I haven’t shared this publicly before, but in the early days of building Arbitrum, we were dangerously close to accepting a grant from another ecosystem to build Arbitrum there (in addition to Ethereum).
We would have gotten early $$ that was very meaningful at the time but ultimately would have diluted our focus, and our Ethereum deployment would have suffered.
Had we taken that grant we would have had more money in the bank in 2019, but I don’t think Offchain or Arbitrum would be what they are today.
And it’s no coincidence that these other ecosystems were offering larger grants than what we could have gotten from the EF or others in the Ethereum ecosystem. These other ecosystems had a lot less to offer, so the cost to deploy there was much larger, leading to a larger grant to compensate.
There’s a massive parallel to the current grant market today. Lots of projects are looking for grants. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But keep your eye on the prize. The goal isn’t to maximize the $ you get today. The goal is to (1) get *enough* today to comfortably execute and (2) make sure you have the right tools, partners, and infrastructure to maximize your potential of success and hitting a home run.
If you do hit a home run, the amount that you took in initial grant funding is not gonna matter. All of the numbers will seem small in retrospect.
And if you don’t hit a home run, the extra $ that you took really won’t matter much either. But if having taken it hurt your chances of success, then it will have mattered a lot.
So when considering where to build and whom to partner with, think about the full picture. And ask yourself the key question: which choice will maximize your chances of succeeding long term.
We would have gotten early $$ that was very meaningful at the time but ultimately would have diluted our focus, and our Ethereum deployment would have suffered.
Had we taken that grant we would have had more money in the bank in 2019, but I don’t think Offchain or Arbitrum would be what they are today.
And it’s no coincidence that these other ecosystems were offering larger grants than what we could have gotten from the EF or others in the Ethereum ecosystem. These other ecosystems had a lot less to offer, so the cost to deploy there was much larger, leading to a larger grant to compensate.
There’s a massive parallel to the current grant market today. Lots of projects are looking for grants. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But keep your eye on the prize. The goal isn’t to maximize the $ you get today. The goal is to (1) get *enough* today to comfortably execute and (2) make sure you have the right tools, partners, and infrastructure to maximize your potential of success and hitting a home run.
If you do hit a home run, the amount that you took in initial grant funding is not gonna matter. All of the numbers will seem small in retrospect.
And if you don’t hit a home run, the extra $ that you took really won’t matter much either. But if having taken it hurt your chances of success, then it will have mattered a lot.
So when considering where to build and whom to partner with, think about the full picture. And ask yourself the key question: which choice will maximize your chances of succeeding long term.
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