The Exchanges

Q Why do you not agree with the financial super app theory then? You know, if you have a Revolut or a Robinhood or a new bank or any of these big providers where it's like the bundled provider is the one that wins. And, you know, I, I trade on Revolut today. Um, why is that the wrong approach and actually you need a trading app?

A Because everything at means not intentional. It means let's just throw everything in there for the user to access. What is the glue between these things? And at FOMO, we think it's the social graph. We think that you can express a thesis. I think that the straight of Hermes is going to close. Well, I can buy oil on hyperliquid perps. I could short us equities that are relying on oil. I can buy the prediction market that the straight is going to close. And I can express my opinion in all these different things. And the reason these different market types exist is to you express conviction on a belief, whereas all these other apps are just everything super apps, and there's no intentionality behind why all those things have to exist in the same place.

AI assessment note: “there's no intentionality behind why all those things have to exist”

Q the first 15 guests I ever had on the show. He was a YC partner at the time. Can I ask you, when you reflect back on that journey, if you were to advise a consumer founder on how to scale to your first a thousand users, I love Kevin Kelly's essay, A Thousand True Fans. If you were advising on first thousand users, what would your biggest advice be?

A Talk to them. You need to keep iterating until you have 10 people, a hundred people, a thousand people using it, and when you have 10 people using it, get the feedback from them. And then iterate on that feedback and then a hundred people. And this is actually one of the biggest, largest competitive advantages for our company is in the on-chain and crypto industry specifically, the users are very passionate about using the products. So we have telegram channels with a lot of the top traders on FOMO. And when we put out our web app, for example, we did it a week prior and we gave early access. The web app probably became twice as good just in that week. Because we were able to get early feedback from people who are actually passionate. And these people are just users of the product. We didn't pay them. There's no other strings attached, but they just loved it. So I think that the most important thing is just getting user feedback, um, and iterating on it.

AI assessment note: “Talk to them. You need to keep iterating until you have 10 people”

Q How did they come around? Like they slide into your DMs?

A So no, um, So for the series B, that was all inbound, but the series A, we actually did run a process because we were like, we should raise money here. And the benchmark intro came from Aaron. So going back to the most helpful Angel, one thing that we discussed earlier that is kind of funny is Say and I didn't really know the venture game and we're, we're just builders, right? And we didn't really know who benchmark was. I had heard some stuff about how they invested in Uber, but I didn't understand Uh, kind of like the tears of VCs or anything like that. So when we met with Chathan, it was just a very natural conversation. And out of all the conversations we had, he got it instantly. Like he had this deep intuition about what we were building. We had very high conviction on what we were building. So to find someone else who has the same vision and conviction off the bat as us, who doesn't historically do deals in our industry, um, it was, Yeah. Just an amazing conversation.

AI assessment note: “So no... the benchmark intro came from Aaron.”

Q Is there a way to synthetically create momentum within a user journey?

A Absolutely. So for example, one of the most important things on FOMO are the share cards. So when you, if I go to Harry's positions, I can see All of your positions and share any of your positions in these beautiful share cards on any other social media platform or your fumbles. So let's say you sold too early and then the price rockets, then I could see how much you missed out on. And what this does is it creates this feedback loop where I can fully publicly share your things on other platforms, and then people want to see that in real time, so then they come to FOMO. And then you're building this growth feedback mechanism within the app. That every single time there's a top person that's having a top trade, whether it be this guy, Iceman, who turned, he turned 10 K to two and a half million dollars overnight in one night on FOMO. There's another guy, Remus, he turned, I think it was 300 dollars into one and a half million in a month. And then these are being publicly shared on other social media platforms, and then it's driving attention to our platform.

AI assessment note: “you're building this growth feedback mechanism within the app.”

Q Why do you not agree with the financial super app theory then? You know, if you have a Revolut or a Robinhood or a new bank or any of these big providers where it's like the bundled provider is the one that wins. And, you know, I, I trade on Revolut today. Um, why is that the wrong approach and actually you need a trading app?

A Because everything at means not intentional. It means let's just throw everything in there for the user to access. What is the glue between these things? And at FOMO, we think it's the social graph. We think that you can express a thesis. I think that the straight of Hermes is going to close. Well, I can buy oil on hyperliquid perps. I could short us equities that are relying on oil. I can buy the prediction market that the straight is going to close. And I can express my opinion in all these different things. And the reason these different market types exist is to you express conviction on a belief, whereas all these other apps are just everything super apps, and there's no intentionality behind why all those things have to exist in the same place.

AI assessment note: “Because everything at means not intentional. It means let's just throw everything in there”

Q Uber and Microsoft have both put question marks around the productivity gains that come from AI tooling and engineering, saying they are questioning it. Do you think that's moronic, and you unwaveringly see it? Or do you actually say, yeah, we get a load more code, but we're not faster?

A I think it's definitely faster. I think it's not just a lot more code, but it's a lot faster to thoroughly review even than write. So for example, Tina, she's a staff level front engineer of ours. Um, she built our feed. She is building sliders for our new product. There's like all of these like small things on the front end that probably would take a while to implement and learn. You have to go watch YouTube videos or, or go search to find libraries and She's experienced with a lot of this, but some of like the small components are new. Um, but if you could ask AI to do it, they'll kind of give you an overview of how to build this thing. They'll even write the code for you. And then Tina will go back through and even restructure and rewrite most of the code. But having the framework of understanding how to write it, I think just speeds up the learning process significantly, even for the best engineers. So the, the, the product velocity, like I told you that we just dropped everything to ship this new product we're shipping next week. We built this product in three weeks, and this product is basically what entire other apps, their entire product is. You know, we built our web app in one month.

AI assessment note: “I think it's definitely faster. I think it's not just a lot more code”

Q How did they come around? Like they slide into your DMs?

A So no, um, So for the series B, that was all inbound, but the series A, we actually did run a process because we were like, we should raise money here. And the benchmark intro came from Aaron. So going back to the most helpful Angel, one thing that we discussed earlier that is kind of funny is Say and I didn't really know the venture game and we're, we're just builders, right? And we didn't really know who benchmark was. I had heard some stuff about how they invested in Uber, but I didn't understand Uh, kind of like the tears of VCs or anything like that. So when we met with Chathan, it was just a very natural conversation. And out of all the conversations we had, he got it instantly. Like he had this deep intuition about what we were building. We had very high conviction on what we were building. So to find someone else who has the same vision and conviction off the bat as us, who doesn't historically do deals in our industry, um, it was, Yeah. Just an amazing conversation.

AI assessment note: “And the benchmark intro came from Aaron.”

Q Is there a way to synthetically create momentum within a user journey?

A Absolutely. So for example, one of the most important things on FOMO are the share cards. So when you, if I go to Harry's positions, I can see All of your positions and share any of your positions in these beautiful share cards on any other social media platform or your fumbles. So let's say you sold too early and then the price rockets, then I could see how much you missed out on. And what this does is it creates this feedback loop where I can fully publicly share your things on other platforms, and then people want to see that in real time, so then they come to FOMO. And then you're building this growth feedback mechanism within the app. That every single time there's a top person that's having a top trade, whether it be this guy, Iceman, who turned, he turned 10 K to two and a half million dollars overnight in one night on FOMO. There's another guy, Remus, he turned, I think it was 300 dollars into one and a half million in a month. And then these are being publicly shared on other social media platforms, and then it's driving attention to our platform.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. So for example, one of the most important things on FOMO are the share cards.”

Q How do you determine what you buy versus build?

A Anything that has to do with the core product, meaning the things the users face, you kind of have to build yourself. For example, some of our competitors, they just acquired trading terminals and then built that into their product. But FOMO web is like a whole different experience. You have the same social graph. You can place a trade there under one identity, open it on your phone, and it's this social trading experience on a, on a web that no one has ever done before. So that's something that was like very obvious that we just have to build this. But then something like Data infrastructure, right? Maybe someone who's already set up bare metal servers, so we don't have to pay so much money to AWS or Google Cloud, or someone who does indexing for us, or these things that are behind the scenes that would take so long for us to build up the expertise to, those are something, that's something that obviously makes sense to, to kind of acquire to bring in-house.

AI assessment note: “Anything that has to do with the core product... you kind of have to build yourself”

Q Uber and Microsoft have both put question marks around the productivity gains that come from AI tooling and engineering, saying they are questioning it. Do you think that's moronic, and you unwaveringly see it? Or do you actually say, yeah, we get a load more code, but we're not faster?

A I think it's definitely faster. I think it's not just a lot more code, but it's a lot faster to thoroughly review even than write. So for example, Tina, she's a staff level front engineer of ours. Um, she built our feed. She is building sliders for our new product. There's like all of these like small things on the front end that probably would take a while to implement and learn. You have to go watch YouTube videos or, or go search to find libraries and She's experienced with a lot of this, but some of like the small components are new. Um, but if you could ask AI to do it, they'll kind of give you an overview of how to build this thing. They'll even write the code for you. And then Tina will go back through and even restructure and rewrite most of the code. But having the framework of understanding how to write it, I think just speeds up the learning process significantly, even for the best engineers. So the, the, the product velocity, like I told you that we just dropped everything to ship this new product we're shipping next week. We built this product in three weeks, and this product is basically what entire other apps, their entire product is. You know, we built our web app in one month.

AI assessment note: “I think it's definitely faster. I think it's not just a lot more code”

Q How do you determine what you buy versus build?

A Anything that has to do with the core product, meaning the things the users face, you kind of have to build yourself. For example, some of our competitors, they just acquired trading terminals and then built that into their product. But FOMO web is like a whole different experience. You have the same social graph. You can place a trade there under one identity, open it on your phone, and it's this social trading experience on a, on a web that no one has ever done before. So that's something that was like very obvious that we just have to build this. But then something like Data infrastructure, right? Maybe someone who's already set up bare metal servers, so we don't have to pay so much money to AWS or Google Cloud, or someone who does indexing for us, or these things that are behind the scenes that would take so long for us to build up the expertise to, those are something, that's something that obviously makes sense to, to kind of acquire to bring in-house.

AI assessment note: “Anything that has to do with the core product... you kind of have to build yourself.”

Q the first 15 guests I ever had on the show. He was a YC partner at the time. Can I ask you, when you reflect back on that journey, if you were to advise a consumer founder on how to scale to your first a thousand users, I love Kevin Kelly's essay, A Thousand True Fans. If you were advising on first thousand users, what would your biggest advice be?

A Talk to them. You need to keep iterating until you have 10 people, a hundred people, a thousand people using it, and when you have 10 people using it, get the feedback from them. And then iterate on that feedback and then a hundred people. And this is actually one of the biggest, largest competitive advantages for our company is in the on-chain and crypto industry specifically, the users are very passionate about using the products. So we have telegram channels with a lot of the top traders on FOMO. And when we put out our web app, for example, we did it a week prior and we gave early access. The web app probably became twice as good just in that week. Because we were able to get early feedback from people who are actually passionate. And these people are just users of the product. We didn't pay them. There's no other strings attached, but they just loved it. So I think that the most important thing is just getting user feedback, um, and iterating on it.

AI assessment note: “Talk to them. You need to keep iterating until you have 10 people”

Q Going back to the story, when you had the angel round, and we got to the thousand true fans, what's your biggest advice to founders on product market fit?

A I think you have to stay humble because at any moment you could lose it. And I think that it's, everything is about momentum. So when you have momentum, instead of like taking the gas off the pedal and be like, okay, like this is working. It's like, no, you need to double down 10 times harder. And every day we come in and we're like, listen, we need to ship these features today or else we're going to lose everything we have now. And I guess it's somewhat of a, a fear mindset, but it's really just like, Trying to continue to keep pressure on. So we continue moving forward because once you lose momentum, the boulders starts rolling down the hill. You know, you need to keep pushing it up.

AI assessment note: “I think you have to stay humble because at any moment you could lose it.”

Q Any reflections now from UGC building this Clipper content management system that other founders should know if they're thinking about it?

A So, so I guess there's two things here. One, you need to make sure that you're at the lifetime value of the user is actually worth it. But two, you don't always have to go for the lowest hanging fruit. And this is a journey that we're on now where you have someone whose lifetime value might be, let's say, 30 dollars and you're only spending 80 cents on them. But then there's another user that you actually need to spend three dollars on because they need to see it 10 times instead of two times to actually convert. So you should actually Start to increase your CAC, even if the LTV stays the same, to capture a larger and larger audience, as long as the CAC is lower than the LTV.

AI assessment note: “So I guess there's two things here. One, you need to make sure”

Q Any reflections now from UGC building this Clipper content management system that other founders should know if they're thinking about it?

A So, so I guess there's two things here. One, you need to make sure that you're at the lifetime value of the user is actually worth it. But two, you don't always have to go for the lowest hanging fruit. And this is a journey that we're on now where you have someone whose lifetime value might be, let's say, 30 dollars and you're only spending 80 cents on them. But then there's another user that you actually need to spend three dollars on because they need to see it 10 times instead of two times to actually convert. So you should actually Start to increase your CAC, even if the LTV stays the same, to capture a larger and larger audience, as long as the CAC is lower than the LTV.

AI assessment note: “you don't always have to go for the lowest hanging fruit”

Q I think that'd be an interesting addition to the angel round. Um, speaking of interesting additions to angel round, when we think about early rounds, you did an only angel round. Yeah. In the early days, no institutions, and you had a 140 angels. Why did you decide to do this and how would that inform how you advise founders?

A It was pretty intuitive to us. So I think if you're running a B to B business, you hire a big sales team and it's not an easy job, but it's a lot of outbound repetitive. When you're starting a consumer product, it's a very different problem space because there's a lot of great products that just never get off the ground. So we knew we needed to start this, solve this cold start problem, like get people on the app. So when we raised the initial round, it The goal was to create distribution. And we think that our best users should have some ownership in the product. And early on, what we were able to do is get people motivated by allowing them to invest in the product and create as large of a distribution channel as possible. And not all those people are traders. Like there are definitely builders in the industry and we've been able to leverage tons of them as we continue to build. But I think that initial round was really core to the success of FOMO.

AI assessment note: “So when we raised the initial round, the goal was to create distribution.”

Q Can I ask you, when you look at Robinhood today who provide or want to provide a lot in terms of trading capabilities, do you think they were wrong to go so broad so quickly?

A I think a lot of people that are on Robinhood would have never been on a brokerage otherwise. Um, I see some criticism of like, do I want to have my retirement account in the same place as I can trade prediction markets in sports bet. And I think that they can do better tooling for users to self guard against some of those products, but I understand why they horizontally scaled. They grew their business and they were able to saturate the U S market. But they weren't able to go global. And I think this is why they're focused on on-chain assets, because on-chain is global from day one. And if they could tokenize equities and a lot of the stocks that are existing on Robinhood, then they could give global access to these assets. I think that as they go global, they could be less focused on horizontally scaling all these products and really capturing a larger market.

AI assessment note: “I understand why they horizontally scaled. They grew their business”

Q I think that'd be an interesting addition to the angel round. Um, speaking of interesting additions to angel round, when we think about early rounds, you did an only angel round. Yeah. In the early days, no institutions, and you had a 140 angels. Why did you decide to do this and how would that inform how you advise founders?

A It was pretty intuitive to us. So I think if you're running a B to B business, you hire a big sales team and it's not an easy job, but it's a lot of outbound repetitive. When you're starting a consumer product, it's a very different problem space because there's a lot of great products that just never get off the ground. So we knew we needed to start this, solve this cold start problem, like get people on the app. So when we raised the initial round, it The goal was to create distribution. And we think that our best users should have some ownership in the product. And early on, what we were able to do is get people motivated by allowing them to invest in the product and create as large of a distribution channel as possible. And not all those people are traders. Like there are definitely builders in the industry and we've been able to leverage tons of them as we continue to build. But I think that initial round was really core to the success of FOMO.

AI assessment note: “when we raised the initial round, it The goal was to create distribution.”

Q What's your greatest strength, but also your greatest weakness?

A I have strongly held, like loosely held strong beliefs, and in the sense that I, I think that sometimes the downside of it is sometimes you just need to make the decision, and, but I always listen. Like whenever there's a decision at FOMO, you're asking, we're asking every single person, especially the core team, what they think about it, and we're talking it out and coming to the right conclusion. I think it's, Definitely more of a strength than a weakness, because it's a forcing function for us to strongman the other side always, because we're always like, what if we did it this way, or I have the opinion that's inverse to yours, let's talk it out. But I do think that sometimes you need to just make a decision and we get hung up on things.

AI assessment note: “loosely held strong beliefs... Definitely more of a strength than a weakness”

Q Can I ask you, when you look at Robinhood today who provide or want to provide a lot in terms of trading capabilities, do you think they were wrong to go so broad so quickly?

A I think a lot of people that are on Robinhood would have never been on a brokerage otherwise. Um, I see some criticism of like, do I want to have my retirement account in the same place as I can trade prediction markets in sports bet. And I think that they can do better tooling for users to self guard against some of those products, but I understand why they horizontally scaled. They grew their business and they were able to saturate the U S market. But they weren't able to go global. And I think this is why they're focused on on-chain assets, because on-chain is global from day one. And if they could tokenize equities and a lot of the stocks that are existing on Robinhood, then they could give global access to these assets. I think that as they go global, they could be less focused on horizontally scaling all these products and really capturing a larger market.

AI assessment note: “I understand why they horizontally scaled. They grew their business”

Q When you say extremely well, I'm so sorry to be a dick, but like, what does that actually mean? So many founders listen, like, should I give everyone one percent each?

A Yeah, I think, well, it's hard, like everyone, it depends who, but like, yes, top performers, a hundred percent. In fact, more than more than that. Right. I think we gave non-founders a percentage of the company that usually founders get. And it was mostly this core group of original people that didn't take any, any pay. And I think what's really important here is all those people feel like owners of the business, because if those Five to seven to 10 people build this business for the next 10 years. There's literally nothing stopping us. And we talked about this and work-life balance and how do you push your team to work harder? And our team is senior enough and also has enough ownership where they feel like FOMO is theirs.

AI assessment note: “yes, top performers, a hundred percent. In fact, more than more than that.”

Q What's your greatest strength, but also your greatest weakness?

A I have strongly held, like loosely held strong beliefs, and in the sense that I, I think that sometimes the downside of it is sometimes you just need to make the decision, and, but I always listen. Like whenever there's a decision at FOMO, you're asking, we're asking every single person, especially the core team, what they think about it, and we're talking it out and coming to the right conclusion. I think it's, Definitely more of a strength than a weakness, because it's a forcing function for us to strongman the other side always, because we're always like, what if we did it this way, or I have the opinion that's inverse to yours, let's talk it out. But I do think that sometimes you need to just make a decision and we get hung up on things.

AI assessment note: “sometimes you need to just make a decision and we get hung up on things”

Q America likes to shit on Europe, but when we look at the numbers, right now Europe is kind of shitting on America when it comes to fintech. It's our fintech provider, Revolut, which has stolen the show, and I think on the next round will be considerably more valuable than Robinhood. Why has no one in the US built something that Europe has?

A Yeah, I think it's true. I mean, listen, because every country has different brokerage laws, Europe is a lot, like a lot larger in terms of, like, there's so many countries in Europe, and I think Revolut has been able to kind of saturate all of Europe at once, and has been able to grow globally a lot faster than Robinhood. Robinhood has done a great job. I think they have a little over twenty million funded accounts in the United States, and we were discussing before how they've horizontally grown to other product categories. Their biggest move with on-chain, uh, tokenized equities is to be able to finally distribute these things globally. And I think it's really important. Look at Facebook, look at WhatsApp, like all of these business, social businesses that really scaled are global from day one. And I think that's really, really important. Um, so I don't know if it necessarily answers your question of Europe versus US, but I think the reason is your ability to saturate a larger group of people.

AI assessment note: “the reason is your ability to saturate a larger group of people.”

Q Do you think VCs can king make? And what I mean by that is when you have a benchmark behind you, do you see a needle moving trajectory change?

A Well, yeah, I definitely think Benchmark being on our side helped us in that sense, but that's not the reason we did it. Mostly because we were naive to that, right? Which is kind of a funny set of, uh, circumstances, but yeah, definitely. I think that there are some venture funds that their strategy is just to follow on companies like Benchmark, et cetera. And we had a lot of inbounds and the partners we ended up working with were not those partners. I think there were like very intrinsic reasons why we worked with the partners we did for our series B. Um, yeah, I think a lot of people just kind of follow investment, and this is a little bit of a separate topic, but one thing that I discovered was if you're trying to raise another round, wait to announce your last round, because as soon as you announce a round, you get tons of inbound from other investors, and it takes up time to kind of tell them, no, we're not raising right now. So in the future, that's kind of a note to self that If you really want to raise capital in the near future, you can just wait to announce your round until you're ready.

AI assessment note: “I definitely think Benchmark being on our side helped us in that sense”

Q When you say extremely well, I'm so sorry to be a dick, but like, what does that actually mean? So many founders listen, like, should I give everyone one percent each?

A Yeah, I think, well, it's hard, like everyone, it depends who, but like, yes, top performers, a hundred percent. In fact, more than more than that. Right. I think we gave non-founders a percentage of the company that usually founders get. And it was mostly this core group of original people that didn't take any, any pay. And I think what's really important here is all those people feel like owners of the business, because if those Five to seven to 10 people build this business for the next 10 years. There's literally nothing stopping us. And we talked about this and work-life balance and how do you push your team to work harder? And our team is senior enough and also has enough ownership where they feel like FOMO is theirs.

AI assessment note: “we gave non-founders a percentage of the company that usually founders get”

Q Going back to the story, when you had the angel round, and we got to the thousand true fans, what's your biggest advice to founders on product market fit?

A I think you have to stay humble because at any moment you could lose it. And I think that it's, everything is about momentum. So when you have momentum, instead of like taking the gas off the pedal and be like, okay, like this is working. It's like, no, you need to double down 10 times harder. And every day we come in and we're like, listen, we need to ship these features today or else we're going to lose everything we have now. And I guess it's somewhat of a, a fear mindset, but it's really just like, Trying to continue to keep pressure on. So we continue moving forward because once you lose momentum, the boulders starts rolling down the hill. You know, you need to keep pushing it up.

AI assessment note: “I think you have to stay humble because at any moment you could lose it.”

Q Do you think VCs can king make? And what I mean by that is when you have a benchmark behind you, do you see a needle moving trajectory change?

A Well, yeah, I definitely think Benchmark being on our side helped us in that sense, but that's not the reason we did it. Mostly because we were naive to that, right? Which is kind of a funny set of, uh, circumstances, but yeah, definitely. I think that there are some venture funds that their strategy is just to follow on companies like Benchmark, et cetera. And we had a lot of inbounds and the partners we ended up working with were not those partners. I think there were like very intrinsic reasons why we worked with the partners we did for our series B. Um, yeah, I think a lot of people just kind of follow investment, and this is a little bit of a separate topic, but one thing that I discovered was if you're trying to raise another round, wait to announce your last round, because as soon as you announce a round, you get tons of inbound from other investors, and it takes up time to kind of tell them, no, we're not raising right now. So in the future, that's kind of a note to self that If you really want to raise capital in the near future, you can just wait to announce your round until you're ready.

AI assessment note: “yeah, I definitely think Benchmark being on our side helped us in that sense”