Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:23
You know, all this Edward, is, is super technical talk about the evolution of the team. Right. It starts you’re you and the co-founder Brian. How did you meet your co-founder?
Edward Woodford: 13:35
Yeah, we met at college And, you know, he stepped away from the business. You know, I think it was shortly, you know, during Covid. He stepped away when we were, you know, a 15-person company. We’re now a 180-person company. So it’s a radically different, radically different business from where we were. One of the things I’m particularly proud of is I think founders, you know, for example, you mentioned Brian, founders get a disproportionate amount, I would say, of credit, and there’s the disproportionate amount of economics. And there is a reason for that, that going from 0 to 1 and instigating and being bold enough to take that first leap. Most people will tend to be followers. But something that we’ve done as a company that I’m particularly proud of is create the concept of a founding team that is officially recognized by the board.
Officially recognized in terms of how we build the company, and is a group that I meet with every single quarter and we meet in person. And this is a founding team of nine people, including myself. And these are people that were there at the start. Effectively, they all joined within the first, first year of the company and are still at the company. And these are people that some of them are C-suite. They report directly to me, some are IC. And the commonality of these people is that they pushed when nobody else was pushing. They believed when nobody else believed they stayed when people left. And so I prefer to talk about the story of less about me and less about the founding structure, but more the sometimes we think of these things almost like an immaculate conception of a company being formed, and it’s formed and it’s Eureka. And it sparks really what I think about.
Okay, if you think about an analogy of a fire, the fire, we put the wood there, but there was no spark. The founding team was the spark. I created some of the combustion, but that was the spark that is to me, what is the start? It’s almost like, do you consider the start of the fire when you put the wood down, or do you consider it when you light the match? I consider it when you light the match. And so that’s why I’m very proud of our founding team and why I talk more about the construct of a founding team as opposed to the concept of founders. And I think more and more founders that I talk to them are actually buying into this vision. And I see more and more on LinkedIn the concept of founding teams.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:16
You know, under what did you see? I mean, we’re talking back in 2017, in the crypto space. Why did you want to even get into this? I’m looking right now at just the max on the price of bitcoin okay. For example. And I’m looking in 2017 and you know it’s in the you know thousand dollar $900 range right. And now it’s you know at this present time it’s in the $80,000 range okay.
Edward Woodford: 16:55
So very quickly.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:56
What did you see then that most people didn’t see or weren’t even thinking about?
Edward Woodford: 17:04
Yeah. So I first heard about Bitcoin. I was at grad school at MIT, and one of my professors, Christine Catalini, started speaking.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:14
By the way, someone’s going to listen to this in like ten years and who knows what it’s going to be at. But yeah, exactly.
Edward Woodford: 17:21
Who knows where it’ll be. Like, it’s a volatile asset. Right. But Christine was one of my professors formed a great relationship with him. And actually he’s now the chief strategy officer of a customer of ours, a group called Lightspark that’s leveraging Bitcoin to disrupt the way that we transfer value cross-border. But Christian got me into it. I bought my first Bitcoin at the MIT bookstore and.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:46
Hopefully you hold on to it.
Edward Woodford: 17:48
Yes. I mean, you think about, you know, the I mean, if you think about the amount that you’ve sold in life, it’s a weird place to be, but that so be it. I mean, I’m very index towards Bitcoin and other assets in this space. But. What really drew me in was how.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:11
Did you wait real quick? How did you buy it? You said where did you at the at the MIT bookstore.
Edward Woodford: 18:16
So there was a group called Liberty X, and it’s now owned by NCR, right. One of the largest ATM businesses. And I went with some cash and I bought a Bitcoin. And that’s effectively how I did it. And so the, the I was very drawn in by two things. One, the construct of removing intermediaries, the construct of a network that can crisscross boundaries, the construct of a technology stack that is available on any phone. And I think equally as important, a decentralization that now can be done on any phone. It’s unstoppable.
Right. Like when you start with Bitcoin you know it’s so easy you can’t stop it. Right. That’s a very interesting technology stack. When you think about everything that we do the construct and I saw I saw I saw a piece recently about the cost of trust. Right. If you look at Uber I think anywhere between 30% and 50% of each. Each one or each ride is paid to Uber as opposed to the driver. That’s an incredible tax. If you start to think about how you can put identity and credentials and ownership in a decentralized manner at low cost, that has a lot of value. So that was the first piece, was the thesis around it. The second piece was the visceral reaction to Bitcoin of people was incredibly negative. And I like spaces where people self-select out because then there’s not many people in the room, right? People say you don’t need to be the smartest person in the room.
Sure, you don’t have to be, but it definitely helps when there’s not many people in the room. And then when a lot of people come into the room, you by nature have spent more time there. You understand it better. And so for me, I liked the complexity of it. I liked the to some degree, the controversy of it, and It just didn’t make sense to me. I felt that people were very visceral, had never read the white paper, had never taken the care to actually understand what this could solve. And I liked, I liked that, I liked being counter trend, I suppose, to some degree.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:45
What did it take to build this from a team perspective? You know, obviously, you know, when you raise money for the first time, I think in 2018 was there. Customers at the time, what did it look like when you raised the first series?
Edward Woodford: 21:06
Yeah, I mean, when you talk to investors, when they look at early stage companies, it’s typically team and Tam. Right. What is the total addressable market. So is the market massive. And do they think this team can address it. As you go later down the pipeline. Right. I mean, we’ve raised our series D. It’s much more metrics-driven. It’s a different construct. I mean, I, I still believe that the Tam is completely untapped in terms of what cryptography can do. And I have three core theses. The first is that payments has been completely disrupted. Stablecoins will do more volume than visa. And that’s we’re still so early. It will completely disrupt the way that we transfer value cross-border and disrupt the way that we use intermediaries and the way that we use the Swift protocol.
That’s my first thesis. The second thesis is that crypto as a store of value will exceed gold, particularly Bitcoin. And the way that people store value outside of the United States will also change. So, for example, holding a dollar in a tokenized form with USD or USDC is fundamentally disruptive and will be a way that people can access hundreds of countries very quickly. And any fintech can launch a product globally essentially overnight. The third is that tokenization and the way that we transfer value today will be fundamentally disruptive. And that’s what groups like Larry, people like Larry Fink talk about. Tokenization is going to be the most fundamental technical technological disruption that we’ve seen in decades. So those are my three core theses. We touch all of them. We have payment clients like stripe, Shift4, Nuvei. We have brokerage clients like Interactive Brokers, Tastytrade, and others.
And then we have tokenization partners as well, such as BlackRock’s Biddle Fund, Franklin Templeton and others. And those three theses are massive. And I still think we’re very, very early. But you have to show that the velocity of the business is growing. I mean, at the end of the day, most VCs, if you’re a VC-backed business, it is about momentum. It’s about velocity. And that’s really it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:11
What are you and what is the hiring look like when you raise one of these rounds? Are you. I’m going to I’m just going to share this screen here. we’ll go back to Zero Hash. You know, there’s these milestones here. I’m not sure if this is accurate or not, but it’s on medium. So everything on the internet is, I’m sure, accurate. Right. But we have series A, B, C, C1, C2 and then series D where there’s 105 million. Talk about the hiring or what are you using the money for.
Edward Woodford: 23:44
Yeah I mean I think in terms of hiring, I mean, one is the scale of the business is obviously growing. We like I said, right around Covid, we’re about 15, 20 people and now we’re 170, 175. So one is that I think second is the people that you bring in and, you know, sometimes to some degree, it’s a different type of person at different stages of the company. I think there’s sometimes a tendency and sometimes we fall foul of it is trying to bring in people that just aren’t at the right stage of the company. And equally the people in the company have to adapt. Right. I have to adapt. The whole leadership team has to adapt. Your job is fundamentally different. A job in a startup changes every six months. And either you change or you don’t.
And there’s no shame in that, right? Like some people love the 0 to 1. And that’s an incredibly complex piece. Some people love the 1 to 100 and some people love being at big businesses. And that’s okay too. But sometimes I think the one, you know, looking back, I think some of the mistakes that I’ve made is conflating what is a startup versus what is a really mature business. I think everybody likes to use a construct they will at a startup. But if you look at people that maybe have come from, you know, an Uber when they were 8,000 people in your head, you may say, okay, that’s a startup. Well, you may think that there’s a lot of analogies. An 8,000-person Uber is very different to a 150-person business. It in my experience, it hasn’t worked and it’s just a different — there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s just a different type of person.
And so in terms of team, I think there’s sometimes a tendency that you need to say we need to mature as a business. And I’ve seen this a lot like, you know, very established leaders like Airbnb. Brian Chesky, he’s spoken about this quite in quite a lot of detail. I think there’s sometimes an element like, okay, we’ve got to put, you know, we’ve got to we’ve got to we’re a big company now, right. And that’s how we have to think about hiring. And so people have to hire. No. Our goal is to 100, you know, achieve a lot in a very short period of time. That is a certain type of person. It’s a certain type of psyche.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:05
How have you changed as a leader from the beginning until till now? Because obviously growing the company from Zero to what it is today.
Edward Woodford: 26:20
Yeah, I think I’ve become more balanced. Right. I think if you put accelerator brake. Accelerator, brake in terms of different pieces, you look at things that are shiny. It can be challenging. And I sometimes see this in other leaders at the start of their careers as well, and kind of in careers at their own companies. But you can be very aggressive in achieving your goals, but be very balanced. And sometimes I think people believe that you can’t. You have to expose how driven you are or expose how hard driving you are. I think sometimes you don’t. And I think becoming more balanced. Becoming more measured. Is really, really, really important.
I drive incredibly, incredibly hard. But you’ve got to I really, honestly believe you have to narrow your emotional bounds as a leader. It’s not about being unfeeling, but it’s okay. The great wins are great and you’ve got to show that. But the great, you know, when times are tough as well you can. I’m a big believer in consistency, whether it be a good day or a bad day. You put in hard work, you drive forward and in the long run you will be okay. And that’s my perspective. And I think if you let your emotions of like, oh, there’s this big exciting deal or oh no, there’s this big thing that’s negative, you’re going to burn yourself out, you’re going to burn other people out.
And so I think just becoming more measured and mellow has definitely helped me and helped others around me. And I think you can achieve a lot more by being very precise, very driven and putting a lot of concentrated force in a lot of pieces, as opposed to going in too broad or kind of switching tact and being a little shiny.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:27
I’m curious, you know, as you know, the founder and CEO, when something, you know, there are like highs and there are lows. I’m curious, what is your self-talk so that you do stay consistent. Like you have a huge deal comes in or a, you know, there’s just something bad that happens. What are you telling yourself that you stay, you know, more consistent, like you were saying?
Edward Woodford: 28:56
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:57
It’s sometimes easier said than done. Like I feel like, oh, you have this huge win. You want to get excited about it, right?
Edward Woodford: 29:05
Yeah, I think I think it’s about being able to process things quickly. Right. So of course you get excited. Of course you get sad. It’s not about being a robot, but it’s about how quickly you can process those emotions and be and figuring out how you process. For me, I’ve been by myself. It’s either going for a walk, it’s going for, it’s getting a massage. And that’s how I process it by myself. Some people have to talk about it. And some people have to exercise. Some people have to. But figuring out what really allows you to go through that emotional response. I mean, we are emotional beings at the end of the day. It allows you, I think, to make better rational decisions.
It allows you to look forward. At the end of the day, your job is to continuously to look forward. The success of today is something we have to say in England. Today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chips paper. It doesn’t matter that much, right? It’s like it just doesn’t. And today’s news is old news tomorrow. And you’ve got to continuously be looking forward. So if you get too caught up in today, it’s not about being like, you know, Zen. And by no means am I, you know, have I hit the Zen piece? But it’s about that. It’s about that processing of that initial emotional response that we all have as humans.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:29
Yeah, thanks for that. I mean, as selfishly, because it’s tough sometimes. With everything going on. You mentioned, you know, obviously there’s a lot of changes. Maybe talk on a macro level on what you see in this space.
Edward Woodford: 30:44
In the broader crypto space. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, look, I think a couple of things. One, on the brokerage side. The SEC has over, you know, has overturned a couple of very controversial accounting bulletins that they put out, which effectively prevented publicly traded companies, banks and broker-dealers from offering crypto in a meaningful way. That’s a huge, huge thing. The SEC has also withdrawn a number of court cases against effectively a lot of the major players in this space, and a significant overreach, what people may call regulation by enforcement.
So the mindset in terms of crypto is definitely shifted. I personally believe every single brokerage platform, every single bank will have a crypto product in the next 12 months. I also believe every crypto business will have an equities solution as well. So I think these want this concept of crypto platforms, investment platforms will become one and the same. And secondly, I think every single business will have a stablecoin strategy in some form. It is an incredibly powerful alternative payment method. If you look at, for example, the All In podcast, they’ve mentioned stablecoins three out of the last and effectively every episode in the last month. There is a psyche there. You are seeing real businesses adopt this at real scale, and you can look at some of the companies that we power, some of the use cases around that, one of which, for example, is payouts.
So freelancers are the largest workforce in the world. There’s a billion freelancers crisscrossing the world. And I’ve mentioned Covid. Covid obviously changed the way that we think about building businesses. You know, a global workforce. One of the challenges is paying those people on time. And stablecoins can solve that. And so one of the integrations of that is remote comm has integrated stablecoin rails powered by Zero Hash, to allow for people globally to be paid instantly and meet the same expectations that we all have, which is to be paid on time. And then when you start to play that out, it starts to and this is you asked me why I’m passionate about crypto, Bitcoin, etc. it starts to break down some of the paradigms that we have. So the way that we’re mostly typically paid is that we I’m paid for work that I’ve already done every two weeks or every month.
Effectively, I’m providing a loan to the business. The reason that we don’t get paid every single day is because of cost, typically. And imagine if you could pay people instantly. Now, that may not matter for some people, right? If you’re well paid, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the border. It really matters when you get paid. And that completely eviscerates, for example, the industry of early payment or payday loans. That is fundamentally disruptive for a lot of people. So I think it’s really interesting as not only the use cases that we power today, but how does it change the way that we think about paradigms that we all currently accept? We all accept being paid once every month? Well, you know, it starts to change the way we think about the world.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:43
Edward, for people who don’t know, if you want, I’m going to just share to my screen. Just give a brief definition of stablecoin and you can obviously if someone wants to research it. I mean, I just found an article and there’s lots of information on it, but here’s one on Coinbase. What’s a stablecoin? Can you just talk just briefly, just so people know when you say stablecoin what you’re referring to?
Edward Woodford: 34:11
Yeah. So stablecoin effectively is a tokenized representation of a dollar or other fiat currency that is built on a blockchain. So what that means is a stablecoin can be built on Ethereum, which means that it’s transferred on the Ethereum blockchain. It can be built on the Solana blockchain. So really it effectively allows anybody with a wallet, effectively a cryptographic wallet that is increasingly becoming more and more abstracted away from the complexity of that, to effectively have a dollar representation that is fully backed by, by, by, by a dollar. And that’s incredibly powerful because it opens up everybody in the world that has a phone to be able to access that.
And what it does is that it allows it’s and it’s a competing mechanism to networks that it’s competing network to Visa. Mastercard. A competing network to Swift. It’s a competing way to the way that we move money today. The intermediaries that are involved in that. So that’s effectively what a stablecoin is.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:15
I’d love to hear any advice. You’ve gotten lessons. You mentioned you have the board that you know that shares things also, I’m sure along the way as you’re raising money. You know, we mentioned some of those companies. Any advice or lessons you’ve gotten from the, you know, Bain Capital Ventures or Tastytrade or NYC or Point72? What sticks out to you along the journey? Or maybe someone who didn’t invest in some advice they gave you?
Edward Woodford: 35:46
I mean, the one that I always think about was one of our earliest, earliest investors. And he said to me, He said. You always have the answers to my questions. I’m not expecting you to. And he goes, if you can’t, I need you to acknowledge that there’s massive risks to your business because there’s massive payoff if you get this right. So he said, write an obituary of your business. Why does it fail? And it fundamentally shifted the way that I thought about things. Risks are also opportunities. If there were no risks, then everybody would be doing this.
And so I think it started to shift the way that you don’t need you don’t need all the answers, but you need to know what the risks are and how you address them head on. And I think if you just talk away risks sometimes it can create concern. And so that was a radically different way of viewing. Like I thought I had to give answers to all the investors like, yeah, this is how we solve it. It’s like, no, no, I mean, it’s a well-taken point. But if that risk is this is how we mitigate it, but it also creates all these opportunities. So I think that that was one of the things that changed the way that I thought about fundraising, especially in the early stage.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:09
Yeah, I love that. Edward. So writing an obituary for your business and why it may fail in some of the risks.
Edward Woodford: 37:17
Exactly.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:19
Edward, I have one last question before I ask it. I want to point people to Zero Hash. You can check it out. Zero hash com to learn more. And my last question is just about what’s next. You know, obviously there’s a lot of momentum in this space. And with Zero Hash what’s next for Zero Hash.
Edward Woodford: 37:40
Yeah I mean continuing to scale continue for this technology to be adopted by the largest companies in the world and to continue to accelerate the disruption that this technology can bring to payments, investments and the way that we transfer value today.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:55
Does that look like more conversations of platforms or what does that look like on the ground for Zero Hash? Yeah, just contacting every bank that needs to implement, you know, put the infrastructure.
Edward Woodford: 38:10
Yeah. I mean we’re already talking to most of these players. I mean, it’s really about realizing that and accelerating adoption.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:20
One of the first one to thank you. Everyone check out zerohash.com and your. From what he says you’re probably using one of these platforms already. So the opportunity is there I know, I know, we are so Edward thanks so much.
Edward Woodford: 38:34
Thank you very much for having everyone.
