Avichal Garg
1 appearance on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
29statements → 17claims → 8claims resolved → 88%fully supported → 3.76/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential →
7 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 8 not checkable as stated how the 17 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
7 predictions · 10 assertions · 1 opinion · 8 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 17 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 8 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Avichal argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Garg: DeFi protocols like Maker and Aave did not fail in 2022
“DeFi worked. DeFi didn't fail here. Maker is still going. Frax is still going. Ethereum is producing blocks. You can send money around using stable coins. You can still take money out of Aave. All the systems that are designed to be over collateralized and res…”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
Everything Avichal Garg said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Garg: DeFi protocols like Maker and Aave did not fail in 2022
“DeFi worked. DeFi didn't fail here. Maker is still going. Frax is still going. Ethereum is producing blocks. You can send money around using stable coins. You can still take money out of Aave. All the systems that are designed to be over collateralized and res…”
Garg: Decentralized storage protocols like IPFS are competitive with AWS
“And beyond that, even decentralized infrastructure. You have things like IPFS, Interplanetary File System, which is incentivized with Filecoin, or RWE, which is a permanent data store. And these things work. You can actually store data on them. Depending on wh…”
Garg: Most DeFi protocols will fail to capture defensible value
“A lot of these protocols ultimately we think will not capture that much value despite there being very useful. It's just going to be really tough for them to actually capture significant value defensively over time.”
Liquid crypto tokens are seed and Series A startups gone public
“Essentially, these are seed stage and series A companies that have gone public.”
Garg: NEAR Protocol is in the top five to survive long term
“They're easily in the top five of things that will actually persist and will survive and have a real value and real ecosystems built on top of them.”
Garg: NFT marketplaces are more defensible businesses than cryptocurrency exchanges
“The belief we've come to is that the NFT markets Are actually going to be more defensible than the cryptocurrency markets. And it's because the assets that you're purchasing are by definition, unique and distinct.”
Garg: Crypto VC firms must operate like engineering-driven software companies
“The way to do investing in crypto would be really different. And it would look a lot more operational. It would look a lot more like a software company than it would a traditional investment firm.”
Electric Capital found raising a $1B fund easier than $10M
“Bizarrely, it was easier for us to raise a billion dollars than it was to raise that first ten million dollars.”
Magic Eden generates hundreds of millions in revenue run rate
“You look at something like Magic Eden on Solana, the run rate for that business is hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The GMV is billions and billions of dollars a year of assets being purchased, and that's on another new L-one in Solana.”
Garg: Value chains form a U-curve where middle integrators get squeezed
“What you can visualize is sort of a U-curve, which is to say that if you're on the far left and you really own the user relationship, you can capture a ton of value. And if you're on the far right, you have some CapEx-heavy hard technology problem. You can lik…”
Andreessen Horowitz built a media company monetized via venture capital
“One of the things they got right, they essentially built a media company that monetizes with venture capital, and they realized that that top of funnel investment flow is really valuable.”
Garg: Crypto will be a multi-chain environment governed by power laws
“We tend to think the world is going to be multi-chain. It's not going to be one chain to rule them all. And there probably is going to be some sort of power law there. So the big winner will be really big. We tend to think Bitcoin and Ethereum will be really b…”
Garg: NFTs are probably how crypto goes mainstream
“The high level here is I've come to believe that NFTs are probably how crypto goes mainstream.”
Garg: There are no good venture investments, only missed size or omissions
“There are no good investments in venture. It's either investments where you said no, you should have said yes, or it's investments where you said yes, but you should have put in a lot more money. There's just no good venture investments.”
Garg: Founders must tolerate being perceived as dumb for years
“And it turns out that psychological position is very important if you're going to be a founder or if you're going to be an investor in something like crypto. You have to be comfortable with people thinking you're dumb for many years at a time.”
Garg: The best investments happen when crypto is deeply unpopular
“Curtis and I always joke that the best investments are when nobody wants to talk to us and we're slowly getting there. When we're very, very unpopular is actually the right time to be investing.”
Ethereum developer counts remained flat despite 80 percent price drops
“The number of developers that are continuing to write code in Ethereum, despite prices being down 60 to 80%, it's flat. The number of full-time developers hasn't gone down. They're still writing code.”
Garg: 2022 crypto failures were caused by opaque off-chain behavior
“The systems that failed by and large were because of off-chain opaque behavior.”
Garg: Crypto valuations will overcorrect to the downside
“We tend to think a lot of these things will overcorrect relative to the value that they've created and relative to the value that they will create.”
Garg: Uniswap will try to capture end-user interface value
“So I think in the case of somebody like Uniswap, you're going to see them try to capture more end-user-facing value and try to own that interface.”
Garg: Following developers is one of early-stage investing's best heuristics
“One of the best heuristics is follow the developers.”
Electric Capital employs full-time engineers instead of VC associates
“We don't have associates and principals. We just hire engineers. So we have eight engineers on staff and these are killer people.”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Avichal Garg – Programmer-Centric Crypto Investing at Electric (Manager Meetings, EP.34) | Aug 4, 2022 | 41m |