Techstars Alchemist Blockchain Accelerator — Recap of Week 3

I recently joined Techstars Alchemist Blockchain Accelerator as a Business Associate in New York City. Over 13 weeks, I look forward to working with the inaugural class comprised of 10 inspiring early-stage blockchain startups (Alkemi, AnyLedger.io, Autom(8), Blockade Games, Embleema, Gilded, Paperchain, Paperstreet, Trixta, Veracity Protocol.)

The following provides a high-level overview of Week 3 of the accelerator program as well as a few personal insights.

Re-read recaps of Week 1 and Week 2 to get up to speed.

TL;DR

• Mentor Madness: Part 2
• Alogrand Technical Partner Presentation
• MasterClass: Lean Startup Dropbox Case
• Founder Story: Mike Dudas, Founder & CEO of The Block
• Master Class: Power of the Network with John Hill
• TED Talk: Isra Garcia
• CasperLabs Launch with Vlad Zamfir

Mentor Madness: Part 2

28 mentor meetings over the course of 3 days. 20 minutes in-person and virtual meetings with industry thoughts leaders, blockchain professionals, and functional experts. This is the power of Techstars mentorship-driven process.

Thank you to this week’s incredible list of Mentors:

1. Alex Hardy — COO at Liveoak Technologies — @canthardywait
2. Alexandra Levin Kramer — Partner at CKR Law — @KryptoKramer
3. Andrea Ballarini— COO at Fabrica —@andreaballarini
4. Ben Arnon — CEO at Color Farm Media —@BenArnon
5. Ben Cherian — Independent — @bencherian
6. Blake Johnson — Co-Founder at Crypto NYC — @blake41
7. Christopher DeMayo — Partner & Practice Leader of Tech at Withum — @cdemayoWSB
8. David Garcia — Managing Partner at Algo Capital — @gdavideh
9. David J. Namdar — Investor at Abound Capital — @namdar
10. Eric Cantor — EIR at Consensys — @ecantor
11. Garin Toren — CEO & Co-founder at messageLoud — @garintoren
12. Isra García — Principal at IG — @Israel_Garcia
13. Jackie Miller — Independent —
14. Jenny Fielding — Managing Director at Techstars — @jefielding
15. John Hill — VP of Networks at Techstars — @techstarsjohn
16. Jon Zanoff — Managing Director at Techstars Barclays Accelerator — @JonZanoff
17. jonathan levin — COO at Chainalysis — @jony_levin
18. Leon Perlman — Head at Digital Financial Services Observatory —
19. Michael Bucella — Partner at BlockTower Capital — @mikebucella
20. Natalie Fratto — Vice President & Canadian Expansion at Silicon Valley Bank — @NatalieFratto
21. Riccardo Spagni — Lead Developer at Monero — @fluffypony
22. robin albin — Founder at Insurgents — @Wordsmitty
23. Sachin Jatly — Managing Partners at Tessera Ventures
24. Scarlett Sieber — Independent Advisor — @ScarlettSieber
25. Scott Sigel — Head of Business Development at Arwen — @scottsigel
26. Shaun Johnson — Co-Founder at Startup Institute — @idealexit
27. Sydney Lai — Independent Advisor— @sydneylai
28. Ty Danco — Program Director at Independent — @tydanco
29. Tyler Markley — Director, Product Strategy at Algorand — @6o3tm

Teams started securing their first few lead mentors, continued with customer discovery meetings, and are steps closer to nailing down their KPIs. This week I had the opportunity to follow AnyLedger, Paperstreet, and Alkemi through their mentor meetings.

Algorand Technical Partner

We had Tyler Markley, Director of Product Strategy at Algorand, come in and teach us about the Algorand protocol.

Algorand Overview

• Algorand is a technology that fulfills the promise of blockchain through a platform that solves the “blockchain trilemma” by offering the decentralization, scalability, and security necessary for both businesses and developers. Algorand is positioned to address the blockchain’s scaling challenges through rapid and efficient user consensus (Byzantine Agreements), enabling micro transactions regardless of transaction volume or number of users. Algorand’s transaction throughput and time to finality (<5 seconds) are expected to result in high performance.
• Algorand was founded in 2017 by Silvio Micali, an MIT professor. Silvio is the recipient of the Turing Award (computer science), of the Goedel Prize (theoretical computer science) and the RSA prize (cryptography). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
• The company raised $66M in equity funding from ~40 investors, including Union Square Ventures, Pillar, Algo Capital, and strategic partners like China Merchant Bank.
• The protocol is live on a testnet and developers can sign up at developer.algorand.org.

Masterclass Lean Startup: Dropbox

Yossi Hasson led us through a workshop on the Lean Startup methodology using an HBS case covering the growth of Dropbox.

Dropbox is a VC-backed startup, founded in 2006, that provides online storage and backup services to customers using a freemium business model. The case recounts Dropbox’s early growth days, when Founder & CEO Drew Houston makes decisions about new product features, how to target enterprise customers, and whether to pursue distribution deals.

While business school provided me with a lot of opportunities to learn using the case method, this session was particularly effective. Experienced founders devised and defended solutions to the problems presented in the case. Talk about experiential learning. The discussion was particularly interesting as the cohort dissected Drew Houston’s decisions and dove into the qualities of a successful entrepreneur.

Key Takeaways

• Certain traits define a successful entrepreneur:

• The “Lean Startup” by Eric Ries is a treasure trove for developing and managing early-stage businesses and products. The methodology aims to shorten product development cycles and rapidly discover if a proposed business model is viable (MVP anyone?). This is achieved by adopting a combination of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning.

• Risk and value are inversely proportional: when you remove risk, you increase value. But it matters in what sequence you tackle risks because not all of them are created equal. Risks should be uncovered and hedged in order of their importance and affordability: deal-killers first; then the risk of settling too early on a strategic direction; and finally, operational risks that can be disposed of quickly or cheaply. Entrepreneurs should initially focus on validating demand and understanding their product-mix. Addressing these 2 risks first creates disproportionate value quickly.

• Despite the stereotypes to the contrary, the best entrepreneurs are relentless about managing risks — as the risk level of a new venture goes down, its value goes up.
• Run small, cheap, fast experiments.

Founder Story: Mike Dudas, Founder of The Block

We had the privilege of having Mike Dudas come in to discuss his background and experience founding The Block, a leading media and information brand in the blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem. Mike previously co-founded Button and worked at Venmo and PayPal.

His Founder Talk was incredibly honest and thoughtful. I highly admire Mike’s vision to simplify crypto via education. His team’s investigative journalism has been critical in driving transparency to the industry and holding market participants accountable. The company recently launched the Block Genesis, a premium paid newsletter.

Master Class: Power of the Network

We had the infamous John Hill (VP of Network @ Techstars) coming in to teach us about the Power of the Network and how to capitalize on it!

Networking is about recognizing and taking advantage of valuable relationships to get things done and to achieve a goal. The breadth of the Techstars network is truly impressive — 10,000+ mentors, 300,000+ alumni, and 1900+ companies. John demystified how to use LinkedIn and Techstars’ internal tools to maximize the value of the network.

TED Talk: Isra Garcia

The pace at an accelerator is rapid — it’s the equivalent of 1 year of work in 3 months. Luckily, we had Isra García teach us his approach to lifestyle hacking with a holistic high-performance algorithm.

Isra has developed a series of 126 lifestyle hacks that he applies to his life daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, semi-annually, and annually.

Some of my favorites:

• Smiling;
• Drinking extra virgin olive oil in the morning;
• Meditation;
• Mindfulness practice with yoga;
• Writing;
• Laughing time;
• Daily learnings / victories / defeats;

CasperLabs

Finally, the week capped off with the Casper Labs VIP launch event with Vlad Zamfir.

CasperLabs launched with the aim of building a new blockchain based on a version of proof-of-stake (PoS), an experimental consensus protocol. PoS systems have significant efficiency and power usage improvements.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Vlad Zamfir announced he will serve as lead consensus protocol architect of the company. Going forward, CasperLabs plans to sponsor much of Zamfir’s research on PoS so as to deploy a “fully decentralized, sharded and scalable next-generation blockchain.”

Sharding 101