The Delphi Podcast
The Delphi Podcast
Clay Robbins: Building Colosseum, Solana’s Largest Hackathon & Accelerator with 80,000 Participants
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Join Tommy Shaughnessy in San Francisco for the first podcast from the new Coliseum office. In this episode, Clay Robbins, Co-Founder of Coliseum, discusses how his team manages the world's largest online hackathons and why they chose to double down on the Solana ecosystem.They dive into the mechanics of sourcing 80,000 builders, the transition from remote to a massive in-person accelerator, and the shift from an infrastructure-focused crypto world to a new era of diverse consumer applications. From sub-3-hour marathons to "grenade" interview questions, Clay reveals what it truly takes to survive and win in the arena.🎯 Key Highlights▸The Numbers of Coliseum▸Clay shares the endurance training secrets that helped him clock a sub3-hour marathon in both Oakland and New York.▸How Coliseum distills 2,000+ global submissions down to a cohort of 10–15 elite investments.▸Why Coliseum moved from all-remote batches to a 75-desk physical hub in San Francisco.▸Why Clay believes Solana’s performance is the only viable infrastructure for the coming "application era".▸Why the Coliseum team now over-indexes on high-agency founders.▸The 15-minute "pressure test" interview used to suss out a founder’s conviction and humility.▸A new funding vehicle designed for companies launching on MetaDAO.▸A look at grand prize winners like Unruggable and Ore.💡 Want to stay updated with the latest in crypto & AI? Hit subscribe and the notification bell! 🔔🧠 Follow the Alpha▸ Clay's Twitter: @clayrobbins ▸ Coliseum's Twitter: @Colosseum 🔗 Connect with Delphi🌐 Portal: https://delphidigital.io/🐦 Twitter: / delphi_digital 💼 LinkedIn: / delphi-digital 🎧 Listen onSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/62PR1Ri...Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...Youtube: / @delphi_digital Timestamps
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SPEAKER_01Hey everyone, welcome back to the Delphi Podcast. Today I'm thrilled to be in person in San Francisco with Clay, uh one of the founders of Coliseum. I came here yesterday, was blown away, and said, let's do a podcast. So here we are. So thanks for coming up.
SPEAKER_02It's best. It's the first podcast from our new office here in San Francisco. I wish I could pan just to show everyone. Yeah, yeah, you can make the claim.
SPEAKER_01I'm so jealous. There's so many open seats, breakout rooms, it looks great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Very empty right now, though.
SPEAKER_01Well, it won't be soon.
SPEAKER_02We'll be home soon. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So the numbers around Coliseum are nuts. I I wrote them down. 80,000 builders have applied, 6,500 products launched, and $700 million raised by products that have been through your hackathon.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's crazy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, it's it it's one of those things where like where when we started out and you're at effectively zero, it's um it's wild to think about what it could become. But it turns out that there's a lot of excited people to build things on chain that are you know in different corners of the internet across the world. So it's um yeah, it's it's a lot of fun. And you know, we wouldn't be anything without the folks that came and showed up and built. And so um so it's it's a good it's a good start. We've got a lot more to do still though.
SPEAKER_01Nice. We're gonna dive into it, but I want to open with a better question, more fun question. So I asked Michael Rinko, used to be at Delphi now at Coliseum, what to ask you. And his first question was, how do you run sub two hour marathons? I thought that's a great one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean sub two would be uh better than the world record. Uh sub three, though, is sort of like yeah, is is like the uh the I guess gold standard for when you cross over to kind of doing something special in in the marathon. And um, for me it's like just a natural extension of a lot of the endurance training that I'd done. Um and it's it's funny, like I've done a bunch of different endurance events, but had up until this past year never done a marathon. And when my old boss from Slow, Sam Lesson, found out that that was the case, he publicly on his podcast like challenged me to run a sub three marathon. And so uh and so yeah, I uh I put you know a great training block in. And I think a lot of the sort of collective knowledge that I learned from endurance sports, you know, leading into that were a huge factor in being able to do it. And just, you know, the most important thing honestly is like showing up to the race healthy and getting to the starting line. Yeah. Um, because a lot of folks overtrain and they get injured and then you know, wheels fall off. And so um where'd you do it? Uh so I did three marathons last year. First one was in Oakland, um, and then I did San Francisco, which was uh brutal, but uh went well, and then I finally did New York and uh I went sub-three in both Oakland and New York. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_01What is that? What's pace per mile on them?
SPEAKER_02That's like 651, I think is the target pace.
SPEAKER_01That's like if I'm sprinting for like two minutes, I can't.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, but then you go and like hop on a treadmill and try to do what Elliot Kipchoge or any other professionals do, and that is true sprinting. It's it's nuts.
SPEAKER_01So tell me a bit about Coliseum. I shared the stats. Um, I think everybody knows a lot about you as Solana's leading accelerator, hackathon, fund. Maybe let's start with we'll start wherever you'd like.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, so we uh we run the world's largest online hackathons, um, online being an important component of that. Um and you know, the question when you're putting together uh a venture fund and the fund strategy is like what's your differentiation and in sourcing? And um for us it is those hackathons where we fundamentally believe that you know people coming in, competing publicly without regard for you know an idea being too precious and doing so on a global scale. Um, plus the fact that you know when you submit to Calcium, you submit everything from your GitHub repo all the way through to a three-minute pitch, it really forces people to constrain um the type of product that they're building originally, um, but also demonstrate their technical capacity to build and how they you know tell the story about the product. And so for us, it's a great way to screen for um for talent that wants to come and build um a real product that that makes a dent in the world. And so that's how we source all of the companies that we bring into the accelerator program. Um but it's early, right? These things run for six weeks, and people treat it like an engineering sprint or an epic to kind of get um a product that maybe is deployed on test net, but um you know still has a bunch that's left to do from either like a security and audit standpoint, a go-to-market standpoint, a like team construction standpoint. Um and so that's where the sort of second half of Coliseum comes in, which is the accelerator program, where we provide a bit of dilutive capital, 250K invested in the company, and then spend eight weeks with um the teams, some of whom will be here next week for the next um next program. Um and ultimately that uh culminates in a demo day where um you know investors from across the ecosystem who we work with closely come and see what folks have built. And you know, in some cases, people don't need to raise additional capital because crypto is quite you know capital efficient in in in certain sex.
SPEAKER_01So, Clay, I'm I'm trying to figure out how you handle just the sheer amount of inbounds that you get, right? You get thousands of inbounds. Normal fund gets dozens, maybe hundreds a month of credible leads. Uh, how do you just how do you at first step sort through all those, filter those, and figure out who you want to work with?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, so for for me, I I feel like I sit in one of the most interesting seats in in crypto in terms of every so often, every few months, I get the snapshot of you know what the collective mindset of developers across the Salani ecosystem globally um are thinking about and building and orienting their products around. And so um to me, that is super intellectually engaging, and I don't have to get you know pulled out of bed to go and and uh and do this day-to-day. So that's an a that's a good problem to have. Um and then in terms of how we manage the scale, so we built a first-party platform where um folks create developer profiles and team profiles and submit their projects. And um, every submission has uh a very standardized structure to it where we have the GitHub repo, the um uh a technical walkthrough, a um uh a product or or business walkthrough, um, and then a bunch of information from a demographic perspective that we capture. And so that to us builds like the one sheeter on what a particular company has done. Um, we then sort of process that through some tools that we've built internally. Um, and then you know, it's actually just the rote work of going through and watching each of these individually. Um, and you know, what the sort of processing piece that we've built has done is made it so that, you know, a lot of the spam or things that are uh you know essentially like copy paste of a code base that we've seen before and and things like that, we don't have to spend uh wasted cycles on that. Um and so that helps us triage sort of the top part that we want to review first. Um and from the 2,000 or so submissions that we get each hackathon, we distill that down to about 150 that we then go and interview. Um sorry, so 2000 down to 150? Yeah, 2,000 down to 150. Each project gets two uh sets of team members' eyeballs on them. Um and then this is where kind of there is a split in terms of um the hackathons that we run have a uh five to seven different categories, and each of those has a non-dilutive prize component to it. Um and then there's obviously the Coliseum investment underwriting and diligence component to it. And so um to help with that and to make it you know credibly neutral in terms of it's not just the three of us or five of us in a room making these decisions for you know these competitions, we have um mentors, founders, other investors in the ecosystem that um represent a judging panel that evaluates those projects from that subset of 150, and then that gets cut down to about 40 that are considered for um category winners down to honorable mentions for the non-dilutive prize money, and then we distill it down to about 10 to 15 that we invest in at that 250k check size and then bring into the accelerator program. So, you know, 80,000 or so developers that are on the platform down to 2,000 submissions that come in um, you know, each event, and that that number is growing, and then you know, down to 40 uh non-dilutive prize winners and then 10 to 15 that we invest in.
SPEAKER_01That's crazy.
SPEAKER_02It's uh yeah, it's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_01There's nothing out there that you're not seeing on Solana, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_02Uh I mean, you know, uh theoretically, yes. Uh but you know, um there's there's a lot of really creative people out there that don't necessarily um come and work with us, but uh but it's it's still we we do get a great slice of it.
SPEAKER_01And and um so just to recap, the the winners, the the 40 or so will get non-dilutive funding. That's like 25 grand or something like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it it varies. So I mean I think the smallest prize is five thousand and then the grand prize is fifty thousand.
SPEAKER_01So um and then ten of those you'll invest in through so that's like uh how much how much do you invest on the that side?
SPEAKER_02250k.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah, nice.
SPEAKER_02So it's two and a half million and change.
SPEAKER_01And they'll work here for a couple of weeks, you'll work with them and then they'll go off and graduate and do MO Day. Okay. That's awesome. So what's the where are you right now? Are you in between batches? Are you in one right or so?
SPEAKER_02We have the next uh so Cypherpunk uh, by the way, we name each hackathon based on like w it's sort of uh an imperfect process of us looking on uh on you know Twitter and around the ecosystem and saying like what is the sort of cultural zeitgeist in in crypto right now and try to kind of name and brand the hackathon, each hackathon uh alongside that that exercise. But um so Cypherpunk just finished. We announced the winners from that um at at breakpoint back in December. Um and then the next cohort comes in um this this coming Sunday to the office.
SPEAKER_01So those are the people that have won, got your funding? Yes. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it's crazy, you used to do it all online, and now you're doing it all in person.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, one of the learnings for us over the last two years was you know, the first two cohorts we ran, it was all remote, and sort of, you know, in terms of what we went to LP saying was, hey, this is you know, these hackathons have existed all online, so we're gonna maintain that. And from a fund model, um, you know, the the operational overhead as well as some of the dynamics of like international travel for founders um made us feel like we should try to keep consistent throughout. But then um, you know, we obviously survey everyone that comes through the the cohorts, and one of the biggest pieces of feedback was hey, we would love to do an in-person component. So we tried to do some of that like ad hoc at different sort of natural ecosystem gathering points. Um, but then we kind of came to the conclusion, thanks to actually to Michael Rinko, who who came to us with the idea, uh, it was like you guys need to do this, and you know, I'll come help you do it. And so that's awesome. That's a part of the story of how he landed at Coliseum. Um, but uh, but for us, you know, we recently in the last cohort rented an office in San Francisco for two weeks of the of the accelerator. And the feedback at the end of that was, hey guys, do you have somewhere where we can just stay longer? And we looked around like, well, we only have this for two weeks. And so that then precipitated, hey, we we need to actually go and get uh an office so that you know not only can we have people stay longer than you know the the the program itself, but I think too in in starting something by yourself, right, or or with one other person, especially if you two are remote at the outset, like it's a pretty lonely endeavor. And so to have a space like like we have where we'll have 75 or so desks, um, that um folks can come in and every day it's not their like you know on paper legal co-founders, but people that are at sort of a similar stage of building, that that type of community and ecosystem is something that I think is really important for us. And you know, to go from all online to that in you know a year and a half is um is I think a testament to like our willingness to get over our biases and inertia, but also um, you know, the the value that I think people still see in in the in-person component of of working together.
SPEAKER_01So yeah. I'm wondering I'm wondering how it'll pan out between the founders working together and then the founders working with you. Yeah. Because like there's a they could all meet, there's 75 desks you said with people just meeting, but they can also come to you. I wonder where the work split is between them working together versus asking you for help and how that'll play out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean we try to do a good job of enumerating, like, hey, based on our experience and and our collective skill set on the Coliseum team, like here are the things that you can draw a box around that we do quite well. Um, you can come to us with anything, but we'll be very clear about saying, hey, we actually don't know the answer, but we because of sort of the mentor network and and the halo of um of folks in in in our ecosystem, um, we can probably find someone that that has the answer. Um like I'm not auditing smart contracts. If someone comes and asks me to do that, like if you want to get hacked, maybe. Yeah, I mean, you know, uh we'll see how far I can you can push Claude code in the future. But you can push it pretty far. Yeah, yeah. But I I still like I have a lot of empathy for people that are in the business of writing, you know, uh things that are subject to you know both security and economic uh attacks because I would just be like up constantly worried about it. Yeah. So uh again, not my skill set, but I can find some money. And there are a lot of people out there that will do it.
SPEAKER_01No, they are. I think one of the coolest things about Coliseum, before we go to the next series of interview, is just I think you have one of the largest, if not the largest, sourcing capability on Solana.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean I think it's it, you know, I think that being self-reflective, the the thing that we do quite well is we definitely um work to be a sort of a tentpole um event and gathering place for people to start companies in the Solana ecosystem. Now, uh I think the important thing for us long-term is ensuring that it's not only that and you know, kind of insular, but rather it can grow the pie where you know if crypto is progressing from the world of being kind of at the stage of like where on-prem databases were pre-cloud to then moving to cloud and being just a piece of infrastructure, like I think Solana can become. Um that that opens the aperture to more types of individuals that that can come and build things on-chain. Um, but it won't be like the point, it'll just be a piece of infrastructure that they're using. And so that for us long-term is a big transition that that you know ultimately we'll need to build so that you know it can be 800,000 as opposed to 80,000 that are on the platform.
SPEAKER_01Not to dwell too much on the differences between the L1s and the L2s and everything, but like obviously you've made a a decision, like you know, through multiple cohorts, multiple years, now in person, we're staying on Solana, we're not gonna build on Monad or Barrachain or an L2 or Tempo or something new. Like have you do you frequently revisit that thesis, or is it sort of yeah, how do you kind of how do you keep that view long term?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean you you have to pay attention to what's happening around the ecosystem. And and um when we got together to start Coliseum, we we actually had this decision point of like, are we trying to build a hackathon platform and an accelerator for crypto broadly? Um, or do we want to pick somewhere and just kind of try to prove the model, right? Because no one has really kind of done this exact uh implementation before. Um and ultimately we came to the decision to like, hey, Solana, you know, taking the technical components uh at at face value, you know, higher performance, higher throughput, lower fees. If you believe that we're moving from like the infrastructure era of crypto to the application era, um, you need you know applications that can scale to millions of users. And so for us that that was a key piece of of the decision framework. Um but then also culturally, you know, Solana's been through like a massive, you know, uh uh run that saw a ton of attention and excitement to like FTX and the you know the world falling apart. And and through that, it's really codified, you know, developer culture that one views these hackathons as a place to start serious companies. Um but two has you know um the characteristics of an ecosystem that is you know obviously pricing crypto people pay attention to day-to-day, like you can't ignore it, but there is a strong focus on just like, hey, we love building on this because it has the characteristics of what we think is is most important. Um uh we're we're in it for the tech, if you want to put it that way. And so um, you know, that that ultimately led us to to focus primarily on the Solana ecosystem. But you know, thinking long term, um we'll see. Like I don't see that changing anytime soon. And I think to the point that I made earlier, uh for me, Coliseum is not something that's gonna catalyze a developer ecosystem from zero, right? And I think there needs to be some kernel of culture that then you know naturally feeds into um an entrepreneurial spirit around product creation, that then we obviously can be a catalyst, um, but it's it's not gonna be something that I I think you can build from zero. Um and and I think you have to go through the volatility um as well, just uh people declaring things dead and all of that a couple times before you know you've really landed in the right place. And then, you know, to touch on the ETH and L2 point, like I grew up in the Ethereum ecosystem, um, building it at Zero X Labs. And you know, I think the thing that I hear played back to me the most right now around ETH base, L2s, and the like is there's just a ton of um developer um apprehension and um overburdening of where to build, right? Because if you're like say you're trying to build an application, right? Um do you pick optimism? Do you pick Arbitrum? Do you pick base? What if your product starts to compete with BACE's core business at Coinbase? Does non you know anti-competitive shit start to weave into you know the the fray, right? And so that like counterparty risk or or you know technical you know overhead versus like just build on the monolithic chain that does the thing, um that to me is at least um in the current state of where ETH is today, the the one limiting factor to like I don't think we could go and do that effectively with the model that we have right now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um so I I kind of view it just as like like peeling back an onion and multiplying those risk factors together for what can be successful. And like it's hard enough to find a great founder, it's hard enough to have a great idea to execute, to stay together, to get the funding, like multiply that by like the macro of choosing the wrong L1 or the wrong L two, and like it just seems like unnecessary risk.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I mean, like, I you know, we talk to founders all the time that are thinking about building and name your favorite emerging ecosystem. And one of the negative things that I see played back to me a lot is, hey, why are you building on here? Very few of them answer with like the tech component. It's hey, we're gonna be the first one to do this on this chain, and they're gonna give us a lot of marking support. I'm like, well, but the chain's not live yet. And so, like, and your job as an application is to go find users. So what are we doing here? And so, like, you know, I I that's not to discount what those things, those ecosystems could become, but like I I think in the abstract, you know, you again you have to go through some shit in cycles to to be able to kind of prove it's it's worth long term.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I got into crypto with Ethereum. I mean, you got into with Zero X, like, and you were like really building something. I was just kind of investing and writing and researching, but um, I mean, I just read our year-ahead report at Delphi and like double zero on the physical infrastructure side, like on the fiber side between nodes, Alp and Glow, Fire Dancer, like these are like real engineering things that I feel really good about.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, so yeah, it helps. Helps a lot. On the recent hackathon, the people that are gonna be in here soon, populating this whole office. I'd love to talk through maybe your couple of your favorite companies or projects.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, it's a hard question. Yeah, no, I love all my children equally, and the one my favorite is the one that needs me the most at that moment. Like that's sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But um, but I think that for for me, um, the thing that sticks out the most about this hackathon relative to the three prior um is that if you looked at each of the ones prior to that, there's very clearly a consensus theme, right? That you could point and say, hey, on average, this is the the thing that people were considering most as part of what they were um building and submitting. So like the first hackathon very much focused on deep in. Like there's a ton of deep in submissions. Um the second hackathon, it was uh a ton of um novel DeFi primitives that hadn't existed on Solana um yet. And so there it was, it was nice. Like we were talking yesterday about DeFi summer back back in in Flashing Lights and Fruits. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Um but but there was like a version of that um that that happened in the second hackathon. The third one, um, it was prediction markets and stable coins. Um in this one, you really had to squint to find like a consensus theme, um, which you know means one of two things. Either there are no good ideas in crypto right now, uh, which I don't think is the case, or there's just a A nice stratification of fun experimentation happening in different corners. And that in and of itself I think is telling in terms of this this cohort is super diverse in terms of no two companies really are building in the same theme. And so to me that's that's what I'm most excited about is that like there's a ton of diversity and a ton of interesting you know corners of of experimentation that are happening from there.
SPEAKER_01It feels like the obviously the early stage stuff that you see is demonstrative of sort of where the space is going though. Because you mentioned last cohort with stable coins and prediction markets. Stable coins and prediction markets are literally the key item right now in crypto.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, I mean whether it's it's informant or as like a reflection of, you know, because you think about like the next big thing is the thing that someone is spending their nights and weekends toying around with. And so if you view hackathons as a version of, you know, that that toying around or tinkering, um, I do think that that it is somewhat of a leading indicator of sort of what's to come from from a consensus point of view. Um, but yeah, I mean, in terms of sub-themes, like I obviously grew up uh uh in the Ethereum ecosystem, but prior to that, um you know worked on payments products at Square. Um and so payments and stable coins continue to have um a ton of um you know uh interesting utility, but also you know, the renaissance around stables uh and and and the commerce that I think is going to be conducted through through that is um it's something that I'm personally very excited about. So there are a few teams that are you know taking things like the X402 standard um and you know thinking about, okay, in the future, if it's not Tommy and Clay making an individual decision on a subscription, you can actually break it down into, oh, there are agents that are going to be conducting commerce or using tools or you know, subsets of an API for cents, right? Um there's um there's a lot of interesting angles of approach in terms of how the the agent side of the world in commerce is going to meet. And I think stable coins are a natural extension of how at least the payments layer is going to be conducted. So um if I had to pick like a personal theme, that's that's something I'm I'm particularly excited about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It is interesting because I just read that report, and a lot of the stablecoin stuff I read about is pretty fintech-y and institutional, like PayPal with a stablecoin, Clorina with a stablecoin, like uh, you know, banks using it, and you know, now we're debating the market bill or market structure bill where they don't want to share interests with we'll see if it blows up. Yeah. It kind of feels like a lot of the stablecoin payment stuff is not happening on crypto rails as much.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, I think that's an extension of like fintech 1.0 is like a nice coat of paint on shitty legacy infrastructure. And I think with stable coins, it's finally like, oh shit, this is how it's supposed to be, and now we can marry the two. Like we've done the great design, we've done the like um, you know, the the regulatory side of it where we have the you know um MTLs and licenses that are required to do these things. Um and and now stable coins just like help our cost structure that much more. Plus, it has the kicker of net interest income.
SPEAKER_01So the plumbing being like way less intermediaries with stable coins on like the back end, less fees, easier access around the world. Then on the front, you're saying we could have like gorgeous fintech-like apps.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Now the thing that I think longer term with stable coins is um great for consumers, bad for financial institutions, is that it's just going to precipitate this um or accelerate this theme that has already been the case, which is just making money movement more seamless, which you know is how we got from $9 a trade on e-trade to zero trading fees to pay for order flow is Robinhood, right? Um, but then I think that finance and money and how we manage it personally is going to become even more seamless across service providers. And so too will the demand for great service at a lower cost. And so um, you know, if I am a traditional institution, like I'm worried about the stickiness of my deposits because you know, if if I'm not providing a great service for users at the end of the day, they're it's very easy for them to move it as opposed to like, uh, I don't want to pay the $50 wire fee and wait like six dollars for the money to get there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean I I just read uh Nick Carter's tweet last night, and he I think he said it's like $250 billion a year of lost interest income or something if if the banks lose their their regulatory moat, and kind of looks like they're not gonna lose it from what we're seeing.
SPEAKER_02We'll hopefully Yeah, we'll see. I mean, uh we'll we'll uh timestamp this.
SPEAKER_01So one of the cool things um when I talk to like fellow VCs is like learnings over the years, right? And a lot of VCs like some differentiate, like you said, on sourcing, some on portfolio ads, many different things. For you, you've seen more teams than anybody else, I think. And you've backed several cohorts over the years. So I'm curious like what were the biggest foundational learnings or changes for you as an investor? Maybe like the things you guys argued on, or you know, the interesting things you you changed as time went on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think that you know the taste-making ability in venture is is obviously the art rather than the science. Um and I think the thing that's changed, at least within Coliseum, um, is for us to be um I think that we've like oriented more and more towards the individuals rather than the ideas, because at the end of the day, the ideas are pretty pliable in terms of a direction a product can take. And I think early on we maybe over-indexed on having to have the perfect marriage of the two. Yeah. And that led to like the biggest disagreement because we were not arguing over the person, but we were arguing over the idea that they had um and and the merits that that are associated with that. Um, and so for us, I think that's been the biggest shift across the partnership. Um the the other thing too is um, you know, I think getting comfortable with with risk as you you get a little bit further along in terms of um you you can't, especially if you're investing when we are at the end of like a six-week event, right? Um you can't try to um say like, oh, how is this going to monetize like the day after tomorrow, right? Um you you need to be able to be comfortable with like there being a period of figuring it out and and you know, uh winding through the the idea maze around what the the ultimate direction of a product is going to take. Um and so I think that's that's another key key learning for us is just um being more comfortable with with things that are a little bit squishier in terms of of their direction. Um but yeah, at the end of the day for us, I mean, we largely just have the individuals to go off of and and what they've demonstrated in our events, which you know is a great leading indicator, I think, because it shows that they're high agency, willing to be wrong publicly and and um are are super technically competent. So that's a good question.
SPEAKER_01I love the direction that that you're taking with that and leading into the founders. The other like the other question I had for you is you're seeing founders obviously at the earliest stages. Like these are founders like our fund would not see, like, because it's we're early, but we're not this early, right? Um and it's really hard to gauge, especially online before you had this physical location, just how they are, right? Like EQ, talking to you, taking feedback, like pivoting, like that stuff happens at a much higher degree at this early of a stage.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I think it's really, really hard to judge that. Um so I'm curious like how you've refined your tastemaking around like deciding on founders from the you know, just the EQ, IQ perspective. Like that's it's hard.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest through line if I look back at at the thing that we um because we only talk to sometimes we have c multiple conversations, but most of the time it's one 15 to 30 minute call with with folks. So and YC does it in 10 minutes. So like there's you know, there's there's there's a lot of that to uh to be clear, um, or a lot of me a lot more that we can cut down if if you want to use that as the analog. But the thing that's been most true for us is um is it becomes very clear over the course of a conversation whether someone is uh looking to us for validation that their idea has merit versus um basically not caring and being like, I'm going to will this idea into the world, whether or not you guys agree with me or not. Um and so I think that that uh that piece of it, um, which again is like very squishy and qualitative, but it becomes very clear when you start to push people on their idea throughout the course of an interview. Um so for us that's that's probably the number one thing that that we've learned over the course of whatever we've done now, 600 plus interviews that uh that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01My partner Jose, I'm I'll probably botch this a little bit, but it's it's great. He likes people that are contrarian and and willing to be disagreeable, yeah. And it seems like this rhymes. Yeah, yeah, definitely. How do you suss out whether they're confident in their idea or they're just annoying?
SPEAKER_02Like that's a that's a good point. Uh I mean I think that it's a lot of it comes down to okay, we ask a particular question, that gets lobbed into their psyche. Do they get really defensive uh about it? And in that is, you know, I would call it the more annoying point uh in terms of they are really pushing on um, oh, my idea is so precious, and if you're trying to kind of uh you know pierce the veil of security, like I it it's very clear when people start to sort of pull back versus people leaning in and saying, yes, and and you know, yes, and and this, and this, and this. And and so um, you know, again, it's it it definitely is like uh facts and circumstances specific, but I do think that um really lobbing in these sort of grenades that pierce the veil of like someone's confidence um and seeing that their ability to kind of um take that in, but you know, answer the question uh uh constructively, I think is is you know the thing that that we see a good bit of.
SPEAKER_01So you want people that are like very confident in their idea, and when you push back or you ask questions, instead of taking it personally and uh debating like themselves or or the personal effect, they're debating the idea. Yes. The intention. Okay. Yeah. That's fair. Um so you're okay backing those very contrary and disagreeable founders as long as they're debate the idea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but I mean I think that to go and compete in public, like you you have to have some humility. Yeah. And so um I I don't know that I mean, I I wouldn't say that we've invested in any assholes to date. So like that's fine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or at least they can hide it over a couple of calls. Sure, yeah, exactly. Yeah. That is that is really cool. What would um what would like your partners or your colleagues, like what have their biggest changes been over the years for the benefit of Coliseum and everything that you've learned?
SPEAKER_02Um I mean, with us internally, the the the nice thing is that you know, across the three GPs, um, we each have very specific things that we focus on. Um Matt uh ran the so he and I worked together at Square over a decade ago, then worked at Zero X together, then he joined Solana Labs um and and built, you know, basically try was charged with answering the question how do you build a novel uh L1 developer ecosystem from effectively zero? And these online hackathons were sort of the way that they grew the pie rather than trying to go and steal every Solidity developer that was that was working on Ethereum at the time. Um and and so he has just like perfected the um the art and science of running these events um that then feeds into the platform, which Nate, who was a software engineer um in fintech and then on Stripe's crypto team, kind of built that platform um alongside Max, one of the engineers on our team. And so that serves as sort of his his area of focus. And then I come from a background of I worked in product, worked in traditional, you know, uh uh tech jobs, but then uh I previously was at Slow Ventures and and saw sort of how the mechanics of a really established fund work. And so I do my best to try to you know recreate that, but in our own version um here um and also just um you know, in terms of like how you go out and speak to different audiences, whether it's LPs or um founders and and work through some of the difficult mechanics of fundraising and and company building. Like that's where I spent the last four years prior to Calcium. So um so you should have your own role, that's great. Yeah, yeah. And so I think just continuing to lean into those. Um, but also like we're perfectly comfortable asking each other, you know, why we're doing this a certain way. And then obviously we come together uh, you know, for every single investment decision for sure. Which is which is great.
SPEAKER_01So maybe a a harder question. Sure. Uh like the best teams that you've backed, are they generally everyone agrees? All three, all three of you are over the moon excited. Are they generally contentious ideas or just not enough I'm sure you have a high enough sample size at this point, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um I think all of them we really had to debate and squint. Like none of them were were totally obvious in in in retrospect that that all of us wanted to do it. Maybe one of us was really excited about it. And and I think if you look at like the history of things that have gone through the shortlist and gone through interviews, each of us has a particular subset of themes that we're we're excited about. And so there is some like implicit default trust that uh happens where if I'm really excited about like a payments or stablecoin idea, we're probably gonna do it. Right. Um, and same thing with like developer tools, or you know, I think Matt in particular uh is is really really good at both consumer um and just very I don't know what what to call it. I mean, I I I've always called it like the weird corners of the internet, but things that are very crypto native, he just has a a a second, you know, or six cents for it. And so um so it it works is the upshot.
SPEAKER_01That's cool. It sounds like a kind of like a champion model and then work to convince everyone else or not convince them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is pretty cool. Another question for you. So you were at slow ventures previously, zero X and Square before that. Yeah. Um so sorry, so square is zero X, then slow? Yeah. Okay. So slow is obviously a very different animal than what we're doing now. Like traditional venture, um, very different sourcing model. Like, why did you decide that you wanted to go and do like a complete 180, like stylistically job-wise? Like, how did you get to that point?
SPEAKER_02Um, I mean it was an extension of I was uh slow was obviously one of the first investors in in Solana. Um and so legendary firm. Yeah, yeah. And and I came from you know Zero X in the Ethereum ecosystem where we were having the internal debate of hey, for our DEX aggregator API, like should we expand to Solana? And so, you know, in the midst of that conversation, really squinting at like what that developer ecosystem looked like circa 2020, 2021, um, you know, the answer was question mark, right? And then I joined Slow and immediately it was like, this is the largest position we have in crypto, uh, and we need to figure out sort of how to you know think about the this position. You know, just so happened I had a friend that had joined the the Solana labs, and he said, Hey, you want to come judge our hackathons? And so from the first one on, guys, get rid of each other. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the the through line, like in there's a couple of them in in my career, and it's also true with Matt, is like money movement and hopefully increasing forms of efficiency from like traditional payments all the way through to um you know whatever it is that we're doing today. Um, and then hackathons. Like Square had a really, really strong culture of internal hackathons. Um, Xerox had a really strong culture around internal hackathons, and then obviously we're huge supporters of um the ETH global um you know hackathon series. Um and then at Slow, I was just a judge sitting there uh you know, looking at teams, coming through these events and saying, like, hey, this is there's something to this in terms of the the vein of talent that they're tapping into that Ethereum is not seeing and and the types of product like central limit order books could exist on Solana, they couldn't, you know, on on L1 ETH. And so um so there are things that I saw that were just like, oh, this this makes sense. And so um, so that is sort of ultimately how I ended up um um doing the 180. But in terms of like the model, I mean slow invested, you know, uh primarily at the seed stage and um and we're um you know, as a generalist fund, the the thing that I think was quite healthy for me, you know, in my first, you know, formal roles as an investor was um having not being able to get away with like, oh, because it's crypto, it'll work, and you don't have to do the same type have the same type of underwriting logic that you do in traditional ventures. So like any deal that I would bring to IC, it got put you know up against what was happening in healthcare and you know, traditional fintech and SAS and you know, whatever you want to do. And so um, so there was a a a slightly higher bar than I think you would have, you know, internally at a crypto native fund, which I still carry with me today. Um the other thing that they taught me um that is still true with what we what we do day to day is um they frame every investment memo in what is the 10x case and what's the 100x case, meaning the 10x case is, hey, with these dollars you believe there's 10x uh a 10x value. And usually that's around a single particular product hypothesis. And then the 100x case is like what is the um unreasonable thing that could happen with this company that in retrospect is going to be perfectly reasonable. Um, and so that can be either you know an ecosystem of product hypotheses around that are derivatives of that original product hypothesis play out at scale, um, or there's just some like crazy version of the future that with these things just continuing to compound, you've ultimately you know ultimately build build towards it or pull it forward. And so I like that process.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So straightforward.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it it it it's it there's a lot that goes into that, right? And and it usually just gets captured in like a couple of lines, which is I think the a great like forcing function around um breaking it down to its essence. But um, but yeah, we we carry a lot of that with us as well, too. It's like, okay, if the first thing is proven right, there's you know a great business to be had, but like to be something truly special, you you have to believe some weird version of the future.
SPEAKER_01So maybe a specific question on the slow process. You said that like if you were to bring a crypto deal, you'd be up against healthcare deals and fintech deals, all types of things. Is that is that good or bad? Because like a lot of the audience isn't crypto native, they might not understand it.
SPEAKER_02Like, yeah, I mean, look, it's it wasn't like deal A and deal B were like competing for a slot in in the fund, um, and we were arguing the merits over like value-based head care and like you know, whatever was going on in crypto at the time. Yeah, yeah. But I do think the thing that it did force is um uh I had to be we had to be uh really disciplined around um pricing, right? Where we had a max check size that that we were capped at. And circa 21 and 22 before sort of FTX collapse, like it was really frustrating in in some ways where if I, you know, was competing for a deal, oftentimes you would get priced out because you know, the token component plus people were you know really excited during a bull market, it became you know harder and harder to win deals that were super hot or consensus. Well, yeah, no, in retrospect, like I you know, uh I I do think that that was a good thing, but it did really force the the the issue on like you have to be very disciplined about both the idea and and the pricing. So what's the best thing you learned from Sam at Slow? Uh I mean I did I learned different things. So the three partners at Slow, Sam, Kevin and Will. Um, no, no, but yeah. No one loud. Well, Sam's the loudest on the end. Yeah. So that's that's an easy um and he was the one that primarily um I I worked with on all things crypto. Um but yeah, from him in particular, I mean, one, he is um one of the most unburdened people in the best way possible, where like there is nothing that phases him. And so in the course of company building, you know, having been through as a founder himself, but also, you know, working with people uh over the years, he just doesn't get bothered when shit goes wrong and is like very willing to lean into those those um those times, and um and and I think founders really appreciate that about him. Um I also think too that he's also really open to just taking swings on things that um are are you know several clicks from consensus, which um which I I really appreciated. Um and so yeah, he and and he just has like a great he's very clear on how he thinks about the future and that thinking evolves almost in real time. Like you'll see like perfect example is he and I would be talking uh about some some topic, and then all of a sudden, like while we're on the call, I'll see a tweet pop up from him on the topic that we're talking about. So like he really refines his thinking through the process of you know obviously conversation but then just like sharing that idea in real time on the internet and so I I definitely appreciate that. But um but yeah I I've learned a lot from from all of them over the years.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. I've heard great things, I've never met any of them, but yeah, I hope to at some point in the future. A different kind of line of questioning for you. You were at zero X, like pivotal time, early crypto. Uh you're at square. So like you actually build things and you were normal like traditional VC, now very early stage. How do you suss out the builder side for these early stage people? Like do you ask them specific questions to judge if they can do what you did? Or yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, um there's so much that goes into you know building a company.
SPEAKER_01Um that's the crazy boards.
SPEAKER_02You only you only do 15-minute calls too. Yeah, and so um you know, you go off of it, we capture a ton of demographic information. So we know a lot about what individuals have done prior to it. So their priors are like a a big thing to go off of. But if if you see something that like you know uh has a has a flag against it, that you know, at least in terms of the the cursory evaluation, you you want to ask about it. It's like, okay, you've done this, but what have you done previously? And and um, you know, there are different degrees of working at companies. Like I worked at Square at a time when I first started, where it was really small and they're willing to give like a 22-year-old way too much you know responsibility. But through that I learned a ton. Um versus had I joined with uh joined Square um at the time that I left, like it had become a public company, very like slow, maybe is is a overly um mature? Yeah, yeah, had become a mature company. Um, and with that, like I definitely wouldn't have learned as much had I not been in the seat prior. And so um I think that that previous experience um certainly can teach you a lot um just in terms of um you know the level of responsibility that you have and scope and and the need to adjust day to day. Um I think are all all important components of company building.
SPEAKER_01I'm I'm stuck on the call for a little bit. I want to linger there. Like, do you ask the same questions to everybody that makes it to that call?
SPEAKER_02No. Okay. I mean we get we ask some like we start off with the same question, which is what are you building and why does it need to exist in the world? Like that's the first question. Yeah. Um and then but then we have always have like specific questions based on the review that each of us wants answered.
SPEAKER_01Um I kind of want to change my DD calls to 15 minutes now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, it does really force because you think about what gets goes into a 30-minute call, right? Oftentimes it's like intros, here's my background, here's what Coliseum is, here's what we do, here's what the company is, here's my and like I don't think that that I'd rather just jump straight into like here are the three most important questions that we have about your company and any like derivatives that that spin off of that, and I'd rather just spend the time on on that. And um, that's really like there is also this problem of scale of like we spend basically three weeks on Zoom with 15 minute breaks in between. And so it it really is just a function of we need to get through all of those um those uh those calls. Um now, like as Coliseum scales, is it the it will it be the case that not all three of us are on a call at a given time? That probably will be will be what eventually emerges, but we just haven't crossed that that threshold yet.
SPEAKER_01It doesn't even seem disrespectful to me though, because it seems actually more respectful that you're you can figure out if you're interested, you can always do a longer call. Yeah. And if not, you give the founder their time back.
SPEAKER_02Well, and what we ask for up front is a ton of context. Like we have a there's a three-minute pitch video, there's a three-minute um technical walkthrough, there's the um there's any like additional materials that they want to share, there's the GitHub repo. So like we have a lot of context, I think even more so than in you know other people that um they're getting maybe cold pitches off off of um off of a an email. And so um I do think that there's a lot of um context building that we do behind the scenes prior to calls, which I think is good.
SPEAKER_01No, it definitely is. Given like the line of questioning I have around sourcing, funds have different tastes. Like some funds I talk to or we work with, like, they don't do any sourcing. Like they'll go do tons of research, they'll find the companies they like, and like they'll hand pick them and like I want to invest in this one. You guys are on the other side where you just have a gigantic sourcing funnel. Have you ever like thought about the merits of the other side? Like where there is no sourcing, you just go research, you find what you like, and yeah, I mean the It's a hard question.
SPEAKER_02It is, and it's really hard, especially now to like create um to put up the bat signal around it as like you know, uh a regular way venture fund. Um and so there's like Will from Slows had a good line around this, which is like ventures kind of becoming like what investment banking was a few, you know, maybe two decades ago, where it was like you get hired to go win the deal on the theme that's hot at the moment. Like that's a lot of what Series A plus investing is. And if you don't win that deal, you're gonna get fired. Yep. Right. Um, and so that's that's one version of of how it's evolved. But um the thesis-based components, um, you know, it it does make it feel like you're kind of getting into original thinking. Um, but it may um it may lead to like overly constraining yourself in terms of this, the opportunity set that you see. Um, because maybe like there's a version of maybe you're wrong about that theme or thesis that that you've developed. Um, or maybe it's just like the founder subset or talent pool that's thinking about that theme as well is just not quite there. Um, and so you know the read and react, I think, is is the practical reality of of what works well in venture. But you can obviously have like a perspective on the future of payments, right? If you're doing traditional fintech investing and like build a bottoms-up thesis around how that's going to be instantiated and then like try to find the companies that do that. But like where you meet those companies and at what stage is you know a real question.
SPEAKER_01Well, you're just so early. Like the I feel like the founders are the ones that are supposed to have the best ideas, the leading ideas. Yeah. Like if you were middle market or something, then maybe it'd be different. But yeah, it makes it makes a lot more sense. Yeah. So I know you love all your children equally. Can we talk about a few successes maybe? Sure. Yeah, yeah. Um, I mean, where where do you want to start? I don't I there's a lot. Yeah. I mean, maybe any that come to mind that like it'd be curious, like like a flagship success that's come out of Colosseum would be nice, but also maybe a different way we could take it as maybe a project you were unsure about that ended up being successful, or or a founder that you you know thought really strongly about that succeeded, or any way you want to take it would be fine with me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think all of this needs to be caveated with. It's still early. Yeah. Right. And like there are things that are that I I I think are starting to emerge and have what I would call like the the early signs of product market fit. But um, but yeah, I mean, in terms of the hackathons, the first one was hilarious because um there was a a company called Or that came through. When was this? This was uh the this was 2024 in January. Okay. Yeah. Um and so uh Hardhat Chatter is an Anon developer that built Or. It was a uh a store of value that was built on top of Solana, um, that basically used a proof of work mechanism, but then settled to Solana.
SPEAKER_01Proof of work on Solana?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um and throughout the hackathon, it it actually broke Solana or was very close to breaking Solana. Um and so we saw this and we're like, this is one of the coolest things we've we've seen in a long time. Um but then uh then the question becomes like, okay, well, how do you actually build a company around this? You know, you've had stores of value before in Bitcoin, those were born of a fair, you know, fair launch and didn't have like a uh a corporate entity that was kind of stewarding it along the way. And um ultimately what what hard hat landed on was like it actually isn't proof of work, it's it's um gamifying the the experience around mining. So he actually created a consumer application that that does that, and now that's one of the top um revenue generating applications on Solana, which is quite quite cool.
SPEAKER_01So the consumer app doubles as people doing proof of work?
SPEAKER_02Yes, no, no, proof of stake. Sorry, he swapped it to the proof of stake. You play this sort of tile game where you're basically allocating soul to different slots on the tiles in order to earn ore. Um and now people are doing this by like the tens of thousands.
SPEAKER_01And that game is a security element in the background?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Damn, that's yeah. So like very, very cool and and has had to go through several product iterations to land where he did, but it it's one of the you know the first investments that we made. Um in that similar vein, MetaDAO uh is is another one that has um sort of wandered through the idea maze under the umbrella of these um different types of companies that can be governed, but this concept of futarchy, where decision markets, rather than like one token or one share, one vote, um, govern sort of the direction a corporation can take, how much a CEO is paid, um, and importantly um creates the the confines of how um a company can be wound down um where the token is the only asset associated with with the company. Um and so for us. That went through the star or uh so we actually met them at Mountain Dow prior to our first hackathon. Oh wow. Um and so it we didn't even we barely had the fund put together. I don't think it was actually even finally closed yet. And so um, but uh but they you know have not only landed on a theme that I think fits within again the cultural zeitgeist of crypto in terms of there have been so many meme coin launches and rug pulls and you know uh countless examples of where um two things. One, the dual token and equity structure are fundamentally break incentive alignment. Um and then the token component, especially, um, there are very few token holder protections that are natively built into um not only these launches, but then how these networks sort of function long term. Um and so uh I'm really excited about what they're doing just in terms of taking a very strong perspective of hey, here's how you build a company where the token is a single economic unit associated with the entity. Um, but also it's it's for whatever reason, just because the the world is weird, aligned very closely with a founder type that we like, where um, you know, in order to have a token from essentially day one with your company, um, you have to be essentially a public market CEO, where you know you're communicating, hey, here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it, and kind of managing the expectations of a market, um, but as a like pre-seed or seat stage company. Um I never I I never thought about them being they are public market CEOs of liquid tokens. Yeah, exactly. Um and and what importantly, like with the futarchy mechanism where the company can be wound down by a decision market that's proposed, um, founders have this sort of sort of Damocles that's constantly sitting over them. You know, network. Yeah, yeah, waiting, waiting to fall. But I mean, it's not to create fear, but it's to create like you know, it establishes an incentive alignment where it's like I'm doing the right thing by the the company and the protocol and the network that I'm working to build. Um, but investors too, the market also has the right where if I'm not, you know, I and the team are contributing um to the expected value of this asset being worth more over time, you know, we shouldn't be running the company.
SPEAKER_01Um what's the easiest way you describe PewTarchy and like i it's I feel like it's very hard to understand at the onset and then very simple once you get it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, I mean, I've been through a bunch of this like personally, like with displaying it to family at dinner tables all the way through to like crypto-native people. Crypto native people get it really quickly because there's you know, things like DAO governance that historically have just been so full of what you know you would call like governance theater, where because there's so many voting blocks that just have a ton of tokens, they can push their decisions no matter what. Um, so the way to think about it is rather than having like a representative share of votes, you have um critical decisions that are put to a decision market where not only shareholders or token holders, but um also the market itself, which is full of people that are doing you know analyses all over the place, um uh can um trade that market and um and uh the underlying component of how that market is traded is is this decision, if it passes, going to be positive EV for the underlying asset? And and so um and so with that as the backdrop, you can think about how this can be a much more efficient mechanism than like um board decisions that are you know basically country clubs in the corporate setting, right, where their friends join and they can push through decisions relatively easily. Um and and so um for us it's like a very interesting experiment in terms of um how you can align token issuance with token holder rights with uh a way to steward something for the long term that is aligned with creating you know greater market value for for the asset.
SPEAKER_01So maybe like a quick example, but like or a hypothetical example, like uh will pump fund launching video streaming be positive for pump price? Yep. Like who who is at risk of capital here? Like what are you betting? Like, how does it work? Like how do you in terms of who can participate? Yeah, like if I say hell, hell yeah, video streaming is gonna help pump's price, I want to vote yes, I have to posit. What do I deposit?
SPEAKER_02Use USDC. So they're all traded around USDC. Um and then uh and then that leads to ultimately settlement of the market as you know if the price, if the yes price is higher than the no price, then then you know that carries the and the people who lose get nothing, people who win get everything?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Pretty straightforward. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_02Um and so um, you know, it's it there's been this open conversation around like, is this good for day-to-day product decision making? And I think the the general consensus, especially at the earliest stages, is probably no. But at the same time, teams like MetaDAO themselves, who as a company are governed by Futarchy, um, they put up a proposal about launching this um uh or uh creating this token launch platform um where it had all of these dynamics that that I've described. And um and that passed and it's been positive EV. And so like that's at N of one that the system is working. But you know, again, like I said at the at the outset, like these things are all still very experimental, but it's they're experiments that are definitely worth running and ones that we want to support as as uh as time goes on.
SPEAKER_01Do you ever lose a deal to a MetaDAO launch pad, or would your teams then launch their token potentially? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we we actually created this mechanism or this uh new vehicle called the Stamp, uh, which is if you're familiar with the SAFE, simple agreement for future equity, you had the SAF future agreement for future tokens, or simple agreement for future tokens. The stamp is um uh simple token agreement, market protected.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02And so the idea being that, you know, uh it's a it's a nod to the fact that when um a company launches on MetaDAO, the market protects token holders from you know rugs, scams, and and you know, people kind of violating their duty as as a as a as a steward of the company. Um and uh and so what the mechanism that or the vehicle we created does is it makes it so that um you know you can take on dilutive capital prior to launching on MetaDAO, which allows for products to be de-risked or you know, people to quit their full-time jobs to just like do the basic blocking and tackling of standing the company up. And so um for us it's an it's a compliment to what we what we do. And and I think that for the right type of company, which is not everyone, at least currently, um it's it's a another on-ramp to um capital formation that um that we want to offer. So like for this latest cohort, everyone had the option of do you sign a stamp or do you sign a safe and token warrant? Um and so so it's um you know it's a it's a new experiment that we're running alongside. So why can't they do the safe with warrant and then do metaDow? Because uh the concept of equity, right? Like uh MetaDAO blows up the concept that's equity. There is no equity. Okay.
SPEAKER_01So there's no warrant linked to the safe safe and token warrant.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So you don't have a way to define um ownership there.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you with the stamp program, the founders you can invest, the founders get the money, and hopefully they bring better, more mature product launches to MetaDAO with that money.
SPEAKER_02That's that's the hope, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And what what percentage chose Stamp first?
SPEAKER_02Uh we haven't announced it yet, but a few, a few are choosing it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, cool. That's awesome. Yeah. So maybe last question for you. Um so you you're two years since your first hackathon, I think. You said January was four, twenty four, twenty-four. Um so two years in, multiple hackathons, literally tens of thousands of submissions. Um we all kind of think like where we want to go in life, what we want to do with the world, like do we want to make money, which is fine, do we want to leave a legacy? Do we wanna back just continue to back teams to what we're doing? How do you think through like your five, 10 year plan for Coliseum? Like, has it changed? Is it different? Do you not think about it?
SPEAKER_02Like, what's the I mean the thing that's nice about Coliseum is at least in in terms of the fund strategy, um, we're like a metronome, right? Like we run these events, we have the cohorts, we have the acceler. And so um, so long as crypto and you know, Solana to the degree that we stay, you know, focused on that is a thing, like I don't see us changing a whole lot. And I also don't see us pursuing a strategy where we're like trying to hoover up a bunch of AUM just to like, you know, eat off of fees or whatever, you know, version of of multi-stage venture capital eventually becomes. Like I really want to stay true to to what we do, and if that increases you know slightly with scale, I think that that's that's important. Um bigger picture, I just want us to be the destination where anyone that's building on-chain wants to come and start, you know, for the first time. Like some of the most successful companies, not only that are in the ecosystem today, but you know, I think are in our portfolio, um, are ones that um were multiple hackathon participants, um, where they use them as, again, like an engineering sprinter and epic to go sort of prove uh or disprove a product hypothesis. And if it's disproven, either like they don't win or they don't love what they see at the end of it, they come back and refactor and then refactor and refactor. And like a good example of this is the the grand prize winner from this most recent uh hackathon is a company called Unruggable that's building a Solana specific um uh hardware wallet and companion app. Um, so really going up against Ledger for that. And they were four-time hackathon participants. So I think that for us, you know, long-term, I just want as many people as possible to be experimenting on-chain. Um I think that that's the the number one thing.
SPEAKER_01Being in the Coliseum in the arena thing is real with you guys.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and competing. And I think all of that flows through to success in terms of the hackathon platform, to the ecosystem um in Solana and and the companies that that we support, and obviously the the fund as well too.
SPEAKER_01Um so maybe, sorry, one last last question for you. Um you're again at the early stages, and developers have their decision. Do they want to build in crypto, do they want to build an AI, do they want to go vibe code or work at a lab? Like, are you seeing that negatively flow into like the quality of founder that are applying or the ideas that they're bringing, or are there no changes and they're leveraging AI and they're doing better? Like, how do you view the the breakdown?
SPEAKER_02I mean, i we I like to say like we support all God's children, right? In terms of if you look at the submissions that we have, it's like people that are working with all the you know fang companies that you would you would think of that are coming into the events, all the way through to like people in who have current jobs. Yeah, who have current jobs, uh all the way through to like high schoolers in some country that you could probably not pick out on a map that like this is their first time building any product ever, right? And so like I think that the the impact of of AI and and you know vibe coding and all of that is like it certainly democratizes the the ability to express an idea um in in code and that puts a little bit more um emphasis again uh for us again on the individual behind that. Um but also it importantly it it really creates um uh an emphasis on um execution of that idea. For sure. Right? Because like I think at least the current subset of tools that people have at their disposal is is quite good at getting from like zero to one. But then to take that to something that is like maintainable production level code um over the long term and like has a product that is truly differentiated, um, that's like the magic and and and still requires a really high agency and and you know, someone that is a a tastemaker, especially in a world where like perfection is, you know, the cost of building perfection is effectively zero. Right. Um and so I think too, the the other impact on us is like I really love the fact that you know the amount of money that we give people is enough to quit their full time job, but only so much to like go run a very small experiment early on. And so um as you know you assume that team sizes become smaller and more capital efficient, I think that that's a good thing, you know, for us long term. Um but um but yeah it I I think that there's much like the internet there's going to be m positives and negatives that flow through into it.
SPEAKER_01That is cool. Smaller teams maybe more checks. That'd be that'd be cool to do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh so I guess to close out like if someone's listening this and they want to they want to work here, they want to work with you, they want to win in the arena, what do they do?
SPEAKER_02Calcium.com we so we have the two um uh sort of tent pole hackathons that we run uh at a specific time every year and those dates are are we actually just announced the 2026 schedule um but in between it we actually have um a series that we call Eternal so when the current large hackathon isn't running and you just have an idea and want to start building you go to coliseum.com you hit start and it starts a four week countdown for you to build and provide like a weekly update throughout the build and then we evaluate those on a rolling two week basis. That's awesome as well too so they could win the dilutive financing yeah and so and they get considered they don't get considered for um the category prizes in the larger hackathons but there is a an eternal prize that we grant every six months um that sort of falls in between so yeah anytime you want to go to Coliseum.com and you built something you and your partners built something so cool because there's just tens of thousands of submissions you're backing people at the earliest idea stage who could change the world and now you're working person it's just awesome to see so jealous of the office the setup of the well I'm I'm appreciative that that uh you were the first uh first one to come in podcast from here um you were walking around you're like this is gonna be so great for content I'm trying to like hook up the the TV for the first time but you you you're you're the visionary here so it's good.
SPEAKER_00Uh well thanks for coming on yeah appreciate it Tommy you're now plugged into the Delphi podcast podcast
