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

• Why crypto?

  • Financial freedom for all is important because of childhood.

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

• Founder journey

  • Learned to hustle selling iPods to NBA players

  • Learned financial system from RBC → Blackrock

  • Learned frameworks for thinking about GTM from consulting

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

• Spinning Novi out of Facebook

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

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

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

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

• GTM

  • Aptos works with two worlds

  • Innovators

    • Startups = disrupt existing business

    • Disrupt existing systems so there is more efficiency

  • Old guard

    • Large companies = not going anywhere

    • Pros: Still retain massive distribution

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

    • Example: Google earns APT tokens by running a validator

• Web3 is the hardest place to be an entrepreneur

  • The market is “neck-whipping” fast

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

  • Everything is open (Twitter, Discord, Telegram)

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

• Dealing with haters

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

  • Always a major move forward in the wake of hatred

  • Respond with marketing jujutsu

    • Use the moment

    • Embrace the discussion

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

• Positioning Web2 vs. Web3

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

  • Why?

    • Faster adopt

    • Higher velocity

    • Variety of use-cases

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

• Competition

  • A crowded market in web3 doesn't matter

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

  • Flex your advantage

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

  • What Mo respects about other chains

    • Community building

    • Founder-led personality

• Status of web3 today

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

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

    • NFTs? Don’t see it yet.

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

    • Aptos thinks: finance → game → media

• Book recommendations

  • Hard think about hard things by Ben Horotiz

  • Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson

• Where to find Mo?

  • Twitter

  • Aptos Labs

• Founding Optimism

  • Dropped out of college to become a Bitcoiner

  • Attracted to Ethereum

    • Humans trying to build something together

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

      

• Bountycaster

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

  • How to run a good Bountycaster? My flow:

    • Get inspiration from completed bounties

    • Use the Create a Post tool on Bountycaster

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

• Once Upon

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

• Splits

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

  • Here’s a Splits protocol chart after the Titles (by Soren

• We shipped 🚢

  • Collaborative Frameboards - Farcaster / Twitter

    

👋 See you next week - Jayme