Paul Erlang
Co-Founder & CEO, fomo. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@PaulErlanger ↗fomo.family ↗
Paul Erlanger is the co-founder and CEO of fomo, an on-chain social trading app that raised $94 million from Benchmark and Index Ventures. Prior to fomo, he worked in private credit at Deutsche Bank and led business development at dYdX.
1shows
1appearances
42statements
6resolved
2supported
0contradicted
33%fully supported
Everything Paul Erlang said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Benchmark Lacks the Platform Resources of Multistage Funds
“I think Benchmark doesn't really have as many resources. Like these multistage funds have so many resources for founders.”
FOMO Operates With No Meetings, One-on-Ones, or Hierarchy
“So currently FOMO is extremely horizontal. We don't have meetings, one-on-ones. We don't really have any hierarchy. Everyone is kind of self-reporting.”
Spending 20% of Developer Salaries on AI Tokens Is Realistic
“But, yeah, so hopefully they get cheaper with time, energy gets cheaper, compute gets cheaper, and then these things get cheaper, but at the current state, absolutely. I think 20% is definitely within reason.”
FOMO Holds More Cash in Bank Than Total Capital Raised
“Our team is scaling. I mean, we're making money. We have much more money in the bank than we ever raised.”
Lack of Consumer Protection Against Scam Coins Destroyed Crypto Sentiment
“And I think what's given such a bad rep is there's no consumer protection here on a lot of these products. So people will buy it. It's so hard to do in the first place, but then they get over the leap of actually doing the thing and then they just lose all the…”
OpenAI and Anthropic IPO Performance Hinges on SpaceX
“I think if SpaceX performs well, the OpenAI Anthropic IPOs will also go very well. I think if SpaceX performs poorly, then those are going to have a hard time.”
Financial Super Apps Lack Intentionality Behind Product Bundling
“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.”
Robinhood's Horizontal Scaling Blocked Global Expansion
“They grew their business and they were able to saturate the U S market. But they weren't able to go global.”
Describing Retail Market Speculation as a Casino Is Derogatory
“I think casino is kind of a derogatory way to view it. I think somewhat, it's somewhat empowering, right?”
Adding LLMs to Existing Design Tools Will Beat AI-Native Platforms
“So with Lovable, it's much harder because they haven't built the human centric software. I think it's much easier to add the LLM on top, especially as it becomes commoditized by all these major models.”
BeReal Lost Momentum by Forcing Daily Activity Without Feedback Loops
“Be Real didn't have the feedback loop. It required people to do something every day, and people don't want to have to do something every single day, and I think as soon as you lose that, you lose momentum very quickly.”
Trader Turned $10K Into $2.5M Overnight on FOMO
“This guy, Iceman, who turned, he turned 10 K to two and a half million dollars overnight in one night on FOMO.”
Revolut Is Strategically Better Positioned Long-Term Than Robinhood
“I, I'm a Robin Hood user because I'm in the US, so I'm going to say Robin Hood, but I do think Revolut is very well positioned. Honestly, it's really hard. Maybe Revolut. It's a close, it's a, that's a close one.”
Overreliance on AI for Writing Degrades Core Skill and Judgment
“I try to use AI for as little of my writing as possible, because I think if I use AI for all my writing, I'm not gonna be able to write anymore, and I'm not gonna be able to remember what is good writing. I'm pretty scared of that to be honest.”
FOMO Gave Non-Founder Early Employees Founder-Level Equity Packages
“We gave non-founders a percentage of the company that usually founders get.”
FOMO Team Took No Salary for First Eight Months of Building
“For the first eight months to building, no one on our team took any pay.”
FOMO's 140-Person Angel Round Was Core to Early Success
“I think that initial round was really core to the success of FOMO.”
Crypto Users' Passion Gives FOMO a Major Competitive Advantage
“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.”
Hyperliquid Pre-IPO Perpetual Prices Converged to Cerebras IPO Valuation
“So what we saw with Cerebris is when the IPO happened, the hyper liquid price started to converge to that price at IPO, right?”
Retail Investors Gain Earlier Access to Private Markets via Perpetuals
“With pre-IPO, with prediction markets, retail gets access to these markets earlier and earlier.”
Peter Fenton Used FOMO's App Throughout Benchmark's Pitch Meeting
“I remember Peter Fenton was actually on his phone most of it. And I was like, kind of bummed out because I was like, damn, he's not interested. He's focusing on other things. He's doing emails. And I remember as soon as we finished the pitch, the first thing h…”
Benchmark Did Not Offer the Highest Series A Valuation
“I think it was close, but not exactly the highest.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Paul's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, fomo | 1 | 42 | 33% 2/6 | full record on 20VC → |