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This Singapore-Based Investor Says Web3 Will Save a Billion People (And Your Startup)
Episode 79 • 16th July 2025 • Designing Successful Startups • Jothy Rosenberg
00:00:00 00:37:16

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Aly Madhavji

Bio

Aly Madhavji is the Managing Partner at Blockchain Founders Fund, a global early-stage VC firm supporting high-growth Web3 and blockchain startups. Named a “Blockchain 100” Global Leader by Lattice80, Aly advises organizations like the UN and INSEAD on emerging technologies and has served on boards including Soluna Holdings (NASDAQ: SLNH). He is also a published author and a Schwarzman Scholar.

Awards: Aly was named a “Blockchain 100” Global Leader by Lattice80

Summary

Aly Madhavji, an esteemed figure in the realm of blockchain technology, elucidates the transformative potential of this innovative paradigm for global financial systems. He emphasizes the critical distinction between genuine blockchain applications and the centralized tools that have, in the past, misled users and contributed to widespread disillusionment within the industry. Drawing from his own journey as a founder and investor, Madhavji articulates the necessity for entrepreneurs to embrace technological advancements that facilitate access to financial services for the unbanked populace. Through his insights, he not only advocates for a renewed consumer trust in blockchain but also envisions a future where decentralized solutions empower individuals and businesses alike. The discourse further ventures into the intersection of blockchain with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, presenting a compelling narrative for the mainstream acceptance of these innovations.

Conversation

Aly Madhavji, a prominent figure in the blockchain and cryptocurrency arena, expresses a compelling narrative that intertwines his personal history with his professional journey. Born to refugees from Uganda, Aly's upbringing instilled in him a profound understanding of the limitations imposed by traditional financial systems. He recounts the pivotal moment when he encountered Bitcoin, which illuminated a path to financial independence, unencumbered by governmental manipulation or inflationary pressures. This ideological foundation catalyzed his subsequent ventures, leading to the establishment of a successful crypto exchange and the founding of Blockchain Founders Fund, where he now invests in transformative technologies aimed at democratizing access to financial services globally. Throughout the conversation, Aly elucidates the critical misconceptions surrounding blockchain technology, particularly the confusion between decentralized systems and centralized platforms that have failed investors in the past. He emphasizes the potential of blockchain to provide a robust and transparent infrastructure that can empower millions, particularly the unbanked population around the world. As he looks toward the future, Aly expresses optimism that the current cycle will witness a mainstream adoption of blockchain technology, fostering an environment where true innovation can flourish.

Takeaways

  • The current cycle of blockchain technology holds the potential to genuinely go mainstream, overcoming past misconceptions and failures associated with centralized practices.
  • Ali Madhavji's journey from humble beginnings to becoming a prominent figure in the blockchain space exemplifies the transformative power of technology in fostering financial independence and innovation.
  • The emphasis on progress over time is essential for startups; achieving significant milestones swiftly can often outweigh the pursuit of perfection in execution.
  • Establishing strong alignment within founding teams through regular meetings can prevent conflicts and miscommunication, which are common pitfalls in startup environments.
  • Engaging with potential customers early in the development process allows founders to gain valuable insights and create solutions that resonate with their target audience.
  • The integration of blockchain technology in various sectors is poised to revolutionize how businesses operate, ultimately enhancing transparency and efficiency in transactions.

Transcripts

Jothy Rosenberg:

Please meet today's guest, Ali Madhavgi.

Aly Madhavji:

So in the past, what's been this sort of a challenge is a lot of technology has almost been built for either, like trading, it's been built for crypto natives and it hasn't been very simple, hasn't been very easy to use.

In the last cycle, you had a lot of people think they were using blockchain and were using centralized tools like BlockFi, Celsius, FTX, which of course all imploded and had a lot of people lose hard earned money and went home Thanksgiving, et cetera, and told people, hey, this industry's terrible and there's some merit to that.

And I think we've damaged a lot of consumer interest in the space because of some of those challenges from centralized practices, which in reality weren't even blockchain.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

Ftx, Block by Celsius weren't actually using blockchain. Those were centralized products. I think there's some challenges, some misconceptions, but I think this is the cycle where it really goes mainstream.

Jothy Rosenberg:

What if I told you there's a technology that could help a billion unbanked people access financial services, enable AI to transact instantly across the globe, and free businesses from big tech's stranglehold on customer data?

Today's guest, Ali Madhavgi went from a $50 an hour paper route to building and exiting a crypto exchange, then becoming one of the world's most active web three investors with 200 companies in his portfolio. But this isn't just another crypto success story. Ali's parents were refugees who fled Uganda with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

And that experience shaped his belief that you can't rely on traditional systems. You have to build your own path.

From his base in Singapore, he's now funding the infrastructure that could reshape how the world transacts, communicates and builds businesses.

Whether you're blockchain, curious, or a complete skeptic, Ali is going to challenge how you think about the future of technology and entrepreneurship. Let's dive in.

Aly Madhavji:

Okay.

Jothy Rosenberg:

And here we go. Ali, it's great to have you on the show.

Aly Madhavji:

Thank you so much for having me.

Jothy Rosenberg:

Well, let's start with you're kind of a globetrotter. So where are you originally from and where do you call home these days?

Aly Madhavji:

Absolutely. So I'm originally born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, and currently call home 6 Singapore. So all the way, probably as far as you can get almost.

But it's an incredible city, state or country. If you haven't been there, you've got to check it out. It's kind of like New York, except much cleaner, no homelessness.

It's almost like going into the future, but incredible, incredible country.

Jothy Rosenberg:

Nice. I haven't been there. I've done a lot of traveling, but we seem to always go the other direction. We go to Europe a lot.

We've done, done several trips to South America, but we just haven't gone that direction except to go to Hawaii a couple times.

Aly Madhavji:

There you go. So next time, next time you're in town, let me know, I'll show you around and you can stay with us.

Jothy Rosenberg:

So I do love that part of the world up in the Northwest. So the defining technology or capability that sort of rules your life is blockchain, right? You love blockchain and you've done a lot of work with it.

And so I want to kind of go back to the beginning. What kind of entice you to sort of go all in on blockchain as a capability in the first place? It's, it's a really good question.

Aly Madhavji:

w, escaped sort of idiomin in:

And many people sort of know the story about a military dictator coming to power there and luckily was able to come to Canada, right. And start a new life with literally the clothes on their backs.

And so from a young age, you know, when I grew up, you know, we grew up in a low income family, realized very quickly that, you know, no one's really gonna help you and you got to kind of figure it out for yourself. And you know, I wanted, you know, different things as a kid and figured out I needed to start making my own money.

And I remember, you know, first starting to do a paper route and I made a dollar fifty an hour when I calculated the, the amount I was making on my first check that mail and realize, hey, this, this isn't really working. I need to figure out something else. And so by the time I was 18, I had started nearly a dozen small businesses.

So I started everything from, you know, computer networking, setting up for people in the, in the sort of town or area, started basically providing content, so peer to peer content, so TV shows and movies that people loved, helping solve computer viruses, all sorts of other stuff. You know, from that. I ended up, uh, making sort of my own way to university.

So kind of like first generation to university and quickly understood the power of higher education to change social classes. And I looked at this as sort of a way where, you know, people can have a fundamental ability to shift their trajectories.

And from sort of all of that and you know, having say, a, a lack of trust in government as fully sort of being there to maybe help you solve your problems.

And me looking at it as, hey, you've just got to figure it out yourself and you got to, you know, figure out what tools you can have in these sort of, you know, this place is set up in a way that, you know, you have a lot at your disposal if you can make use of it. And you know, when I came across Bitcoin, to me it was an ability to basically separate from that system, right?

So you don't have to trust government, you don't have to worry about government printing and inflation going up. You don't need to worry about wars being fought, you know, with money that's being printed and you know what the impacts of that are.

And so that actually really, really stood out for me. So it was actually more from an ideological perspective than let's say, a pure financial position or, you know, mindset.

Of course, in, in hindsight, it maybe looks smarter than it, than it, than it, than it really was.

You know, and I think even still today, like you're seeing a lot of that mission and vision, I think really still come to reality, right, is like the, this alternative currency, it's not being printed, it's not being manipulated in that way. And I think it's still exciting as every single person, you know, goes out and wants to hold Bitcoin.

I think it furthers that narrative and that ability of this alternative currency to power global commerce. Now blockchain itself probably goes a step further, right?

So later on, I mean from a blockchain perspective, the way I look at it is essentially this technology that helps solve multi party trust issues.

So in situations where humans might have challenges doing business together, you might have counterparty risk, you might be worried about sort of who you're working with, can you trust them? This essentially solves a lot of these types of challenges, right?

And it becomes sort of this value layer in a digital world that becomes more and more important, right?

And so we usually say that incredible technologies really take off and have exponential growth when they meet other, you know, incredible emerging technologies. And so as you see what's happening with IoT or AI, I think it actually exponentially benefits each, each of them and, and collectively as well.

And so, you know, if you think about AI and how powerful AI is, it becomes more valuable when AI can transact on its own and can act on its own and you can maybe set parameters, but then AI sort of works within those parameters. And so if you think about the currency that I have to use, it's going to have to be digital currencies, because they need to be instant.

They need to be instant, they need to be able to settle anywhere in the world. And really the only choice is going to be leveraging digital assets.

And you look at traditional currencies and it might take two days, four days to clear, banking, et cetera, like that wouldn't work effectively for. If you think about how AI would transact, if you think about how IoT needs to communicate.

So Internet of Things needs to communicate machine to machine. It's going to be more effective having the auditability and the transparency that come with blockchain.

So I think there's a lot of benefits in which these technologies each work well together. But blockchain ended up being that sort of that value layer across all of it.

Jothy Rosenberg:

And did you start any companies yourself? I know you were an investor. We'll get to that in a second. But did you start any blockchain related companies along the way?

Aly Madhavji:

This would have been back in:

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

You look at where the world is today, it looked very, very different back then.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

So Binance didn't exist as an example.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

Hadn't launched yet. You know, Kraken, which many people use, didn't really work very well.

I remember probably having the vast majority of my transactions fail when you tried to use it. Just there was a lot of errors.

the ICO boom that happened in:

And there was a lot of, a lot of changing regulations.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

It was, it was a time where your bank accounts for your company would get frozen, you know, regularly or blocked regularly in the space. It was a time where, you know, you had, you just had. There was a lot of negative stigma around the industry.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

But, you know, we looked at this and I looked at this and saw this sort of transformational power of the technology. Phenomenal to think about how far the industry's gone.

So, you know, we raised three rounds of capital, we growed our team to about 40 people and you know, we, we started doing well. I think some of the challenges that came up was, you know, September 4th, you had the China bands, you also had India bands.

In:

, fortunately, good timing in:

Jothy Rosenberg:

So when you say exited, I assume you mean acquired.

Aly Madhavji:

Yeah, so, yeah, so I, I, I, I exited to a number of investors that were interested to, to take over the, like, the position. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't a huge number or anything, but I think it was really good considering the circumstances.

,:

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And then you had, if you remember, a major crash in crypto, 90 plus percent down, you know, pretty soon after. So I think timing wise, it turned out to be very fortunate.

Jothy Rosenberg:

So then you started this, this new fund. You and some partners are investors and you and it's called the Founders Fund.

Aly Madhavji:

Yeah. So Blockchain Founders Fund. Correct.

Jothy Rosenberg:

I brought you. Sorry, yeah, I left out the critical word.

Aly Madhavji:

Yeah, there you go.

Jothy Rosenberg:

Yes, there is actually another entity called the Founders Fund. Anyway, the Blockchain Founders Fund. Yes.

Aly Madhavji:

Yeah, so tell us.

Yeah, so we then started Blockchain Founders Fund and, and, and this is sort of maybe a good lesson for anyone that wants to, you know, even break into a new industry where their passions are right from the perspective of hadn't been, say in active investor, obviously had done a lot of public stocks and derivatives and stuff like that at that point, but hadn't done necessarily a ton of angel investing, only in a few things sort of under my belt. Basically the idea behind is, hey, we just exited the crypto exchange, right.

Why not roll up our sleeves instead of scaling one company scale two and instead of two became four. And so we put both our, you know, some small amounts of money, wasn't huge behind working with founders and rolling up our sleeves.

And we earned some additional sweat equity in those. Plus, you know, obviously there's that cash side and we just continued to grow it.

And so all of a sudden two companies became four companies to eight companies. We ended up having 60 companies and then we went out and raised a formal fund.

So, you know, we had the track record then off those first 60 companies. We had incredible successes.

We had a number of Unicorns that came out of that group in the crypto space, you know, and you know, it ended up leading to being able to go raise a fund from some of the most well known investors in the world that came and backed the current fund. And here we are now at 200 companies. So it's, you know, we've come a long way.

We came the first regulated Web3 fund out of Singapore which is a very, you know, trusted jurisdict jurisdiction. And you know, we love what we do.

And one of the things that maybe differentiates us and maybe gives you a bit of an idea of the mindset is like, I don't really think of ourselves as an investor, right. We look at ourselves as, you know, basically there to support founders and almost as a founder, very close partner to these companies.

And so we come in, we roll up our sleeves, we want to work with them, solve the biggest problems with them. And you know, we're not there to go schooled founders. If they tell us a problem, it's not hey, why did this happen? It's how do we solve it.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And I think that's very important when you're even dealing with investors. There's a, you know, there's almost that negative side of having the investor where it's, you know, it's not constructive.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And that, that's not how we operate. Our, our goal internally is we want to be the first place that a founder thinks about when there's an issue, right.

Say there's issues between founders or issues across the team or you know, potential hiring challenges or scaling challenge. Like we want to be the first place that founders come because we want to basically go solve it.

Jothy Rosenberg:

I don't think Everybody knows what Web3.

Aly Madhavji:

Yeah, it's a, it's a good question.

I mean Web3 like overall, I mean encompasses, you know, blockchain is sort of the, the, let's call it the modern definition of are looking at it, right? And so you're using sort of this technology. If you think about, you know, how the Internet sort of brought this sort of revolutionary layer.

A lot of people are looking at sort of blockchain as, as a way that sort of solving some of the net sets of challenges, right?

So it's almost like creating that value layer, as I sort of mentioned of the Internet and, and the ability to transact and move value, you know, instantaneously cross border, you know, without any of those types of challenges.

And you know, we essentially encompass, you know, from an industry type of definition, all of that technology, everything that's happening with blockchain related technology. Everything that's happening, even in reality with crypto kind of gets grouped into that web three, you know, umbrella, let's call it.

So it's probably the easiest way to think.

Jothy Rosenberg:

So now you've got 200 companies that you've invested in. The first one's small investments, but you also worked side by side with them.

And then once you get to 200, you probably can't look too closely with all of them. But there must be some key things you learned. And are there any themes of things you've learned in that process?

Aly Madhavji:

I mean, there's definitely a lot. I mean, that's what I do. That's why I do what I do.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

I mean, I want to basically work with the smartest people in the world and want to go learn from them and with them.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And that's sort of what motivates me. That's also what drives me. And it's, you know, helping founders make those visions a reality.

And, you know, there's been a lot of things I've learned. I mean, there's a lot of mistakes along the way.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

I mean, oftentimes, you know, even in this industry, right. Like there's been challenges around in the early days investing in tokens and being misaligned with equity.

And so you see that challenge still a little bit today. Some of it's washed out.

But, you know, now one of the rules that we have internally is we just want the same incentives of the founder from a, from an instrument perspective. So the founders are going to launch a token. We need equity and token. If they have both, they're only going to have a token.

Then we're fine with a token, but we want the same incentives.

t where a lot of investors in:

I think there's been challenges even around, like, you know, how to sort of get laser focused on what matters.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

You know, in my, in my background, so before, before I went into startups, I used to do corporate turnarounds. And one of the key things with corporate turnarounds is how do you stay laser focused on what matters on the core.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And so with corporate turnarounds, the idea behind it is like, you know, you get thrown into a situation and, you know, private equity firm Tells you, hey, there's four months of cash left in this company. Go fix it before it goes bankrupt, right before four, chapter 11.

And you got to go in and figure out how do you go cut costs, how do you go figure out how to focus on the core and sort of rebuild from a stronger core? And in a startup, in reality, there's, there's some merit to that, right?

You got oftentimes a lot of ideas, a lot of things that could make sense, right? But you got to figure out what matters, what do customers care about or what is sort of critical.

And how do you go focus on like one or maybe one and a half, two things, right? Like you can't, can't solve everything. Like, if you build one thing that people love, you can use that as a way to grow.

But often, oftentimes, especially in this space, you get a lack of discipline, right? A founder's like, hey, I could do any of these 20 things. But if you're trying to do 20 things, you're probably doing nothing.

Aly Madhavji:

Right?

Aly Madhavji:

And that's been a big challenge. I think that's a startup problem in general, where founders oftentimes have ideas. Execution is what matters, right.

And how do you be laser focused on execution?

And so, you know, one of the things that we do with our founders actually when we invest is, well, one of the things that we do is we actually have a project plan.

And, you know, we look at this and what we broke down this project plan into is let's break down those goals that a company has into the next six months. So it's only actually 24 weeks. Right. We don't, it's not longer than that.

going to accomplish November:

,:

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

Etcetera. And then, so what we call is those are sort of outputs, right? So that's what you'd celebrate.

What would you pop champagne over as a team if you accomplish?

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

So what are those bigger milestones? Maybe it's achieve your first million and ARR. Maybe it's close your first customer. Like, what are those sort of major things?

And then we break it out into, you know, across four sections. So, you know, basically product, so product, tech, right? Marketing, finance, and basically across those Four sections.

What is basically the inputs that you can have, right? So it might be talk to 30 customers to figure out, you know, what do they need. Battle test, make sure it's what they, what they want, right?

Then it's maybe build a pipeline of 100 prospective customers and then go through that. Because you can't actually control hitting MRR numbers or ARR numbers or sales numbers that you can only control inputs, right?

So what are all these inputs that you can set up to increase likelihood of hitting those goals?

And we try to have founders like stay laser focused on thinking of it like this because it's important to, as a founder, to get out of, hey, I can sell this to investors and I have this idea to what do I actually need to do today, tomorrow, next week to actually hit these goals. And I think that's very, very critical. So we like, you know, helping founders around different aspects like this.

I can keep the business more focused, get away from maybe like focusing on too many different ideas, et cetera, and just, you know, battle test one thing, make sure it works.

If it doesn't pivot, but like, you know, very quickly, you know, fail fast, figure it out, then figure out what, what can work and then figure out how to scale that and, and make sure it's not a false positive, etc.

Jothy Rosenberg:

A lot of.

Jothy Rosenberg:

Hi, the podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book Tech Startup Toolkit, how to Launch Strong and Exit Big. This is the book I wish I'd had as I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years.

I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right and especially about what went wrong. You could get it from all the usual booksellers. I hope you like it. It's a true labor of love. Now back to the show.

Aly Madhavji:

Positive, et cetera.

Jothy Rosenberg:

A lot of investors, maybe most to deal with the fact that they've got to talk to so many people to then make their investments, get really good at pattern matching. So how do you evaluate founding teams that you are thinking about investing in?

Aly Madhavji:

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean we have a lot of criteria and a lot of different things that we go through it similar to any investor.

But I would say there's only a few things that really, really, really matter.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And so if I were to, you know, look at these things, I mean, one, what's the track record of success of the team?

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And that's going to be important and it could ideally be in this industry.

It doesn't need to be right because you can have success as you translate from one industry to another, but the more success you have in a certain industry, that might mean you have connections, you have ability to leverage some things to sort of help in the short run. But that might also mean you have biases, right? And you may not be able to get over some of those biases or rethink the way the system should work.

So there's pros and cons to that to some extent.

The second part that we, we find is very, very, very important that I think oftentimes is forgotten is, is it boils down to a formula that we put as progress over time. So how fast are you moving? So how much progress in as little time as possible? Because the time is the denominator, right?

And as you have indicators of that, you can start to see like, is the company moving fast enough to win? And it doesn't need to be, you know, hey, we've got millions and millions of dollars in revenue.

It could be, you know, we built a pretty complex, you know, tech platform in two months that maybe most people had taken a year to do, right?

And that's already a really, really good indicator that their progress for what, you know, might have been accomplished in other cases is done extremely fast in this case.

And so we want to see indicators of that because it's, it's probably the single most important metric in our mind around how fast the company moving in as little time as possible. Because that's going to indicate a lot of different things. Go ahead.

Jothy Rosenberg:

Does that mean that you are avoiding investing in someone who has, maybe has a great idea that has not done it before?

Aly Madhavji:

So I mean, we will take, we will take, we will do investments from time to time in first time founders.

You know, sometimes they're pretty young, but at the end of the day, right, it's all about, it's all about understanding the skills, gaps and understanding can they do it.

So, so if a founder comes to us and it's a single founder, they've never done it before and they're very young like you, what you got to worry about is like, well, how are they going to solve all these different gaps, right?

They maybe haven't built tech platforms that are scalable and maybe haven't, you know, scaled on the marketing side a consumer product with any users, let alone millions of users, right? Like, so you got to understand then like, well, if all of these are gaps, well then how are we solving them?

Because if there's not a great solution to solving them, well then like maybe It's a business that should have had co founders, right? And that would help you solve some of those gaps.

Maybe it's a business that like, you know, is going to need some very, very, very hands on advisors to solve certain aspects in the short run.

Aly Madhavji:

Right?

Aly Madhavji:

And so we want to understand that, you know, sometimes there's such a bold idea that it's, you know, it's, it's going to take someone to reinvent a system and that's going to take someone that's almost extremely passionate and maybe even in some ways naive, right? Because you've got to be so passionate, but you also got to be a little bit naive or delusional.

Oftentimes if you're running a startup and you're going to try to break a wall and build a new industry or change the way an industry works, right?

Jothy Rosenberg:

So if you saw someone like that, you might find co founders to join them that you know, or experienced or you might help find advisors who can really add a lot of sage wisdom to the, to the equation is, am I right?

Aly Madhavji:

So we, we can and we do in select cases. You know, there is a, there's obviously a challenge from the perspective of like as an investor we look at three to 500 companies a month, right?

And so we look at a lot of companies even compared to other venture funds our size. And so, you know, we can't do that for every company.

But one of the things we do try to do on, on calls with founders is like we'll give them honest feedback. And I think that's oftentimes even hard for founders to get because a lot of investors don't tell you what they really think.

And I think as a founder myself in the, in the past and I still see myself as a founder, you know, it's, it's valuable to get that honest feedback.

do you remember we chatted in:

And so like, even though we didn't invest in it, it feels good because, you know, they actually got something out of those conversations, you know, with me or with our team, etc. And I think that's very important, right? Because part of what we're doing is also trying to build an industry, trying to build, you know, founders.

I mean, it's their livelihood, right? It's their families. It's their friends. It's, you know, you're trying to build something incredible that sort of uplifts community.

And so I think it's very important to be very open with founders. I think when it's something we're really excited about, yes, we will explore. Hey, can we pull in a co founder here?

Can we pull in, you know, marketing support or other support here to fill these gaps? Because maybe it's a company that's technologically just geniuses, right?

And you know, they've got something that's really, really unique, but maybe they don't understand the marketing. So it's, you know, it's not as hard to solve, like if you're extremely strong.

So this is another thing from an investment perspective, if you have a company that's like good in everything, it may not be good enough.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

What you're almost trying to find in certain respects is that they're great at some stuff, but maybe they might be weaker in like one or two things because it's easier to solve those one or two things than make something that's good great across a lot of metrics.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And so that's also important. So when you see, you know, technological genius, you know that's not going to be an issue anymore, right.

And you know, they're going to be the best in the world at that, that's that side of things, then it's okay, well, how do we go solve the other challenge? Like, is it marketing bd, how do we solve that? But like, you can explore solving some of those things.

Jothy Rosenberg:

Is there a mistake or, you know, a small number of mistakes?

You see a lot of founders making that you'd love to project out, out from me from this podcast episode to potential founders and tell them, hey, this is a mistake that a lot of people are making and don't make it.

Aly Madhavji:

Absolutely. I mean, there's quite a few that come to mind.

But I would say, like, I mean, make sure that you've got strong alignment internally and you know, you spend, you know, for example, we have that project plan discussion. You break it across, you know, marketing, finance, you know, tech, etc.

Like, make sure you have a one hour meeting every week internally and just have clarity and alignment because oftentimes you see the technical side and the CEO, if the CEO is not technical or vice versa.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

You see like gaps, mistakes like in managing internally and misalignment and not an understanding of why someone's doing something. And so you end up with founder issues. This is like very common.

And I Think it stems from not great process internally a lot of the time because there's not alignment. But then I think as you're finding product market fit, I think it's really about going out and talking to customers.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

Like I would say the easiest time to go get customers in a lot of ways is when you don't have customers and you're building a product because everyone wants to vent about something that doesn't work.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

It's like a very common, let's call it human trait. Like I'm really pissed off about how X, Y, Z works.

And if you're trying to solve xyz, like go talk to customers and hear them out because they're going to feel like they contributed to your business. Very easy to set up 30, 40, 50 calls around this generally.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And if you have all of those 30, 40, 50 people telling you about a problem and then you're going to go fix it the second you have something for them to test, they're going to test it, they're going to use it, they're going to feel like they contribute to, they're going to feel like you built it for them. They're going to be your champions and advocates.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

So it's a really good hack. But we oftentimes find founders don't talk to enough potential customers. Like they're assuming what their customer wants.

They might be even from the industry and might even have biases then. But as much as you can talk to customers, is, is, is where the money is, right? I mean it's.

A lot of people spend too much time Id even say talking to investors. I think these are separate tracks. But spend time knowing your customer, building what your customer loves. You build something your customer loves.

Like investors will want to back it.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

And so as much as you can get close to that side is, is critical.

Jothy Rosenberg:

I think a lot of technical founders are very afraid of customers.

It's, it's just, it's a hard thing to get past and yet a lot, I mean, you know, one of the things that I, I say in the very beginning of the book is, you know, it's, it's the asking the question who should be CEO? And if it's a tech company, then the CEO should be very technically adept because they can then communicate the problem, the solution.

Talk to customers, talk to investors. So you're sort of setting it up for, with people who have maybe a little less comfort socially, a little less comfort talking to customers.

And that's. And they need a lot of help and A lot of encouragement.

I mean, I've done this over and over again, you know, to, to help people like for example, you know, just learn to use LinkedIn. There's some features of LinkedIn you don't know about necessarily. There's this thing called LinkedIn Analytics.

It's free, it's there all the time and you can zero in on people that have the profile, the title of the people you want to talk to.

And, and then if you just learn to, you know, a very simple message that you, you get out to people and they come to you and they start saying, I do want to talk to you, and that can break the ice and then that lowers the fear barrier that a tech, a technical founder, technical CEO might have.

Aly Madhavji:

Absolutely. I would even say with this, like, you know, in this, in this day and age, there's so many tools at your disposal, right?

So with the example you just gave, I would say as a technical founder, even as a non technical founder, it'll take you under one hour to probably go learn how Phantom Buster works, right? Or other similar tools.

And you can use it to basically scrape lists off of LinkedIn or use like LinkedIn Navigator, like one of the sort of recruiter, sort of type ones, or you can sort of download more information. But if you use Phantom Master, you can download and target, you know, what is your ideal profile look like that you're trying to target.

Figure out how to go scrape the thousand people that match that, then automate a message out that sends out to, to them, which you can use LinkedIn to do through Phantom Buster and you can actually automate it. So now you might actually spend three hours of time, but you're actually going to continuously contact a thousand people, 500 people, etc.

So you can actually become more scalable and then build a process in which like say they schedule on your calendar, etc. And now you can actually like even save a lot of time and sort of start to build something a little bit more scalable, right? And I think it's with.

And then try to ab test your messaging, right? Is your messaging working? How? Option A, option B, right?

So Champion Challenger, if it's whichever one is doing better, cut the challenger, keep the champion, do it again, right? Add a new challenger, right? And just keep AB testing on everything. And it's almost a mindset, right?

You got to do it on this, you got to do on your product, you know, you got to do it kind of through every little thing because you're trying to optimize so many different pieces in a startup.

Jothy Rosenberg:

So let me just shift the conversation towards. Yeah, future facing. You're the passion you have for this has come through loud and clear.

What excites you the most about the Future of Blockchain Web3 as you've explained Web3 to us?

Aly Madhavji:

Absolutely.

I think, I think what's very, very exciting, you know, in it right now is the ability that this technology is going to go out and help millions and millions of people in their everyday lives in this cycle.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

So in the past what's been this sort of a challenge is a lot of technology has almost been built for either like trading, it's been built for crypto natives and it hasn't been very simple, hasn't been very easy to use.

In the last cycle you had a lot of people think they were using blockchain and were using centralized tools like Block by Celsius, ftx which of course all imploded and, and had a lot of people lose hard earned money and went home Thanksgiving etc and told people, hey, this industry is terrible. And you know, there's, there's some merit to that.

And I think we've damaged a lot of consumer interest in the space because of some of those challenges from centralized practices which in reality weren't even blockchain.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

Like ftx, Block by Celsius weren't actually using blockchain, those were centralized products. And so, you know, I think there's some challenges, some misconceptions, but I think this is the cycle where it really goes mainstream.

Aly Madhavji:

Right.

Aly Madhavji:

I mean, for example, we've got a company called Credit that's basically helping to do remittances between Africa and the US and vice versa.

And it also helps anyone to basically get small credit, you know, using usdc, Rails in Africa and sub Saharan Africa and soon in the US and this is, you know, pretty transformational. We're talking about millions and millions of people that have already gotten loans today using this technology.

And it's, and this is like fundamentally important for creating, you know, potentially millions of jobs in the future because each of these people are going to take small loans, they're going to build, you know, small businesses, potentially pay other things. But you know, that's going to help drive the economy.

And when you think about developed economies, it's the ability to access in large part borrowing lendings and savings products which form the core of banking.

Well, you've got a billion people today that don't have banking, that are cut out of our banking system, that don't have identities, etcetera and like, blockchain has the tech potential to leapfrog that and actually solve these problems. So I'm very, very excited about that.

But today, you know, you could even go on to the App Store right now and you could download the Miss World app or you could download the Hockey News. If you're a fan of, you know, the NHL and, you know, all 32 NHL teams, you can actually see and, and comment and like, posts, etc.

And every single comment, every single, like, every single post is actually on chain. It's actually on Web three.

And one of the benefits here is it actually helps, you know, businesses to get away from the reliance on things like Google or X in terms of owning all your data, owning your customer relationships as a business. And so you can actually get away from that. And it actually promotes, like, independent journalists.

Aly Madhavji:

Right?

Aly Madhavji:

I mean, you see journalists, regardless of what side of the spectrum, getting shut down or getting, you know, cut off from advertisers, etcetera, because of their viewpoints or because of what are they're covering.

But, you know, I'm, I'm a very big proponent in, you know, making sure we have a world in which we promote these freedoms, allow, you know, people to, you know, share what they need to share and not get cut off.

And it doesn't matter what side of the spectrum you're on, because if you're saying, hey, it's the other side of the spectrum that's getting off today, like, think about what's happening tomorrow, right? And we've seen this pendulum swing in both ways.

And so, you know, we need ways and technologies that even allow us to, you know, build the future world that we want to see. And I think we're getting there, actually, with some of this technology.

Jothy Rosenberg:

Well, Ali, this is great to learn about. We haven't had anybody on, on this show talk about blockchain who, you know, knows as much as you do about it.

Everybody that's watching this one, I think, has learned a lot about blockchain and that you're, you know, an active investor in it skin, that you're a knowledgeable founder as well. I think you've got a nice sort of. That's a nice package. And I really appreciate you spending this time with us.

Aly Madhavji:

Thank you. My pleasure.

And if, you know, you want to learn more about the blockchain space, we just launched a TV show on Amazon Prime Video, so it's called Cryptonite. It's with Adrian Grenier from Entourage, if you remember, Vinnie Chase and Kim Lee from Bling Empire.

So it's a great way to, you know one have some entertainment but to learn about web3 and blockchain in a in a fun way and so check it out on Amazon prime and hopefully you like it and but you get more immersed in trying out and you know any of these emerging technologies because I think as any, you know, young person today, you want to go learn about these technologies, you want to embrace them and you want to figure out and sort of build your own opinions around these different technologies.

Jothy Rosenberg:

Absolutely. Well, great. I really appreciate your your time. Thank you so much.

Aly Madhavji:

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jothy Rosenberg:

Now here's your startup founder toolkit takeaway 1 the Focus Formula Ali's key insight is to focus on progress over time. How much can you accomplish in as little time as possible? Don't try to solve 20 problems. Pick one thing and execute it faster than anyone else.

Speed of execution often beats perfection. Takeaway number two the customer delivery Hack Here's Ali's brilliant customer discovery strategy. Everyone loves to complain about broken systems.

Before you build anything, find 30 to 50 people frustrated with the problem you're trying to solve. Let them vent. Involve them in your solution and they'll become your first champions and advocates. Takeaway number three the alignment meeting.

Implement Ally's simple but powerful process one hour per week with your co founders breaking down progress across four product, marketing, finance and operations. Most funder conflicts come from misalignment, and this weekly sync prevents those costly breakdowns before they happen. That's our episode with Ali.

Until next time. Keep designing your success. The show notes contain useful resources and links. Please follow and rate us@podchaser.com designing successful startups.

Also, please share and like us on your social media channels. This is Jothi Rosenberg saying TTFN Tata for now.

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