I remember waking up every morning terrified that I was going to make nothing of my life in terms of what I wanted to do Because I would get to completion. I probably wouldn't have left as quickly as I did if I hadn't gotten really into Bitcoin She did because of the lot of like a hundred bucks. It was a thousand or ten thousand. What did you do?
I won't say the number but it was 50% of the money I had in the world at the time. So you can't implement water? Yeah, the Bitcoin. Now, what's the Bitcoin?
To what some are calling fools though. The value of each Bitcoin hit a new high. Is trading for about $130, $413 more than $2,000, $9,700, $19,500. Honestly, it was just very clear to me that this was distinct from anything else I'd ever seen and that if it worked It was unlikely to go from $100 to $200 and kind of be down there to me.
It was like this either goes fucking huge or it died. You said you listened to an episode or two? Yeah. Yeah, it was great.
It was so funny because I just like randomly came across it and then like you messaged me like the next day or something. Like within day like it was well. No, I thought it was super interesting. I actually listened to the episode with Sam and it's always interesting to hear people who just had some idea and then just build it up and what they actually did and it was like steps because to your point I think there's a ton of like oh then I did the thing and it's like what things did you actually do?
That's why even I was asking all these specific questions around the podcast. I'm just curious about like steps and very much a fan of the kind of entrepreneurial hustle I have like always taken the less paved road And so I think it's always fascinating to see the stories of other people who have done that as well in totally different environments So I was looking at your Twitter beforehand because I'm like the best way to do research is to read some of the Because they're posting all like all of their thoughts and so you can see how they think and you had a tweet Which is good, which was like I feel like in college everybody should be required to take a test that makes you do a 20 second intro of yourself This should be required. It's shockingly bad. It's like introducing themselves simply So I'm gonna put you to the test you're gonna have to do your 20 second in show here and no pressure And let's see how it gets up for the audience who is our answer sure.
Yeah, so my name is Ariana Simpson I'm an early stage tech investor I've been involved in crypto for about six and a half years which practically makes me a dinosaur and prior to that I worked at Facebook and a couple other tech startups. Yeah, I love investing I think that's definitely what I'm gonna be doing for the rest of my life So I think that's like a pretty strong part of my identity at this point Did you think you were gonna do investing like when you're growing up here in college where you like that's the path I want to go down or just double into this now if you look back You can kind of see the seeds of it at various points in time, but it was not obvious at all my parents are Teachers now professors have no interest in anything financial, but I always did I just I like numbers I like money I thought it was interesting and I like things that are quantifiable and specific and that's just kind of how my brain works And so I was always interested in kind of reading financial history books and things like that And so that was kind of the impetus for it but in terms of my academic trajectory I studied international relations and Spanish and history and thought I was gonna go work at the UN or for the State Department And then realized I was probably not very well suited to bureaucracy given my lack of patience in general And so I kind of started thinking about technology and it's kind of a bizarre story how I ended up there But I got a grant from the National Science Foundation Right as I was about to graduate from college and went to South Africa to do a college research for a couple months there And when I was there I had an idea for an app that would basically help botanists or colleges identify various plant species there because I was roaming around the Forests literally in downpour rain situations with this book trying to figure out what trees I was looking at and don't recommend it Not a fun activity and basically I was like well I'd be a lot easier if I could just like take a picture of a leaf or a bark and figure out what it is based on that Or at least have some guidance and so I started working on this idea Obviously now there's a lot of apps that do that but this was a number of years ago And so it wasn't really a thing So I started working on that with a couple of guys I knew from college And we decided you know kind of go out and build this thing got accepted to an accelerator and Princeton and started working on it And then at a certain point I was like wait a minute I don't really want to spend the next five years my life on this problem So we'll keep the team but we started working on some other ideas And so that was kind of my very random meandering into tech The crypto piece is even weirder in the sense that my second time in Africa I kind of fell in love with the region the first time I was there And I mean I've never felt more alive in my life because there is no higher density of things that can kill you maybe Australia But Africa is pretty high and and so I just had an incredible time there And I was like I definitely want to come back when I have some free time So I went back the second time I spent time in South Africa again but I also was in a number of other countries including Zimbabwe and this was early 2013 and The country was just coming out of kind of the worst of their hyperinflation And I saw kind of how much economic devastation they've gone through and the fact that they'd had to switch over to the US dollar to Resabilize the economy so when I came back I was thinking a lot about non-state run currencies and all of that the hyperinflation because I've seen a Zimbabwe like Trillion dollar note or something like that something ridiculous a million dollars like Zimbabwe dollars whatever it is So tell me what was going on what was causing the hyperinflation and what did you see because I think it was kind of I've heard some crazy stories about what was going on absolutely crazy stories So basically what happened is the president slash dictator Robert Mugabe who actually just passed away last week effectively started recklessly printing money to pay off his military cronies And so what this cause was massive hyperinflation, which at its peak had the currency devaluing by 50% on a daily basis So basically people's savings were completely evaporating stores were not able to keep any merchandise in stock hospitals could not stock medicine doctors We're not getting paid people were dying from very preventable things So the whole country kind of just spiraled downward as a result of that so you were there when this was going on So I was there a couple years after the worst of it But these things obviously take many years to kind of recover from and so by that point what they done They replaced this in Bobwin currency, which had you know gone to a point of no return effectively with US dollars So when I got there I was no expert in various currencies at that point in time and I got there And I was like oh this is interesting people are using dollars And so then I started kind of doing some research and talking to people and really understanding what had gone on there And yeah, I was a really really crazy situation But that kind of experience was really what sparked my interest in the potential of cryptocurrencies and that whole universe because I came back To the US and a friend of mine was like oh well You're talking about like non sovereign currencies like have you looked at Bitcoin and I was like oh no What's that and sorry for the white paper and I was like oh my god This is insane like this works early 2013 Yeah, and I said you know if this works This is like the biggest invention of my lifetime and yeah I just became fascinated from it in it and so started investing there and then the tech piece and the financial piece sort of Converged in Bitcoin, which is one of the reasons why I find it so interesting. Yeah, so you got bit by the Bitcoin But I did and who's the friend who introduced you to Bitcoin his name's Ryan Shea? He is the founder of a project called block stack But this was even before he started doing that and we were just next to our neighbors and which is kind of you know Drink wine and shoot the ship from time to time and he was like obsessed with it as well and explained it to me I was like I don't really get it I read the white paper and then I was like aha it's a fitting moment So you got it and then at this time where were people talking about Bitcoin was this just in the forums was the hacker news Like because Bitcoin went from like a very small circle of essentially like anarchists to you know Tech enthusiast and kind of people who are interested in new radical ideas and then they got more and more mainstream And now you know you watch the CBC and there's a big coin ticker on the screen So like where were we in that going mainstream of Bitcoin at that time?
We were really early I mean there were so I was living in New York at the time and there were kind of certain small really sketchy meetups Which were inhabited by individuals who look like they hadn't emerged from their mother's basement except to attend these meetups in about a decade I'm kidding. There were also some normal people but a lot of interesting characters and how many other females were in the room? Yeah, great question one. No generally it was like zero or one I'm still very good friends with most of the ones who were there Yeah, I mean I had some horrible experiences I actually wrote a blog post which went super viral my 15 minutes of fame about kind of my experience as a woman at a Bitcoin meetup Like I'm not a delicate flower if you piss me off It means it really went overboard and I think the you know Just people being like oh well like women aren't interested in these things and women don't understand efficiency and I'm like literally I'm sitting here I'm in the room or you know it's just just people groping you I mean the whole gamut really but you know in general I was like well whatever I'm just gonna keep showing up and onwards and so yeah, it was a weird moment in time I think there was a small community of people who saw the potential and were excited about it But like most people even very smart knowledgeable people about tech and you know finance were extremely skeptical And you know to me the last year has been really kind of crazy in the sense that a lot of the people who were saying Oh, you know Goldman Sachs would never touch this like none of the big players whatever doing anything in this camp You know now a lot of those players have a desk that trades it or they're building financial products around it Or they're members of the Libra Association, you know, so there's just a lot of stuff that's happening Skeptics have become sort of converts now.
Exactly. Yep. Totally. And so when you were you're getting introduced that you read the white paper Obviously, you know technically savvy enough to like sort of read a white paper and understand what the implications of it is But for most people and maybe a lot of people listen to his podcast They've heard a Bitcoin at a very surface level and don't believe a grasp of it and I'm the type where there's like 10 things where I'll hear the term 50 Times to the point where I'm like, yeah, I think I know but if somebody was like hey can you explain that real quick?
I'd be like oh, yeah, I don't like I need to go real quick You know, let me be right back So if you were explaining Bitcoin today to a cousin or an aunt of yours who's heard of the term but doesn't actually understand what it is What's your like simple way of explaining what is Bitcoin? Why is it interesting? Well, I think in its most basic definition It's a digital currency, which is scarce by design So you can't print infinite money or things like that you can't do it We'll go be there exactly and that's I think a big part of the value You know, it's defined as sound money, which means there's a certain supply and there's a number of other characteristics that define it as such But it's not issued by a government which is a key difference We haven't really seen non-state issued currencies in our lifetime for the most part and it's censorship resistant in the sense that you know I can't really shut down the network nobody can which is I think one of the key elements there and I own my money in a way that I don't in the traditional financial world So right now, you know, I'm an account at Chase if Chase says we're freezing your account like cool story I can't move my money Whereas if I have a Bitcoin wallet and I own the private keys which give me the ability to actually transact or move that money Nobody can really take it away from me And if one you know wallet provider or whatever decides to not support something you can migrate to another and so I think that is the key Distinction you're not reliant upon other middlemen or third parties in the way that you are in the traditional financial system And so when you were getting interested 20 early 2013 2014, what was your first Bitcoin purchase? When did you first it down?
You're like, okay, I want some of these bitcoins myself How did you get your first Bitcoin? I went on coinbase, which was a very new company at that point in time And I just bought it on there. I'd also like receive some from people who you know paid me back for something in Bitcoin And now you know, those are it's kind of a $50,000 Yeah, so some of that kind of transactions with friends and things but the bulk of it was spying it to me I've always felt that it was more interesting to have explosive upside potential than managing downside risk And so I was like, okay, I'm quite young. I don't have that much money to begin with I think this is incredibly powerful and important and most of the world has not yet gone on to this fact And if it goes to zero, well, whatever I've lost half a mine at worth But it wasn't that much to begin with and I'll make it back over the course of my life slash career And if it works if I'm right about this thing like this is huge You can make a fortune, but you couldn't lose a fortune So like do you remember the size of your first Bitcoin purchase was it like you dip your toes in the water for like a hundred bucks?
It was a thousand or ten thousand or what did you do? It was I won't say the number but it was a 50% of the money I had in the world at the time, okay Which is a pretty aggressive Yeah, but I honestly it was just very clear to me that this was distinct from anything else I'd ever seen and that if it worked again, there was a large percentage likelihood that it didn't work But if it did it was gonna be huge It was gonna be kind of a binary outcome like it was unlikely to go from a hundred dollars to two hundred dollars And kind of be down there to me it was like this either goes fucking huge or it dies Yeah, and so you know again from my given I wasn't in the wealth preservation stage of my life I was in the like well Let's see what happens here And I just I found the tech to be so interesting and so transformative that I was like if this works like this is huge Right. Yeah, I did the same when I first bought Bitcoin I think I put eight grand into Bitcoin and I had a rule at a big one at the time the price was like somewhere between a hundred and two bucks and when I bought it I just published I put this on Twitter I said bought Bitcoin today 10,000 or bust and I was like I'm gonna hold it until they're at ten thousand dollars per coin or I'm gonna hold it till it's zero dollars per coin and that's that's how I'm gonna play this game I'm not gonna look at the price on a daily basis and at the time when I was saying ten thousand I thought that was the like home run I thought well, that's the crazy outcome if this thing goes from a hundred bucks to ten thousand dollars per coin And ironically like today the price of basically ten dollars point I didn't actually hold true my rule because at some point I think because I got thirty five hundred bucks And I went to the East Coast for like a wedding or something and my aunt who I can say this issues no way she listens to this No way she knows what a podcast is she was talking to you like all the other like aunties at this Indian party and she was telling them She's like oh yeah Ethereum Ethereum's really good And I was like wait did she just say Ethereum like how does my aunt know about Ethereum? She doesn't even know like she still has like a well email address and so I was like did you just and she's like yeah Bitcoin Bitcoin's great But you know Ethereum's where you gotta be so she was like already passed Bitcoin was slinging Ethereum as like the new thing And I was like oh my god This is a bubble if my aunt who doesn't understand why she thinks Ethereum is good But just thinks it's good because you put your money in and it makes you more money I was like that's like I think what a bubble is so I tried to sell everything that day and coinbase has like a limit So you can only sell like 20 grand in a week or something like that And so I was trying to sell and then like eventually I sold like half of it and then the other half I kind of like calmed down by Then I was like okay, okay, I'll keep holding that Let's see let's let that let's let's have ride but that was my journey into Bitcoin Yeah, I think honestly a lot of people have similar situations in some cases worse It sounds like at least you kept some on the table I know a lot of folks who started buying it round when I did and then we're like oh I made 10x my money like amazing I'm out and that's true But I think my position on it was still like if this works this literally can compete with state-run currencies Which is an enormous market It's good.
It's tackling the market of money, which is by definition the largest market like trillions of dollars And so to me again, I was like even at 10,000 like there's so much upside potential from here that like I'm holding Yeah, I don't price this kind of plain out so I'll switch the topic soon But the two for those who listen there are people who believe in Bitcoin They'll be somebody like Tim Draper there people who believe in Bitcoin and they say look if this is digital gold or if this is the global reserve currency Which is like if Bitcoin achieves its vision That's what it will be the market for those is in these sort of like multiple trillions and trillions of dollars Therefore every Bitcoin will be like okay 250k is there's some number where every Bitcoin will be worth a lot of money Do you have a mental model that you like that's like here's what if it achieves its vision Here's what I think it would be worth, you know based on my logic Do you have kind of a max upside of what you think this gets to well? I mean you can back into some numbers You know for example the gold market is about seven to eight trillion depending how you count it And so if you say okay, if Bitcoin becomes that size then you can back into a number per coin etc I tend not to have super specific price targets for some of these things because I just think there's so many moving parts It may not even be relevant because maybe it takes Bitcoin my lifetime and a half to actually get to the size of the gold market So you know if it goes there, so it's hard to kind of give it a particular number I also think there's Bitcoin is dominant. I'm very long Bitcoin But I think there's to expect that other currencies will not kind of improve on it or potentially take market share away from it over time Is silly and so you know the overall market for cryptocurrencies might be twice the size of gold But Bitcoin might end up being a quarter that you know So there's just so many kind of factors that are up in the air I think one thing that is an interesting kind of analysis and and body of work on this is a paper by a guy named John Fever who is a partner at KKR the private equity firm and he wrote it's called an Institutional investors take on crypto assets or something like that and basically he does the math looking at what is M1 money supply? What if Bitcoin achieves you know 10% 50% 100% penetration of these various kind of segments of the money sphere that you could look at and he Backs into a 200 to 800k ish prediction or you know potential and so if you think about it that way It's less about like is it 200 K or is it 800 K?
But more is it like on a risk adjusted basis? Do I think this has the makings of a potentially really interesting investment because the upside is quite large the downside is whatever You put in and so you know if you look at it through that lens if you have a certain appetite for risk Then it seems like a no-brainer Not obviously all of your assets but with some percentage of it as you put 50% of your assets in at the time I did now I'm much higher than that in terms of a group of percent And so you're all in essentially yes and at the time You know your parents or your friends was it did anybody sort of sit you down and say hey This is a little bit crazy or nobody really knew what you were doing you just did it everyone has always thought I'm crazy Until it turns out I'm right about something I've kind of always gone my own direction I think for me if I have conviction and something it doesn't really matter what anybody else thinks you know I've definitely had moments where I was like oh my gosh am I totally wrong about all of this but at the end of the day I think my lens has also been I'm gonna learn a lot more I'm gonna be exposed to a lot more interesting thing and yeah I know I mean I've definitely had people who are extremely smart extremely knowledgeable You know at the time decades older than me saying like this is crazy What are you doing? Dada Dada both in terms of like how I've allocated my money but also like career choices I've made and things like that and in retrospect I think I regret none of it fortunately a lot of it has worked out quite well But even the things that didn't in the near term I think have been extremely useful and great learning experiences for me and kind of help Me move through my career more quickly than I might have otherwise Gotcha and so let's walk through some of those career decisions So you read Facebook for a period of time. Yep.
You decided to leave there and we'll talk about you know Why you were there why you left then you were at BitGo which is a crypto platform for institutional investors And you were like number three at BitGo and he left there and now you've raised your own fund Which is awesome and congratulations give me the like TLDR on like Facebook like what were you doing? What was it like? Why did you leave? So I went to Facebook because I'd previously been at a Y Comator startup called Chup Teaks working in New York And I was basically running sales in ops which is a lot but it was a very small startup That was my first job out of college nobody really had time to train me So just kind of figuring things out on the fly for the most part and with Facebook I really wanted to go somewhere to quote unquote learn how to do things properly because I was like well I'm just kind of making up how to sell but maybe there's like processes and you know things like that that I should some skills that I should pick up And I wanted a logo to be honest I was like okay I think it will be useful for my further career progression to have kind of them exactly yeah And that's exactly what I got I mean frankly the hardest part of working at Facebook was by far the interview process So there were about 1800 applicants for the job I ended up getting which is you know a very very long percentage hit rate But I think the job itself was a lot easier than what I've been doing at the startup because when you're at Facebook You're selling a known thing.
It's like okay coca-cola or you know invest one million or two million in this ad campaign It's not like should we buy this at all like you know And so I think it was a lot easier in terms of the actual job the eight rounds of interviews and all of that were the hard part Yeah, I was there like okay This is not that hard But yeah I mean I think for better for worse when you go to a place like that people then assume you're smart and you know It's definitely not the only way to do it But it's certainly helpful in the same way that you know that you get that signaling from Harvard or Stanford or whatever right? So you're there for about a year and most is very easy and now I'm at a big tech company So I can tell you it's very easy to get comfortable at a company like that There's a lot of different stuff you can do a lot of smart people around they take care of you the feed you that you're long Yeah, you know they do everything to make you very very comfortable so that you stay and you didn't stay So why did you decide to leave? I remember waking up every morning terrified that I was going to make nothing of my life in terms of what I wanted to do Because I would get to complacent it was a distinct like every morning I had that feeling and so I knew I needed to leave I think I probably wouldn't have left as quickly as I did if I hadn't gotten really into Bitcoin And so that was like I tried to do some stuff internally I started organizing a lunch meetup for engineers to talk about these topics and kind of do teachings and things I wanted the company to do something obviously took him like six years back actually do up at this year they got around it So you know I think I just was so worried that I would get comfortable because I was like well right now is the time in my life Or I should be taking the most risk. I don't have any kids I'm young I've no debt whatever But it was just it was really this driving fear that I had that I would just be too comfortable and never want to leave And so it was like you wanted to some ways like tap into your potential like I'm making the most of my time Is that kind of the fear or how would you have thought about that thought in the morning?
Yeah, I mean I was just I felt like I could do more like I could see I looked at the people who were me in five years in the company Like if I proceeded along my current path and I did well what would that look like and I was frankly unenthused I was like okay great. I'll be making you know 300 K a year and I'll have pretty good work like balance Most of my life is expensed So, you know I literally lost my wallet when I was there and I didn't know this for a week because I had no I didn't use you know Money during the week and so it took me until the weekend to figure it out And I was like I mean that's kind of awesome, but also a little bit terrifying that like they kind of own my life Right the umbilical cord is like attached exactly and so I was like this is kind of like it feels a little dystopian in some ways So, you know I was a little concerned about that as well Yeah, the thing you just said the very first guess on the podcast guy So Lee when I asked him he started off in Microsoft and then he quit and then started up I was expecting to be like I was at this big company it sucked and so I want to leave out board and it was bureaucratic Well, but he was like no actually like it was good company. They treated me well I was interested in the project I was working on I was like so they lied to leave and he said the same thing He's like well I looked at my boss essentially this guy was been there for 10 years And he said that they had like a product launch where you know the years worth of effort at launch the product They had a party and the boss got up and he started crying talking You know, he's so proud of the product and he just looked up something was like I will never feel that way and I don't want to feel that way about Microsoft's products And so I need to get the hell out of here because if that's success then if that doesn't fit my model success I don't want it They don't playing the wrong game. I'm playing a game where if I win I lose and that sounds like you kind of had a similar thought around These people who are you know above me and these few levels above I want to be them and therefore why I'm playing this game Exactly.
Yeah, no, I think that's really it I don't have a lot of patience for political games and things like that and especially at that point in time You know, you get a little bit older a little bit wiser you calm down a little bit I think but I definitely was like I just want to do my job Like why do I have to do all this internal bullshit? I got especially coming from a three to ten person startup where basically I could work on anything I wanted there were certain things I had to do but if I had other ideas or I wanted to create new things like I could just do that here I had to get approvals for all these things and I was in flagrin violation of a lot of them I mean I was supposed to get approval to speak or to publish I just did it nobody ever cared But you know, I think I just felt very constrained and I didn't I didn't like that. Yeah, I'm not supposed to do this podcast I think this is property of Amazon technically according to my contract is crazy Okay, so you decide to leave you take a leap you go from making good money and a cushy place to know money essentially Is that how you believe or did you have something lined up? No, I mean I was just like I need to move to San Francisco and then I'll figure it out from there because at that point in time Most of the stuff that I thought was interesting in crypto was happening in San Francisco And I wanted to work with a team that I thought could accomplish something interesting and ideally had a little bit of funding And if you looked at the crypto space, there were like three teams that met that definition at that point in time One of which was BitGo and so actually what happened there is a funny story I was blogging so basically what happened is I was spending all this time doing research about the space and I wanted to have an Output and to your point earlier I think the best way to understand if you really get something is to explain to somebody else And so I started kind of publishing and I would explain various topics Whatever and some of them were more technical others less But one of the things I wrote about was multi-signature wallets which basically help with the redundancy issue So for example if you lose your key or if it's stolen somebody can't just run away with your money or your money's not lost forever But basically you need two out of three keys in order to move money So it kind of protects you from from user error or from theft and BitGo was basically the first company to commercialize multi-signature wallets And so I read blog post about it and mention the company in the post and then because I'm a little bit shameless I just emailed it to the CEO and I was like oh you might want to publish this on your blog and they're like Who is this girl?
And so then they were like oh this is quite good Would you like to come have lunch and so I had a meeting with the CEO and then with the other two co-founders and two separate instances And the second meeting they were like great when can you start? And I was like oh I didn't know this job interview but okay Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I just moved I didn't have a job I didn't really have a plan but I was like I'll figure it out which has always been kind of my approach I think I have a high degree of belief in my ability to figure it out and so far It's generally worked pretty well. So yeah, that's the things you're saying I'm like nodding because it resonates with me like I did the same thing I just moved to San Francisco and I said I'll figure out what after that I just knew this is like the mecca of startups It's like if all the other smart people who are doing what I want to do are here Well, then I don't even need an I start up idea I just need to get there first and that just worked out for me and then same sort of thing where a high level of conviction or confidence that I can figure something out once I get there and I've realized that that's in short supply and it's just a decision you make really It's like I believe in myself to figure things out And what I've seen is that that is something that more people need to do and it will serve them well And so if you're listening to this and you're one of those people who if you have that just know that that's actually really valuable asset If that doesn't describe you I encourage you to adopt that because if nothing else that will get you ahead of 90% of people because they don't have that Unshakable confidence in themselves to just figure it out They think I need to know X or do X before I can have Y and instead you just need to say I am enough to get Y Just give me enough time and I'll figure it out 100% I couldn't agree more I think often like my approach has generally been what is the minimum amount of knowledge and or credentials?
I need in order to accomplish this thing rather than the other way around and I think you know the world has room for a Lot of different types of approaches, but I think oftentimes that is lacking is confidence more than any actual skills And I see this I think particularly often in women but in people in general It's just like you can do and so if I have like one sort of altruistic mission It's really to help people kind of do the thing that they already can do But just make them feel like they can do it because I think that's half the game You know, how are you helping them do that? So obviously like a conversation like this helps because you're putting your thoughts out there and you know Those people could hear this and say you know some of them could go you know rise up from that Are you doing anything else that towards that mission? I guess you know I think a lot of it is I make an effort to speak at certain kinds of events and things like that And I didn't realize initially I just did it because I thought it would be interesting and I want to practice public speaking and all these sorts of things But I've had so many people like particularly like college age women or people like that or even men You know come over and be like wow like I didn't know that this was a thing I could do I'm so inspired and then they go and do all these incredible things like I had no idea how to do I mean they're way better than I am but it's just like sometimes just seeing someone and again You know, I think back to the women like because they're not that many women in this kind of investment role or whatever Just seeing that like someone who looks like you can do something is surprisingly powerful, right? Yeah, and so to me, I'm like well I'm just doing what I want to do But if that gives you the feeling like the license to go and do your thing like that's incredible And you know, there's a lot of other ways in which I try to be helpful But it seems like even just that is surprisingly powerful, right?
And I feel like I don't know this because we just met but I feel like you have a bit of a life hack around this public speaking thing Because I've seen you're like tracker You've done a lot of different public speaking events You're you know, you're sort of in some ways known for that invited to do certain things and there's two ways to do that one is You're just so accomplished that people just when they are trying to fill their event They think of you and they bring you in but when you're up and coming that's not obviously not gonna be the case It's not that's not a reliable way to get started That's like go become ultra successful first and then of course people want to have you speak of the thing But it seems like you I'm guessing you probably did something's proactively reaching out and you I think you manufactured that for yourself Am I right and tell me if so tell me how you did it? Yeah, so I think some of it was locker happens and some of it was a little bit of strategy on my part And I think that is kind of a good descriptor of my entire life So if you're young and you want to start doing this kind of thing I think you start with smaller events You don't obviously go to you know tech crunts disrupt stage one on the first go But you just kind of start getting some practice and then people see that you've done it And so you kind of start to come to mind as a speaker for bigger and bigger events I think the industry and expertise that you have is a huge part of it So for example if I had wanted to become a well-known speaker on the enterprise SaaS circuit as a 22 year old like no chance Okay, unless I had happened to also found a very successful company unless you're like the founder of Dropbox Probably not gonna happen so in my case because I was interested in Bitcoin and crypto and they were like four people So experts yet no experts exactly it was a much faster ascent if you will because if you knew some stuff and you had done your research Which I could be clear it's not like yeah, exactly I had genuine interest and that that was a big part of it But I think you kind of have to put in the time to get to know the topic really well But if you have a niche that really helps and I think that helps you stand out in any category because people like to put things in buckets And so for example my Twitter is almost there's some reading some general type But it's almost all crypto so people follow me because they're interested in crypto and that I think is really helpful Whether you're on Twitter or whatever so picking your niche owning that niche, they can be small But if that's your corner, you'll be the known person Yeah, you went to like kind of a new emerging thing where there are no experts and therefore you can research your way to being an expert Whereas in other things if it's super well established There's just gonna be somebody who's done it for 20 years and is actually has a tracker that you cannot fast forward through So there's two two elements of it. When did you do kind of your first public speaking gigs? Do you remember what age were you?
I was so let's see. I was at fae. I was 22. Yeah, so like clearly like an expert expert at 20 Nobody's an expert at 22 anything except for maybe like expert of college But you were able to build up your knowledge and start doing maybe smaller events at that time to get going Yeah, I mean I think a big part of it is also like I was very authentically me like I swear on stage It is and so I actually think it's fascinating and some of the things that I felt were that I had to dampen or squish down about My personality at Facebook were actually the things that made me more successful on the speaking circuit So for example like I'm very direct and I'm very honest and that can be great It can also be abrasive and so at Facebook I was like okay This is clearly a terrible idea like why don't we move on to the next one and that you know sometimes about people the wrong way And obviously I try to be nice about things But like I felt like I was like let's not be around the bush, you know chop chop we've got things to do and especially at you know 23 on the lowest person on the totem pole not always Exactly, but in this kind of environment like you don't want to go to a panel and listen to somebody who's like says everything That's politically correct and like add something to everything Yeah, exactly So I think I was just more able to be myself and like as I spoke more I became more comfortable I just that kind of came out more and more and so I think that Resonates with people because at the end of the day people want to listen to people They don't want to listen to like a pre-written boring script Yeah, and but you know you have to figure out your style right there's many ways to be yourself and like that's me But others will be extremely successful potentially for more successful than me just by being themselves in whatever form That is I think they call like zone of genius or something like that Basically when the overlap between when you're doing what you naturally want to do and it's being received as like wow Thank you so much for doing that you're like wait what I'm just doing what I do Yeah, and that's like that's the sweet spot If you ever find that like hold on to that and so it sounds like you know Whereas at Facebook you need to turn the volume down to four on the speaking circuit was like hey turn this knob to 12 Like that's what we want that is that's what the people are responding to here exactly a hundred percent I have a friend so you raised a fund recently like a shot of the fun name what it does and tell us how much you raised for your Fund so we don't disclose that but we raised a so I have two funds one is called Crystal Towers Capital And that one was raised in 2015 my business partner and I started working together because we were both really interested in crypto But at that point in time really wasn't enough investable material to do that so we raised a fund We did a lot of autonomous vehicles health care enterprise S a few different categories with a focus on my company Her companies because that's kind of our network and then in 2017 as kind of the I see our explosion started There was just a lot more happening in crypto.
I was like oh finally all the stuff that I've been talking about It just makes sense to have a fully focused fund And so my second fund is called autonomous partners and it's technically structured as a hedge fund But we invest with kind of more of a VC lens anyways We just do significant portion of that in coins and tokens Gotcha, so I have this friend and this friend is very smart very young guy He's like 22 23 years old extremely smart guy wants to wants to invest He's been investing for a couple years But now he wants to raise his own fund and so we were like great Hey, we support you in doing this how are you gonna do it? It seems like you know if I wanted to go raise a fund I either need to have already built a network of people who trust me over a number of years But I'll also probably need to go to some new people and explain to them why they should trust me as a new person Who doesn't have an established record to give me their money to invest and that seems hard And so we were telling them we were like you should blog you should tweet you should put your thesis that you have that's actually pretty compelling You should be putting it out there at all times and he was like well Why like I don't think somebody's gonna read my blog and invest and that's false I've had LPs from Twitter. I've had investments come from Twitter I've like honestly, I'd probably I could describe 25% of my career success at least to Twitter and Twitter is my channel I mean if I were more inclined to blog what I found is like initially I like I forced myself to blog really but it just became such a process and as I had less time Like I can put out a tweet storm which has these like kind of poor Yeah, and that'll just do on a regular basis So I'd rather do you know 75% of it and actually do it rather than say oh I haven't written you know My magnum opus and therefore I'm just gonna sit on the idea so yeah Tell your friend to do it so we're telling him he was pushing back on he's like no I don't think that's how it works. No, that's definitely how it works He's like, you know, I just feel like you know my time I should be using it on meetings and whatnot Okay, fair What we realized was like I was like there's two types of people there's one type of person who wants to look through a window And a window obviously like this is what I'm right here You can see through it and what's on the other side is you know You can see it right there and so I was like you're the type of guys looking through windows You're looking for a direct line of sight to the outcome you want and that's great That serves you well in many cases because if you see it you're willing to go straight You know go straight for it I was like but the problem is like a lot of things in life are not directly visible Before you do the action you don't know what you're gonna get and I was like I was trying to tell him I was like you're so focused on this Windows only where you have to be able to see the outcome in order for you to take action That it's paralyzing you and you really got to know that like sometimes in life There's these doors where you can't see the exact result on the other side But you know I got to be opening doors in order for something good to happen And so that's what I was telling him and you know for me You're a great example of somebody who's willing to work on doors, right?
Like it's not always clear looking through a window that there's some direct benefit that's gonna be there You were you know speaking at conferences you were blogging you were tweeting you were doing meeting people you were doing all kinds of stuff Without trying to measure the direct outcome or say I'm only gonna do this if it pays off doesn't seem like that was your strategy No, I love that analogy and be I think that's exactly right I don't think you can control for everything so you have to be doing things that have a high likelihood of bringing something good So, you know who what audience are you speaking to at the beginning? Maybe you take whatever you can get but later you try to be a little bit more thoughtful And so you're just kind of increasing the surface area for potential positive outcomes But like life is so random, you know sometimes I'll do one thing and I'll do it five times and four times nothing comes of it And then one time it's like massive thing you're like holy shit What that's amazing and but I had to have done the other four because like a that's how you get better at whatever it is And you just kind of have to you never know when it's gonna hit so I think you put in the work And you kind of have to that's why I think it's so important that you work on something that you like because I tweet because I think it's fun Like I'm not like oh well if I said I'll get an LP or I'll find a founder That's really cool. I mean, you know, no So I think that's why working on something that you find compelling is most important But for example for me again like blogging felt like a chore whereas tweeting is fun And so I'm much more likely to do something if I think it's it's fun or interesting And so who are some other people you've seen that do this well who are some people you've seen on Twitter or blog? Where you're like, you know, that person is really hustling their way to success.
What are some of other examples? Yeah, I have a good story about that So a good friend of mine now is this guy Zack Park who is one of the founders of a company called Cubcoats They make these like adorable little stuffed animals that reverse into a hoodie and they started about two years ago They've grown like crazy. They now have like deals with Disney and Marvel and all this stuff They've gone super viral I'm at Zack because I cold emailed him and he had basically built kind of a presence for himself online because he'd raised Many millions of dollars for various Kickstarter campaigns. He kind of had this background as like a I've reached out to this guy because he owns that corner Oh, I've done a bunch of Kickstarter.
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, so this was let's see I was at Facebook so 2013 and I just thought he seemed cool I was like I had been kind of toying with you I'm like starting a side business because again I wasn't like totally engaged to Facebook and so I was like what should I be doing and he was clearly a hustler like how he Had done the Kickstarter stuff I mean it was just obvious from all of his web presence and I sent him an email and I was like hey listen I would like to learn from you about these things here are the things that I can help you with so like let's do a trade or you know whatever and he wrote back within a few minutes and was like I get hundreds of cold emails like nobody ever offers anything back Right and that was why he reached out and so we ended up meeting and became very good friends now my investor The company is just such a funny story from the internet But I think he was a great example of someone who had a skill worked on it Where's his ass off? I mean it remains to this day one of the hardest working people I know I'm actually sad because now that the company's doing so well like I see him less as a friend I'm like damn it. I'm gonna do really well from this deal But like I miss you as a person you know like great sell the company and then we can hang out again But you know I think you see these people who really put in the work and then do a good job of like showcasing it online And by the way, I think again, there's a million different ways to do this like Zach is much more introverted He's like much shier.
So his presence is very different from mine But you know you can do this in a million different ways And so to wrap up I want to leave people with some recommendations from you on some reading some homework So if I want to get into Bitcoin more if I want to understand it better and get a level of understanding you have What do you recommend? Who are some people I should be following or what some books I should be reading or a YouTube talk like give me the like one or two Best resources you would direct people to for Bitcoin specifically sure and recent Horowitz has a really good kind of compilation of crypto Resources that begin very basic and proceed into more advanced territory if you search and recent Horowitz crypto Canon online You'll find it I think Andreas Antonopoulos has been kind of a really good resource for the community in terms of like educating people I think he's like very very reasonable person so he's definitely someone I would I would recommend following his story is pretty remarkable Right, so he's like the Messiah He's like goes around and he preaches the gospel of Bitcoin But he doesn't do it to sell he does it because he believes and he's very like measured in what he says He's just trying to explain the facts and what's exciting about it without overhipping and overselling and having some personal angle on why he's doing it So I love that yeah, but there was a cool story that happened right where he's such a believer in Bitcoin that he tried to But he's live his life through Bitcoin so he would take his payments and consulting gigs in Bitcoin He would buy coffees of Bitcoin He would basically run his life through Bitcoin as if the world was where he thinks it's gonna go in 10 years where that is the main currency And because of that he kind of missed out on some of the price boom that happened because he's got a family And he basically spent the Bitcoin that he had to run his life in order to be like a model citizen of the Bitcoin community And so he was kind of getting mocked online by somebody who's saying like look you're the Bitcoin guy You've been at this from the beginning and like somehow you didn't get rich off Bitcoin Like how did you do that wrong? And then what happened was kind of remarkable like crypto Twitter came to his rescue and basically donated him like a million dollars of Bitcoin Yeah, overnight, which I think is amazing. I get the story right.
Yeah, no, that's right I think it's some people have made Ungodly amounts of money from crypto and so I think members of the community feel Positively about him because he has done so much work evangelizing and I think just being generally a good advocate for the community And yeah, and so people were like here you go my friend Which I think is super cool And you know I think if I were to pick someone in the community who would deserve it He's definitely on that list for sure. So it was it was a funny event amazing. Yeah, okay, so So that's Andreas on to not bliss. I don't know how to sell his name Like try yeah, what about on the sort of investing side?
So anything that you you said you wanted to get in investing you wanted to you like that job like that craft And you've basically built a life for yourself being able to do it What are some like must-reads on the investing side for somebody who's like you they're 21 and they want to start learning? Yeah, I think I really like the guys that place holder Chris and Joel and Brad and they have a lot of good stuff on their blog They write about their investment theses they write some general pieces about kind of where they think the space is going So yeah, I would definitely follow them in terms of something that's a little bit more metric-based a virtual at electric capital They've put out some really good work looking at kind of developer adoption and things like that So if you want to get into a little bit more of the nitty-gritty around where is developer activity happening? How is that changing over time which projects are seeing a lot of it? That's a good resource to start and if people want to follow you if they listen to this and they're like hey, she's great I want to get to know her more I want to reach out to her whatever where should people find you and who should reach out to you?
Who type of person should reach out to you? Yeah, I think Twitter is the number one place my DMs are open Please don't send me a message that just as high I probably get hundreds of those a week I'm like just say something anything literally so yeah, don't do that But I mean, you know, I think if there's a specific question or make that that I can answer I'm always happy to do that. I'd encourage people not to say hey Let me pick your brain because I think that's a little overplayed And I think if you start with a specific question, it's a better way to kind of build rapport and kind of go from there But yeah, I mean for book recommendations, I always have a lot of those so what's your Twitter handle at Ariana Simpson ARIA Cool. Well, thank you so much for doing this.
I appreciate you making time quickly on your trip here to South Coast So it's been great. Thanks so much. Awesome. Thank you