EP14: Bringing crypto loans to the real world, with Blake West, co-founder/CTO of Goldfinch, $500M DAO and $25M from a16z
Paradigm Shift
English - February 03, 2022 03:00 - 1 hour - 42.6 MB - ★★★★★ - 12 ratingsEntrepreneurship Business Investing Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
In this wide-ranging conversation, we chat with Blake about his experiences starting out his professional career as a musician, and all the key experiences and trends that led him to founding the Goldfinch decentralized lending protocol (recent $25m Series A from a16z, and $500M DAO).
This is an incredibly rich conversation where we explore so many interesting topics. Some select highlights: the similarities between being a musician and an engineer, and between being in a band and a startup. How the Goldfinch protocol works and Blake’s most ambitious vision for it. Advantages of setting up Goldfinch as a DAO. Predictions on NFTs. The areas where crypto really shines and the trends that are moving more and more economic activity on chain.
Blake is a brilliant and clear thinker, and we learned so much from this conversation. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Episode Highlights
Being a full-time musician after collegePutting small things together to make big things as a musician, and engineerJoy of working on a small group, and being in a band vs startupLearning to code after college and transitioning over to software engineeringEarly inflection points at Hint Health (Employee #1) and CoinbaseApproach to hiring engineers at GoldfinchHow Blake got into crypto and what got him interestedMagic of decentralization and many interfaces sitting on top of the same dataRecent LooksRare token launchWhat Goldfinch does and how it’s different from other crypto lending protocolsUnder-collateralized lending for real-world scenarios in a decentralized wayApproach to finding the right market and getting early PMF tractionHow the lending protocol works — across borrowers, backers and LPsMore liquidity as one of the places where crypto really shinesMost ambitious vision for the protocolTrends moving more economic activity on chainGoldfinch is setup as a DAO — how that worksTradeoffs between DAOs and Centralized OrganizationsThoughts on the current bear market cycleBlake’s secret to making rapid progress with GoldfinchWhat mission-driven means to BlakeDeFi advantages: natively global and interoperable by defaultPrediction on profile NFT pics coming trueCrypto wallets as bottomless digital backpacksPredictions on NFTs— “can’t lose” way for brands and creators to engage super fansBuilding great co-founder relationships and handling high pressure situationsRecruiting his initial boss at Coinbase to GoldfinchSuperpowers and book recommendationsStructure of Scientific Revolutions— the book that coined the term “Paradigm Shift”!
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