@Delphi_Digital has grown tremendously over the past few years. Join @AndrewSteinwold as he interviews @YanLiberman, Co-Founder of Delphi Digital, on their journey from a small start-up to what they are today 😎
🔮Worked in equity research at Bloomberg @business
🔮Went to @DeutscheBank to do leveraged finance
🔮Got into crypto in May 2017
🔮Rode the 2017 highs/2018 lows
🔮Along with his co-founders, left their jobs to build their business
@Delphi_Digital@AndrewSteinwold@YanLiberman@business@DeutscheBank 2/ "And before you know it, you're just like emptying out your entire traditional equity portfolio. And then not too long after that, my entire retirement portfolio, is like, yeah, this is way more interesting." - Yan Liberman
🔮In 2017, it was the opportunity to make a ton of money
🔮Had to learn about the space
🔮The more they learned, the more they realized that crypto is a really interesting space
🔮Wanted to be a part of crypto in the long run
🔮Yan and his co-founders have been roommates for years
🔮Thought that research was the best way to start
🔮Wrote long form reports to deep dive into a handful of projects
🔮Helps them to really understand the topic
🔮Released 2 reports to build up their brand
🔮Started subscription model
🔮Did consulting work on the side
🔮Stash was running out/lease up at end March 2019
🔮Landed a big consulting job to stay in New York
🔮Through 2019, started bringing on employees
🔮Reached a stage where they took payment in tokens
🔮Shifted to consulting for equity. Wanted to be aligned with the projects over the long term
🔮Partnered with @ZeMariaMacedo and @lukedelphi
🔮Consulting side evolved into Delphi Labs
🔮Consulting work include tokenomics design
🔮Everyone chipped in and they raised $1 million
🔮Recycled capital when some positions were sold. Proceeds were used to reinvest
🔮Launched Institutional Plus model to allow subscribers to co-invest alongside them
🔮Current AUM: mid to low 9 figures 🤩🤩🤩
🔮@Shaughnessy119 joined them early on and was already running his own podcast
🔮Tom's podcast evolved into the Delphi Podcast
🔮Created subcategories for the podcast where individuals who were subject matter experts would be the interviewer for the episode
🔮It is a learning process involving tweaks to previous designs
🔮Try to model the design, play it out with different variables, and observe what happens
🔮Attacked their models and attempted to exploit them from the perspective of the user
🔮Was reasonably helpful
🔮In DeFi, the initial models were DCF-based
🔮Token design and gamifying incentives. Being a video game or poker player helped to some extent
🔮Have to understand how models progress over time and why
🔮Gaming
🔮Excited to invest in @YieldGuild
🔮Play-to-earn games are reflexive in nature
🔮Blockchain games will outgrow traditional games
🔮Future games would want to partner with Yield Guild, creating a flywheel effect
🔮Social tokens will come into play
🔮Could be a characteristic that's added to existing tokens
🔮Have to tease apart whether the social element will be its own category of social tokens or a facet of existing communities
🔮Have not done as much investing on pure collectibles
🔮Bigger fan of NFTs with embedded functionalities
🔮For pure collectible NFTs, one has to be ahead of mimetic trends and be able to identify a sticky community
Blockchain + Web3 is revolutionary, but what is limiting their potential to change the world are the challenges involved in indexing and accessing data on the blockchain itself. @ZettaBlockHQ aims to address this issue.
• Has a #Web3 startup team that operates globally
• The team is led by two experienced co-founders, Scott Shi and Chi Zhang
🔸Scott Shi (@scottshics)
• Has over a decade of expertise in engineering
• Worked at companies like @Uber, @salesforce & EA
🔸 Chi Zhang
• Was a product manager at @databricks
• Holds a PhD from @UCBerkeley
• Experience in building data and #AI products
• Proven track record of supporting data-driven
organizations
He discusses anthropology, Web3 and other subcultures, and many other interesting topics with @chaserchapman in this episode of On The Other Side 👇
Background
🔹 An anthropologist
🔹 Is an artist
🔹 A DAO contributor
🔹 Has a Substack, but it’s not really a newsletter, but a cultural report
Substack
🔹 It’s more an anthropological collection of a subculture
🔹 Trying to record the why and the what behind the different projects
🔹 Important to have a bird’s eye view to see the connections
🔹 Is an obsessively curious person. Have always been searching for cool stuff
Today, I'll be sharing the book highlights of @peterthiel's Zero to One. Peter Thiel is a serial entrepreneur who helped to start up many companies, like @PayPal and @PalantirTech, and invested in Facebook.
If he has something to say about startups, I want to know. Read on 👇
There are 2 kinds of progress:
• Horizontal (1 to n)
• Vertically (0 to 1)
E.g. Horizontal progress is about getting existing products distributed to more places (globalization), while vertical progress is about coming up with new products (tech).
From the book's title, you should be able to deduce which is the better kind of progress. Going from zero to one will be hard, but the rewards will be way better than going from 1 to many.
👉 Look for companies that go from 0 to 1 instead of 1 to n.
🔹 People remember the year for all the terrible stuff that happened
🔹 Important to remember the positive events too (e.g. the merge)
🔹 The merge is a transaction inclusion time decrease
🔹 Have multiple zk-EVM implementations that will have a mainnet launch in 2023
🔹 @signinwitheth has seen massive gains in adoption
🔹 Cryptocurrency payments worked during the invasion of Ukraine
🔹 Have always recommended @KeePassXC or @Bitwarden:
🔸 KeePassXC: A completely offline tool. Reserved for extreme scenarios
🔸 Bitwarden: A secure password manager that synchronizes your password database across multiple devices
Now
🔹 Online password managers have advanced quite a bit
🔹 Every reputable password manager encrypts everything on your machine before it goes into the database
🔹 Does not recommend LastPass, 1Password, Dashlane
🔹 For people new to password managers, he recommends Bitwarden