Nikil Viswanathan: Leading the fastest-growing company in history
Nikil’s thoughts on what makes a great entrepreneur and his advice for college students
Nikil is the Co-Founder and CEO of Alchemy. He graduated from Stanford with a BS and MS in Computer Science and built consumer apps after college. He launched Alchemy with Joe Lau in 2020, and it has since become the world’s leading blockchain and web3 development platform. Alchemy is hailed as the fastest-growing company in history, going from public launch to a $10 billion valuation in 18 months.
Here are four takeaways from my conversation with Nikil:
1. The earlier the field, the greater the opportunity for impact
I asked Nikil his thoughts on the recent AI craze — how Stanford AI and ML class enrollments are through the roof, and blockchain classes have trended down. Nikil made three interesting points:
- For one, AI and blockchain have very different timelines. The discoveries that laid the groundwork for AI happened 50–70 years ago, while Satoshi’s whitepaper was published in 2009. Nikil emphasizes just how nascent blockchain is, comparing it to the Newtonian days of physics.
- Blockchain is an entirely new paradigm in computing, while AI is not. If you consider the three main shifts in computing — machines following instructions, machines exchanging information, and machines exchanging value — AI it is simply a combination of the first two. Blockchain (machines exchanging value) unlocks use cases and applications that are not possible with AI.
- Lastly, the technology itself is not the most important part of a product. The mark of a valuable product is not having to think about the technology behind it — no one talks about multithreading when using a mac or HTTP protocol when browsing websites. At the end of the day, AI and blockchain are both tools by which value can be created. AI as a tool is farther along in terms of use cases and adoption, but Nikil points out that the value of blockchain as a technology is not an open question, it’s a matter of when and how.
Nikil and the Alchemy team see a massive opportunity ahead due to the early stage of blockchain as a technology. And, because Alchemy represents an infrastructure layer — analogous to how most of the internet runs on AWS — the “how” aspect is not a risk.
2. Great entrepreneurs show speed and consistency over time
Nikil’s co-founder Joe has said, “The big don’t eat the small, the fast eat the slow.” When they were building consumer apps, they would dress up as Berkeley students, ask students for feedback, recode the app based on that feedback, and show it to the next person. They cut the two-month iteration cycle of most apps down to minutes. Nikil and Joe have shown the same commitment to speed at Alchemy, even though they sell an enterprise developer product.
Speed is crucial to getting something off the ground, but consistency over time is what creates something enduring.
Nikil enjoys studying other great businesses, both inside and outside of tech, and he pointed to an example I hadn’t considered: Taylor Swift and her recent $1B tour. There are a lot of artists who have a couple of great songs and fade away, but Taylor has continued to deliver on what initially captured fans. She still hustles, writes her own songs, tries new things, and consistently puts out a large volume of work. Tying it back to tech, Nikil points to Mark Zuckerberg, who has talked to him about how Facebook started as one of many side projects. Mark had built nine others before it, and there was no particular sign that this would be the one to stick.
Great entrepreneurs are prolific — they have a propensity to create, and, more importantly, to keep creating.
3. College is the best time to start a company
Nikil believes that college is the best time to start a company, and not everyone would agree with him — students lack the work experience, professional networks, and maturity of those who wait until their 30s or 40s. That said, young entrepreneurs have three things that are oftentimes more important: Speed, Risk Tolerance, and Energy.
Students have fewer responsibilities and more time, meaning they can iterate and ship quickly. Yes, many college students are busy, but being in an acapella group and doing part-time research is not the same as having kids and a mortgage. Along the same lines, it’s easier to recruit co-founders and early employees: College campuses have a high density of high-caliber people, and those people have a higher tolerance for risk. Lastly, it doesn’t hurt that pulling an all-nighter doesn’t take much of a toll in your twenties.
The company you build in college probably won’t be as big as Microsoft or Meta, but it will inform how you approach the second one. That was the case for Nikil — he spent years building consumer apps, and at Alchemy, a major driver of their success has been bringing the speed of consumer products to enterprise sales cycles. More importantly, he learned that he works incredibly well with his co-founder, Joe Lau.
4. Focus on the people you surround yourself with, not your grades
Incoming college students face the temptation to focus on the same things they did in high school: coursework, grades, and extra-curriculars.
If your aspiration is to start a company, that’s probably not the right way to approach it; the single most important thing you can do is build meaningful connections with great people. The vast majority of the time, that’s not going to come from a short interaction at a pre-business club; it’s going to come from late-night conversations in the hallway of your dorm, fountain hopping, or in Nikil’s case, meeting Joe Lau through as a TA in CS 145, Stanford’s database class. Classes and clubs can be valuable, but few people really think about the opportunity cost of their time and make a conscious decision to say yes to some things and no to others.
Putting entrepreneurship aside, Nikil emphasizes that college is an incredibly special time of your life. He made friends he still talks to today, pulled epic pranks (listen to the podcast for more details), and had the chance to mentor younger students as a CS TA and RA in the dorms. His biggest piece of advice: Soak up the time you have on campus.
For the full interview, check out the Seed Stage Stories podcast! If you have questions, feedback, or suggestions for this blog, you can reach me at emcasey@stanford.edu
