Insight
Armstrong: Unanimous consensus committees miss breakthrough innovations
“I think there's a real danger in consensus, especially when you're talking about real breakthrough innovation, because yes, Every breakthrough innovation looks like a bad idea, but it's actually a good idea, and so you, I think you really want to avoid, like, …”
Assertion Supported
Armstrong: Less than 1% of crypto transactions are for illicit purposes
“And so the best data that I have on it today, like over the last couple of years, is that crypto transactions, it's less than one percent are for illicit purposes.”
Assertion Supported
Armstrong: Only 5% of Coinbase employees took severance after 'no politics' memo
“It turned out it was about five percent of the company. We offered this exit package to people, anybody who was not on the same page and wanted to make it all win-win, about five percent of the company decided to take the exit package”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Crypto could become 20% of global GDP within two decades
“Crypto as a whole industry, I think could become 10, 20% of global GDP, like in maybe 10 or 20 years, something like that.”
Disclosure
Armstrong: Coinbase preferred shutting down over pivoting to enterprise banking software
“If we have to pivot this company to be an enterprise software company, I think we maybe just want to shut it down and return capital to investors. Cause like, I just didn't want to run that company. Like we really were in it for the mission. We were a mission …”
Opinion
Armstrong: Legacy financial services hold back innovation and human progress
“Financial services is really holding back innovation in the world. And it's holding back human progress because people don't have the freedom to participate in this global economy because of all the barriers to innovation.”
Insight
Armstrong: Startup co-founders should ideally be people known for years
“Having a co-founder is like getting married, basically. Like, it should be somebody that you have worked with for years, and you've, at least maybe you've known them for years, ideally.”
What-if
Armstrong: Coinbase Would Not Have Succeeded Without Co-Founder Fred Ehrsam
“I don't think Coinbase would have been successful if I hadn't found Fred, so I am eternally grateful to him on that.”
Insight
Armstrong: Successful Fundraising Means Nine Out of Ten Investors Reject You
“Success in fundraising looks like Nine out of 10 people saying no, and very smart people who you probably respect telling you why your idea will not work.”
Disclosure
Armstrong: Misjudged crypto adoption by expecting widespread everyday payments within four years
“If I could go back to my mindset at the beginning of Coinbase, I was like thinking, oh, you know, three or four years, There's going to be hundreds of millions of people using this as a payment method, and the whole network is going to scale, and I would have …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Public company founder CEOs outperform professional CEOs as a cohort
“Founder CEOs, by the way, kind of, if you look at them as a cohort in public companies, they outperform Professional CEOs.”
Insight
Armstrong: Uncertainty of finding product-market fit is what demoralizes entrepreneurs
“When you're trying to get product market fit, you know, you're just continually tweaking things, and getting customer feedback, and fixing bugs, and you never know if you're one more fix from turning the corner, and then boom, organic growth just starts
To tak…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: One Fraudulent Transaction Required 100 Legitimate Trades to Offset
“It takes us a hundred legitimate transactions to make up for one fraudulent transaction.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Armstrong: Coinbase Used $500K of $600K Seed Just to Float Trades
“We had only raised 600 K. Yeah. And we were getting quickly to a point where we were using 500 K of the 600 K just to serve the day to day flow of funds on the site.”
Brian Armstrong