André NevesAndré Neves

Bitcoin Startup Day 2024

March 14, 2024 (8m ago)469 views

Earlier this year, I was invited by the great Car Gonzalez to give a keynote presentation at the Bitcoin Startup Day by PlebLab in Austin, Texas. The event was put together by PlebLab and WolfNYC and hosted at the wonderful Bitcoin Commons in Downtown Austin.

My talk was titled being a founder sucks and it was a tongue-and-cheek way of explaining the roller coaster of experiences and lessons I have learned from my journey as a founder.

In my talk I covered how as a founder you are constantly faced with the unknown, and how you have to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. I voiced how virtually everything that could go wrong will likely go wrong, and how you have to be flexible and swift to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of being a founder.

Being a Bitcoin founder however, means that the entire world is against you. You represent disruption, change to the status quo. Incumbents will do everything in their power to stop you, and you have to be prepared for that. SaaS providers will hate you and deplatform you for 'bitcoin', banks won't give you basic operating accounts, advertisers will shut their doors on your products, and so on. It's a constant battle, especially when most people and businesses out in the world simply do not care about Bitcoin -- they are all plugged into the matrix.

I spoke about how as a founder you will have the toughest decisions to make, how you will have no work-life balance, how you basically won't ever sleep, and how you will go bald and grow grey hair (from experience).

But it's all just part of the journey. Founders are obsessive, relentless, and they are the ones who change the world. They are the ones who build the future. They are the ones who make the impossible possible.

As a founder you will push yourself to such extremes that you'll discover entirely new limits for your own capabilities. You will learn more about yourself than you ever thought possible. As a founder you will learn-by-doing and because of that you will suddenly find yourself as an SME / expert in a variety of disciplines and verticals of your business. You will become a master of all trades, and you will be able to do things that you never thought you could do.

As a Bitcoin founder, your creations will change lives. Your products will impact people at a global scale. You will be part of the revolution that is Bitcoin, and you will be part of the change that is coming.

Bitcoiners build for a brighter future, and that's what makes being a Bitcoin founder entirely worth it -- we build the future now!

Being a founder is the toughest, yet most rewarding thing you can do in life.

The slides can be viewed here -- being a founder sucks, but the video of the talk will be available soon.

I also had the pleasure of participating in a panel titled The Future of Bitcoin with Christopher David of OpenAgents, David DiNeno of Satlantis, and moderated by Brandon Keys of GreenCandle. We discussed how Bitcoin is affecting change and disrupting every industry around the world, and we did a deeper dive on the Gaming and AI industries.

The results of the TopBuilder competition were also presented at the Bitcoin Startup Day and it was a great opportunity to see the amazing projects that were built during the competition.

After much deliberation the judges awarded the grand prize to Yopaki, a project that aims to make it easier to onboard millions into Bitcoin using gamification. Yopaki relies on ZBD's Bitcoin Lightning API infrastructure to power payments and rewards, so I'm thrilled see what the future holds for the team!

Francisco Chavarria (founder of Yopaki) - @franciscobtc

I had an amazing time at the Bitcoin Startup Day and I'm looking forward to the next one! I want to thank all the organizers, sponsors, and attendees for making it such a great event. Special thanks to Car Gonzalez and the PlebLab team for the invitation and for putting together such a high signal-to-noise competition.

G, Car, BHD, AN -- the crew