.578
Yeah, just looking at like publicly announced fundraising rounds, it's around 600.
00:16:04.578 --> 00:16:12.466
What we have heard privately it's probably 600 million total and cumulatively, privately we've heard it's probably closer to like 650 million.
00:16:12.466 --> 00:16:17.482
But I think that's something that I've tried to work on a lot with.
00:16:17.482 --> 00:16:23.909
Some folks is like after the hackathon there's obviously a lot of promising founders, how do we help them get connected with VCs?
00:16:23.909 --> 00:16:47.331
And this is a lot of the genesis right for Coliseum, where it's like formalizing that into an actual program running the hackathon, running an accelerator for the promising winners and actually backing them to give them the bridge financing they need to get to a proper seed round, because oftentimes even the best teams take several months to a year to raise that seed round after coming out of the hackathon.
00:16:47.331 --> 00:16:57.649
And so that's why you know one of the reasons why Coliseum raised Adventure Fund to invest in them right after the hackathon at the pre-seed level to help them bridge the gap to get in front of seed investors.
00:16:58.039 --> 00:16:59.264
Yeah, and that's a somewhat new thing.
00:16:59.264 --> 00:17:02.942
So tell me more about the fund, like what size is it and what kind of checks do you?
00:17:03.056 --> 00:17:07.946
write yeah, just overall, how Coliseum works is we are going to be running the hackathons.
00:17:07.946 --> 00:17:10.982
You know this is our bread and butter of how we've been growing the Solana ecosystem.
00:17:10.982 --> 00:17:14.531
We'll continue doing that for the Solana Foundation and the broader ecosystem.
00:17:14.531 --> 00:17:19.215
We'll then basically narrow down the winners so there's usually 40 winners.
00:17:19.215 --> 00:17:38.333
We'll narrow it down even further to the top 10 to 15 teams and right after the hackathon, basically offer them acceptance into our accelerator program, which is another five to six weeks, which is much more focused on getting them from DevNet to Mainnet, getting them the connections that they need to continue building their product and, you know, find product market fit.
00:17:38.333 --> 00:17:47.746
And we have a whole roster of former hackathon winners that have become top founders and other, you know, founders from across the ecosystem that have agreed to be mentors.
00:17:47.746 --> 00:17:51.345
And then we're running a demo day right to help them get their seed round.
00:17:51.345 --> 00:17:56.180
But up front we basically offer them a pre-seed check of $250,000 each.
00:17:56.180 --> 00:17:58.585
So that's awesome.
00:17:59.386 --> 00:17:59.867
That's great.
00:17:59.867 --> 00:18:01.811
Yeah, I think that's really needed.
00:18:01.811 --> 00:18:12.307
I've worked with a decent number of teams in Solana, some of whom I've invested in some of them that I just advised, but to help them with that process, because a lot of people, especially going through a hackathon like they haven't.
00:18:12.307 --> 00:18:15.279
There are definitely a decent number of teams that have never raised money before.
00:18:15.279 --> 00:18:22.977
Actually, one-on-one book I've been re-recommending I kind of forgot about it until recently, but it's Venture Deals by Brad Feld.
00:18:23.799 --> 00:18:27.272
I think that's a really good book for some founders who haven't raised before.
00:18:27.272 --> 00:18:28.196
To just check out.
00:18:28.196 --> 00:18:39.559
There's a little bit of a difference in crypto without things are structured, but overall, the things that are in that book will save you a lot of time and money and make sure that you don't sign a deal that's really bad for your company.
00:18:39.559 --> 00:18:45.394
I think that's one thing that I like about the Accelerator is you can actually provide a safe space for people to raise.
00:18:45.394 --> 00:18:47.059
It's kind of how YC works.
00:18:47.059 --> 00:18:51.915
If you're a bad actor, investor and people find out about it, you're not invited to that party anymore.
00:18:51.915 --> 00:18:53.681
I think that's pretty important.
00:18:54.930 --> 00:19:03.340
Yeah, there definitely are bad actor investors that are very short-term thinking, that pair it as VC's, which are purportedly very long-term thinking.
00:19:03.340 --> 00:19:18.165
In crypto specifically, I think there's a lot of dynamics that we offer to teach about as part of the program where to talk about Venture Deals, you don't want to give up too much of your company or raise too much money.
00:19:18.165 --> 00:19:20.211
I think we saw this with the last round.
00:19:20.211 --> 00:19:31.740
People optimizing for the most money get in big trouble when the market turns around because if you're valuating, do a seed round at 300 million posts.
00:19:31.740 --> 00:19:34.672
That's the watermark for you.
00:19:34.672 --> 00:19:41.596
If the market recedes and you don't fulfill that 300 million dollar post, you're going to have to do a down round, which is not good.
00:19:41.596 --> 00:19:44.702
Taking more money is not always the best decision.
00:19:44.702 --> 00:19:52.342
Then, obviously, you throw in the whole token component where it's like maybe you only need to raise one round before your TGE.
00:19:52.342 --> 00:19:55.945
You have a token and that's funding your operations.
00:19:55.945 --> 00:20:00.650
There's a lot of different dynamics that are unique to crypto that I think we can help founders with.
00:20:01.952 --> 00:20:03.156
Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
00:20:03.156 --> 00:20:08.925
There are definitely a lot of things that are unique that they just won't know until they find out the hard way in some cases.
00:20:08.925 --> 00:20:12.157
I think that's why that the accelerator is extremely valuable.
00:20:12.157 --> 00:20:16.251
It sounds like you said you narrow it down to 40 teams per cohort.
00:20:16.251 --> 00:20:17.736
That's what you're thinking.
00:20:18.436 --> 00:20:21.083
We have 30 to 40 winners per hackathon.
00:20:21.083 --> 00:20:34.842
And then of those we'll interview all of them, basically those 30 to 40, that's the only way to actually get considered for the accelerator so you can apply to the accelerator other than going and winning our hackathon.
00:20:34.842 --> 00:20:36.367
It's the only route in.
00:20:36.367 --> 00:20:44.092
And then from there, from those 30-ish teams, we'll choose 10 to 15 to actually invest in and accept it in the accelerator.
00:20:45.115 --> 00:20:45.335
Nice.
00:20:45.335 --> 00:20:47.642
What are you most excited about?
00:20:47.642 --> 00:20:50.148
You just started Coliseum.
00:20:50.148 --> 00:20:50.952
It's getting off the ground.
00:20:50.952 --> 00:20:51.778
I think you got your first.
00:20:51.778 --> 00:20:53.549
When's the first hackathon happening?
00:20:55.117 --> 00:20:56.826
March 4th through April 8th.
00:20:56.826 --> 00:20:59.438
Okay, and you run an accelerator batch right after.
00:20:59.911 --> 00:21:02.657
I guess part of my question is what inspired you to go out on your own?
00:21:02.657 --> 00:21:06.200
I think that's an interesting topic to cover.
00:21:06.200 --> 00:21:09.451
And then, in that same vein, what are you most excited about building this company?
00:21:10.494 --> 00:21:16.353
The reason I decided to start this with my two co-founders is one I really wanted to work with them.
00:21:16.353 --> 00:21:20.586
So these folks are not people that worked at Solana Foundation Labs.
00:21:20.586 --> 00:21:35.252
Clay was an investor at Slow Ventures and I had worked with them previously, like I said, at Square and ZeroX, so we had a long history of wanting to work on interesting things together and so that opportunity rose.
00:21:35.252 --> 00:21:39.573
And then obviously, nate, who's the third co-founder he's our technical co-founder.
00:21:39.573 --> 00:21:43.430
He was at Stripe building back at Infrastructure for the last four or five years.
00:21:43.589 --> 00:22:00.948
So, yeah, I think it was just the opportunity to work with those guys and build a unique thing that we hadn't seen in Web 2 or Web 3, where we sort of took the YC model but instead of a college style written application use this hackathon that I knew was already working.
00:22:00.948 --> 00:22:11.452
I knew that a lot of great founders were already coming through this and I think we could just provide an even more valuable experience for those founders if we had dedicated like a full-time organization around it.
00:22:11.452 --> 00:22:19.363
So I think it was just the unique model, the value that we could provide the Solana ecosystem and working with those guys on fulfilling that vision.
00:22:19.363 --> 00:22:21.872
Sorry, what was the second part of your question?
00:22:21.892 --> 00:22:23.138
What are you most excited about, like?
00:22:23.138 --> 00:22:26.498
What are you looking forward to in the next year with building this company?
00:22:26.498 --> 00:22:27.240
It sounds like partly.
00:22:27.240 --> 00:22:33.304
It's working with those guys is one part of the answer, but are there other things that you're just like can't wait to see?
00:22:33.344 --> 00:22:49.300
Yeah, we can't wait to work with like really talented founders from across the world, and so I think that's what really excites me about this right, there's so many interesting use cases, especially with sort of like deep end taking hold in Solana.
00:22:49.300 --> 00:23:02.328
But the crypto space generally I think you know that's one category of project that we're interesting in backing and we'll have a dedicated track in the hackathon for is just working with those founders on kind of what they're going to build.
00:23:02.328 --> 00:23:05.536
I think that's what's always been interesting to me about.
00:23:05.536 --> 00:23:25.501
Crypto is just like how it opens up new markets or creates efficiencies by reducing middlemen that are kind of worthless in a crypto context, in a crypto dominated world, and so I think, yeah, it's just learning about all the interesting ideas that founders have and helping them kind of realize that vision through Coliseum.
00:23:26.230 --> 00:23:27.719
I'm super excited about deep end.
00:23:27.719 --> 00:23:33.480
I mean, really, when I came to Solana, that was the thing I was already thinking about and working on and I didn't even realize it was before.
00:23:33.480 --> 00:23:41.917
There was a deep end was like a phrase, but it's just this idea like how do you bootstrap the physical infrastructure required to make a network work?
00:23:41.917 --> 00:23:45.251
And then obviously there are a lot of different iterate.
00:23:45.251 --> 00:23:56.771
For me, that context was validators and data centers for various different networks not just Solana, but now we've got decentralized telecoms, decentralized mapping products that use hardware.
00:23:56.771 --> 00:24:00.340
I feel like it's such a green field and there's so much innovation coming.
00:24:00.340 --> 00:24:07.453
And then the other one that I'm really excited about is real world assets, and you were talking about like creating new markets.
00:24:08.015 --> 00:24:12.463
We just recently had Todd from Baxus on the show and they do.
00:24:12.463 --> 00:24:16.301
I don't know if you know that company, but they are tokenizing whiskey.
00:24:16.301 --> 00:24:29.377
For me, the why use blockchain for something like that is because it creates a new market for liquidity for whiskey or for wine and spirits that didn't exist before.
00:24:29.377 --> 00:24:45.377
So a distributor who's a whiskey maker, who has a bunch of barrels of whiskey sitting in a warehouse somewhere really it was like tough to get liquidity and a loan to finance their operations and now you can do that in a permissionless way on a platform and stuff like that.
00:24:45.377 --> 00:24:52.344
That I think the composability and the openness of blockchain technology on Solana makes it possible.
00:24:52.344 --> 00:24:54.009
I think that's really interesting.
00:24:54.009 --> 00:25:02.374
So we're getting close to the top of the show here and I always kind of ask this but what things have I not asked you that I should have asked or that you wanted to talk about?
00:25:03.537 --> 00:25:05.021
I think we covered a lot of it.
00:25:05.021 --> 00:25:14.339
I'm curious to know from your outside perspective, beyond deep end, what use cases are you wanting to see come out of the hackathon?
00:25:14.339 --> 00:25:20.688
Where do you think the big opportunities are for Solana, but just crypto generally over the next couple of years?
00:25:21.817 --> 00:25:31.564
So there are some really hard problems that need to be solved around encryption and things like zero-knowledge proofs, fully homomorphic encryption.
00:25:31.564 --> 00:25:36.303
I don't know if you've seen Million Network I haven't had those guys on the show yet but I just read their white paper.
00:25:36.303 --> 00:25:38.220
It's an overlay network really.
00:25:38.220 --> 00:25:44.846
It's not blockchain-specific, it's not even a blockchain, but it's kind of like a multi-party computation, but better.
00:25:44.846 --> 00:25:50.019
I don't want to get into all the technical details, but you can go to their website and check out their technology.
00:25:50.019 --> 00:26:00.065
The theme here is how do you actually make AI work in Web 3 in a way that's usable, that can get adoption by enterprises and outside of just hobbyist?
00:26:00.065 --> 00:26:11.587
I think that there are some missing pieces around privacy technology and decentralized computing that are maybe closer than I thought but still haven't existed.
00:26:11.587 --> 00:26:13.079
That's a really hard problem.
00:26:13.079 --> 00:26:20.261
These are like PhD-level multi-year research projects, but I do think that there are going to be some interesting AI applications.
00:26:20.261 --> 00:26:32.183
There's a stack of technology that does exist that will allow some AI use cases to work that involve blockchain technology and Web 3 principles in general, but there are also missing pieces that there's a green field.
00:26:32.183 --> 00:26:40.942
The other thing that I'm really interested in is somewhat related, because I still think you need privacy-preserving technologies to make it work, but it's data markets.
00:26:40.942 --> 00:26:50.917
I have a friend who has, through a nonprofit that he runs, access to two petabytes of medical research data.
00:26:50.917 --> 00:27:01.665
Researchers put data in this repository and it's supposed to be open, but it's just dumped into this tar-Z file and the data is not sorted at all.
00:27:01.665 --> 00:27:04.501
It's really hard to make it useful for machine learning.
00:27:04.501 --> 00:27:10.086
You need that data to be anonymized because it's all medical research data.
00:27:10.086 --> 00:27:13.157
It's got PII in it In order to solve that problem.
00:27:13.157 --> 00:27:15.665
This is again why I go back to the encryption stuff.
00:27:15.665 --> 00:27:21.979
You need some kind of technology like that if it's going to be available in an open and permissionless way.
00:27:21.979 --> 00:27:32.520
Right now, the only way to use it is to spend millions of dollars organizing it which I think could be solved by decentralized compute and to put it in a centralized, closed server that a big pharma company owns.
00:27:32.520 --> 00:27:33.423
We don't want that.
00:27:33.423 --> 00:27:38.126
We don't want one big pharma company to be the sole group that can access this information.
00:27:38.126 --> 00:27:39.019
It's super important.
00:00:06.229 --> 00:00:10.095
00:00:10.095 --> 00:00:17.800
00:00:34.140 --> 00:00:36.027
00:00:36.027 --> 00:00:49.447
00:00:49.447 --> 00:01:03.371
00:01:03.371 --> 00:01:04.563
00:01:05.682 --> 00:01:07.046
00:01:07.046 --> 00:01:12.865
00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:17.829
00:01:17.829 --> 00:01:23.906
00:01:25.421 --> 00:01:41.507
00:01:41.507 --> 00:01:50.686
00:01:50.686 --> 00:02:12.731
00:02:12.731 --> 00:02:25.271
00:02:25.271 --> 00:02:28.489
00:02:28.489 --> 00:02:31.366
00:02:31.366 --> 00:02:35.969
00:02:36.099 --> 00:02:54.811
00:02:54.811 --> 00:02:57.487
00:02:57.487 --> 00:03:07.890
00:03:07.890 --> 00:03:26.645
00:03:26.645 --> 00:03:31.292
00:03:31.439 --> 00:03:36.580
00:03:36.580 --> 00:03:54.219
00:03:54.219 --> 00:04:05.006
00:04:05.006 --> 00:04:07.306
00:04:07.306 --> 00:04:09.667
00:04:09.667 --> 00:04:13.348
00:04:13.348 --> 00:04:15.947
00:04:16.502 --> 00:04:17.846
00:04:17.846 --> 00:04:26.769
00:04:26.769 --> 00:04:34.507
00:04:34.507 --> 00:04:48.326
00:04:48.326 --> 00:05:26.983
00:05:26.983 --> 00:05:31.132
00:05:31.132 --> 00:05:34.894
00:05:34.980 --> 00:05:50.790
00:05:51.319 --> 00:06:05.591
00:06:05.591 --> 00:06:14.612
00:06:14.612 --> 00:06:48.963
00:06:49.699 --> 00:06:52.670
00:06:52.670 --> 00:06:54.966
00:06:54.966 --> 00:07:22.954
00:07:22.954 --> 00:07:29.538
00:07:29.538 --> 00:07:33.074
00:07:33.074 --> 00:07:35.415
00:07:35.415 --> 00:07:36.314
00:07:36.314 --> 00:07:39.153
00:07:39.153 --> 00:07:42.735
00:07:43.329 --> 00:08:07.043
00:08:07.043 --> 00:08:09.398
00:08:09.398 --> 00:08:19.980
00:08:19.980 --> 00:08:21.615
00:08:21.615 --> 00:08:22.875
00:08:22.990 --> 00:08:24.154
00:08:24.154 --> 00:08:31.860
00:08:31.860 --> 00:08:40.576
00:08:40.576 --> 00:08:51.616
00:08:51.616 --> 00:08:52.953
00:08:52.953 --> 00:08:58.475
00:08:58.590 --> 00:09:08.817
00:09:08.817 --> 00:09:14.855
00:09:14.855 --> 00:09:17.518
00:09:17.518 --> 00:09:21.234
00:09:21.234 --> 00:09:31.240
00:09:31.240 --> 00:09:40.755
00:09:40.755 --> 00:09:43.839
00:09:44.370 --> 00:09:50.938
00:09:50.938 --> 00:09:56.778
00:09:56.778 --> 00:09:59.719
00:09:59.719 --> 00:10:15.715
00:10:15.715 --> 00:10:24.057
00:10:24.057 --> 00:10:39.139
00:10:39.850 --> 00:10:42.011
00:10:42.011 --> 00:10:50.475
00:10:50.475 --> 00:10:51.253
00:10:51.253 --> 00:10:53.663
00:10:53.663 --> 00:10:55.308
00:10:55.308 --> 00:10:57.937
00:10:57.937 --> 00:11:01.827
00:11:01.827 --> 00:11:13.629
00:11:13.629 --> 00:11:15.052
00:11:15.052 --> 00:11:16.725
00:11:16.725 --> 00:11:20.322
00:11:20.322 --> 00:11:28.491
00:11:28.491 --> 00:11:32.246
00:11:33.169 --> 00:11:33.471
00:11:33.471 --> 00:11:53.955
00:11:53.955 --> 00:12:12.331
00:12:12.331 --> 00:12:21.879
00:12:21.879 --> 00:12:28.990
00:12:29.029 --> 00:12:31.985
00:12:31.985 --> 00:12:35.259
00:12:35.259 --> 00:12:42.898
00:12:42.898 --> 00:12:48.652
00:12:48.652 --> 00:13:08.221
00:13:08.423 --> 00:13:16.952
00:13:16.952 --> 00:13:26.142
00:13:26.142 --> 00:13:35.558
00:13:35.558 --> 00:13:40.798
00:13:40.798 --> 00:13:49.288
00:13:49.288 --> 00:13:53.363
00:13:54.225 --> 00:13:58.823
00:13:58.823 --> 00:14:08.114
00:14:08.114 --> 00:14:09.440
00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:17.190
00:14:17.932 --> 00:14:21.042
00:14:21.042 --> 00:14:40.524
00:14:40.524 --> 00:14:44.352
00:14:44.352 --> 00:14:46.972
00:14:46.972 --> 00:14:48.480
00:14:48.480 --> 00:14:49.745
00:14:50.267 --> 00:15:00.687
00:15:00.687 --> 00:15:06.030
00:15:06.030 --> 00:15:12.711
00:15:12.711 --> 00:15:29.431
00:15:29.431 --> 00:15:31.822
00:15:31.822 --> 00:15:34.791
00:15:34.791 --> 00:15:37.849
00:15:37.849 --> 00:15:45.270
00:15:45.270 --> 00:15:47.788
00:15:49.822 --> 00:15:54.821
00:15:54.821 --> 00:15:58.511
00:15:59.799 --> 00:16:04.578
00:16:04.578 --> 00:16:12.466
00:16:12.466 --> 00:16:17.482
00:16:17.482 --> 00:16:23.909
00:16:23.909 --> 00:16:47.331
00:16:47.331 --> 00:16:57.649
00:16:58.039 --> 00:16:59.264
00:16:59.264 --> 00:17:02.942
00:17:03.056 --> 00:17:07.946
00:17:07.946 --> 00:17:10.982
00:17:10.982 --> 00:17:14.531
00:17:14.531 --> 00:17:19.215
00:17:19.215 --> 00:17:38.333
00:17:38.333 --> 00:17:47.746
00:17:47.746 --> 00:17:51.345
00:17:51.345 --> 00:17:56.180
00:17:56.180 --> 00:17:58.585
00:17:59.386 --> 00:17:59.867
00:17:59.867 --> 00:18:01.811
00:18:01.811 --> 00:18:12.307
00:18:12.307 --> 00:18:15.279
00:18:15.279 --> 00:18:22.977
00:18:23.799 --> 00:18:27.272
00:18:27.272 --> 00:18:28.196
00:18:28.196 --> 00:18:39.559
00:18:39.559 --> 00:18:45.394
00:18:45.394 --> 00:18:47.059
00:18:47.059 --> 00:18:51.915
00:18:51.915 --> 00:18:53.681
00:18:54.930 --> 00:19:03.340
00:19:03.340 --> 00:19:18.165
00:19:18.165 --> 00:19:20.211
00:19:20.211 --> 00:19:31.740
00:19:31.740 --> 00:19:34.672
00:19:34.672 --> 00:19:41.596
00:19:41.596 --> 00:19:44.702
00:19:44.702 --> 00:19:52.342
00:19:52.342 --> 00:19:55.945
00:19:55.945 --> 00:20:00.650
00:20:01.952 --> 00:20:03.156
00:20:03.156 --> 00:20:08.925
00:20:08.925 --> 00:20:12.157
00:20:12.157 --> 00:20:16.251
00:20:16.251 --> 00:20:17.736
00:20:18.436 --> 00:20:21.083
00:20:21.083 --> 00:20:34.842
00:20:34.842 --> 00:20:36.367
00:20:36.367 --> 00:20:44.092
00:20:45.115 --> 00:20:45.335
00:20:45.335 --> 00:20:47.642
00:20:47.642 --> 00:20:50.148
00:20:50.148 --> 00:20:50.952
00:20:50.952 --> 00:20:51.778
00:20:51.778 --> 00:20:53.549
00:20:55.117 --> 00:20:56.826
00:20:56.826 --> 00:20:59.438
00:20:59.911 --> 00:21:02.657
00:21:02.657 --> 00:21:06.200
00:21:06.200 --> 00:21:09.451
00:21:10.494 --> 00:21:16.353
00:21:16.353 --> 00:21:20.586
00:21:20.586 --> 00:21:35.252
00:21:35.252 --> 00:21:39.573
00:21:39.573 --> 00:21:43.430
00:21:43.589 --> 00:22:00.948
00:22:00.948 --> 00:22:11.452
00:22:11.452 --> 00:22:19.363
00:22:19.363 --> 00:22:21.872
00:22:21.892 --> 00:22:23.138
00:22:23.138 --> 00:22:26.498
00:22:26.498 --> 00:22:27.240
00:22:27.240 --> 00:22:33.304
00:22:33.344 --> 00:22:49.300
00:22:49.300 --> 00:23:02.328
00:23:02.328 --> 00:23:05.536
00:23:05.536 --> 00:23:25.501
00:23:26.230 --> 00:23:27.719
00:23:27.719 --> 00:23:33.480
00:23:33.480 --> 00:23:41.917
00:23:41.917 --> 00:23:45.251
00:23:45.251 --> 00:23:56.771
00:23:56.771 --> 00:24:00.340
00:24:00.340 --> 00:24:07.453
00:24:08.015 --> 00:24:12.463
00:24:12.463 --> 00:24:16.301
00:24:16.301 --> 00:24:29.377
00:24:29.377 --> 00:24:45.377
00:24:45.377 --> 00:24:52.344
00:24:52.344 --> 00:24:54.009
00:24:54.009 --> 00:25:02.374
00:25:03.537 --> 00:25:05.021
00:25:05.021 --> 00:25:14.339
00:25:14.339 --> 00:25:20.688
00:25:21.817 --> 00:25:31.564
00:25:31.564 --> 00:25:36.303
00:25:36.303 --> 00:25:38.220
00:25:38.220 --> 00:25:44.846
00:25:44.846 --> 00:25:50.019
00:25:50.019 --> 00:26:00.065
00:26:00.065 --> 00:26:11.587
00:26:11.587 --> 00:26:13.079
00:26:13.079 --> 00:26:20.261
00:26:20.261 --> 00:26:32.183
00:26:32.183 --> 00:26:40.942
00:26:40.942 --> 00:26:50.917
00:26:50.917 --> 00:27:01.665
00:27:01.665 --> 00:27:04.501
00:27:04.501 --> 00:27:10.086
00:27:10.086 --> 00:27:13.157
00:27:13.157 --> 00:27:15.665
00:27:15.665 --> 00:27:21.979
00:27:21.979 --> 00:27:32.520
00:27:32.520 --> 00:27:33.423
00:27:33.423 --> 00:27:38.126
00:27:38.126 --> 00:27:39.019