Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups
by
Ali Tamaseb
Published 14 Sep 2021
Mohan Pavithra, “BuzzFeed’s Audience Spends Over 100 Million Monthly Hours on BuzzFeed,” Fast Company, February 18, 2016, www.fastcompany.com/3056667/buzzfeeds-audience-spends-over-100-million-monthly-hours-on-buzzfeed. 3. Gerrit Tierie, “Cornelis Drebbel,” Isis 20, no. 1 (1933): 285–286, doi: 10.1086/346778. CHAPTER 9: MARKET 1. Kevin Rose, “Foundation 35: Brian Armstrong,” video, December 17, 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwG1roO70co. 2. Alexia Tsotsis and John Biggs, “Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong,” video, May 22, 2013, https://techcrunch.com/video/coinbases-brian-armstrong/. CHAPTER 10: MARKET TIMING 1. Paul A. Gompers et al., “How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?,” Journal of Financial Economics 135, no. 1 (2020): 169–190, doi: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2019.06.011. 2.
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Although Green had learned to code and was able to build initial prototypes, they had to bring on senior and junior engineers to develop the complicated back-end systems required for ridesharing. On the other side, Coinbase, an early cryptocurrency exchange, was started by two technical founders. Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam had both studied computer science and economics as undergraduates; Armstrong would go on to get a master’s degree in computer science. Before founding Coinbase, Armstrong had worked as a software engineer at Airbnb, and Ehrsam had worked as a trader at Goldman Sachs. Their deep knowledge of both technology and financial markets gave them the skills needed to build Coinbase, which was valued at $8 billion at the time of writing this book.
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In the next chapter, we will look into the role that market size and dynamics played in the success of billion-dollar startups. 9 MARKET When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins. When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins. When a great team meets a great market, something special happens. —ANDY RACHLEFF, FOUNDER OF BENCHMARK CAPITAL AND WEALTHFRONT When Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam founded Coinbase in 2012, “cryptocurrency” had yet to enter the popular lexicon. Bitcoin, the first modern cryptocurrency, had been invented just four years earlier; it was still trading for less than five dollars per coin. Already, though, Armstrong and Ehrsam could see a new kind of market emerging.
The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results
by
Andrew McAfee
Published 14 Nov 2023
utm_source=pocket_saves. 21 “History suggests”: Joseph Patrick Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), loc. 3353, Kindle. 22 wrote a blog post: Brian Armstrong, “Coinbase Is a Mission Focused Company,” Coinbase (blog), September 29, 2018, www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-company. 23 More than one-third: Casey Newton, “Inside the All-Hands Meeting That Led to a Third of Basecamp Employees Quitting,” The Verge, May 3, 2021, www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22418208/basecamp-all-hands-meeting-employee-resignations-buyouts-implosion. 24 made the right decision: Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong), “1/ Wanted to share some thoughts on the recent Coinbase story around our mission,” Twitter, 8:01 p.m., September 30, 2021, https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1443727729476530178. 25 “lumbering bureaucracy”: Kevin Roose, “The Metaverse Is Mark Zuckerberg’s Escape Hatch,” New York Times, October 29, 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/technology/meta-facebook-zuckerberg.html. 26 a quarter of its workforce: Clare Duffy, “Meta’s Business Groups Cut in Latest Round of Layoffs,” CNN, May 24, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/tech/meta-layoffs-business-groups/index.html. 27 “ways to be scrappier”: Naomi Nix, “Mark Zuckerberg Unveils ‘Scrappier’ Future at Meta After Layoffs,” Washington Post, May 25, 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/25/meta-layoffs-future-facebook-instagram-company/. 28 “As we add different groups”: Mark Zuckerberg, “Update on Meta’s Year of Efficiency,” About Facebook, March 14, 2023, https://about.fb.com/news/2023/03/mark-zuckerberg-meta-year-of-efficiency/. 29 “war against the bureaucracy”: Brad Stone, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022), 264. 30 advertising business: Mark Di Stefano and Jessica Toonkel, “Amazon’s Ad Staffers Flee amid Complaints of Bloat, Bureaucracy,” The Information, June 24, 2022, www.theinformation.com/articles/amazons-ad-staffers-flee-amid-complaints-of-bloat-bureaucracy. 31 at AWS: Kevin McLaughlin, “AWS’ New CEO Faces a Fresh Challenge: Bureaucracy,” The Information, July 12, 2021, www.theinformation.com/articles/aws-new-ceo-faces-a-fresh-challenge-bureaucracy. 32 “aging professional athletes”: Graham Averill, “The Secret to Athletic Longevity Is Surprisingly Simple,” Outside Online, May 17, 2018, www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/athletic-longevity-secrets-play-on-book/.
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“Cooperative enterprise” is a good synonym for “prosocial institution,” and a company is very much a cooperative enterprise. Henrich’s insight gives us reason to expect that all companies will in some way, at some point, experience the age-old tension between their goals and those of individuals and coalitions. This tension has absolutely cropped up at Silicon Valley tech companies. In September of 2020, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, wrote a blog post about a gap he perceived between his company’s goals and the interests of some employees. It has become common for Silicon Valley companies to engage in a wide variety of social activism, even those unrelated to what the company does, and there are certainly employees who really want this in the company they work for… While I think these efforts are well intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division… I believe most employees don’t want to work in these divisive environments.
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utm_source=pocket_saves. 21 “History suggests”: Joseph Patrick Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), loc. 3353, Kindle. 22 wrote a blog post: Brian Armstrong, “Coinbase Is a Mission Focused Company,” Coinbase (blog), September 29, 2018, www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-company. 23 More than one-third: Casey Newton, “Inside the All-Hands Meeting That Led to a Third of Basecamp Employees Quitting,” The Verge, May 3, 2021, www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22418208/basecamp-all-hands-meeting-employee-resignations-buyouts-implosion. 24 made the right decision: Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong), “1/ Wanted to share some thoughts on the recent Coinbase story around our mission,” Twitter, 8:01 p.m., September 30, 2021, https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1443727729476530178. 25 “lumbering bureaucracy”: Kevin Roose, “The Metaverse Is Mark Zuckerberg’s Escape Hatch,” New York Times, October 29, 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/technology/meta-facebook-zuckerberg.html. 26 a quarter of its workforce: Clare Duffy, “Meta’s Business Groups Cut in Latest Round of Layoffs,” CNN, May 24, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/tech/meta-layoffs-business-groups/index.html. 27 “ways to be scrappier”: Naomi Nix, “Mark Zuckerberg Unveils ‘Scrappier’ Future at Meta After Layoffs,” Washington Post, May 25, 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/25/meta-layoffs-future-facebook-instagram-company/. 28 “As we add different groups”: Mark Zuckerberg, “Update on Meta’s Year of Efficiency,” About Facebook, March 14, 2023, https://about.fb.com/news/2023/03/mark-zuckerberg-meta-year-of-efficiency/. 29 “war against the bureaucracy”: Brad Stone, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022), 264. 30 advertising business: Mark Di Stefano and Jessica Toonkel, “Amazon’s Ad Staffers Flee amid Complaints of Bloat, Bureaucracy,” The Information, June 24, 2022, www.theinformation.com/articles/amazons-ad-staffers-flee-amid-complaints-of-bloat-bureaucracy. 31 at AWS: Kevin McLaughlin, “AWS’ New CEO Faces a Fresh Challenge: Bureaucracy,” The Information, July 12, 2021, www.theinformation.com/articles/aws-new-ceo-faces-a-fresh-challenge-bureaucracy. 32 “aging professional athletes”: Graham Averill, “The Secret to Athletic Longevity Is Surprisingly Simple,” Outside Online, May 17, 2018, www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/athletic-longevity-secrets-play-on-book/.
Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street
by
Jeff John Roberts
Published 15 Dec 2020
Finally, this work represents a more polished version of the audio version of Kings of Crypto, which came out in May 2020. The book you now hold in your hands includes more recent news surrounding Coinbase and corrects several minor errors. PART ONE * * * From Open Secret to Civil War 1 Brian Has a Secret Brian Armstrong stepped out of his car, felt soft California sunshine on his bald head, and smelled eucalyptus. He gazed at the façade of Y Combinator: the one-story building, just five miles from Google’s Mountain View campus, looked more like a sleepy suburban office park than a famous startup school that had educated the founders of Stripe, Dropbox, and other billion-dollar companies.
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There was a site called ‘Mybitcoin’ to buy from, and the joke was it had that name because the site owners treated it as ‘my bitcoin, not yours.’” When Coinbase came on the scene, it was a godsend for a bitcoin believer like Olaf. Finally, here was a site that promised to make bitcoin easy to get—and was trying hard not to be shady. The company was based in California, not overseas, and you could see who was running it: a guy named Brian Armstrong, whom you could Google, and who talked about things like compliance and regulation. Those were dirty words to the antigovernment zealots who had helped bitcoin gain traction in the first place, but they sounded great to Olaf. Like Brian, he thought the only way his beloved currency would catch on in the mainstream was if ordinary people could get it and not get scammed.
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There already was a link between Facebook and Coinbase: the head of Project Libra was David Marcus, a former president of PayPal who, until recently, had been on Coinbase’s board of directors. But while Silicon Valley gossips have speculated for years that Facebook has tried to acquire Coinbase, the rumors are false—Facebook never even inquired, and Brian Armstrong and Mark Zuckerberg have never met. When it came to Project Libra, the plan was for Coinbase to be just one of a hundred or so partners to help Facebook run the new blockchain network—if it ever got off the ground in the first place. Unfortunately for Facebook, by the time it announced Libra, the company had become radioactive to Congress and regulators around the world.
The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order
by
Paul Vigna
and
Michael J. Casey
Published 27 Jan 2015
Within a year of attending his first meetup at 20Mission, Held’s life had changed dramatically. “Kevin and I really became inspired” by the gatherings, Held said. “The energy there was tremendous.” Those early meetings were small, he said, maybe fifteen or twenty people. But the people attending would go on to become big names in the bitcoin world: Among them were Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, the founders of Coinbase, which is second only to Blockchain as a leader in digital-wallet services and one of the biggest processors of bitcoin payments for businesses. Jed McCaleb, the Mt. Gox founder, was there, too. McCaleb was then busy working on the alternative payment system Ripple, which would go on to be something of a competitor to bitcoin.
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Functioning very much like SecondMarket, the five-years-older brainchild of prominent bitcoin booster Barry Silbert, Xpert has since earned SEC approval. A year later, the now-graduated Draper founded Enders Fund, a project designed to finance the development of mobile-phone games. In June 2012, after a meeting with Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong opened his eyes to the enthusiasm of its community, Draper set up the venture that would launch him into the world of bitcoin: Boost, a special “accelerator” program for nurturing early start-ups. Accelerators are tailor-made for Silicon Valley. Essentially, venture capitalists and so-called angel investors pool money together and designate it to help start-ups get going.
Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape From Corporate America
by
Dan Conway
Published 8 Sep 2019
It had just the right touch of mainstream energy with crypto-credible content. The Tapscotts were there and said some polished shit, bless their hearts. Some crypto titans had debates on Bitcoin scaling, the never-ending civil war plaguing that community. But Ethereum had the most buzz. In his keynote, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong unveiled a new Ethereum-based messaging app called Toshi (later renamed Coinbase Wallet). It was similar to WeChat, a messaging and payment app ubiquitous in China. The popular teen messaging app, Kik, announced they were launching their own token on the Ethereum blockchain. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) announced eighty-six new members, including Bancor, Deloitte, Mitsubishi, and Broadridge.
How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs
by
Tim Draper
Published 18 Dec 2017
The event has since been named “BizWorld’s Riskmaster Award Lunch,” and has attracted some real luminaries. Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, Richard Rosenblatt of Myspace, Chad Hurley of YouTube, Tom Seibel of Seibel Systems, Jenny Johnson of Franklin Fund, Aaron Levie of Box, Eric Migicovsky of Pebble, Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, and Peter Gotcher of Digidesign and Dolby have all come to do fireside chats at the BizWorld luncheon. Ironically, none of them seemed to have had any business training in grade school. BizWorld also raises money from an annual dinner in which Joe Saunders of Visa, Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm, and Meg Whitman of eBay were honored in the past.
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
by
Michael Lewis
Published 2 Oct 2023
None of them had buyback-and-burn features, for example, or were solely intended to raise money for some for-profit enterprise. Coinbase, the exchange that serviced the greatest number of US customers, appeared willing to take more regulatory risk. It listed roughly five hundred coins, including some that the SEC pretty clearly viewed as securities, and its CEO, Brian Armstrong, took to Twitter to criticize the regulators for “sketchy behavior.” Coinbase itself had no exchange token akin to FTT, however, and so wasn’t in the most brazen position of using its exchange to sell its own unregulated securities to US investors. Only Binance did that, with BNB. Selling what were in effect shares in itself to US retail investors on its own new US crypto exchange, Binance lifted the biggest middle finger to the US regulators.
Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond
by
Chris Burniske
and
Jack Tatar
Published 19 Oct 2017
If holders fail to report accurately on the outcome of an event, or attempt to be dishonest—the Augur system redistributes the bad reporter’s Reputation to those who have reported accurately during the same reporting cycle.35 Augur conducted its own crowdfunding effort in 2015, selling 80 percent of a fixed supply of 11 million REP. In so doing, it raised over $5 million to fund the creation of the platform. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, which is one of the largest companies in the cryptoasset sector, has called it an “awesome project with huge potential.”36 Even Vitalik Buterin acknowledged its potential when he called it an “Uber for knowledge.”37 Augur is one of the clearest uses of cryptotokens, and its potential success could set the stage for even more implementations of crypotokens in the future.
Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam
by
Vivek Ramaswamy
Published 16 Aug 2021
Many companies outright ban political speech at work.20 One prominent example is Huntington Ingalls,21 the US Navy’s main shipbuilder, which recently fired a worker for violating this policy by wearing a Trump 2020 hat to meetings.22 Another recent example is Coinbase, which faced the question of what kind of company it was last June when a group of employees demanded that CEO Brian Armstrong make a public statement in support of Black Lives Matter.23 It was a situation similar to the one I faced at Roivant. But at Coinbase it resulted in open warfare. First, Armstrong refused to make the statement, arguing it would be divisive. Then senior managers organized a group of employees to stage a walkout in protest.
Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money
by
Nathaniel Popper
Published 18 May 2015
But the story wouldn’t have come together without the time and cooperation of Fran, Hal, and Jason Finney; Dan Morehead; Patrick Murck; Erik Voorhees; Jesse Powell; Mark Karpeles; Mike Hearn; Naval Ravikant; Jed McCaleb; MiSoon Burzlaff; Nick Szabo; Reid Hoffman; Eric O’Brien; Federico Murrone; Charlie Lee; Amir Taaki; Jamileh Taaki; Alex Rampell; Emmauel Abiodun; Nicolas Cary; David Marcus; Jorge Restrelli; Bill Tanona; Pete Briger; Jamie Dimon; Max Neukirchen; Andy Dresner; Paul Walker; Marty Chavez; Alexander Kuzmin; Nicole Navas; Lyn Ulbricht; Josh Dratel; John Collins; Jennifer Shasky Calvery; Sebastian Serrano; Chris Larsen; Chris Dixon; Balaji Srinivasan; Marc Andreessen; Kim Milosevic; Brian Armstrong; Fred Ehrsam; John O’Brien; Belle Casares; Patrick Strateman; Yifu Guo; Marcie Braden; Alex Waters; Brian Klein; Nejc Kodric; Paul Chou; Jeff Garzik; Adam Back; Laszlo Hanecz; Leon Li; Gil Lauria; Monica Long; Michael Keferl; Daniel Kelman; Jack Smith; Tim Swanson; Rui Ma; Jack Wang; Ling Kang; Huang Xiaoyu; Kathleen Lee; Ayaka Ver; Alex Likhtenstein; Jeremy Allaire; Matt Cohler; Larry Lenihan; Fred Wilson; Michael Goldstein; Phil Zimmerman; Yin Shih; Perry Metzger; Tony Gallipi; Bruce Wagner; and Justin Myers.
The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend
by
Rob Copeland
Published 7 Nov 2023
on LinkedIn in January: Ray Dalio, “Our Early Thinking on the Coronavirus and Pandemics,” LinkedIn, January 30, 2020. “in this volatile environment”: Bradley Saacks, “Read the 2-page note billionaire Ray Dalio just sent investors laying out his coronavirus game plan,” Business Insider, March 18, 2020. were moot: Brian Armstrong, Twitter, June 10, 2022. “Right on, Elon!”: Ray Dalio, Twitter, August 27, 2020. “want to discredit them”: Ray Dalio, Twitter, September 23, 2020. appearance on CNN: Matt Egan, “This Billionaire Warns That America’s Massive Wealth Gap Could Lead to Conflict,” CNN, December 22, 2020. “revolutions have a purpose”: “A Conversation with Ray Dalio and Tom Friedman,” YouTube, October 12, 2020, Milken Global Conference.
Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers
by
Katherine Clarke
Published 13 Jun 2023
The explosion of the market for NFTs, which were essentially unique ownership codes tied to digital assets like images and video clips, accelerated as celebrities like Paris Hilton, Melania Trump, and Justin Bieber got into the NFT game. And the boom in alternative money minted a new class of billionaires. They included known entities like the Winklevoss twins, best known as Mark Zuckerberg’s college nemeses, as well as newcomers like Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, who had founded the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the now disgraced creator of the competing exchange FTX. At 111 West 57th Street, there was a contest between two wealthy buyers for one of the building’s most expensive units, a 7,130-square-foot aerie on the 72nd floor asking $66 million.