EP 061 | LYRON CO TING KEH | SEISMIC

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this episode of Doc Radio, the Realist Recruiter is joined by Lon from Seismic for an engaging conversation about the tech industry, startups, and blockchain innovation. They dive into Lon's background, the formation of Seismic from his experiences in Stanford's AI and crypto circles, and the challenges of building a team in today's tech landscape. Lon discusses the fun yet technical nature of the crypto community, the importance of in-person teamwork in startups, and the lessons learned from handling criticism. They also explore the distinctive approach Seismic is taking in blockchain innovation, focusing on encrypted versus transparent blockchains, and the broader implications of this for the tech world.

Highlights

Lon's transition from AI to blockchain was driven by the fun nature of the crypto community 🎉.
Seismic aims to address forced transparency in blockchains, a critical industry challenge 🌐.
In-person collaboration is a key to Seismic's team synergy and success 🎯.
Handling criticism and public perception is part of the learning curve in the startup world 📢.
Lon's narrative on AI influencers as a potential trend in the crypto world 🌟.

Key Takeaways

Lon from Seismic shares his journey from Stanford AI enthusiast to leading a crypto startup 🚀.
Seismic focuses on cryptography and blockchain innovation, aiming to tackle transparency issues in the blockchain space 🔍.
The importance of in-person collaboration in tech startups is emphasized for building a cohesive team 👫.
The doc highlights the challenges of startup life, including hiring, fundraising, and handling public criticism 📈.
Lon discusses the unique culture and the creative freedom in the crypto community, comparing it to AI circles at Stanford 🤖.

Overview

Lon from Seismic shares his exciting transition from AI to the vibrant world of blockchain technologies. Known for his time at Stanford, Lon experienced firsthand the fun duality between AI and crypto communities. This episode unpacks his journey and decision to delve deep into the more chaotically ingenious space of crypto.

The episode dives deep into the narrative of Seismic, Lon's brainchild focused on cryptography and blockchain innovation. It explores the company's mission to grapple with the challenge of 'forced transparency' in blockchain, a pivotal issue for the sector. This discussion includes insights on the division between transparent and encrypted blockchains and their future roles.

Commentary on startup culture reveals a preference for in-person teamwork at Seismic. This approach is key to fostering strong team bonds and effective collaboration, proving that even in highly digital fields, face-to-face interactions remain invaluable. This insight is critical as it ties into broader discussions on tech startups' dynamics, from hiring practices to public feedback and lessons learned.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Guest Welcome The host of Doc Radio enthusiastically welcomes back viewers from various platforms, including LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Discord. He introduces himself as the 'Realist Recruiter' and encourages sharing the episode. The host expresses excitement about presenting a new episode after returning from Eat Denver and introduces a guest, Lon from Seismic. Lon is welcomed to the show as the episode begins.
00:30 - 01:00: Project Background and LinkedIn Strategy This chapter discusses the project's background, focusing on the strategy involving LinkedIn. Initially, there is recognition of LinkedIn's role and potential for reaching a large target addressable market (TAM). However, it also reflects the notion that LinkedIn's potential might have been 'squeezed dry' for the project. Despite this, LinkedIn is acknowledged as a suitable starting point. The project has been in existence for a year, but recent discussions suggest that it is becoming more tangible and real. There is also a reflection on early interactions, specifically mentioning a meeting during the project’s early days at the Stanford blockchain accelerator.
01:00 - 01:30: Challenges in Hiring for Web3 and Crypto The chapter discusses the challenges faced in hiring talent for the Web3 and crypto industries. It notes a stagnation in the talent pool, with the same individuals circulating through jobs. The chapter highlights the need to transition more professionals from Web2 to Web3 to refresh the talent market. Despite ongoing efforts, there has been minimal success in interviews, indicating the severity of the hiring challenges.
01:30 - 02:00: Guest's Background and Transition to Crypto The chapter delves into the guest's background before entering the cryptocurrency sector. It highlights the challenges faced while hiring staff engineers, particularly with the decision to operate fully in-person, which is uncommon in the crypto industry. The conversation aims to explore the guest's history and the journey leading to their involvement in the crypto world.
02:00 - 02:30: AI Crowd vs Crypto Crowd at Stanford The chapter titled 'AI Crowd vs Crypto Crowd at Stanford' begins with a person sharing their educational and personal background. They grew up in the Philippines before moving to Los Angeles (LA) for high school. Their interest in coding began in middle school and continued through high school. Eventually, they enrolled at Stanford University, where they studied computer science with a strong focus on mathematics. During their time at Stanford, they dedicated themselves primarily to artificial intelligence (AI), being passionate about the field. This period was before the development of the first-generation Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-1), and they were actively engaged in AI projects and activities.
02:30 - 03:00: Why Choose Crypto Over AI The chapter discusses the speaker's journey through various tech industries, comparing experiences in both small startups and large corporations. They worked in experimental groups at Google X and had experiences in Apple R&D and Facebook AI, taking various roles that were sometimes internships or job stints during academic breaks.
03:00 - 03:30: Seismic's Origin Story The chapter titled 'Seismic's Origin Story' delves into the author's experience in the startup scene, particularly at Stanford, which was a vibrant environment for both crypto and AI enthusiasts. The author recalls having two distinct groups of friends: those involved in cryptocurrencies and those focused on artificial intelligence. Despite the rise of AI's prominence at Stanford, the author found the crypto group particularly enjoyable, reflective of the social dynamics at play during this time.
03:30 - 04:00: Early Team Building and Co-Founder Questions The chapter explores the social dynamics at Stanford University, likening it to a typical high school experience where groups form around common interests. At Stanford, these groups are more domain-focused, such as AI and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. The speaker notes a fascinating observation about the distinctive characteristics of these groups, particularly highlighting the 'weirdness' of the crypto crowd, which is meant positively. The content stresses how work and social interactions are often intertwined based on one's area of expertise or interest.
04:00 - 04:30: Transition from Coding to Marketing The chapter titled 'Transition from Coding to Marketing' discusses the different cultures and environments within the AI and crypto industries. It highlights the creativity and unique personas in the cryptosphere, contrasting it with the more structured and industrialized world of AI. The chapter notes the well-formed pipeline in AI for nurturing talented individuals, whereas the crypto industry relies on a few standout figures like Dan Bonet and David Se, who was mentioned to have founded Babylon after leaving the academic world.
04:30 - 05:00: Lessons in Effective Communication This chapter delves into the theme of effective communication through the conversation between two individuals. The dialogue subtly highlights different communication styles and choices, shedding light on how one individual's experience felt more grassroots and less constrained. The discussion transitions into the exploration of choosing blockchain over AI, emphasizing that the fun and engaging nature of the crypto community played a significant role in the decision. This personal anecdote serves as an illustration of how interpersonal dynamics and community vibes can influence professional choices.
05:00 - 05:30: Lessons in Standing by Your Opinions The chapter 'Lessons in Standing by Your Opinions' explores the speaker's educational background and interests. The speaker enjoyed math during undergraduate and master's studies, allowing those interests to guide their early career decisions, particularly towards technical work. They explain a preference for AI due to its ties with optimization and linear algebra, in contrast to crypto, which is aligned with modern algebra. The speaker expresses a preference for modern algebra, indicating a strong stance on personal academic interests that influence professional choices.
05:30 - 06:00: Founder Marketing vs Hiring a CMO The chapter explores the differences and considerations between founder-led marketing and hiring a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). The discussion touches on personal enjoyment and challenges related to the technical aspects of running a company. It delves into the origin story of Seismic, emphasizing the necessity for the founder to excel in their domain to succeed.
06:00 - 06:30: Importance of People in Buying Decisions In this chapter, the author discusses the significance of cryptography and blockchains in the context of team formation and leadership. The author reflects on personal realizations about current capabilities across various domains and identifies the realm of cryptography and blockchains as a promising area due to their unique background and the emerging nature of the field. This recognition propels the author to further investigate and consider focusing efforts on this specific domain.
06:30 - 07:00: Seismic's Unique Selling Proposition The chapter explores the speaker's journey into the crypto and blockchain space, where they sought out challenging aspects of projects that others were hesitant to tackle due to technical complexity. By assisting friends in the industry with their technically demanding tasks, they gained insights into potential problems that could arise in the future, eventually identifying a niche area of focus within the domain.
07:00 - 07:30: Marketing Strategy and Community Engagement The chapter titled 'Marketing Strategy and Community Engagement' addresses the difficulties encountered in accessing essential properties regarding encryption. The narrative reflects on repeated experiences with these obstacles, emphasizing the realization of the issue's magnitude from a first-principles perspective. It acknowledges that recognizing this problem early on could provide a competitive edge, given the expertise already accumulated in this area, and suggests a strategic decision to fully commit to tackling this issue, culminating in further steps such as raising rounds to address it.
07:30 - 08:00: Seismic's Position in the Blockchain Market The chapter discusses the formation of Seismic's team and its position in the blockchain market. The company was started without a co-founder, although there might be additional co-founders in the future as the team grows. The strength of Seismic's team is highlighted, indicating potential growth and adaptation in the blockchain sector.
08:00 - 08:30: Community Building and Unique Marketing The chapter discusses the early days of community building and the challenges faced during the ideation phase. Initially, the process was lonely and difficult, consisting only of the founder and their ideas. However, as more people began to join the initiative, the process became significantly easier. The team eventually expanded to include a head of operations and six engineers, focusing on building the product while the founder handled external communications like tweeting. This highlights the importance of a collaborative team and effective market communication in the growth of a community-based project.
08:30 - 09:00: AI and Blockchain Intersection This chapter discusses the perspective shift experienced by founders, particularly those in the tech industry, as they transition from technical roles into more communicative, leadership-oriented positions. It touches on the necessity for founders to evolve their roles within a company, emphasizing the importance of effective communication in leading modern tech companies. The conversation highlights how this transition is vital for the growth and success of companies that are heavily dependent on innovation and digital transformation.
09:00 - 09:30: Misconceptions About AI in Crypto The chapter discusses the misconceptions surrounding the use of AI in the cryptocurrency industry. It highlights the challenges faced in marketing AI technologies and compares it to other sectors. The speaker reflects on their personal experience, expressing a preference for engineering over marketing. They note a shift in their skills and reward system towards roles like founder and marketer, suggesting a changing landscape in the AI and crypto intersection. The summary hints at a broader dialogue on the evolving demands and perceptions within the field.
09:30 - 10:00: Series C Fundraising Process The speaker is in the early stages of progressing in the Series C fundraising process. They are actively engaging in analytics, consulting with experienced individuals, and running experiments to refine their approach scientifically. The focus is on iterating quickly to improve and succeed. The speaker acknowledges it's early in the process and is learning about effective communication strategies, such as tone of voice and understanding audience expectations, to 'yap' or engage in dialogue successfully.
10:00 - 10:30: Dealing with Online Criticism The chapter explores strategies for handling online criticism and how to make content more engaging for different audiences. The speaker shares personal experiences, particularly in relation to their growth on Twitter, highlighting a journey from minimal engagement to achieving higher levels of interaction. Despite being a work in progress, lessons have been learned regarding audience engagement, which has elevated their social media presence.
10:30 - 11:00: Lessons from Haters and Online Reputation The chapter discusses the strategy of mindful tweeting by considering the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for each tweet. It contrasts this approach with a more casual and frequent tweeting style that some people use. The speaker emphasizes applying strategic thinking, similar to a Stanford AI approach, rather than tweeting aimlessly or out of obligation.
11:00 - 11:30: Importance of Having a Strong Product The chapter discusses the mindset and approach required for developing a strong product. The conversation highlights the importance of balancing optimism and pessimism when creating a product strategy. It acknowledges the potential to overthink the process but also suggests that finding the right mix is possible through continuous adjustment and learning over time.
11:30 - 12:00: Future Goals for Seismic The chapter discusses the delicate balance entrepreneurs and salespeople must maintain in trying to please everyone while also striving for success. In particular, the focus is on how this applies to managing a social media presence, especially on platforms like Twitter. The key lesson from this chapter is that it's important to not shy away from difficult decisions that might upset some individuals. Instead, the emphasis should be on maintaining one's business principles and building respect through firmness, even if it occasionally means displeasing some people. The speaker reflects on personal experiences of not being able to satisfy everyone, acknowledging that this sometimes leads to challenging situations.
12:00 - 12:30: Challenges of In-Person Hiring The chapter discusses the challenges of in-person hiring, emphasizing the need for authenticity and open communication. Despite disagreements, these interactions can lead to better understanding and relationships. The speaker values the honesty of expressing one's views, even if they initially cause friction. This approach can transform conflicts into opportunities for connection and mutual respect.
12:30 - 13:00: Scaling and Future Hiring Strategy The chapter discusses attitudes towards business and collaboration, emphasizing respect despite disagreements. The speaker expresses a willingness to engage openly and critically, recognizing that avoiding offense may sometimes be necessary, but maintaining a stance of being open to different opinions. The conversation suggests that having critics is more meaningful than facing indifference, viewing engagement and sometimes conflict as important aspects of business growth and personal belief.
13:00 - 13:30: Differences in Hiring for Technical vs Non-Technical Roles This chapter discusses the differences between hiring for technical and non-technical roles. The conversation highlights the importance of founders being involved in marketing and establishing the brand's tone and voice. One point raised is that founders can benefit from direct engagement with the audience, receiving feedback, and understanding the market dynamics firsthand.
13:30 - 14:00: Closing Remarks and Encouragement to Haters Chapter Title: Closing Remarks and Encouragement to Haters

EP 061 | LYRON CO TING KEH | SEISMIC Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 what up LinkedIn YouTube Twitter Discord we back man you know what it is it's another Doc Radio banger it's me Realist Recruiter in the game so put some respect on my name like it tweet it share it with somebody who needs to see it salute to all the anons shout out to my DJs big up all the all the chats all the all the Telegram channels man I'm pumped today to bring to you a new episode fresh out of Eat Denver back in the studio with the homie my man Lon from Seismic what Lon what up man thanks for having me thanks for having me i
00:30 - 01:00 love the the order that you put it in linkedin came in first you're really going for a high TAM here damn i might have to switch that up bro you're right i I think I've like squeezed LinkedIn dry at this point but I mean it's a good place to start is like I mean you've been you your project's been around for how long at this point it's been a year a year but we just recently started talking about it more so things feel a lot more real now we're going Hell yeah yeah i remember we met pretty early when you were coming up out of the uh Stanford blockchain accelerator but I guess the point where I was getting to
01:00 - 01:30 is like I don't know if you've noticed this yet maybe not but you will soon enough is like the the talent like market in web 3 of cryptonatives has been really stale lately it's the same people floating around like every couple months you know it's becoming really apparent to me that it's time to bring more people over from web 2 so shout out to LinkedIn if you're watching we got love for you LinkedIn you're in God's work we're over We're 0 for 30 on interviews right now we're 0 for30 streak it's horrendous on on trying to
01:30 - 02:00 recruit a staff engineer and we've been we've been we've been trying really really hard and you need everyone in New York right uh yeah we also do have the tough man yeah cuz we're going a little bit different we're going fully in person which is really tough especially in crypto area i expect it um not everyone can pull it off not everyone can be so patient but there's ways to make it work um but we'll get into all things hiring but why don't why don't we back it up man and start from the lore uh tell me a little bit about about your background man who were you before crypto and how did we get here oh good
02:00 - 02:30 question uh backgroundwise uh I grew up in the Philippines and then I moved to LA for high school i started coding around uh early on around middle school high school phase uh from high school went to Stanford i studied computer science with a good bit of math and then in that pretty much all my years in Stanford I did pretty much just all AI like I was a very big AI guy loved doing it this was around preGPT1 so we were we were still messing
02:30 - 03:00 around some some pretty primitive stuff relative to what we're seeing now then did a bunch of big company stuff but a lot of smaller company stuff i wanted to sample everything so the small companies I tried little uh little experiments in groups in Google X and bigger companies did like Apple R&D Facebook AI uh and then after internships or uh some of them are internships some of them were jobs where I just took quarters off cool and then after really sampling all of it it was pretty clear that uh the the
03:00 - 03:30 startup scene was the one for me and then from the startup scene I had two group distinct groups of friends in Stanford because I went when crypto was really still popping there now it's kind of it's kind of lower down even though it's still an incredible scene there but just AI is just so strong at Stanford so it's like a little bit of that but I had two groups of friends there were crypto people and then AI people i just thought the crypto people were really fun that's literally how like the social circles go at Stanford like in you know Hopra where
03:30 - 04:00 I went school it was like the athletes and the creative people like like a normal high school at Stanford at Stanford is like you're either in the AI crowd or the crypto is that like how it is like that's how it is at the lunch table like oh it's probably not a strict delineation usually but uh you definitely hang out a lot more within your domain because you do a lot of work in characteristics like the difference the differences in the people characteristics between these two groups oh it's completely different the crypto people are much uh weirder in the best
04:00 - 04:30 way possible like they have they have crazier ideas they they dress they dress in a more in a different way those are my people yeah it feels it feels great and then AI it's very it feels very industrialized which is a good and a bad thing where the the ecosystem the pipeline there is very is very wellformed into creating really good AI minds and in crypto it's a little less wellformed where there are a couple shining star professors like Dan Bonet and then David Se before he left and started started Babylon and then it's it
04:30 - 05:00 is more it feels it's a bit more grassroots yeah a little more uh color outside the lines kind of yeah yeah so it felt good and then after that So what made you choose crypto like so I mean to my understanding Seismic isn't like a crypto AI project this is a chain right yeah yeah so what made you I mean you're gravitating towards AI in college what made you choose like blockchain oo good question it was a combination of two things number one it was crypto people were just more fun love love all my ai buddies but good answer like the crypto
05:00 - 05:30 people were fun number two I I liked math a lot when I while I was in my undergrad and like slightly into my masters where uh I indexed a lot of what I wanted to do for the first years out of college based on the type of technical work that I wanted that I would want to do this is natural just coming out of education and then from there uh AI is really in optimization linear algebra all of this where crypto is more in modern modern algebra and I just like modern better like it was it
05:30 - 06:00 was just plain and simple like I didn't really do much analysis past like it's more fun on the technical front harder for something that you enjoy doing I mean it complicated than that do it yeah yeah pretty much where did the actual idea from seismic come from like where what was the problem you identified and why is this the solution that you came up with okay uh I went without going too crazy i mean Yeah yeah no I won't go crazy let's see coming out of of college I needed to start a company to do it successfully i had to be the best in the
06:00 - 06:30 world or be able to create the best in the world team at something and I looked at all the teams that I could lead and I could create and I concluded that for most domains we're going to be completely average at the one thing that we could probably do very well on is cryptography x blockchains just because of uh background and how nent the space was how early how early we could get on something new and then from there I said okay cryptography x blockchains let's spend I'll spend a couple weeks just seeing if there's something there m and
06:30 - 07:00 then from there uh I had talked to all my friends who were already in crypto and building blockchain de apps and I said hey uh if there are pieces of your road map that you haven't done yet because it's too much technical risk it's a little out of out of the way for you but it's very technically complex uh I want to try doing it because I want to figure out what problems people are going to run into over the next few months over the next few years ended up helping them with a lot of problems implementing a lot of things and I realized that there was one subset set
07:00 - 07:30 of problems that I could never get over because there we I couldn't get access to these properties that I needed around encryption and then from running into it into it again and again and then looking at it from a more first principle is hey this is probably going to be a big problem perspective then then okay this is a big problem I'm probably running into it a little bit before a lot of people and then I have some expertise in it already uh should go all in on it and then from there on uh race around
07:30 - 08:00 started getting a team together and then and then got the company beautiful man beautiful um what uh so you said we like you kept saying we do you have a co-founder like who who were you ideulating with in the earliest of days you know uh I I started off with without a co-founder uh technically still don't at the moment although the the seismic team is incredibly strong i'm sure many people out of there are a good political well done my brother well done well done i didn't mean to set you up i didn't mean it's all good it's all good they're going to they're going to start coming on might have more co-founders in the
08:00 - 08:30 future but right now a lot of the early days the ideation was horrendous because it was just like me and myself and blackboard and then uh pretty soon people started joining and then from there it got it it got a lot easier like having we we have seven eight eight people where it's me and then I've met a head of ops and then six engineers and all the engineers are pretty much building seismic and then I'm like and I'm like tweeting so it's a it's a huge good like a like like a good founder
08:30 - 09:00 should man like all the best founders do all they do is yap man yeah the team's going crazy now does it does it feel weird to you at all to like you know was there a shift that you had to a mindset shift from like you know being stuck in the code and and being in the technical side of it to just being a like good old yapper like the rest of us like you know like Yeah how are you thinking about that it was uh I mean I I knew it had to happen eventually just because this generation of companies I don't see how a company that isn't that isn't founder
09:00 - 09:30 led for marketing succeeds like it's just so much stronger that I've seen that we've all seen in other data points i said okay it just has it just has to be me there's no other way around it it's definitely way way worse at least from what I like doing like engineering is definitely something I'd be a lot more comfortable doing and I'd have a lot more fun doing at the end of every day i'd feel more accomplished and then now my my reward system and skill set is starting to shift a little bit more into I I can be a founder marketer and do
09:30 - 10:00 this but it's but it's nice and now I'm trying to really progress and progress in it fairly quickly so I'm like looking a lot a lot of analytics like talking to a lot of people that have done it before me uh run a lot of experiments do it in a pretty scientific way iterate fast and get good at it hopefully it works i don't know it's early days I guess got to ask like what are some of the lessons you're learning about yapping along the way like how to yap successfully um the your your tone of voice how to resonate with people what people want from you
10:00 - 10:30 how to chop it up and format it in a way that's digestible to certain audiences is there any lessons you've learned around that kind of stuff yes the and obviously work in progress of course obviously work in progress but right now something that I've started to realize so I've I I've been tweeting for about uh a month right about and I've gotten to a spot where it was it was on average like a little bit of engagement like I'd be like thrilled if I got 10 likes on it and then now now I'm like batting batting a good bit higher than that and
10:30 - 11:00 the number one adjustment that that was good for me was to think about the TAM of every tweet like who are all the possible people that can enjoy the information and the human this is the Stanford AI brain apply applying to tweeting whereas like you know the rest of the homies just be saying [ __ ] and like literally like I have to tweet five times a day no matter what type of [ __ ] it is which you know I mean sickening but that strategy has worked for a lot of people it's not the way I
11:00 - 11:30 would approach it but sounds to me like you're overthinking a little bit no I'm definitely overink to some degree i'm sure over the next few weeks I'm going to figure it out at least there not too pessimistic not too optimistic like you you're trying to tow all these crowds and then eventually you you get to something where this is the right mix of things i I think one I mean just one
11:30 - 12:00 key insights obviously specifically to Twitter is just like it's it's a dangerous game to play because like as a founder you want to keep everyone you and as a you know as a salesperson you know by by practice like you want to be a people pleaser you want to keep everyone happy you want to massage this side and that side or whatever but like I think the key is like you can't be afraid to piss people off you have to stand on business and you'll earn respect that way you know like and I don't know I've had many times times where like no there's some people that have just pissed off and like we're
12:00 - 12:30 never going to be cool so like it's not ideal and it doesn't feel great but like I feel like that was a part of my journey whatever that statement I said was that pissed you off I had to say it it was authentic to me and it is what it is but I've also had plenty of people that like took like you know took the opposing side of my opinion or tweet or whatever and we and we like hashed it out and then became homies because like there's like a a mutual I know where you stand i know like I understand you better now yeah yeah like you know you took the time to dig into their argument
12:30 - 13:00 you really tried yeah you stand on your business I'm going to stand on mine i could I could respect that i don't have to agree with you but you know there's something we could still work together yeah you know absolutely but like are you do you ever think about like Yeah i don't want to like I feel like you would be trying not to offend people too oh okay that would be my guess i don't know i'm pretty game for it at least as long as I do it with eyes wide open i'm definitely a believer of the whole like the opposite of the opposite of love isn't hate it's apathy so if if you have no if you have no haters then like
13:00 - 13:30 you're Yeah that's the worst thing ever hell yeah well we're going to get there we're going to get there for sure put a pin in that 100% so you're doing the tweet tweeting you're doing the founder marketing i guess like why do you think that's important in the first place cuz like there's a lot of other founders that would say "Okay I'm going to be you know here and I'm going to hire a a CMO and then I'm going to hire a you know what I But I personally would say it's important to establish the tone and voice of the brand and also being that front lines person receiving that feedback you're going to learn much
13:30 - 14:00 quicker uh with a shorter feedback loop than if you handed it off to someone else at least in the early days you know also as a founder it should in my opinion feel so personal that like I want to I want to be I want my you want to own it i want to be tied to this you know what I'm saying yeah i I completely agree with pretty much all of those maybe the one thing I would add is early on I heard this quote that was that that made a lot of sense it was people don't buy into products they buy into people that too that that's pretty much it so uh for a lot of the a lot of the
14:00 - 14:30 developers that we're talking to these days when they're talking about uh coming in and working with Seismic and doing all of this I index very heavily on it's it's you and me we're working on this we're we're in the stage where everything's bespoke everything's really one-on-one and the the product in here whatever you don't like about the product like I will personally just compensate for it and then we and we can do it although hopefully over time it's just the product is is there it's gone but but really right now it's it's I'm I'm just trying to sell you're in the trenches man respect um so I guess like
14:30 - 15:00 if you had to explain it like uh what is the narrative that you're trying to push here what do you want people to know about Seismic like how do you want to make people feel when you're talking about Seismic talk me through some of that oh oh uh I like the two-part question on part on part number one the narrative that we're looking to push is within the next few years we're going to see a strong a strong delineation between transparent and encrypted
15:00 - 15:30 blockchains like right now when people have thought about things in the past they've thought about uh scaled versus not scaled like this is a slow blockchain i don't really want to be in it this is a fast blockchain like this is where I want to be over the next few years after we start plateauing with the first problem we're going to move on to this new problem of force transparency which I believe is the next big hurdle after limited scalability uh at least on the infrastructure level and you can do a lot of new things with it there's uh there's a lot of opportunity here especially on creating uh unique apps
15:30 - 16:00 with strong differentiating factors so I guess from your understanding of talking to you know friends of ours out there in the market like do you think this is something that people care enough about now and if not how do how are you going to make them care about this great question i don't believe they care about enough to put however much we need into it to really make it succeed and and the reason I say this is because force transparency is an issue that we've we've seen from very early days in in the industry like the first paper that
16:00 - 16:30 came out on it was probably Zcash in 2014 so we've known that transparency on blockchains is is a good thing in generally but has a lot of consequences on it's harder to make blockchains a regular part of people's daily financial lives even more important than that it's harder to just build apps that require some form of encryption and we've known this for a while and then in the last decade what you've started to notice is when people like think talk about encryption do all this people just get really bored they've been here it's it's been a problem for a while they're like
16:30 - 17:00 "Oh I've been there done that i've heard the story retold for the last decade but yet nothing's ever happened to it." What we want to do when we come into this is we want to uh give a fresh take on it where we want to make it we want to make it cool again we want to say we're not going to we're not going to come in with the same narrative we're not going to come in with the same pitch this is a new pitch where instead of being more of a prerequisite say blockchains aren't going to take over the world unless there's encryption unless unless if they're still fully transparent instead
17:00 - 17:30 of being more of a prerequisite to blockchains don't take over the world if this is the case it's saying "Hey this is how blockchains can take over the world be more on the offensive instead of be on the defensive." And that's and that's what I that that's the uh user that's the massive user education problem that Seismic faces today wow really that's really interesting that's really It's really interesting to think about that i'm sure that you've spent a lot of time like figuring out how to like overcome that hurdle and and how to message that properly i don't know like I guess from a marketing yapping
17:30 - 18:00 perspective part of me is just thinking out loud of like maybe it's more compelling to like throw the problem in people's faces and and like I don't know like have you thought about that like it may not I get what you're saying how it's it's a more positive spin more optimistic spin on it to like maybe have positive sentiment here rather than like a more you know like aggressive controversial way but I don't know what's your take on on that I I actually think this is this offensive defensive
18:00 - 18:30 distinction is more on the do a driver instead of prerequisite instead of positive or negative and what I mean by driver instead of prerequisite is in the past encryption X blockchains has painted this future where blockchains are just about to to dominate the world like all all world TV is going to be on blockchain but the last thing holding it back is that blockchains are fully transparent like this has been the narrative um and people have been dissuaded by this because they're asking the natural question okay so when
18:30 - 19:00 blockchains are on the precipice of of taking over then we need this but but no at no point before the in that's that's what I call defensive what I call offensive is hey this is Not when when the time comes we're really going to need it it's this is going to bring us closer to the time to to the time today that's really cool yeah yeah so that that's really where I'm trying to go are you do you have any like mentors that are helping you or advisers that are helping you with coming up with marketing strategy or this is your whole brainchild oh I'm going I am going uh I
19:00 - 19:30 made an explicit decision about this where over the first two months I am going to take very little outside advice on marketing because I want to try even if I slow down growth early on I want to try seeing what naturally emerges that is that is my style and from there I learn I learn what's happening well with other playbooks like one thing that I'm trying a lot I'm trying to record a lot of videos just like this and just me talking face to face like explaining some topic talking about some idea I
19:30 - 20:00 really believe in and seeing if I can connect to an audience like that i I don't know so far it's kind of wellreceived at some point it's probably going to be like "Why don't I see this guy's face again on my timeline?" That's how you know you're doing something right bro you know really when someone's like "I think I think so." Yeah bro for so long I would see people at events when they would meet me they'd be like "Oh like I've seen your clips." And I'd be like "Yo am I bad for flooding your timeline?" No like no you know it's all good we like it and like I it took me a minute to be like "Yo am I doing too much right now?" now like you know feeling a little little insecure uncomfortable with it but um it sounds
20:00 - 20:30 like Did you ever take it down i thought Keep going harder baby keep going harder man okay a lot of these you know win win until it's too much winning you know yap until it's too much yapping you know no but it's good that you're getting like outside your comfort zone and and and trying and trying things out i will say like you know one as a recruiter I think one thing that many of my peers in industry like take for granted which I do not is the fact that we're when we have highle candidates like we're
20:30 - 21:00 dealing with experts in their field people that are great at what they do and I will say a big point of growth for me was when I had this marketing guy really high level CMO dude who I connected well we just became friends through the process and I hired him you know he gave me a homie price and just you know He took me through a quick couple of sessions just to like teach me fundamentals of marketing and and I'll be honest with you like he wasn't so on top of it that like I didn't get to experiment and try things of course I did but it was the prompts that he gave
21:00 - 21:30 he gave me like a lot of helpful prompts to like trigger me to how to think about things um and just like yeah it was I enjoyed that a lot that that experience of learning the fundamentals of marketing and I it was a lot of a lot of it I applied in my own ways so oh would definitely recommend just having someone that you could call for that kind of stuff oh okay i think early on on teaching principles there there was there was one guy that really helped a ton for for me at least two two people number one was uh his name is Arom and
21:30 - 22:00 then he he's he'sing positioning wizard celestial guy yeah celestial guy he has done incredible things for the seismic narrative where he like he he came and really spent a lot of time with us just because he was he was introduced by uh one of my good friends Jay-Z from story protocol where uh he just put a lot of time into us it's obvious that he cared a lot and over maybe the course of just three days like he he he opened my eyes so number one is definitely a there
22:00 - 22:30 number two there's another guy his name is Joe he's from He's from Alliance if you've heard of it of course yeah and uh this guy is uh like alpha meme lord the the best guy possible and he helped me a lot with accepting that eccentricity is something that you should really lean into and and feel and Joe was the guy that that really that really tipped it over tell me tell me more about that i'm curious so this was uh on the first commercial that we were and that commercialish trailer that we're going
22:30 - 23:00 to put in is for Hello World Seismic and one the the one message that we wanted to communicate with our proposal is uh force transparency bad and the best way to communicate this turned out to be okay in the blockchain world right now we're expecting for your finances to be to live in a world where force transparency is the norm let's see if we can have an analogy that's really easy for people to click there and in an easy analogy is what if you were living in the real world and everything was just made of glass so instead of a wall
23:00 - 23:30 behind you it's glass everybody can see in and then we made a we made we made a commercial from it and from this Did it drop yet uh it dropped it dropped it was like 2 3 weeks ago i got to look at it it was like fully AI generated one of my buddies helping with it and when I was talking to Joe about this he the ideas that I was talking about were all really safe conservative office friendly and he and then he just drops like "Hey man what if your very first scene was uh was a bathroom where all the stalls are made of glass and three people are on the newspaper sitting down and then he said
23:30 - 24:00 this and I and yeah and immediately I was like I was I was like no like it feels like a little mush like like come on like this is for my company account and then he's like are you kidding me man?" like and he shows me a lot of examples as the game and then now I'm thinking like oh my god banger hell yeah and then that that was the single scene that a lot of people just go like reference after like are you like were you the company that released the trailer with a bathroom with glass stalls cuz it's just a really striking image a striking visual and that that
24:00 - 24:30 that was really what I meant by lean into eccentricity and then since then like we're we we have an undropped trailer coming out where uh sneak peek there's a Cardano dinosaur coming Yeah I know comets coming in streaming hot ones and zeros that are just going to much love to to the ADA all but but the comet's coming in that's great so like that that that's really it's been a big transformation and Joe's really helpful that's good stuff man well I guess coming off that I mean that's a really cool story and uh I'm I'm excited to see
24:30 - 25:00 like the future content and videos that you come out with but um it does make me think like okay you know you are a Stanford guy cleancut dude what role does the dgen community play in the seismic community or narrative all that I think today it's significant and tomorrow it's going to be even more significant and because because of the simple fact that like I I just trade a ton my like my like like my my my my phantom history is a fre a blood bath it
25:00 - 25:30 used to not be a blood bath but right now it's it's a blood bath so aside from working on all the all the deep tech bits and all of this like I I I slammed it on on the AI narrative like like hard and I was tracking it every day i I I really I really enjoy that a lot so I I think one piece that is going to end up working hopefully well for Seismic long term i know a lot of chains go out and they project uh a lot of strength a lot of stability and I hope to do this well
25:30 - 26:00 with Seismic too but one of the pieces that I do end up I want to project with us is that we really embrace what's fun about crypto like like I like I I I get it like I get slamming like a low market cap token and then just have like like like I feel you're not above it you're not I feel I'm not above it and I'm definitely like I I love it like it's not even like I'm like kind of in it it's like like I have group chats with my buddies and you I I think way more people are DGEN than uh than it seems
26:00 - 26:30 like right now it's not only it's not only Eth Bushwick that's that's like doing DJ [ __ ] in the trenches it's not only Eth Bushwick like I like on my respect to Eth Bushwick for sure like like on my Twitter I'm I'm like pretty scientific and pretty locked down but uh even on my Twitter I talk about trades every now and then and then uh in my group chats you like with a lot of the people that you'd think of that have never even talked about anything outside of really deep tech on Twitter like they're in it they're slamming it more than me hell yeah so you you'd be
26:30 - 27:00 surprised it's a big it's Yeah it's it's a sleeping sleeping majority yeah no no no i I hear you that's a good point um I guess like you I mean I probably should have hit this earlier but you just touched on like AI narrative i mean yeah just to bring it back for a second you know um as someone who was exposed to AI at the highest level at Stanford um any like broad general takes about what's going on in uh crypto XAI these days i stand on business stand on business no safe [ __ ] don't give me the safe take i
27:00 - 27:30 I I haven't seen a lot of like really strong compelling value props that are that are around to last the most exciting one that I found was AI influencers that was literally the only one that I like bet on really hard so like uh so yeah yeah so it's like the entire the entire goat AI girlfriend type [ __ ] the entire goat succession virtuals all of this i slammed that hard because I thought that that was the highest likelihood of being the NFTTS of this cycle cuz w with a lot of what we've run into over the last few months you don't know how painful it is to
27:30 - 28:00 interact with a traditional financial system until you've tried to integrate a D app into into uh into like a bank or someone like with with on-ramps with wallets with KYC every single stage is just straight pain and one of the beauties of DeFi summer and NFT summer is that everything is in this beautiful land of endto-end crypto like you're logging on you're on ramping people are doing that on Coinbase by themselves but once you're there you're in Ethereum
28:00 - 28:30 you're in Salana already and you can just you can just sit there forever and all and everything is composable it's it's it's the promise but everything outside of that if you're trying to build an endto-end app uh it's it's horrendous and so with the thing that I found beautiful about AI influencers is because they're in they're only in this world like if you're looking at if you're looking at goat like you're not saying onramp on ramp and buy and then offramp in one click right and oh yeah you're kying in the middle you're
28:30 - 29:00 literally like just send soul interesting yeah yeah yeah and I think that's really important that's really that's really important for uh for for at least short term interesting cool I guess like last question on like AI stuff what do you think the general public who's I guess like one step deeper than the general public maybe the people that are taking some light AI high bets or whatever like what do you think the most misunderstood thing about AI in crypto is i think the biggest one that I've seen is AI applied to solving
29:00 - 29:30 bottlenecks that uh that that aren't the strongest bottlenecks like for example and like I'm not I'm not picking on any particular app but like for example if you were talking like an LLM interface for a chain like you probably need that a little bit less than you probably need a better a marginally better like UX trading experience a little less than just having cooler assets and I think in general it's not just AI people that are making this mistakes it's this mistake it's generally infrastructure people where at the end of the day like say
29:30 - 30:00 you're in seismic shoes you're a chain a lot of chains early on are thought talking about uh these these innovative these innovative ideas where we're internalizing the dex because the dex is so important like we're gonna have we're gonna have a from from us in day one like our defi experience is going to be as sophisticated as as anyone's ever seen before at the end of the day that is not the bottleneck for people coming onto your chain like your chain is is is when stripped down is an asset ledger and if the asset sucks it doesn't matter
30:00 - 30:30 how quick this button goes after you confirm and then the money's in your bank account it's the it's the actual assets that you go for and we're seeing this we're seeing this everywhere like the you're you're you're optimizing bottlenecks where there's a 10x bottleneck that's just sitting a couple feet away super insightful yep um so let's bring it back to uh where we're at today so you just you just recently raised your series A or was it a C it was a C yeah tell me about the raising process it was it was very good uh I mean uh I was fortunate to have known a
30:30 - 31:00 lot of the partners at these firms for a while where we just got connected maybe two three years ago while we while I started doing some early work in in like more academic cryptography and all of this and then when I needed to start raising it was a quicker process of te text eval do it pretty do it pretty plainly i think as long as you go through the the raising process with like a lot of brutal honesty and a lot of integrity espec especially at the
31:00 - 31:30 seed round uh things move pretty quickly because a lot of a lot of it is like founder derisking and then making sure they're not making some any crazy claims in the future like like you raise when you have nothing is like that's fine as long as you're very straight about it what do you Okay this is a good I got an interesting question for you so it was A16Z that led it yeah yeah a A16Z a heavy heavy participation from Poly Chain too so both both funds have been absolutely critical for getting Seismic to where where we're at today beautiful
31:30 - 32:00 shout out to Poly Chain shout out to A6Z and of course Gil and the homies from Stanford uh that that connected us a long time ago yeah um so my question is this right so let's say I don't know if it was A16Z but let's just use them as an example let's say you had a relationship with them um from like you know post Stanford days when you were still on the academic side researching and learning um and they got to know you intimately as a person at least you know and now it's comes time to ask for the money right being that they already know you what do
32:00 - 32:30 you think they were really double clicking on or zooming in on to like evaluate whether they're going to write the check or not because you know we know that a lot of these like seedstage investments are you know pretty pretty purely based on like a founder with an idea period but like what do you think they were invest they were asking you questions specifically about i'd say in my particular case it was how much I cared about demand driven technology uh for for me for me the biggest risk in their head was probably that I that I
32:30 - 33:00 would want to like sit in a cave and and code for four years and then and come out with something which is definitely still the most appealing option to me and I made it very clear that this is just that is not the way I operate and then now I'm having a lot more fun going with demand driven tech so that was that was definitely number one that they were trying to derisk uh number two I would say that is still even though that was a number one piece component that they wanted to derisk During the actual process I think 90% of the process was already done before I even asked for the
33:00 - 33:30 money a lot of it especially especially in the seed stage where where where we were at when we raised is is pitching started happening the first call that that I took many months before cool man well um I saw the big announcement and apparently I wasn't the only one who saw it cuz you had your first hater congratulations on that man it was a great moment yeah I saw that on on Twitter why don't you give us like a TLDDR of the thread and I It was [ __ ] up that they took your picture and threw it up on there it was funny but it was hilarious so what was
33:30 - 34:00 the what was the FUD why were they FUD and how did you handle it yeah in incredible question this was a This was a great day i think it was last Saturday i wake up I usually spend at least the first half of my day not on Twitter at all like it's it's usually deep work like work working out making uh like making food and then and then really unplugging after a hard week uh and then I log on to Twitter and then it's just notice like crazy and then more than a Twitter notice I saw a lot of people reach out and say "Hey I'm so sorry this
34:00 - 34:30 is happening to you." And I'm like like died and and I get on my Twitter and I like click click the link and it's the best thread ever it's it's amazing like the the top thumb the top thumbnail image is literally just my face and then and then it it's good branding it's good I guess so like I was like distributed this thing is already like ripping to a thousand likes and it's saying and it and it's saying uh what essentially boils down to uh we have no
34:30 - 35:00 product we are again getting killed by this Forbes looking MF that was like that was hilarious i mean that's good that's a That's the biggest hate you could come up with that I look like I should be on Forbes oh [ __ ] i'll take that this is why I wasn't bummed through all of it like I was I like I was confused when people are like "I'm so sorry this you don't deserve this." I was like "Damn like let me deserve it a little bit let me lean into that [ __ ] hell yeah let me let me deserve it a little bit." Like and then
35:00 - 35:30 uh a lot a lot of the reasoning was was was just funny like I not not not to [ __ ] on this person i think like it was well founded because there's a lot of noise in crypto so it's it's hard i I would say this person was probably a little bit trigger happy when doing it yeah because the evidence it's Bro I've been there before when you get in the incentivization of of doing these like spicy takes and [ __ ] you're like "Fuck it." You don't even take any We've all like a lot yeah and you have to read it the second time after you cross like 800 likes is probably the one so what was the thing that you think if she slowed
35:30 - 36:00 down a little bit she would have maybe rethought i think the the literal big one was that we had no product when our code is open source uh it's like easy it's it you can run it in under five minutes uh and then we have a bunch of prototype apps that are working on it and we also have an internal but live developer test net so like I wasn't worried about things but I was especially not worried when I saw the reasoning on how to get to the conclusion of it where the reasoning was we had a job posting that said we're
36:00 - 36:30 looking for a founding engineer and founding engineers like first 10 if someone's really showing out even your 10th hire can become a founding engineer if they're really monstrous facts and so the reason was since we're looking for a founding engineer we have no engineers and so I was so since that was the main one I was like I was not worried at all the comments were like saying "Hey this is kind of ridiculous they probably have engineers and their code is open source." And I was like going after me for being non-technical which is to be fair I've written very little of Seismic all of that is to Seismic's engineering team but generally before this like I I
36:30 - 37:00 coded a good bit so I'm probably not non-technical it's Yeah the The one point in the thread that I did agree with as a general statement not as it applied to you is that I I will say I have seen a lot of cases of non-technical founders hiring engineers and having no idea how to like evaluate the work that they're doing and that is messy and but it is funny to like say that to a Stanford like like you're like a Stanford AI grad like that's funny yeah yeah is that technical enough to
37:00 - 37:30 like know how to Yeah technical enough to like to get understand the product yeah and then it it was to so to so to their credit this like track of like you raised money for no project nontechnical found I think is so common that like it's easy for them to see so like uh in most cases they probably wouldn't have been wrong in this case they're just very wrong and then they the the Twitter immune system was I'm thankful that Twitter immune system was enough that like call called them on it they end up taking the tweet down and then they they
37:30 - 38:00 reached out after and they said hey looks can be deceiving my bad and so I was like "Oh hey they reached out they DM'd they DM'd." And then I was like I was like "No hard feelings." Because at the end of the day like this that was the whole exchange that was the whole exchange that that was the whole exchange i I said some things so like your your concerns are valid in most cases i hope like I I called a lot of them happy to chat anytime like it was they they were good and receptive at least they're not receptive in the Twitter on Twitter but in DMs like they were great and at the end of the day like I'm feeling great about this
38:00 - 38:30 because like we didn't get killed for any any legit things like we get k like there are many reasons to bash on seismic like we're talking a lot and we have no mainet but I mean we just came out of stealth so like obviously I don't and then none of the reasons were really like that deep so I was fine with it i was a Forbes looking MF so I was also fine with that and now you got to really own it like make that your Twitter tagline but you know what I mean you got to really lean into it laid into it that's funny and then like the the results at the end of day were amazing
38:30 - 39:00 we got five job applications from just that Saturday it was huge it be funny if it was like people that worked at that person's own company like that would have been crazy that would have been crazy but now it's like five job applications we're interviewing two of them for for for serious engineering roles if one of them falls out uh I might reach out to this person ask please tweet again like that'd be amazing yeah where can I send the referral fee like Yeah yeah yeah yeah 10 to 20 10 to 20% first year that's amazing man yeah so that was that was a great moment honestly that's awesome
39:00 - 39:30 that's awesome really cool and um Yeah well I I I'll tell you like one quick story of my own which was like Yeah so early early on in my in my crypto career there was a guy um shout out to Jack man my my boy Jack he runs a company called Hire Chain i saw a deck floating around for it like a long time ago and it's basically like a I love you Jack i don't really know what the [ __ ] Hire Chain is if I'm being honest with you it's some sort of like bounty referral program where like you refer your friends and you get bounties for making ass whatever okay i'm just generally so bearish on
39:30 - 40:00 like any recruitment software like AI recruitment all that [ __ ] like it just doesn't [ __ ] work like relationship game period end of story that's it that's how I think about it um I saw his deck going around and I I I put I posted on LinkedIn some [ __ ] like if you like if anyone sees a deck relating to like hiring bounties like throw that [ __ ] in the trash whatever like I I [ __ ] on it i didn't name him by name i didn't name the project by name was he a buddy like you knew him so okay i didn't So
40:00 - 40:30 hold on so we were connected on LinkedIn which I forgot about because we had met at a conference which I forgot about and he was like mad nice to me which I forgot about and the other thing I forgot about is that you put your email in when you view the deck so he's like so I put put the post on LinkedIn and he was like "Hey mate." He's like "British dude." He's like "Hey mate didn't like the deck I see." And I was like "Oh." And I just like my I felt so bad like cuz he just nice guy me to death and and he was like "Fuck." And um Yeah and you know it's funny how we now are like
40:30 - 41:00 great friends he came to my cigar night in Denver we share clients and and [ __ ] like that and it's cool and the reality is the hire chain is like more than that it's it has you know that's one part of the business there's other there's a real recruitment business built in there too and so I was trigger happy like like this person on you hated and felt like a [ __ ] idiot and recounted recanted my statement and you know um but like you he said yo leave that [ __ ] up like people are talking is all all love and I guess like what I was going to say earlier when I when I meant when I was
41:00 - 41:30 talking about stand on business and like have your opinion and don't care who you offend what I've learned over through the experience is like I got to make sure I'm not punching down like because that you look like a bully you know and I I learned this concept through my marketing guy of there's positioning and then there's depositioning right so like positioning is like obviously how you position yourself in the market and then depositioning is like I'm not like this I'm not like that I'm not like this guy I'm not like that person you know what I'm saying to separate yourself from competition which is important it is
41:30 - 42:00 important to distinguish yourself but if you overdo the depositioning then you look like a dick you know what I'm saying yeah yeah doing it wrong you got We gota learn where that line is for you and uh it was a valuable learning lesson for me and I'm glad that we can be be friends still you know this is This is good to hear i think over the next few months I'll tune that hell yeah i'll try to figure it out we'll see when I'll let you know i'll ping you on my first apology the apology arc the apology arc is coming man i guess what are uh for the
42:00 - 42:30 rest of this year man what are you like most excited uh about regarding seismic like what are you know some big milestones you're trying to hit what should the people be you know paying attention to the biggest the biggest milestone the only one that matters to us is uh let's get to mainet because all this all of the hypotheses that we're that we're talking about and all of the early indicators that we're seeing don't mean anything until until it's in mainet there's money flowing there users on the other side that are saying yes or no the The number one positive of building for
42:30 - 43:00 project and the number one negative is that you have so much leeway in in talking because things aren't live like you can be kind of wrong nobody would ever know you get a lot of preferential treatment in the market uh even if you even if you've done nothing to deserve it all of that is very good while you're while you're like pre-launch in this like in this great phase but things don't but it it ends up backfiring once you're really once you're really deploying and you're really talking about real users so getting to mainet is
43:00 - 43:30 our big one we need to get to our success case the way that we define success is there's one app that is built on some of the properties that Seismic uniquely provides relative to the the entire blockchain ecosystem this one app that is at 10 million ARR that is that is our only goal at Seismic at least in the near find your killer hit mainet and find your killer app that's your main mainet mainet killer app there's a lot of pie in the sky stuff that I get asked often where it's what's the long-term vision how is going to take over the
43:30 - 44:00 world uh where we're just thinking about this one $10 million AR app where we we talk that's almost our chance internally love that love that and I guess like before we wrap up here I'd be remissed to ask I mean I'm curious when it relates when it when it comes to hiring walk me through your rationale having the IRL in person in New York culture talk me through your mindset around that and give me some challenges that you faced there and kind of like what you've learned along the way specifically regarding hiring for an in-person you
44:00 - 44:30 know situation yeah this is a very good question so early on seismic was not fully in person i found that this was incredibly damaging and we we we fixed it we it took there were a couple months where we really restructured things to mostly be a fully inerson team hire hire some people let some people go and then it was a painful process taking getting to it but now it was way more it was so worth it and the main piece is because we're only a year into this but even now
44:30 - 45:00 it's very clear that when people are putting up the amount of hours that are required to make a small startup a with a that's backed by a small elite team work put in the hours to do that you are showing up every day not because of the mission but you're work you're showing up for your teammates and showing up to your teammates on Zoom is 100x weaker than showing up to your teammates in real life and that that was the number one big difference and then after we got everybody IRL and then we were working
45:00 - 45:30 cohesively as a team uh communication started getting better it's commitment level was starting to get better it was a lot more fun not because was succeeding and crypto was doing really well but because we were doing really well as a team wow that's really I've never heard it articulated like that and it it's definitely you're pretty good at these like analogy things of like you know and I get it you know reminds me of like when I was pledging a fraternity is like if you if one of you don't participate in whatever [ __ ] hazing is like everyone else gets it harder and uh I never really thought about building
45:30 - 46:00 a team in that way but it it does make sense i guess the my my follow-up question would be how do you value like the trade-off between you know the the slow slower build of the team obviously um and the you know just like having to play within the parameters of that market yeah how does that stack up against you know the the pro which you just mentioned yeah uh we're definitely eating it on the chin right now like our our hiring process is much much more of a grind to get people in person the
46:00 - 46:30 thing that's shifted since when I started Seismic is I now put a lot more weight on the pro of inerson team than the negative of whatever like deficiency is in the Yeah pretty much just because uh I saw how hard the problem is to undo a slow a slowm moving not aligned team and all of that is 10x is still 10x the uh the amount of recruiting work that you has changed yeah it's still there although I think I hope I hope a lot more of crypto starts doing this because
46:30 - 47:00 then I think it would help a lot like a lot of the best teams in the space that I know are also doing are doing this i mean some have done it really well some have done it really well and some have done it have built really high performing teams remote too not to say that it's the best option for everyone but it has been done well before 100% but I get your point you know when I'm running a search for someone who's hiring only IRL like yeah usually now when I onboard them like I like to say
47:00 - 47:30 this line just to like just to like kind of throw a little jab just to be like do you want me to find the best people or do you want me to find the best people in New York and if just to let them know that those are that is two different two very different groups you told me this when we first started yeah those are two different not to say that and that's not saying you can't find the best people and get them in New York but kind of just to like let put you in the my mindset right there you know what I'm saying absolutely my last question around this would be like how do you think about scaling in this way you know
47:30 - 48:00 m cuz I that I've seen this become an issue before where it's like okay we done a a great job of building the first call it 15 20 hires IRL you know crushed it got to mean it hit all these like achievements milestones whatever and now it's time to really like scale up and then it becomes like okay well you know yeah we could hire this ro remote it would be fine but then it would [ __ ] up the culture over here this person would be salty this person had to move here from wherever you know what I'm saying so like how do you think about like the
48:00 - 48:30 future as I know you said you don't I know it's all good it's all in the future we're almost certainly going to start distributing that just must happen pretty much exactly for the reason you said and I've accepted that I I am encouraged by the fact that this future is pretty far out mainly because the way that we are are building our blockchain a goal that we've set early on is we're going to ship we're going to ship mainet with 10 engineers like Ethereum was nine engineers was 12 when they shipped mainet wow and there's no world where we
48:30 - 49:00 uh given the level of innovation that those two had like don't get me wrong we do a lot of crazy things but we're not we're not shipping Ethereum for the first time ever no world are you kidding me and because of that if we can't get if we can't get it out in 10 people then we we've done something wrong already so we're going to be 10 f we're going to be 10 engineers for a while and maybe a lot of not yeah yeah you can make that happen you can make that happen I guess for real my last question on this is like is there any difference in your mind as as far as like when it comes to
49:00 - 49:30 IRL hiring technical versus nontechnical like if I'm if I'm if I'm talking to you about let's say you want a BD person I would say bro BD people they could be floating around like you want them outside you know like running around doing [ __ ] in different places like but would you still be I know you're not hiring BD marketing yet would you still be as you know dead set on having them come in person probably much less but not that much mainly because a lot of the best ideas that we've had on that I've had with with My teammates on the
49:30 - 50:00 marketing and BD front have been in inerson inerson talks so BD BD and marketing we see we we we see very very critical to seismic and because of that they still have to be the same yeah yeah all right man you heard it no exceptions bro until later man thanks for doing this man haters keep hating man we all we love it we love you still stay up man we out peace