Entrepreneurship 101aaH seeb Qureshi (th t’s me)

I’m Haseeb. I’m a crypto VC.

ftI used to be a professional poker player,a so ware engineer (Airbnb, earn.com),a startup founder, and have been investingin crypto for over 5 years.

We’re going to talk a lot about startups.

ff

But what makes a startup di erent
from a regular company?

Startups are special.
They have magic powers. ✨This is because they are:• Small• Nimble• Unconstrained• Courageous• Most of all, innovativeStartups can do amazing things.
But they are also fragile.

Big company

StartupIn a startup…

Responsibility is di use

Everyone feels responsible

You must defend your cash cows

You must put everything on the line

Incremental improvements

Innovate or die

The best companies are the best
managedMinimal management necessary

Default alive

Default deadff

In a big company…

Like all organisms, bigcompanies decay over time.
Startups eventually replace them.

And yet, startups are stressful,
unforgiving, and extremely risky.
Most startups fail.
Data from Sebastian Quintero, Dissecting Startup Failure By Stage, https://medium.com/journal-of-empirical-entrepreneurship/dissecting-startup-failure-by-stage-34bb70354a36

Most people should not startstartups.
If you start a startup, you willprobably fail. And you almost
certainly will not become rich.

Startups won’t make you cool.
They won’t make you rich.
They’ll challenge you, stress youout, and take away years of your life.

I hope I’ve scared you. 💀
You should be scared of startinga startup.

There is only one good reason
to start a startup:

fibecause you want to solve a bigproblem with your life, and you’rewilling to sacri ce time and energy fora chance at it.

That’s OK if you’re not ready tostart a startup yet.
This course will still be useful.

But why are startups so valuable?

Not all innovation comes fromstartups. But a lot of it does.

BIG PICTURE

Most economic growth comes from 🌈innovation.
In a world of declining growth + interest rates,innovation is extremely valuable.

Credit: Visual Capitalist, The 700 Year Decline of Interest Rates, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/700-year-decline-of-interest-rates/

Most of that innovation comes fromstartups. From people like you.

There is a lot of money chasing startups.

That’s why, if
you’re successful,
the rewards canbe immense.

(But, of course, you probably
won’t be successful.)(That’s okay.)OK, this concludes the pep talk.
Let’s dive into the 🥩 of it.

How are crypto startups di erent
from normal startups?

ff(Side note: I’m gonna call it crypto, not web3.)

Crypto startups are subversive.

Crypto is extremely volatile.

Credit: CoinMarketCap, https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/fiThis makes it harder to tell what’s
real product-market t.

Most startups are open-source and very public.

Community is everything.
(This has a lot of implications on strategy, which we’ll talk about later.)The 5 (big) steps to build a startup
1.

Learn the culture, products, andhistory of the sector.
2. Find great cofounders.
3. Come up with a great idea.
4. Validate that your idea is great.
5. Raise money for it.

Step 1: Learn!

Do you know enough to start a startup?
• Immerse yourself in the culture, the products, the history• Join another web3 startup — this is the best education you can get• Read voraciously, go to meetups and hackathons, play around withthe tech

• If you aren’t technical, get technical (at least a little!)

Step 2: Assemble a TeamThe best teams are comprised of friends• The #1 cause of company failures is cofounder breakups• You don’t have to jump directly into starting a company!
• You can start with a small project, or some consulting• Generally you want to pick cofounders who you trust with yourlife, are competent and resourceful, and who complement you• Solo founder?
• Who’s the CEO?

(Also, equity splits are a tricky thing.)

Step 3: Come up with a great idea
Step 4: Validate that it’s actually great(We’ll talk a lot about this part.)

Step 5: Raise $$$!

(We’ll also cover this later.)

A Brief History of Crypto

Until 2009, the Internet didn’t have apurely digital form of money.

ffl

The only way to send money online
was to use o ine systems.

The Big BreakthroughSatoshi Nakamoto solved this problemwith the invention of Bitcoin.

fiFor the rst time, the Internet had
its own form of money.

Once you make money digital…

What else can you do?

What if contracts were digital?

What if property could be governed by code?

44Ethereum opens to thedoor to smart contracts.

⚖ vs 💻

door to smart contracts.

You can think of Ethereum
as a “computer in the sky.”(h/t Tim Roughgarden)

So ware can encode
almost anything:

ftNFTsTweets
Loans
In-game items

Like many technologies before it,smart contracts enable
permissionless innovation.

OK! That was a lot. 👍Questions?