Don't Beg VCs for Money: Peter from 1kx | NAC Ep. 11
Peter from 1kx drops founder survival knowledge during crypto's market downturn. Forget begging VCs for money—build community, focus on revenue, and reach ramen profitability instead. Topics Covered: Why VCs won't invest right now and what to do instead (11:38) Getting to "default alive" and ramen profitability (15:31) Capturing market growth when sentiment shifts (20:05) NFTs, social permeability, and reaching beyond crypto natives (25:05) Counter-cyclical building: taking risks when others won't (34:19) Essential listening for founders navigating the bloodbath and positioning for the inevitable market turnaround.
Shorts | Julian Holguin: Why Content is The Hook
This short highlights one of my favorite moments from my conversation with Julian Holguiin of Doodles and Jesse Pollak of Base. Content is the hook that will usher in billions of users from web2 into web3. Doodles knows this best, and with Julian's prolific background in media and music, coupled with their acquisition of a major animation studio, they're perfectly positioned to execute on this strategy. Listen to the full episode: https://pods.media/mint-podcast/doodles-moves-to-base-ft-jullian-holguin-and-jesse-pollak
Going Viral Onchain
This episode welcomes Cooper Turley, Founder of Coop Records. Cooper is a recurring guest on the pod, though this time, we focus all of our attention on how to go viral onchain. Consider this a round table discussion where him and I share our insights, lessons learned, and debate our perspectives on the current state of the onchain creator economy. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
#172 - JESSE POLLAK
Jesse is the creator of Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 incubated by Coinbase, where Jesse has worked since 2017. Less than one year since its mainnet launch in August 2023, Base has quickly become the leading L2 by many metrics as of the time of this episode's release. Prior to Base, Jesse led all of Coinbase’s consumer-facing engineering from 2017 to 2021. Jesse originally joined Coinbase through the acquisition of Clef, a passwordless identity solutions company he started. Follow Jesse @jessepollak on both X and on Warpcast. 0:00 - Jesse’s story and path to Coinbase 7:02 - How a sabbatical led Jesse to build Base 13:30 - How Coinbase's culture enabled the creation of Base 16:48 - Taking iterative shots with a talented team 21:06 - The importance of persistence 26:27 - How Base's builder-focused culture came to be 29:05 - Navigating when to move fast and breaking things versus when to make decisions carefully and deliberately 34:46 - Why Jesse believes many L2s will be successful 43:19 - Coinbase Smart Wallet & Onchain Summer II For more episodes, go to podofjake.com. Previous guests include Mark Cuban, Vitalik Buterin, Brian Armstrong, Balaji Srinivasan, Keith Rabois, Ali Spagnola, Anthony Pompliano, Raoul Pal, Julia Galef, Jack Butcher, Tim Draper, and over 100 others alike. Learn from founders and CEOs of companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Solana, Polygon, AngelList, Oura, and Replit, and investors from Founders Fund, a16z, Union Square Ventures, and many more. I appreciate your support and hope you enjoy. Thanks to Chase Devens for the show notes and Yiction for the music. Lastly, I love hearing from fans of the pod. Feel free to email me any time at jake@blogofjake.com. Thank you!
Onchain record labels with Coop Records
The inaugural episode of the Coop Records Podcast featuring the core team - Cooper, Ramie, Jake and Cece. We cover the origins of Coop Records and everything you need to know about running an onchain record label in 2024.
NFT Ticket Case Study: Queen George on Growth Hacking Collectors
This episode, from Mint Season 4, Episode 21, is a pivotal moment in my journey as a web3 founder. It significantly contributed to the development of Bello through the insights gained from my conversation with Queen George, a crypto-native jazz-pop artist, who has been exploring web3 since April 2021. We discuss our strategy in building a collector base in web3 and the success of her live concert at ETH Denver in February 2022, where she effectively minted tickets as NFTs, attracting 120 collectors. This conversation documented our thoughtful experimentation with NFTs and planted the seed for a whole new chapter in my life.
Alex Masmej Talks $DEGEN: Fueling Drakula's Growth and the Onchain Creator Economy
Join us in this episode as we sit down with Alex Masmej, the brain behind Drakula and a key player in the farcaster ecosystem. From his early days of conceptualizing Showtime as the 'Instagram of NFTs' to pioneering Drakula, Alex's journey is nothing short of remarkable. Drakula, now making waves as the 'TikTok of Web3', has seen an explosive start with over $30M in transactions in just two weeks, introducing a new and engaging way for fans to support video creators. Alex returns to the podcast to share the lessons learned from pivoting Showtime to creating Drakula, highlighting the strategic moves, go-to-market strategy, and the decision to adopt $DEGEN as the native currency of the app. I hope you enjoy our conversation and our genesis episode on Pods!
#168 - JACEK
Jacek is the creator of $DEGEN, an innovative cryptocurrency and L3 built on Base on Ethereum and popularized on Farcaster. Follow Jacek on Farcaster @jacek. For more episodes, go to podofjake.com. Previous guests include Mark Cuban, Vitalik Buterin, Brian Armstrong, Balaji Srinivasan, Keith Rabois, Ali Spagnola, Anthony Pompliano, Raoul Pal, Julia Galef, Jack Butcher, Tim Draper, and over 100 others alike. Learn from founders and CEOs of companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Solana, Polygon, AngelList, Oura, and Replit, and investors from Founders Fund, a16z, Union Square Ventures, and many more. I appreciate your support and hope you enjoy. Thanks to Chase Devens for the show notes and Yiction for the music. Lastly, I love hearing from fans of the pod. Feel free to email me any time at jake@blogofjake.com. Thank you!
