Why Sequoia Invested In Citadel Using The Old Paradigm
There are two kinds of investors in crypto: those who understand the community, and those who ignore it. Sequoia Capital and Paradigm do not understand the value of sharing the upside with people 🤨
Would you rather make a billion dollars or give 1,000 people $1,000,000? That is one of the many questions that pepper capital allocators with when I am trying to figure out their firmware. Let us look at Matt Huang, co-founder of Paradigm. This was profile picture on Twitter before he finally woke up:
Paradigm was started when Matt left Sequoia Capital because he got frustrated with their opinions on crypto. Now that Paradigm is one of the highest performing funds of all time, Sequoia are getting into the token game too.
Sequoia Capital gave me everything I have
I am typing out this diatribe on an Apple computer which is connecting through Cisco router to a server I paid for using Stripe. Sequoia funded all of that. For that, I am eternally grateful.
When I first joined Stripe in 2012, I had the pleasure of listening to Mike Moritz give a talk at the company. We then exchanged a few words on the nature of youth & ambition.
In 2018 I told Mike about my work with Uniswap and what we were build at Balance. He was fascinated about my kitesurfing career and my ideas, but he told me I was not fit for investment. He was right about some things. Very wrong about others. But I love him. He is one of my British heroes.
Sequoia & Paradigm cannot see the value of sharing
Both of these funds are legendary in their respective fields. You never want to be fighting either of them for an allocation—you will lose. But that is precisely their blind spot.
Sequoia knows how to fund companies. It does not know how to fund communities. They care about their view from the top.
Paradigm has upset so many people in the crypto community that none of the truly great young protocol founders I meet want to work with them.
Paradigm has treated me like shit on multiple occasions.
In return, I have steered several multi-billion dollar protocols away from them. Eventually I be able to reveal more about the way they have treated some of the people I love the most.
1K x 1M > 1B
Company founders think about how they can become billionaires.
Community founders think about how they can create millionaires.
Who is winning in this regard? One word: Vitalik.
Millions of people have become millionaires because of this holy man. He has created a religion that can make you rich in this life, not the next. He is the founder of Ethereum—the greatest technology community of all time.
Thousands of people supported the crowdfunding event in 2014. Hundreds of thousands of people built applications on top of his systems. Millions of people invested in millions of tokens, many of which have sky-rocketed in value.
Everyone in the Ethereum community owes Vitalik Buterin a huge debt.
We are a capitalised community of crypto believers.
In the merge we trust.
We follow.
A cult.
Cult creation != Company Creation
Sequoia and Paradigm do not understand community-funded cults because they have never been a part of one. They have been steeped in the discipline of company formation and equity allocation. They have no background in the messy gestation of token-powered communities.
It is telling that Paradigm retains so many lawyers. They would rather spend millions on violently describing terms in legalese than put energy into token allocation mechanisms for regular people.
I am a community creator. I gather people together, help them work on their project, fund their dreams, and send them on the way. I have done it many, many times. If you spend any time using Ethereum, you are probably touching a dapp or piece of infrastructure that I have helped.
That is my nature. I try and help people with potential.
I owe Ethereum my life. I am giving back.
I return capital to my community.
I always give back.
I never give up.
A mission.
Fund ConstitutionDAO over Citadel
There is only one fund I know of who funded the ConstitutionDAO—a gathering of people and capital that tried to buy the U.S. Constitution.
The ConstitutionDAO was foiled by Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel. To fund his traditional market making business is so tone deaf I don’t even know where to start.
I really view this as the most blatant demonstration of how little these two funds understand about community creation. They would rather be masters of the universe than help the people rise up.
Want to capitalise a community?
If you want to help a new community with some capital, I strongly recommend donating to the Safari Wallet. Trust me, it will be worth it.
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