{ "episodeId": "SLP444", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "mike_jarmuz": { "name": "Mike Jarmuz", "role": "guest", "tag": "MIKE" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.51, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics, brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Today for episode four hundred and forty-four, my guest is Mike Jarmuz, also known as Muz. He's joining us from Lightning Ventures, and we talk about a range of things. He's coming from the world of Bitcoin venture capital, and we chat about Bitcoin venture capital obviously, and we talk about this idea of whether it's fiat Is it corrupting the system in some way or is it taking advantage of that? We talk about the general process of investing in companies, thinking long term. We chat about his thoughts on the problems of chain analysis, as well as Bitcoiner jobs, whether you should evangelize Bitcoin, as well as tips for founders. But before the show, a message from the sponsors. Mempool dot space is a next generation Bitcoin blockchain explorer. It shows the multiple layers of the Bitcoin ecosystem. It's a comprehensive explorer. You can use this to target your fee before you send a Bitcoin. Bitcoin on-chain transaction, you can also use it to check transactions. Now, of course, you can use it yourself without trusting a third party, you can host this yourself, or otherwise go to mempool dot space. Now, it will show you multiple aspects, it can show you the mempool, it can show you the blockchain, it can show you second layer networks like the Lightning Network, and if you're with an enterprise, mempool dot space offers customized mempool instances with your company's branding, increased API limits, and more. Go find out more at mempool dot space slash enterprise. If you Looking for multi-signature security for your long-term hodlings? Unchained Capital can help you. They've got a multi-sig vault that's easy to use yourself if you want to. You can go to the website unchained dot com and spin up the vault yourself with your own hardware, or otherwise if you need some assistance, they have a concierge onboarding program where they walk you through the process of setting up a two-of-three multi-signature vault. Now, of course, you keep those two keys in two different locations, you have your own backups, and Unchained holds the To make sure you're prepared for multi-generational Bitcoin savings, so think about that also whether you have your stack, have you thought about passing it on to the next generation? Unchained dot com is the website to go to find out more. This show also brought to you by Blockstream, who have a new community that they are starting up, it's called Build on L2. This is a community led effort by contributors and companies building on Core Lightning and the Liquid Network. This is an interactive community platform where builders, ranging from product managers, designers, and engineers, can come together through events. There's a mentorship program to fast-track success, and you can join and build a community. You might be able to get expert help to build your project, you may be able to showcase your work to the community, ask for support. There may be even opportunities to connect at events or join a program to fast-track success. If you're interested, go and sign up for this platform over at buildonl2 dot com. And now onto the show with Muz. Muz, welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "02:55", "start": 175.1, "text": "Alright, thanks for having me, man. Nice to be here." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:58", "start": 178.36, "text": "Yeah, well, At, some of the various conferences and, you know, have known you in the space professionally a little bit here and there. And yeah, keen to chat a little bit about what you're doing and also just what's going on in the world of Bitcoin. I know, you, were recently going at this notion that nothing's happening in Bitcoin. Is that true? Is nothing going on in Bitcoin, Muz? Nothing's going on in" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "03:20", "start": 199.87, "text": "Bitcoin. It's absolutely dead. It's deadder than ever. And, and not only have, we hung out at some conferences Angel investors seeding a lot of these, companies, with your own shop over there, the, the Bitcoiner Ventures crew." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:37", "start": 217.46, "text": "Right. Yeah. I mean, from us, it's, you know, it's basically a syndicate. We, you know, we invest along with our, syndicate members. We don't take any carry on that. This is kind of like, for, for all of us, this is like our side thing, right, to our main thing. But of course, there are various ways to, you know, get involved in" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:00", "start": 240.02, "text": "You had a great talk on this as well over at-- This is Baltic Honey Badger, you did a talk on that and, about kind of the space generally as well. So yeah, I mean, I think that's cool. Let's, let's chat a little bit about that and how you got into that world, right? Like, were you a Bitcoiner before you went into that world, or were you already in that world before you came to Bitcoin? No, so" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "04:19", "start": 259.19, "text": "I'm, you know, for-- I'm a, I'm a twenty thirteen Bitcoiner, around that Girlfriend at the time. But yeah, that twenty thirteen era, that first altcoin boom, that Mount Gox, you know, the Silk Road, all of that sort of world, that was, that was it at the time. That was pre-bit license, and I actually owned a bar in New York City. We had the second Bitcoin ATM, that was in Manhattan, at the time, behind the one, in Midtown, the famous one there, I think, Charlie Shrem had something to do with that one. So I'm from that era Bitcoin goes. And, I didn't do anything really in the Bitcoin space. I just had small businesses, had a lot of my own things going on, I was in the music business for many years before that. And, I started investing in private companies, in twenty fifteen. So those would be mainly late stage secondaries. And, my first investment was actually in Lyft. And, I focused mainly on the late stage secondaries because 'cause I didn't wanna lose all my money, and that's what people do when they invest in early stage stuff, they lose all their money. And, around twenty eighteen or so, I met someone at a conference, I was showing him what I was doing, and I, I was doing pretty well with, with these later stage deals 'cause we were in a healthy IPO market, you know, so the DraftKings, Spotify, you know, e-everything Slack, everything that was coming out, was good because you didn't have to keep your money tied up Turn. So he took a look at what I was doing, he said, \"You know, if you really wanna do this, you gotta start doing the early stage stuff.\" And, I, I didn't wanna lose all my money, like nobody does, right? so started really getting into more education, and I've been obsessed with it since I got going in twenty fifteen, but really getting into the education of learning as much as you can, and it's just, it's endless, what you can do when you really start digging into this world And, so dialed up my deal flow and started investing in early stage stuff, and then I never really looked back at the late stage. That was, that was kinda it. Once I discovered the early stage stuff and a lot of these, VCs that I still really, I mean, had the most tremendous amount of respect for, that I learned a ton of stuff from. These aren't the, the Bitcoin VCs, these are outside normie VCs, but just learned as much as I could, and I somehow invested in, over two thousand deals. when you count the follow-ons. So a lot of small checks, of course, and, you just learn from every deal, you learn from everything that happens. So, you know, if you get something sent to you and, and you read it and it looks great, and then you get those updates from the founder, right? And it's the hottest deal, it's the best thing ever, it's the greatest company, and then you read the update, you know, a couple months later, and it's, \"Oh, we had a little bit of trouble launching, and, Three months later, you get another update that's not great, and then eventually it's, \"Oh, COVID India, we're shutting down.\" Dissolution apology letter from the founder, \"Here's our learnings,\" which is the most important thing, alright? You can fail as a founder, but everybody has to learn something, and that includes every single person who invested in your company. Don't ghost them and just shut it down because you're gonna go on, you're gonna start something else, you're gonna go on to your next company, and you're gonna wanna leave things the way they should be Be left. So when you archive this stuff and you look back, you can kind of do this really cool post-mortem, and you can go back and think, \"What was I thinking at the beginning?\" Right? And you get to see all everything else, and everyone who lost a lot more money than you did, if you're a small check investor. And then you can kind of read from these, updates, and then you can get something from it, right? That's the most important thing. So when you amass like a, a lot of experience from being in Go to IPOs and acquisitions and zero, and, you know, you learn a lot about the different types of things that can happen along the way. You're like this living, breathing API for stuff, that can happen. So I was really investing in a lot of deals, and I wanted to start Lightning Ventures. Actually, some friends really motivated me to do it to just focus on Bitcoin, right? Because I can't really add a lot of value to, you know- drones, that are delivering medical devices in Uganda. Okay? I mean, I like investing in that stuff. I love flying cars and, you know, hoverboards, you know, everything else in the world. That stuff is great, but there's only so much that you could do, right? You have to have a specialized knowledge. so we started Lightning Ventures to really just focus on the Bitcoin space, which I know very well and I believe I can add value to and really work more closely with, you know, Closely with founders and kind of leverage the network. So we raised a small fund, we started deploying out of that, that was a very small fund, friends and family, and then started building out the syndicate, similar to Bitcoiner Ventures, although we do have a carry, and a referral scout program and some other things there, and then just really focused on trying to get the most accomplished, awesome group of people that we can put together, whether that's co-founders of other Bitcoin companies, whether we invest Invested or not, developers, retired, cryptography experts, you know, marketing people, press people, lots of good lawyers, just as many quality people that we can together, and then hopefully eventually, leverage them to really add value and support the, the company. So, that's really been the main focus, you know, us versus these, a lot of other, Bitcoin-focused VCs, you know, they, they really raise big funds, okay? They raise big- Big funds and then they deploy out of it, and so it's a different model, you know, we get, just like your syndicate, you know, we, we get money from the group, right? We pool it all together and we invest, and then we champion them, not really like a single, GP who's going to maybe take a board seat and lead around. It's a different sort of structure. But, I'm working tirelessly. in the past fifteen months, I think we've deployed about six million bucks and, invested in- Maybe twenty-five, twenty-eight or so Bitcoin companies, and I love them all." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:04", "start": 664.43, "text": "Fantastic. And so I'm curious your thoughts then, in terms of as a Bitcoiner, which obviously you are, and, you know, listeners are, and everything. I hear some criticism coming from some Bitcoiners because they, they think of this idea that, oh, right, if you're doing VC, you're, you're trying to IPO, and that's very fiat. You know, that's like you're trying to sell out to the fiat or so-- in some, in some way, shape or form. How do you view that?" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "11:31", "start": 690.57, "text": "Well, you know, this is kind of funny because, Corey fights this battle a lot. people seem to think that you should be able to buy Bitcoin for no fees. and unfortunately, that's you can't just, hire and grow and do all sorts of other things and build and innovate, without some sort of, without capitalism. so, you know, he, he goes through that same thing with Swan quite a bit. And, you know, VCs aren't all bad, just like in every business, right? There's lawyers, there's insurance people, there's necessary-- There's necessary industries, that you have to deal with, right? And some of them have worse reputations. than others. Same thing with real estate agents. But if you're doing the right thing and you're focused, you kind of stand out because there are luckily so many, not so great, people that you're competing with. Look, I mean, we're not saving the manatees, okay? This isn't, you know, this isn't a charity. You know, we want to make money. We want to see these companies, become the future, you know, world-beating, you know- Disrupting various industries, whether it's podcasting, or communications, or peer-to-peer exchanges, or you name it. You know, we wanna see these companies succeed, and we wanna be paid in the process because this is all I'm doing for a living. I mean, this is all anyone who is a VC, especially a Bitcoin-focused VC, I mean, this is our job. So there are costs, right? If, if you're gonna sponsor the meetup, for the, the hackathon or your local- Bitcoin meetup, it might only be a few hundred bucks, but it's always going on your credit card, unless there's some kind of fee structure. So, you know, a lot of people say, \"B- you know, VCs are bad and they're terrible and all this,\" and there's plenty of examples of, of terrible, VCs and unscrupulous stuff. I mean, sometimes a VC will give a founder advice that really just serves the VC, so you know, you have to be careful about things like that, probably in all aspects of life. I don't think that, VCs are bad. I don't think that, IPOing, or any kind of exit is fiat. I think that, you know, it's interesting because people call these things exits, right? You're waiting for an exit. What is, what does that mean? So if you invest in a, in a company and they're acquired or they IPO, that is an exit, right? But that exit is really kind of the entrance, for that company's life, as being a public company, right? So it's referred Okay, when Swan does IPO, you know, God willing, on the Nasdaq, a-and, and that happens, that'll just actually be the start, of Swan's life in a new chapter in the business, you know? It's certainly not a bad thing. and if you wanna talk about democ- democratizing it, okay, and allowing everyone to participate, you know, let's just without getting into a whole bunch of semantics here, everybody can buy a publicly traded stock, okay? Everyone could buy Swan If it was public on NASDAQ right now. Alright. Not everyone can invest in private companies, whether it's the accredited hurdle, whether it's, deal flow and access and all these other things, right? even minimums, right? Even if it's a thousand dollar minimum, you could buy those thirty dollars worth of Swan stock, in a publicly traded environment. So there's a lot of positives that come from that. I really don't see it as a fiat negative." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:13", "start": 913.02, "text": "Right, I see. And so- So some of the criticism I've seen, and just commentary I've seen in the space, is things like, as an example, our friend Steve Barber, where he'll criticize the fiat maxies and say, \"Look, never sell equity to a fiat maximalist, only, you know, try to deal with other Bitcoiners per se,\" because I think some Bitcoiners, and I, you know, I'm not saying I personally hold this view, but I'm trying to represent that view, some of them see it like it's almost like once you go to a certain level, that it kind" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:44", "start": 944.16, "text": "See that, or if you see it more like, well, you know, the scaling and the benefit of that aspect, you know, that's, that's just a necessary part and parcel of being able to operate at that kind of scale." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "15:56", "start": 956.05, "text": "Well, if you're raising money as a founder or even as a VC, right? 'Cause a lot of people just kinda think that founders raise money, right? And they're the only ones with that challenge of raising money, but VCs have the same challenge too, right? We're in the same boat. I go through the same, or will maybe if real fund go through the real, the same struggle that a founder goes to, okay? So when, if I'm pitching somebody to invest in a fund, or any Bitcoin VC out there is pitching someone to invest in a fund, if you have to explain Bitcoin to that person, you're just wasting your time. I mean, that, that's just the end, the conversation has to stop right there. And now there's enough of a Bitcoin ecosystem in funding to where you don't have to do that. And that's why it's kind of a, a, a breath of fresh Fresh air coming to, you know, one of these Bitcoin VCs, because we're not asking why Bitcoin, we're not asking why Bitcoin only, we're not saying what's Lightning, is Lightning Bitcoin? There's no confusion, there's no, when are you gonna add tokens? When are you gonna add these other things to, if it's an exchange product or whatever? All that stuff kind of goes out the window. Now, if you're a founder and you're raising money and you go to one of these fiat maximalists, you have to deal with that person moving forward Forward, okay? It's not necessarily a marriage, right? It can be if they're leading your Series A and they're taking a board seat and there's elements of control and other dynamics that are negotiated there, it can be, right? It can be a marriage, and they might be a huge pain in the rear. But if it's something smaller, right? Like a syndicate deal or maybe a seed round or a little, a safe note, there's not really too much they can do other than just annoy you. So you definitely have to be careful careful who you take money from because they might just flood your inbox, you know, they might demand all sorts of information rights and, and other things, you know, even if they're not supposed to get them, right? So you kind of have to be careful who, who you raise money from. I mean, n-never raising it from a fiat maximalist, that's probably really good advice. the question is, is it that or you don't build anymore? Does that then kill your idea or do you just wait until the- Perfect trusted capital partner surfaces." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:18", "start": 1097.57, "text": "Right, and oftentimes, oftentimes, an idea can't wait, right? Like if there's an idea that you really need to get it delivered soon, speed matters because there are competitors out there, you know, or maybe this is an important project or software or some product or service that needs to exist. So maybe that's, that's part of the argument. But I think it's also fair to point out that, and as you have also, is that it's not only venture capitalists, that there are other ways to raise funds, and there is also that option of So do you want to elaborate a little bit on how to sort of see those different options? Sure." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "18:50", "start": 1130.29, "text": "So first off, not everything is an investable business, or at least suitable for venture capital investing, and people shouldn't take it personally. And, you know, it's never really a no, it's always like a no for now, okay? And these relationships cultivate over years, okay? There's so many mining companies that I've never invested in, we've never closed a mining investment Through Lightning Ventures, I send them stuff all the time. Hey, this person's got a ton of miners, this person's got a ton of electricity, we're not investing in either, okay? But we keep a record, we keep a database, and we're able to facilitate partnerships and still be helpful to them, right? So it's not like a door slammed, there's still a lot of good things that can come from it. So, you know, VCs have to really return capital to their investors, okay? So if you're running some sort of obscure node management liquidity tool, that's probably, that's still absolutely needed. That's awesome, you shouldn't stop doing that. you should either maybe think about what are the types of returns and the types of a TAM, a total addressable market, how big is it? What else can you do to, to get this to a venture, backed company, okay, or, or project and whatever you're doing? but just know that it might not be perfect for it, right? And you can go out to Geyser, depending on what you're doing, you can go out to other crowdfunding platforms all over the world, right? In, in the UK, in Europe, in the US here, you can raise money in other ways, okay? You can also do the friends and family route, okay? You can do the syndicates, which, you know, I mean, it's loosely, VC, right? It's like a micro VC sort of- Sort of, sort of group, right? But there's many other ways to raise, and you shouldn't ever get upset when someone doesn't want to invest in your company. And I'm really hoping that through other things that are being built on, you know, like the liquid side chain, that there's gonna be even more access and more eas-easily, it'll be easy to invest, as a quote-unquote pleb or a whale or whatever you are, right? Because they're gonna cut a lot of these fees, they're gonna cut a lot of these inefficiencies. This whole industry is littered with inefficiencies. I mean, it's terrible. I'm sure you have, I, I don't wanna say anything bad about AngelList, but I'm sure you, you know, you, you log into and you s-- do things on there, and there's a lot to be desired. There's a lot of, there's a lot of upgrades that could happen to that entire process for a company that's worth, I don't know, billions of So there's a lot of things that can, can be, you know, upgraded there. and I'm just hoping that it becomes more and more. I mean, since this crowdfunding has started, equity crowdfunding, not like, you know, Patreon type of thing, but equity crowdfunding has come a long way, and the limits are being lowered and, the amounts that companies can raise are going up. So in, in terms of bootstrapping, though, let me just say this, I don't wanna talk all over you here. In terms- In terms of bootstrapping, the best founders, do the most, you know, can ship an MVP with really no funding. Those are my favorite types of founders, okay? Where they've gone from incorporation to beta and maybe they've spent seventy grand of their own money and they have a working product, okay? That's great. And then conversely, you know, four guys, that wanna buy a bunch of S-nines and put 'em in a barn and they wanna raise ten million dollars and they've done nothing, that's like on the other side of terrible, you know? So, I mean, what's the old adage, you know? ideas are cheap. ideas are cheap, and don't worry about the NDAs and don't worry about the funding, but you gotta get out there and build something, and maybe that means getting a co-founder. You know, if you're a solo, if you're a solo founder, I mean, two is better than one." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "23:11", "start": 1391.4, "text": "a lot of V We have founder makeup that's very valuable there. Can one of the founders, sell, and market, and is the other one super technical, right? 'Cause just a technical founder on his own, he might have some problems, right? And a solo non-technical founder, I know some VCs personally that just, they won't even invest in it. So just a few things to think about." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:37", "start": 1416.79, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And so I think for listeners, they might also be interested to hear some thoughts about valuations, so company valuations and across the cycle. So maybe if, if you could take us through, like, just for someone who's not as familiar with this world, could you walk through what are the different stages or the life cycles, involved in, in typical investing in companies in this kind of realm?" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "24:02", "start": 1441.73, "text": "All right. So you and I, we- We have the best idea ever, okay? We have, radbitcoincompany, dot x y z, okay? And, we've worked together before, we know each other very well, we have a history, and we start our company, okay? And then we start to build something, okay? If we immediately go out and get funding, that's not good, right? Unless the, you know, you previously were, I don't know, co-founder of Blockstream, it may be a little bit easier, To go out and, and, and raise kind of pre-work, right? But we build something, we get it working, and then we wanna do a small, very small, friends and family sort of angel round, okay? And then we only raise as much money as we need. That's the thing. A lot of founders are always like, \"How much money should I raise? \" Only what you need. Only raise the amount of money that you need to hit the next milestone, okay? So you and I, you know, we need to hire a dev, okay? And we- We decide that, you know, if we can go out and raise two hundred and fifty thousand, that'll get us this one dev that we need, and that'll kind of pad our cushion for a runway moving forward, okay? And then we're gonna shoot for five hundred users, five hundred people. So where do we go? We go to Lightning Ventures or Bitcoiner Ventures or Oleg at Folger or somebody, right? Or maybe the typical, you know, Jockamozuko or Brad Mills or any of these These type of individual angels who might come in for, you know, twenty-five or fifty thousand or pick a number, right? It doesn't matter. But we start piecing together quality people that might be able to help us and that we're not gonna get sick of and we're okay with dealing with, okay? So maybe Bitcoin or Ventures puts together, a hundred and fifty thousand, maybe we put together, fifty thousand, and maybe there's a few other angels who come in and there's our two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, right? So that Pre-seed is done, alright? Now that valuation is another conversation, okay? That's, that's a whole different, different ballgame. You know, they, they've been inflated, right? While everything was great and money was cheap and IPOs and everything, but in reality, it should be low. it should be no more than five million dollars on a safe note, maybe, right? And that's high, because if you're using real metrics here on like AR- ARR and revenue, there's numbers, right, that the normie VCs use, okay? So if you're worth twenty million dollars, you're probably doing nine hundred k a year in ARR, okay? And that gets you to a low twenties multiple, and even that might be actually overpriced, okay? But at least it makes some sort of sense. And in the Bitcoin world, just like everything else with Bitcoin, everybody's wacky, okay? And, and here we go, you and I, we take another route, right? We don't raise the two hundred fifty thousand, and we know that we're sitting on the next unicorn, right? This is it, or a, a dinosaur baby egg, as I like to try and find. Okay? So we think our company's worth thirty million dollars, okay? We don't just wanna raise two hundred fifty thousand to get to the next milestone, hire that one dev and go, we wanna raise two million. We wanna raise two- Two million on a thirty million post, and that's what we're gonna do, and that's a terrible strategy. That's terrible. So lower everything, raise just enough that you need to get to that next level. And by the way, after we raise that two fifty successfully, and we get, we pass five hundred users, now we have something. Now we have an MVP, it's working, okay? We have some form of product market fit, okay? Now we can raise it a little bit higher of a valuation. You know what? Let's raise another five hundred, or, let's raise five hundred or seven hundred fifty on maybe an eight million dollar cap. I don't know, okay? But you come with a number, and it's a negotiation, and then you just take it slowly, manageable steps, right? You don't come out the gate wanting to raise three million on a thirty million dollar post-money note. I mean, that's just disastrous." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:26", "start": 1706.35, "text": "Yeah, that's-- I think that's a great way to put it, and this might be handy for people out there, whether they are builders or just people who are Look like, what, what is this world that seems a bit opaque maybe to people who aren't in that world? And so, so then, we have these, these, these stages, right? So pre-seed, seed, A round, B round, et cetera. And so the idea is that each round or each stage there should be some meaningful progress, right? Like what kind of progress and steps would you be looking at? Obviously, it's kind of hard to talk about in a general case, but what kind of progress are you looking for at each round or each step?" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "29:04", "start": 1744.37, "text": "So following on is, is tricky, right? So when you invest in a company for a second time, that's generally referred to as a follow-on investment. And, there are some investors out there who, no matter what, right, they invested in radbitcoincompany dot x y z, in the pre-seed round, okay? If we fail to deliver, now if we burned that two hundred and fifty thousand, by the way, the first thing that we did after we hired that one dev was we went out and we dumped like sixty- Grand sponsoring a conference, okay? That's a great way to just light money on fire that's not coming. We don't even have anything built yet, right? But let's just go out and spend, and we did the t-shirts and everything, so we don't hit any sort of meaningful goal, okay? And now we wanna raise more, and that's when you have to be careful. Now, some people call, you know, bridge rounds, right? They call them a bridge round, and they say a bridge to nowhere, of course, right? So you wanna be careful, you know," }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "30:04", "start": 1804.37, "text": "Extension. But if you're gonna invest in one of those rounds, there has to be progress, okay? Now maybe their revenues up five x, okay? Maybe their users are up, the charts up and to the right, okay? But meaningful, measurable progress, and then really looking at the use of funds. Okay, what are you gonna do with this? Oh, we're gonna roll out this big user acquisition strategy, right? We need five hundred K to go ahead and get into full on build- User mode. Okay, well that makes sense. And it's not that all bridges are bad or all extension rounds are bad, right? There's meaningful progress, the chart is up and to the right, there's a clear use of funds, okay? That's a good time to invest again. Conversely, you know, there's a lot of times where things aren't going well, and investors will just even see a higher valuation. That's what's funny, is, you know, there's a lot of ways that VCs chart their markups, okay? This is kind of a contested area, okay? If you invest in something at a five million dollar safe note cap, and that company comes back five months later and they're raising, another round, another small tranche at a ten million cap, that isn't A markup. You aren't two X on that investment, not even close, okay? And there are a lot of VCs out there who will go ahead and kind of mask that, that, you know, and it's certainly a good sign, as long as the numbers back it up, it's definitely a good sign to see these things increase, right? When the numbers back it up, but that is by no means an actual markup, okay? So there are just a lot of people out there who will just continue to invest again, they see that top line Number, they think everything's great, and they don't really do the research." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:56", "start": 1915.63, "text": "Right. And so I think probably a lot of people now are also thinking about, due diligence and what went, what went wrong in the crypto world with the likes of FTX and so on. And I'm curious your view there. Do you think it was that everyone was just pinging off what, what everybody else was doing? Were they just lazy? Were they saying, \"Oh, look, Sequoia or some, you know, name your big name fund or, you know, Temasek, that Oh, look, they must have done a lot of due diligence. I'm just gonna piggyback off their due diligence. I'm just gonna run into this round. So I'm curious if that's what you think happened or something else." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "32:31", "start": 1950.73, "text": "Well, now that's interesting. And in the industry, that's called signaling. So if anyone doesn't know, when you're kind of getting started with angel investing, reviewing deals, looking at things, that's a, that's a great tool. Okay? That is your number one north compass star. Okay? Your north star right there is Okay. Who else invested previously? Are those previous investors investing again? If not, why? Who are these new investors coming in the round, right? Because let me tell you that Founders Fund, Sequoia, all these big names, listen, for them to lead and invest in a round, we are talking months. We are talking months of due diligence that's just short of giving the founder a colonoscopy, okay? We are talking about Custom dashboards, every metric that they would wanna see, it's actually closed, it's actually proprietary. They won't even share what those VCs want. Then they gotta get like nine people all in a room that all say yes, okay? When Founders Fund's leading around, you had a bunch of people that are sitting in a room who all said yes, okay, and that is tough to do, okay, after all of that due diligence. So that's not to be taken lightly. In fact- That's a great way to help you get started investing when some of these investors are in the round. Now, how did they, how did these things happen, right, with Voyager and everything else? Well, this isn't really looking like a regular SaaS company, okay? This isn't a collaboration tool, this isn't a Notion or a Slack or one of these things. These VCs just probably are out of their element with cold storage. Custody, audit process, all these type of things that are really probably new to them, and they probably just took some people at their word. And when you're at the early stages, like we are, we don't get a lot of information rights, okay? We can't really go into the line by line financials of a company that's raising a seed round, okay? Nor do I, to be honest with you, nor do I really even want to, okay? especially at, at the, the valuation In the amounts that we're talking about, okay? Our check size is a hundred to five hundred thousand dollars, okay? W-we can't really get into the financials. We can get high level burns, we can go into with the founder, whichever they wanna share about their overall monthly burn, what can we tighten up? There's certain things that you can do from a distance, but we can't really dig in and get there as far as like line by line inflows and outflows for the company. So they probably- Probably just missed it with the rehypothecating and all of the merry-go-round of pushing it over here and taking another loan. And when you, when you put it on a sheet of assets and liabilities, it's tough, you know? It's, it's tough to really dig in. But if you are on a board, if you're a VC and you're on a board, which I hope to be one day, it would be nice to really have the full picture, alright? And maybe that you could stop some of that damage, before it starts." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:48", "start": 2147.69, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. The lead sponsor of this show is Swan Bitcoin, and Swan are making it easy to buy Bitcoin and also learn about Bitcoin. Now, particularly if you are a high net worth individual or investor, consider Swan Private. This is a special service for high net worth individuals and some business owners who are looking to stack larger amounts of sat with a concierge, a person you can pick up the phone and call. There's all kinds of benefits that come with being a Swan Private member for those of you buying larger amounts of Bitcoin. With Swan Private, you have access To a special community where there are Swan Private webinars, there is research reports that go out to Swan Private members, and just having that person who can hold your hand while they talk you through the process of Bitcoin or even help you with your self-custody, that is available over at swanprivate dot com. Now, when it comes to hardware, coinkite dot com have a range of Bitcoin hardware and accessories, so most notably is the coldcard. This is a very well-known and reputable hardware signing device, previously known as hardware wallet. The Coldcard is a very versatile and reliable performer. You can plug it into the wall, you can plug it into your computer if you're a beginner, you can use a micro SD card, or you can even use NFC. So there's all kinds of features and options that you have available to you if you're using the Coldcard. It is really cool in that you can set it up without phoning home to the manufacturer, you can set it up yourself. So that's a really cool feature. You can get your own Coldcard or Coldcards over at CoinKite dot com. Use the code And finally, a reminder about a big European Bitcoin conference coming up. It's called BTC Prague. I'll be one of the hosts, so I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be June 8th to 10th in Prague, in the Czech Republic. This is going to be a massive three-day event. There'll be all kinds of people there. There will be developers, there'll be newbies, there'll be whales, there'll be Bitcoin miners, there'll be business insiders and developers. You can go there, connect, make friends, make connections, also watch some It'll be a relaxed summer atmosphere, you can get some Czech beer, and it'll be really affordable also. So go to btcprague dot com, use code Livera to get your discounted ticket, and I'll see you in the Citadel there. And now back to the show with Muz. Right, because once you're on a board, then you theoretically, you should, I mean, you should have right to see more information from what's going on in the company, whether that's financial statements, whether that is, you know, other contractual information or agreements and things, you know, really what's going on in the company. But that said, you, you know, you could still fall victim to a liar, right? Like it could just be that SBF and them were just straight up lying or, you know, omitting or just being misleading about the way things were, such TX and those in that example was just maybe a, a really just this freak case." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "38:37", "start": 2316.68, "text": "I, I just had my first personal situation, where a founder was completely very dishonest with me. you know, I take everyone's word for it. I'm a very trustworthy, easygoing guy. you know, I guess it's trust but verify, right? you know, and, perhaps the same, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:55", "start": 2335.26, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "38:56", "start": 2335.64, "text": "But, you know, in this world, there's, there's only so much you can do. And, It's kind of shocking, that somebody would, would really just, just lie outright. So, you know, even though Bitcoiners have good hearts and they're special people, definitely something to put in the file manager for the future." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:16", "start": 2355.81, "text": "Right. And I look to be clear as well, there, there have been scams, and I'm, I know you're a twenty thirteener, just like I, I'm a twenty thirteener, and I recall looking on Bitcoin Talk and seeing scams all the time, like they were just total scams. And in the earlier days, I remember- Remember there was even this whole, the infamous Butterfly Labs, right? And so this is where the two weeks joke came from, like the people were saying, \"Where is my miner?\" And the, and the, the joke was, \"Oh, it'll be, it'll be coming in two weeks.\" And that's, that's where this joke actually came from. So people, and I'm, I mean, it also came from like the general kind of software lifecycle thing where people just kind of, they're asked to kind of put their finger in the mouth, to kind of say, \"Oh, Which is, I believe, it's like a, a play on the Russian saying, which is \"trust but verify.\" Or was that, I think it was a, it was also a US president who famously said that also. But nevertheless, you know, people can scam, and just because somebody's Bitcoin only doesn't mean they're not a scammer, right? As, as our friend, Michael Goldstein says, \"Everyone's a scammer.\" So, you know, important for us all to think about that. So one other question that I think is interesting, we like to" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:31", "start": 2430.66, "text": "One thing, but then when we're in a bear cycle, that can get more difficult, right? And there can-- and I think historically there have been times where, let's say, venture capitalists might have pushed companies to go and do things that maybe weren't very low time preference, right? Like obvious examples might be even in the scaling wars in twenty sixteen, seventeen, maybe there was pressure from venture capitalist firms onto companies, whether that's Coinbase or others, to try to raise the block size and, you know, take that easy way out, right? And so I, I'm curious your thought there Do you see that as it's, you know, people can say they think long term, but actually when rubber meets the road, they're not that able to do that?" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "41:09", "start": 2469.09, "text": "Yeah, you know, I actually have a valid gox claim, right now, so I'm with you in terms of the, the old school scams. I never bought one of those butterfly, labs machines. But, you know, I, I was hoping that those days were kinda over. you know, there was the Quadriga, there was Big Vern with Cripce, A lot of other things that went down, you know, BTC or whatever, but, you know, I was really hoping that these venture backed, you know, top tier, tier one VC kind of backed companies, were really doing the right thing. Fortunately, you know, I didn't, I didn't have any funds on there, but, you know, I, I really thought it was over. And if you saw like BlockFi's last deck, I mean, it was like sixty-eight pages. You had to be like a neuroscientist to figure out what, what the hell was going in their relationship with that stuff. And sure enough, it's the same old story, you know? And will people learn this time? Probably not, you know, I, I don't know un-until they, they just can't do it anymore. I'm sorry, I forgot your question." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:14", "start": 2533.71, "text": "Yeah. So I was just getting at that idea that, you know, when times get tough, is that really when people get tested? And whether that is the temptation to just go shitcoining, or whether it's a temptation to, you know, i-in an exchange where maybe they Like, are we capable of really playing the long game? It's one thing to say we're playing the long game, but, you know, is everyone playing the long game?" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "42:38", "start": 2557.7, "text": "So in terms of boards and pressure, that comes much later, okay? So no early stage company or a c-Series A, even a Series B, those investors, their board members, whatever the governance is, it's very limited on what they can force them to do, okay? They couldn't force, okay, you know, they can't force someone like- Corey, to add Ethereum to Swan. Okay? It's just not possible. Like, you're just not in that situation. After you've raised, you know, Series D and E and everything else down the line, okay? You can be forced out of your company as a CEO. Those are the things that I find very interesting is how does, Travis Kalanick get forced out of Uber? How do these companies, you know, you know, you, you take a CEO out and you install someone else at the much later stages, but early on, it's really difficult It really impossible to assert that sort of influence, okay? And there's really no guarantee that any Bitcoin company isn't gonna start getting into nonsense, okay? And we saw it, we saw it recently with, Casa, getting into nonsense. And there's even some companies in the space, I think, I think maybe BitWage, has wavered from a, a Bitcoin-only company to other things. even beloved companies, right? Everyone loves BitRefill, you know? And you look at what Bitrefill accepts, and they accept other things, right? And, you know, he's a great guy, and he has another story, says this is what our users want, and, and whatever it is. So there's really no guarantees. In the case of like a Kraken, they just don't have to innovate, you know? the easiest way to not do new things, okay, is to just add garbage, okay? So, you know, Kraken plateaus, and like what can they do? They can increase leverage trading, and they Junk that they sell, right? Now you look at somebody, you look at a company like Swan. Swan is innovating. Swan Private IRAs, okay, retirement products. You know, getting into things like, you know, wills and trusts and others, sort of becoming an actual financial services company without ever wavering on the Bitcoin-only side of it. That's true innovation, because what would be easy is to just start throwing crap out there There. You know what I mean? And selling junk, right? And if you're not gonna do that, then you come up with new ways, right? You release a debit card or a credit card or other sort of tools to become that all-in-one Bitcoin neo bank that everyone's out there trying to do. So we could invest in a company that ends up adding nonsense, you know, and it's not our fault if they do it, but it's just life." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:23", "start": 2723.48, "text": "Right. And, and there's all kinds of competitive pressure out there, and at the same time, you know, companies have to Or at least try to get to that stage, get to that level of being profitable, while at the same time dealing with being a part of the space and trying to contribute in the space. I know there are, you know, in some ways, people in the community can get really like very purity signaling or very purity testing about, oh, they can get really strong about purity testing companies, but at the same time, I think the companies that exist in the space, they also need to make a profit too. So it's kind of like, yeah, it can get tricky, right? And, you know I know just in general, like the failure rate for these companies, for companies is quite high. So, and that's even built into the model, right? Obviously with VC, and the model is essentially that you know a lot of these companies aren't gonna make it. So that's kind of rough, but that's, but that's part of business, right? Oh, man, the" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "46:20", "start": 2780.01, "text": "death rate. Oh, you know, everyone likes to talk about died suddenly. That's actually pretty funny, you know, died suddenly with your startup. Man, that's really funny. No, but it's the truth, and we haven't had anyone die suddenly just yet, at least not through Lightning Ventures, right? I mean, through my personal investments and all sorts of other things, right? The next HR startup in Southeast Asia, all of these things that had all the makings, you know, they were in YC and they had all these great investors, and, you know, now they, they dissolve and they unwind, and, it's on a consolidated tax form against, hopefully, all- Your winners, right? So, so they, they are statistically supposed to die, and boy, I really don't want them to. So luckily, they haven't yet, and hopefully they don't." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:15", "start": 2835.27, "text": "Right. Yeah. And, you know, it could just be that a company fails to just kind of get traction, and so eventually they just, you know, wrap up. And especially now, as I'm sure you're aware, Bitcoin has these big bull and bear cycles. I think historically it's fair to say that, that has been the case. So then- Do you believe that presents a unique challenge for a Bitcoin entrepreneur, or do you just think that's just, you know, it's not that unique?" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "47:38", "start": 2857.54, "text": "I mean, it's kind of in every industry, right? I mean, if you're, if you're a home builder, let's just, if you're a housing builder, you're, you're familiar with market cycles. there's times when the pre-builds are, are sold out, you know, and then there's times where they sit, right? Housing's a great example, you know, real estate agents, construction, I Everywhere you look with everything. You know, with Bitcoin, it's, it's not terrible. If you've been in this for a while, you don't even care what the price is. I mean, to be honest with you, I could care less, I'm sure you could care. Like, it really doesn't even affect you, it doesn't matter. It's an arbitrary number. You know, I mean, I can get a little emotional about stocks if I have a stock or a recent IPO because that's real, right? You know, a thousand shares of Rent the Runway isn One Bitcoin, so those type of things can bother me, but the price of Bitcoin, it doesn't. It's just a good time to build, and it's an even better time to invest, this is when you want to invest, when everything is frothy and hot and great, that's when those valuations, you know, you can get kind of roped into something that might be on the high side, and I'm being nice by saying on the high side, but right now, you know, things slow down, they contract. I actually really like this environment because for a For example, when things were hot, okay, and we talked to a founder and we liked the company, we're a small team here, okay? So by the time that we circle back to that founder ten days later, hey, listen, we're ready to go, we're ready to do something, oh, the round's full. We'll talk to you next time. and that was, that was the case many times. And now we can circle back with a founder four to six weeks later, and there's still room in the round, and they're still happy to talk to A little bit longer to close, but deals are still happening. I mean, companies are still getting funded, it's just, it's just more challenging, right? just like anything, if you can get through this period, if you can persevere, right? Whether you're investing in Bitcoin companies or whether you're building them, whatever you're doing, if you can get through this, the other side of it, which, you know, it's funny after you're in a bear market for a while, you can't even remember the bull, right? Can you remember what it feels" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "50:01", "start": 3000.92, "text": "You know, the memory is so funny, how you forget those times." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:04", "start": 3004.24, "text": "Yeah, and look, I think everyone gets sucked in, right? And it even in different places in the Bitcoin ecosystem, right? Whether you are a miner or whether you are a, an investor in companies, whether you're just, you know, stacking sats, obviously, w-which all of us are, you know, as your advice is, always stack sats first, right? We're talking about investing in companies, but it's important to have your stack of sats before you even think about purchasing or looking at Bitcoin But, yeah, look, I, I think I, I echo a lot of your sentiment. I think after you've been in the game for a while, you are a little bit more numb to the price movements because you've, you've, you've kind of been on that roller coaster for a while, so, you know, it's like that meme with the-- I think they've got that meme of, Mr. Bean on the roller coaster, and he's very lackadaisical, and all the people around him are freaking out and losing their minds, and" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:58", "start": 3058.46, "text": "that's like critiquing, chain analysis. I wanna hear more about this. So what's your, what's your beef there?" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "51:06", "start": 3065.76, "text": "It's just such a terrible company. You know, I, I got my, somebody had sent me a deal for it, and just reading it was so disappointing. It was just, I, I mean, I almost vomited. This is a fairly new MacBook here, I almost ruined the thing. Just looking at their prior rounds of funding, you know, this company is worth billions of dollars. The investors who've invested- Their memo, their deck, their entire thesis is to help governments enforce taxes. You know, that's like, that's blatant in the memo. It was so shocking, I was just like, so disgusted by it. You know, and, and it's always kind of put as, \"Oh, we're gonna-- This is gonna stop the bad guys, and this is gonna, whatever.\" And, you know, their whole TAM is governments around the world and people who want KYC-free Sats. I don't like the term KYC. Free, but I don't know what else to say. Or, or people who, you know, respect their privacy, want financial sovereignty, they're just gonna get in bed with every government around the world to just enforce it, and it's sad, it's pathetic. I could never invest in a company like that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:18", "start": 3138.15, "text": "Yeah, I think it, it, it does bring that whole question as well, and I, I see people crit-criticizing on Twitter, for example, they'll say, you know, the whole idea of Bitcoin is meant to be this sly roundabout way, right I think part of the approach I see is, of course, I think being able to be private with Bitcoin matters. I'm not against non-KYC coins or, you know, unregistered SATs, let's say. But I also see it as we need to build adoption, and I think having enough adoption and having enough mindshare is important. I think, you know, I think this idea that people can exclusively come in only from non-KYC-- I don't know how realistic it is, right? I think a lot of people, you know, and maybe I could be wrong, right? Like And then later they learn about, oh, privacy. Now that, now they learn about why these things are important. So I don't know, I'm, I'm, yeah, but, but at the same time, I, you know, obviously I, you know, I dislike these, chain surveillance companies, and I think they are trying to play this kind of regulatory game where they insert themselves in and tell governments, oh, look, we're necessary, or they tell banks, oh, you need to do this, otherwise you're not compliant with the law and everything, you know More people getting into peer to peer, you know, that's how I see it anyway." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "53:33", "start": 3213.26, "text": "When, how old were you when you had your first job? You remember the first time you ever worked or fourteen years, eight months? Alright, so I as w- I as well, I think it was, I think it was fifteen and change, in Arizona was the legal limit that you could, you could start working part time. So, you know, there wasn't-- I didn't have a driver's license, I didn't have an ID, I didn't have any of" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "54:01", "start": 3241.08, "text": "small amount. It's not like everyone can KYC from birth, okay? So there's a huge, there's a lot of people who don't have driver's licenses, you know? I was just in, in Africa. There's a lot of ID-less people, out there that, that need this, that need to be able to-- There's forty percent is the, is the recorded inflation rate in Ghana. That, that's what they tell the public is, is a real number. I can't even imagine what the real, real number is, you know? And they just Go out and, you know, upload the front and back of your driver's license and a passport and, you know, your thumbprint and a face scan and everything else. It's just, it's just not possible." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:42", "start": 3281.73, "text": "Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think there's certainly a lot of people who literally can't KYC, even if they wanted to. I'm hopeful to see more non-KYC and peer-to-peer stuff. So, you know, I, I'm curious to see that grow. I, I think part of it is just like, because it's such a cyclical industry, we tend to just kind of get a lot of people who come in when the price is going up. I, you know, I wish we could get more people coming in, you know, in bear cycles so that they" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "55:11", "start": 3311.01, "text": "sense rather than only seeing it in the, in the, in the crazy bull cycle times." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "55:15", "start": 3314.69, "text": "Yeah, I mean, that's why the DCA is king, right? I mean, once you just turn that on, you, you know, it helps you, it helps any sort of new coiner, get over that price deal, right? 'Cause the price is down, you're excited 'cause you're buying another x amount of dollars that day, and the price is up, you're excited because you bought x amount of dollars for the past however long, you know? And it just, In it, right? but, you know, instead of KYC, it should be KYF. It should be know your food. they should take, they should take that to the grocery store and they should really, you know, ID every freaking kernel of corn and, and chicken that's there, you know what I mean? And stop worrying about, you know, Aunt Mary's three hundred dollar Bitcoin purchase." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:05", "start": 3364.77, "text": "Right. So, I mean, looking out at, you know, I don't have a crystal ball, right? But it looks like we're, you That'll be, it could be a year, maybe two years, we, we don't know. Do you have any ideas on what people out there can be doing to help grow the movement? What kinds of things should we be doing, to grow the movement? Now, this is" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "56:23", "start": 3382.88, "text": "interesting because grow the movement, okay? And there's a lot of this kind of kumbaya, in Bitcoin, with this grow the movement. And like, that stuff is all like well and good, but what do you mean by grow the movement? Like, Bitcoin's gonna grow on its own Like, you know, everyone wants to talk about what, you know, what nation's gonna adopt it next. Chris Hunter gave a great keynote in, in, El Salvador, which is like, it doesn't matter, okay? We don't need to be asking, permission, we need to be asking forgiveness, you know? Bitcoin needs to spread to a point where they can't turn it off, they can't arrest everyone, you know? And it doesn't matter which, you know, which nation brings on. So when you say like, h-- you know, help the ecosystem or Ecosystem. What do you mean by that?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:14", "start": 3434.07, "text": "So what I mean is by helping pull people into the idea of saving Bitcoin rather than, for example, there are a lot of people right now who save into property or stocks or worst, bonds, and those people could be ser-served if they were to just start saving with Bitcoin and take a long-term view, I think. And I think maybe this kind of gets to that idea that, like people like Corey mentioned, this idea of trying to win the race or run the race to avoid- Having like a war. So this idea of building enough people who are using Bitcoin, ideally non-custodially, such that it's harder and more difficult for the whole thing to get shut down, right? I think from my point of view, I don't view Bitcoin as being inevitable, and so I think if I can help spread that, right? In the same way that for me, there was, you know, if it was an article or something that got me to see Bitcoin in a certain way, are there ways that we can do that for other people to help them? Because as much as people" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:11", "start": 3490.93, "text": "Bitcoin to help, grow this thing so that there's adoption, so that you have trade partners, so that it's more normalized, and therefore it's less likely that the use of Bitcoin will be, let's say, criminalized or punished or overregulated." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "58:24", "start": 3503.8, "text": "So we're from, the same Bitcoin alumni, the same Bitcoin alumni school year. And, do you remember, screaming from the mountains and the hilltops and everywhere else in the world and everyone that you met back in that, you know, I don't know, twenty thirteen to twenty fifteen? I don't know. wh- whatever that, that period was when you discovered Bitcoin, and it was so hard to buy. It was so difficult. It was so difficult to spend, to buy, to do. It was a question of what can you do with your Bitcoin, right? That was the number one question. You remember that, right? Yeah, for sure. Didn't you get sick of it? Didn't eventually you just say, \"You know what? I'm retiring. The buy Bitcoin speech, it's over. The mus buy Bitcoin speech has been retired for many years, okay So it's gotta be a crazy situation to come out of retirement and to give someone that speech, and, they gotta discover it on their own. I mean, I'm, I'm trying to do what I can working with founders and, and funding companies. That's, that's my passion, like that's what I love to do. I mean, I love what I do. You know, you have this amazing show and platform. You're an incredible host and moderator, and that's what you do, like you're doing it. But for me to go knocking door to door to And the Italian restaurant and the, the cannabis shop and everything else, and just try and onboard them, it's very tough. How do you get somebody? I mean, maybe everyone should have a goal, you know? Maybe, maybe the number is twenty-one people a year. If every Bitcoiner tried to onboard twenty-one people a year, do them all in January, you know, do them all in December, right? If you're late with your homework. But if you can get twenty-one people to download, pick an app, and get them comfortable, maybe that's like a A bare minimum, but, it's tiring, it's tiring answering the same questions over and over again to people, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:17", "start": 3617.74, "text": "Yeah. Look, I mean, certainly there's aspects of what you're saying I agree with, right? Obviously it can get tiring, it can be frustrating trying to-- some people could even frame it, what's the saying, throwing pearls before swine, right? Like there's this idea that you're trying to teach somebody and they're just not ready to receive the message. But I, I also see it as sometimes Actually willing to learn, and I think there are things that we can do that help. So for example, I used to be an organizer of Bitcoin Sydney when I was in Sydney, and, and now here in Dubai, I'm, I'm one of the organizers for Bitcoin Dubai, and I, you know, I try to help teach people about non-custodial wallets and all these things. So I think we have to remember there, there were-- we can't judge ourselves only by the failures, right? There were people who, let's, I'm sure there were people you spoke to in twenty thirteen Are now doing their own things, whether that's creating their own content or their own meetup or their own conference, and I helped influence them in some way. And so I think that's, that's the sense in which I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it more like, let's, let's try to grow the movement in terms of users of Bitcoin, because I think having more people in, who are trying out, who, who are trying to use Bitcoin and will maybe go to defend Bitcoin in certain senses, that helps all of us, I think." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "01:01:40", "start": 3700.13, "text": "So those groups Just like the, the Bitcoin Policy Institute, these type of, you know, groups that can really meet with elected officials and kinda educate them, I think that that's great, right? They're all nonprofit, you know, as long as, I don't, I don't know what they're saying in those meetings, I, I imagine it's, it's all good. But like, what would, what, what did the Satoshi, what was the post?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:03", "start": 3723.39, "text": "If you don't believe me, I don't have time to convince you." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "01:02:05", "start": 3725.99, "text": "You know, even he got fed up, You know, because it's, it's like enough already. And I think if somebody comes to you and says, \"Hey, you know, I heard that you know something about Bitcoin. Can, can you show me something?\" I'll drop whatever I'm doing for that. You know what I mean? Always. But this sort of like tireless, like, \"Oh, you don't have any Bitcoin?\" And then they're gonna, you know, I, I gave my father like fifty dollars worth of Bitcoin, I thought I set him up with Moon, I have no idea how he lost it," }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "01:02:40", "start": 3760.91, "text": "Everyone is meant to be a Bitcoiner, alright? You know, maybe it's not for everyone. You know, what is the universal sort of Zen like, you don't discover Bitcoin, Bitcoin comes to you, you know, when you're ready to receive it. I can appreciate" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:53", "start": 3773.62, "text": "that. It's kind of like the saying, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, right? Like, I think it's kind of like, it's like this idea that I think at a minimum, we, we have to, as you, as you do, we have to make ourselves available for people" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:11", "start": 3791.77, "text": "but I, I still, I still see it as a good thing. If people do wanna take it on, I know it's work, it's, you know, it's, you know, like organizing a meetup or organizing a conference or an event or some way of trying to bring knowledge or, bring mindshare to Bitcoin, I think it helps. But, I appreciate it's not for everybody and it maybe it's not their skillset or it's not their passion, it's not their interest. So I can definitely appreciate that." }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "01:03:32", "start": 3812.47, "text": "I also think it's probably the best Maybe they're miserable, you know, maybe they're doing some, something they're not passionate about, and they're just kind of going through the motions, you know, they're not challenged. There are so many good Bitcoin jobs out there right now, in amazing companies, you know, a-and everyone's hiring, and it's like such an exciting time. And even just kind of shifting from your fiat job that you really-- you need, right? You need your job, but you're not very passionate about it, even just shifting. You're in- employment and just looking at Bitcoiner jobs, right? Which I think is another, Swan product and that you guys are, yeah, Bitcoinerjobs dot" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:04:17", "start": 3857.86, "text": "com, just for anyone, yeah," }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "01:04:18", "start": 3858.92, "text": "Bitcoinerjobs dot com. Just, I mean, I got the email, it came out today, I'm just like, wow, you know, I'm not even looking for a job, I'm like, should I do that? But there's, there's some really amazing stuff, you know? So it's not about necessarily, the bullhorn and man on the street, but maybe it" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "01:04:40", "start": 3880.91, "text": "Lightning assistant, you know what I mean? Why don't I like be a junior financial analyst for, name the company, right? And, and start, you know, that's, that I think would be, that's like a number one thing. There should be no bit- Bitcoin jobs available, because those are the coolest, most interesting, fun, companies on the planet that you can work for, and those should all be scooped up. They should be forced to do that other job because there are no Bitcoin companies hiring, right? Which is kind of how it used to be. There" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:11", "start": 3911.49, "text": "Yeah, that's a good comment. There are a lot more Bitcoin jobs available right now, so it's a great time, for people, especially-- I would say there are some people where maybe they make that calculation, \"I'm gonna earn more in my fiat job, and, you know, I'm just gonna chop wood, carry water, right? I'm gonna stack-- I'm gonna mine my fiat in the fiat mines, and I'm gonna stack satoshis, and that's all I'm gonna do.\" But then there are some people who maybe you just can't stop thinking about Bitcoin Bitcoiner person, bitcoinerjobs dot com or any of the other platforms is a great, option out there. so let's, wrap it up now and have some closing thoughts from, from you, Mike, and just hear a little bit about, you know, I guess as a, as an investor in the space, do you have any tips for people out there, let's say if they're a founder and maybe they are making that decision about whether they should raise funds, you know, or any tips for them, or if you have any, Bitcoin business look like?" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "01:06:12", "start": 3972.47, "text": "Yeah, and by the way, that block clock behind you is so cool, I gotta get one of those. I just saw it, I just saw it flip over, man, that's so cool. so founders, that are looking to raise, first off You know, be strategic, okay? get a really tight one paragraph about what you do and have that down, have that down, because when you start emailing people, you got like thirty seconds of like, \"What do you do? Why should anyone care?\" Okay? And just get that tight. Don't, don't reach out to somebody with this giant, you know, thirty-seven page, document of, of everything else. Just get, get that dialed in, and then make sure that you are in a good position to actually raise, okay? make sure that you are incorporated, and you're incorporated properly, okay? LLCs don't work, with the exception of some mining stuff. LLCs are not good, okay? So maybe even reach out to someone like myself, or maybe, the, Bitcoin Adventures crew, or a, a VC in the space, and just say, \"Hey, you know- So here's what I'm building, I'm getting ready to incorporate, do you have any advice? Right? I would never not respond to that email. Okay? And, you know, get yourself set up, okay? And right, and in the situ- the right place. I, I mean, it's not good when somebody you don't know, you've never spoken with, they somehow got a link to your Calendly, you know, they book a spot, you don't even know what it is, and then you get there and they're not even really in a position to, to Have like a, have a shared drive somewhere that has a lot of stuff. Your certificate of incorporation, maybe you have wiring instructions, maybe you have a bank, maybe you have some metrics or financials, maybe not. Maybe you have a marketing plan, maybe you have a business plan, a deck, some KPIs that you've been monitoring, something, right? Get whatever you have in one area so you can easily share it, with a VC, or somebody who's a potential investor, okay? Kinda get some of this stuff ready to where, you know, one click Google Drive, and then you can open it up, you can go through everything, you can look and see. That's great. Not a lot of this back and forth and, and, and nonsense. And then, like we were talking about earlier, you know, set realistic goals, set milestones. You know, think about just what you need. You know, think about if you're by yourself, maybe you wanna find a co-founder first. Apply to the accelerators. Apply to Pleb Lab. Apply to or participate in Bolt Fun. Bolt Fun is great. Now look, you've got Wolf, in New York City. if there's another one, I can't think of it. The Tim Draper one, the Bitcoin Accelerator. I know he does a lot of crypto stuff, but he has a Bitcoin, devoted kind of program there. And you're gonna learn a ton of stuff in there. You know, i-if you go through the Draper program, which I went through the Draper Heroes myself, that's not a Bitcoin thing, that Ago when I'm trying to just understand what founders do and how to invest, I went through that. you're gonna learn a ton of stuff. I mean, you're gonna learn a lot, okay? And it's not a waste of time even if you don't get funding from it, okay? So there's a lot of these tools out there that you can just kind of apply to, get in the fold, learn as much as you can, and just keep building. but what I wouldn't do is, is rush it and then, you know, s-start emailing Bitcoin VCs, and just start raising before you're incorporated, before you have a DAC or anything else to share, and you've done a lot of this stuff. and there's plenty of other accelerators too that aren't necessarily Bitcoin focused, but sometimes Bitcoin companies get in there, you know? And just going through this process helps you actually understand your business. Just filling out the stuff for YC will help you get everything done, okay? Because they're gonna ask you the question That you need to think about. Maybe you've never thought about your TAM. Maybe it just never dawned on you, how big could this be? You know, maybe you've never thought about, traction or retention or what's our numbers look like after ninety days? How many people uninstall our app? You know what I mean? There's a lot of different kind of exercises that you can go through when you're learning how to be a founder or you're learning this whole thing. so I, I think that that stuff is incredibly helpful. It's-- don't just focus on the money. There are times when the money matters, okay? But it's usually not ninety-five percent of the time it's, it's not right then for you. Right then for you is like forming a team, getting people who are gonna work for equity, getting an options pool, created, getting a vesting schedule, getting your company set up for success, building something that's at least some sort of an MVP, some sort of a beta Getting something going, and that's not always about, \"We need a seven hundred and fifty K check right now.\" You know, you can do a lot with a little or nothing, and we talked about some of those alternative fundraising, things as well. Plus, there's friends and family, and, you know, you can always take, a five thousand dollar check from, you know, a couple of good friends. careful what terms you set with them if you want them to be your friends afterwards. but there's a million, there's a million things that you can Rush it and don't fixate on the money." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:11:58", "start": 4318.11, "text": "Yeah, for sure. Okay, well that's great, Maz. where can listeners find you online?" }, { "speaker": "mike_jarmuz", "time": "01:12:02", "start": 4322.45, "text": "Alright, so our website is l t n g dot ventures, Lightning Ventures is l t n g dot ventures. And, there's a, an application little thing there if you wanna get in our fold and see some of the stuff that we're working on, or if you're a founder and you're looking to raise, there's a little bit of a form there. We're actually getting ready to redo that and it And I'm on Twitter, it's just my name, it's mike jarmuz, mike j a r m u z." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:12:29", "start": 4349.59, "text": "Fantastic, thanks, Mars. Great chatting with you. Alright, thank you. So what do you think, is Bitcoin venture capital fiat or is it actually compatible with the ideals of Bitcoin? Let us know what you think. Get the show notes at stephanlivera dot com slash four four four. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }