Co-Founder @ElectricCapital Chairman @crypto_council Views are my own; DYOR
Bay Area / Singapore
- Tweets 7,909
- Following 3,354
- Followers 63,995
- Likes 31,851
Pinned Tweet
> Be 22 y.o.
> 1st time in NYC
> Get lost on subway
> Dream up Google Transit
> Have no idea how hard it would be to build
> Bunch of talented, naive people build in spare time (shoutout @chrishtr, @twephanie, @KatieS)
> Grows to 1B MAU
Naivety is a feature, not a bug
1/ In 2005, @avichal visited NYC and kept getting lost on the subway.
Late to dinner and frustrated, he wondered:
If Google Maps can route me anywhere by car, why can’t it get me on the right train?
So on his flight home, he wrote the product spec for Google Transit. 🧵
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Ironic that we got free AI from a hedge fund and $200/month AI from a nonprofit.
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What's more likely?
1 - small group of AI engineers at @deepseek_ai figures out how to beat all of the top researchers in the world as a side project
2 - Chinese government has 100k GPUs they shouldn't have and releases open source models claiming $6m training cost as a psyop
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You should tell them they are being racist by not allowing you to have your Diwali lights up.
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Indian Americans are finally realizing what Jewish Americans have known for decades:
Just because you love this country doesn't mean it has to love you back.
If you are American of Indian heritage and love America, it is time to fight, fight, fight.
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1/ This screenshot is floating around and I know the back story.
How did a Groupon PM go on to build a supersonic airplane company?
Here is the little-known and tremendously inspiring story of how @bscholl started @boomsupersonic (and my very small part in it)
👇
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1/ The 2nd San Francisco gold rush has finally come to an end.
Gone is era of walking into a $200K job at 22 and saving a million by 30.
For decades, a 70th percentile engineer was guaranteed multiple offers as soon as they interviewed in SF.
That era is over.
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Tether is likely the most profitable company in the world per employee.
Goldman Sachs - $288,172 profit per employee
Meta Platforms - $455,586
Apple - $571,341
NVIDIA - $1,006,757
Tether - $85,625,000 profit per employee
It just looks silly when you graph it
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We need to stop listening to Buffet and Munger for investing advice. Software changed the game and left them behind.
Performance since 2008 crash, when Buffet notoriously struck "sweetheart" deals:
* Nasdaq : +848%
* SPY: +444%
* Berkshire: +388%
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1/ HOW TO ASK FOR HELP AS AN ENTREPRENEUR -- Every week entrepreneurs reach out to me cold on LinkedIn, Twitter, and email asking for help. I love helping if I can!
Unfortunately most people are terrible at asking for help. Here is how to do it properly.
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Europeans hate air conditioning more than Americans love guns.
~70,000/yr people die in Europe from heat exposure.
46,000/yr people die in the US from guns (suicide + homicide).
Community note
70.000 deaths is a peak value for the 2003 heat wave (not a mean value) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Euro…
There are ~746Mo inhabitants in Europe vs ~333Mo in the USA -> the rate per inhabitants of death from a heat wave in Europe would be at least one third below the rate of death by guns in the US
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1/ Time for @ElectricCapital's Annual Developer Report:
medium.com/electric-capital/…
We analyzed 150m+ repos & xM code commits to produce these 100+ charts.
This was a community effort: 150 people contributed via email and Github! Thank you everyone who helped.
Let's dig in👇
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🚨1/ President Trump just issued a MAJOR executive order that touches on everything crypto.
This is a BIG deal: stablecoins, Operation Chokepoint, developer protections, a new Crypto Task Force, and a Digital Asset Strategic Reserve
A breakdown of what @realDonaldTrump signed:
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🚨BREAKING NEWS
The White House just repealed the ban on supersonic flight over the US!
@boomsupersonic is the new Boeing.
Let’s gooooo!!!!
whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2…
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If you need validation from others, being a startup founder is a terrible career choice.
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As of today, $100 of gold weighs less than a $100 bill
$100 USD bill = 1 gram
$100 of gold = 0.983 grams
The US no longer issues new bills larger than $100.
This means gold is actually a more efficient means of transferring value in the physical world than USD bills.
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1/ @ElectricCapital has raised $1 billion in new capital, our largest fundraise yet.
The web3 economy built on top of the programmable money stack will be one of the defining disruptions of the 2020s.
Where are we going to invest $1 billion?
mirror.xyz/electriccap.eth/a…
🧵👇
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One of the most under-appreciated parts of being a founder is how lonely it is
Founders who are 10+ years in, will tell you almost no one who started with them is still around
You start the journey alone and end it alone
It's why founders bond so tightly with other founders
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1/ Some friends and I are trying an experiment:
$400k for 7% on a SAFE, *before* you've picked an idea for a startup
medium.com/south-park-common…
I've done this w/ 3 founders since 2017. 100% of the companies have raised a A and they are worth ~$200M
Details on the $400k👇🧵
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1/ The US Senate just voted 60-38 to overturn SAB 121
This is a BIG deal!
It is the 1st crypto bill to get to the President
It also sends a message to @SECGov that they are screwing up
What is SAB 121?
Why is this vote a big deal?
How did the banks help crypto win here?!
👇
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~20% of US Millennials own crypto. Only 37% own stocks.
Imagine Senators and the White House trying to kill the stock market for half of all Millennial shareholders.
How do you think that demo would vote in the next election cycle?
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Uber is 10x+ larger than the taxi industry.
YouTube is 50x+ larger than any tv station.
Facebook is 100x+ larger than any newspaper.
Why would Bitcoin stop at 1x gold?
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1/ Today we are unveiling @ElectricCapital Fund II, a $110M crypto-focused fund!
We're fortunate to partner with world-renowned endowments and philanthropies on Fund II.
We invest $250k-$10M in tokens and companies.
Need an idea? Here are 16 we are excited about👇🏽
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Sharing lessons from running a startup through 2008. Hope it's useful to founders.👇
1/ Most important: prioritize your health and family. It's clearly stressful as the world feels like it's falling apart. If you are healthy and have your loved ones, you will be fine long term.
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1/ People look for a new job completely backwards, e.g. "I want to be a PM at these 3 companies"
How people prioritize:
A/ Role
B/ Company
C/ Manager (sometimes)
D/ Market (almost never a consideration)
How people should prioritize:
A/ Market
B/ Manager
C/ Company
D/ Role
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India today feels like 1950s America
People assume their lives will be better than their parents'
Tech is seen as a positive force
The government is competent - put a probe on the moon for $70m, built a national ID system, and shipped a realtime national payment system
bqprime.com/business/india-t…
Every trend line points to the next few decades being absolutely incredible for India.
-- India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. “Demographics is destiny”
- India’s phone user base has grown from sub-25m (on 2G networks) in 2011 to 700m today on 4G networks. 5G rollout fastest in the world. “Unparalleled digitization”
- India’s digital ads market has grown from $150m in 2011 to $8b today. Fastest 5G rollout in the world. Ads is a proxy for consumption. “Consumption growing rapidly”.
So this news about India surpassing Japan in the next 7 years is not surprising at all. The bigger question is when India will catch up to the US and China. Could definitely happen in the next 25 years.
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The "rise" of China and India is not a 21st century phenomenon.
It is a reversion to the mean.
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1/ Loot is like @ethereum. It has ignited the imagination of a community by giving us some basic primitives.
It is clunky and limiting, but it is a working MVP.
If the community energy persists, it is a BIG breakthrough. It is the first truly community-owned gaming platform
🧵
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Asking public health officials when lockdown should end is like asking a lawyer when your product should ship.
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Startups are beautiful.
Founders know they will likely fail, but they try anyway.
And every now and then, one of them beats the odds.
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"It's a marathon not a sprint" is only half true.
The best marathoners complete run 4:45 minutes/mile for 26.2 miles. How many people can run even one mile at that pace?
If you want to compete with the best, you need to run at a pace that looks like a sprint to normal people.
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1/ Ross Ulbricht, creator of the Silk Road, has just been pardoned by @realDonaldTrump after serving 11 years!
His story sparked controversy & debate about justice, technology, and freedom.
Most people here joined crypto after Ross was sentenced.
So here's a Ross 101 👇
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1/ Right after graduating I worked at @Google and Larry Page said something in passing that has stuck with me for a decade: "Most important problems aren't that hard to solve, it's just that no one has really tried." With some experience, I have come to believe this is 100% true.
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This one account on Twitter is doing a better job of covering the FTX and SBF news than the entirety of the @nytimes.
The Internet won. Citizen journalism won.
The NYT article was unquestionably soft. They're in a precarious situation. On the one hand, Sam stole $10 billion. On the other, Sam represents globalist values they love. And on the whole, they've promoted him and he is a huge dem donor. This is why we need citizen journalism.
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The fall of the @nytimes summarized in a tweet
~25 years ago: John Burns teaches the world about the horrors of the Bosnian war
Today: A style reporter attacks the founder of a $1B tech company built on social media for not understanding social media; reporter friends pile on
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1/ The US House is voting on FIT 21 today.
Biden just said he wants comprehensive crypto regulations.
Time for another explainer thread.
+ What is FIT21?
+ Why is this bill important?
+ What does FIT21 tell us about shifting political alliances and power in the US?
🧵👇
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Some basic principles to start:
- merit based hiring and education (pushing back on the Hard Left wokes)
- shunning individuals and their associates who claim you are not American for how you look (pushing back on Hard Right Ethno-Nationalists)
- sane immigration merit-based policies that treat illegal and legal immigration differently (pushing back on Dems claiming these need to be tied together, pushing back on Repubs who are zero sum minded)
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1/ We @ElectricCapital fingerprinted more than 20,000 code repos and 16M commits to create a Dev Report on crypto. Analyzed by @MariaShen (better known internally as "Maria Meeker"). Data powered by @curtis0x. Here are the highlights ⚡️
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Since this has gotten some traction:
- The DeepSeek team is obviously very talented
- The DS tech is amazing and impressive
- No hate intended at them or the tech
I remain skeptical of the narrative, just like I don’t believe stories about how famous companies were founded and don’t believe the US Govt’s stated narratives on a whole host of issues.
Foundational models are intertwined with geopolitics. When governments and geopolitics are involved, being skeptical is a good starting position.
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The crypto provisions in the new US infrastructure bill are a disaster.
This bill would result in crypto companies leaving the US en masse.
You can't KYC autonomous code that lives in the cloud that happens to custody crypto. The right strategy is to KYC at the fiat off ramps.
1/ 🚨 Here's the deal with the US infrastructure bill:
A new provision has been added that expands the Tax Code's definition of "broker" to capture nearly everyone in crypto, including non-custodial actors like miners, forcing them all to KYC users.
This is not a drill 👇
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Thinking about moving permanently to Singapore this year.
What are the best resources for me to understand neighborhoods and where to live?
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Probably 50% of the advice I give Stanford students:
A. You're studying engineering? You should take more humanities classes.
B. You're studying humanities? You should take more engineering classes.
There you go students. Saved you an hour of hearing me ramble. ✌️
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0/ 20 Heuristics to Generate Startup Ideas -- I regularly help pre-seed entrepreneurs identify and evaluate startup opportunities. The following are heuristics I’ve developed and collected to identify problems to solve that may also be startups. Also: avichal.com/2019/02/24/heuri…
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1/ Like Pokémon, angel investors have a natural evolutionary path. Founders who understand the evolution of angels can construct a better team around the company. A quick thread on my observations and how founders should stack their team 👇
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Ironic Capitalism: Simultaneously believing capitalism is broken and corporations should be the arbiters of morality.
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More founders *should* take money off the table.
For founders, having $1-2M cash changes your mindset. You can swing big and worry less about downside.
Good VCs only make money with $1B+ exits. They don't want you to sell for $400M.
Cashing out aligns interests long term.
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Nothing makes me happier than seeing smart and successful people who *don't* get web3 yet.
It means we are early. The best, most creative, wildest stuff is yet to come.
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Congratulations to everyone at @coinbase
$100,000,000,000 marketcap is a lot of 0's!
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1/ Q: What has 126 slides based on 89M code commits across 270k repositories?
A: The 2020 @electriccapital Crypto Developer Report!
A herculean effort by @MariaShen, data infra built by @curtis0x and @puntium.
The full report:
medium.com/electric-capital/…
Some highlights below👇⚡️
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By 2025, most white-collar jobs will be better done by an LLM.
It's already game over for most lawyers, analysts, consultants, financial advisors...
We are heading towards a Rust Belt collapse, but for desk jobs.
GDP will go up while we have massive layoffs in these sectors.
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ETH turns 10 years old in July 2025.
For comparison, when BTC turned 10 in Jan 2019:
* Price had collapsed from $20k to $4k
* No institution or govt took BTC seriously
* ETFs didn't exist
* DeFi & stables didn't exist
It's foolish to think ETH is done.
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1/ The US has lost its global lead in crypto & blockchain developers.
This is a policy disaster for the US.
Almost every other region understands the potential of these technologies and how to regulate reasonably.
We see this daily. Amazing founders are leaving the US 👇
The U.S. has lost its lead in blockchain developers & has gone from 40% to 29% market share of open source devs.
We analyzed 200+ million code commits & 11k+ developer profiles to capture geography data.
Full analysis here: developerreport.com/develope…
Let's break it down 👇🏽
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If this holds, the crypto community will raise $5m+ to research a cure for @blader’s daughter, Mira
Interestingly with this twist on memecoins, everyone can feel good about getting dumped on if a verifiably good cause makes millions…an insight for a potential new product?
uh so some random guy 20 minutes made a SOL memecoin called $MIRA to help with research fundraising and sent me half the entire supply and it's now worth like $400K and i literally don't know what to do because i certainly don't want to rug a bunch of random people
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2/ Software engineers were top of the world from 2000-2020
But the easy path to wealth for the median software engineer is over
There were 100k+ people laid off from big tech in 2024, with more layoffs coming. Remote work has globalized salaries, AI is automating more jobs.
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Whoa - a sitting Senator is filing an amicus brief in support of @coinbase and against the SEC!
Great work @SenLummis
cointelegraph.com/news/senat…
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5/This next generation of builders won't need to be coders.
They'll be people who know how to wield AI to build things that matter.
Designers, product managers, and deep domain experts will have unprecedented leverage.
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25/ Thank you @bscholl and everyone at @boomsupersonic for bringing back supersonic flight.
Thank you for inspiring so many future founders, even those stuck in PM jobs at boring tech companies.
Thank you for inspiring us all to believe that we too can just do stuff.
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There are no good investments as a VC.
There are only investments that lost you money, and investments where you should have put in much more money.
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1/ Only ~30% of Americans trust schools, the media, or banks. Similar trends appear globally. This is a 40-year downward trend, not b/c of the Internet. We no longer trust the pillar institutions of post-WWII society and this has significant consequences: medium.com/@ElectricCapital/…
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1/ People are surprised to learn @ElectricCapital's team is 68% software engineers and designers
Why does a VC firm need engineers?
Because Crypto will do to TradFi & venture capital firms what the Internet did to retail & media companies.
🧵👇
mirror.xyz/electriccap.eth/q…
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The @ElectricCapital annual Developer Report drops on Wednesday!
We have ~150 slides of insights and proprietary data. It puts hard numbers against our intuitions that web3 is taking off.
The data makes me *ridiculously* optimistic about crypto & web3. 🚀
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Great companies and founders are forged in Years 2-3, not Year 1.
-
Year 1 (pre product): This idea is amazing. We will change the world!
Year 2: OMG this is hard. Why did we think this was a good idea?
Year 3: This might work.
Year 4 in the press: X is an overnight success!
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24/ The second most incredible part?
He knew he’d probably fail.
Most startups do.
But he tried anyway.
And because @bscholl dared to try, humans will fly supersonic again.
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NFT volume today is 35x what @eBay was doing at IPO.
eBay GMV at IPO:
$340M (*total* since inception)
Today's NFT volume, annualized:
$12b+
Tell me again why NFTs are a fad.
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4/ The era of small, elite, high-leverage builders is here.
$1B companies will be built by 10-person teams. AI will drive efficiency. Productivity will skyrocket.
AI-first companies will dominate. GDP will go up in aggregate.
VC and PE dollars will flow even more in pursuit.
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20 years ago the left loved tech for being socially progressive & the right loved tech as capitalists.
Now no one with political power wants to defend tech companies. The left hates tech for "causing" wealth inequality. The right hates tech for "bias."
nitter.app/ewarren/status/1104019… 🤦♂️
Facebook, Amazon, and Google have vast power over our economy and democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition and tilted the playing field in their favor. Time to break up these companies so they don’t have so much power over everyone else. #BreakUpBigTech medium.com/@teamwarren/heres…
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There are 1-3 decisions that actually matter every year. Everything else is a rounding error.
Most people spend too much time on the decisions that don't matter. And too little time thinking through the decisions that do matter.
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Imagine a Fintech startup tweeted:
"We launched two years ago. Today we have $1 Billion in collateral and have given out a cumulative of $1B in loans!"
Every VC in the world would want to know what the hell the startup does and how it works.
2020 is going to be wild for crypto.
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Yet another example of how the rest of the world is 3 years behind San Francisco.
The future truly is unevenly distributed.
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NFTs are this cycle's alt-coins. We are seeing liquidity flee and rotate out as the excess comes to an end.
Just as with ICOs, the 80 IQ belief is actually right -- just too early. Ethereum, Solana, L2s, DeFi, and stablecoins all came out of the excess of the ICO boom. It just took a few more years.
Some marquee NFT projects will survive this cycle. A few new NFT projects will learn the lessons of this cycle's excess and invest in real user value, value-accretive token mechanics, and build something durable.
The current NFT bust is laying the foundation for a durable NFT ecosystem a few years from now.
Humans *need* to socially signal to each other. Luxury goods, collectibles, video games, and more applications will run on NFTs in a decade. The world's richest man sells physical NFTs, afterall.
Just like digital advertising replaced offline advertising, digital goods will replace physical goods. It is only a matter of time.
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Can someone do a YC for politics?
1/ Find pragmatic, smart engineers
2/ Productize training on how to get elected
3/ Build a massive alumni network, likely starting with local politics, growing into Senators in time.
Scale this and do to law schools what YC did to MBA programs!
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Delighted to announce @0xren_cf has been promoted to General Partner at @ElectricCapital!
Ren started as an engineer at Electric & has grown into a phenomenal investor and unique thinker.
Founders are lucky to work with him. We are lucky to have him at Electric.
Link below 👇
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New pfp - thank you @LucaNetz for the custom @pudgypenguins!
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1/ Once upon a time, crypto's survival was an open question. Now, it's how we grow to 1B+ users
Today, @ElectricCapital is announcing AMAZING advisors to help founders get to 1B users
+ Jay Clayton, ex-SEC Chair
+ Kevin Warsh, ex-Fed Governor
+ Pratiti R., @Meta's Head of UX
👇
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To give you a sense for how early we still are:
My wonderful mother described the events of this week as a BIG deal because "the US Government said Bitcoin is not illegal anymore."
Also I think this means my mom thinks I have been doing illegal things for the last 7 years.
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21/ Ecosystems with 50+ devs growing FULL TIME devs most quickly:
@terra_money +312.50%
@Solana +307.14%
@NEARFoundation +291.43%
@FantomFDN +271.43%
@Avalancheavax +179.17%
@0xPolygon +175.00%
@kusamanetwork +161.90%
@Dfinity +146.15%
@MoonriverNW +125.00%
@Algorand +116.67%
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3/ We saw this in the 80s with traders, 90s with hedge funds, & investment banks prior to 2008.
ChatGPT was the 2008 moment for software engineers. The market regime has forever changed.
But it’s not all bad news — if you’re exceptional.
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You know what makes people REALLY want to disrupt the banking system?
Having to interact with the banking system.
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Want to start a fintech + crypto company with me?
It's a $10+ billion token network if it works
I'll be a cofounder, put in $5m, & land the first 3 key partners
Looking for
1/ Product leader with expertise in brokerage infra or capital markets
2/ CTO with L2 experience
DM me
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Automation is not going to take blue collar jobs. It is coming for accountants, paralegals, administrative assistants, and other white collar jobs.
What robots did to the manufacturing middle class in the 1980s, AI is going to do to the white collar middle class in the 2020s.
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🐂🚀
The # of people asking me for "crypto 101" reading is skyrocketing
🔎 What are the best "intro to crypto" articles for smart laypeople?
+ what is Bitcoin and the case for investing?
+ why crypto unlocks innovation (and disrupts FAANG)?
+ what is DeFi?
Kicking it off👇
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21/ Boom now has nearly $25B+ in pre-orders from United, American, JAL, and others.
Enough to sustain production for five years.
Commercial supersonic flight is coming back.
Introducing the United supersonic fleet.
@United will purchase up to 50 Overture airliners and fly the fleet on 100% sustainable aviation fuels.
boomsupersonic.com/united #BoomSupersonic
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Toly is clearly the person in crypto most like Kobe
Ridiculously talented, crazy work ethic, deeply cares about the craft, and the "job's not finished" intensity to fucking win
Every crypto founder should model themselves on @toly
Absolute 🐐
Anyone who says that solana has won at anything is a sleeper agent. It’s 100% psyops. There is a mountain of work left to do on all fronts.
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4/ Banking access for all - end of Operation Chokepoint 2.0!
The administration is mandating fair access to banking services for law-abiding individuals and businesses in the digital asset space.
No more blacklisting by financial institutions of crypto businesses or people.
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10/ DON'T BE AFRAID TO ASK -- Silicon Valley works because people pay it forward. You'll be surprised at how many people will help, do introductions, or give you quick feedback if you ask kindly, are precise in your request, and concise.
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