Please tell us more about your background, how you got interested in blockchain & DeFi and what you are currently working on?
My name is Benjamin; I'm currently building newsroom, the place where readers can fund crypto articles they want to see in the world and get a stake in their success.
My first contact with the world of DeFi was when I joined Request in March 2018. It goes without saying that it was a brutal time to join DeFi. I was confused. Why was everyone so pessimistic? Why did everyone hate every single project? It was weird for me. I had come in from a purely technical perspective and found it fascinating. I had never owned any BTC and didn't even know what CoinMarketCap was - I was late to the party. Tech was still the same,it was people's perception that had changed.
What have been your most important failures and what did you learn from them?
My biggest failure was a 4-year prolonged effort to go into medicine. At 23, I was jobless, unpartnered, and slowly emerging out of the drug-crazed party life. I applied to about 20 jobs. This culminated in a humiliating trial for a position at Carrefour as a cashier. I was up against another young person. At the end of the trial, the interviewer said: "It was a hard decision, you were both terrible.", and then pointing at me, said: "But. you were worse."
If you could change anything from the past, what would you do differently?
I decline to answer this question due to unforeseen butterfly effects.
What is the slight moment which changed everything for you?
I almost passed on an incredible opportunity in January 2018. I was in a short but intense long-distance relationship. The person I was involved with happened to be interning at a recruitment agency. One day while visiting, she invited me to pass by her office to talk to one of her co-workers. This person presented 3 companies looking for a full-stack developer, one of which was Request - I politely declined. A few days later, we decided not to pursue our relationship.I was devastated and, on a whim, called up the recruiter so I could get a chance to interview for Request.
What soft & hard skills have been most helpful in helping you succeed in DeFi?
One of my main skills is thinking about why. Many engineers are plagued by thinking about the how question. The ultimate x100 productive hack is to know why you're building something. You can avoid months of unnecessary work by trying to ask why more often.
A few days ago, I did a required "personality" test to apply an accelerator. I scored 99% on the reflection trait. I don't care much about what tests usually say, but this one got me thinking. When you're operating in a highly innovative industry, you can't just blindly apply methodologies that have worked well in the past. We're very susceptible to survivor's bias. Humans are pattern recognition machines, but you need to take a step back and ask yourself: "Is this a similar situation, or does it just look similar."
How have DeFi and blockchain changed your life?
It gave me a more optimistic look at life. DeFi has made it drastically easier to join what use to be ultra elitist institutions, such as market makers, by allowing anyone to participate as liquidity providers. I think this is just a glimpse of what the future holds.
What problem does your project solve?
We're using blockchain technology to decentralize how information gets funded. From the side of the readers, that means better information and enjoying the financial upsides of the content they help finance.
From the writer's side, since everyone writes using pseudonyms (wallet addresses), that means equal access to opportunities since you're not judged on your fancy resume, just on the content. As well as transparent compensation & protection of their identity.
How do you manage to grow your project and find clients?
While we're building the infrastructure necessary to make this product come to life at scale, we're still kind of operating through word of mouth.
What's the most important or impactful project outside DeFi you created ?What made it so important or impactful?
I worked on prologe.io (very confusing since it's the same name as the current project), which is a start-up studio that offered free development of an MVP to help non-technical founders get their ideas off the ground.
It was important to founders because it gave them a shot to launch something too complex for a no-code app, and it was important to me because it taught me how to evaluate ideas & people I'd want to work with.
Twice a month,
the best stories straight into your inbox
What is a typical day for you? What are your work habits?
Experimentation is baked into my daily routines, so what I'll tell you today might not be how my routine will look in a few months.
The morning routine usually goes something like this:
- warm-up exercises (~20 min)
- meditate (~30 min)
- gym (every 2nd day 1h)
At newsroom, we have weekly goals that we set together with my co-founder Laurent. We review our goals every week and discuss what went wrong and how we can improve.
I start every day with the question, "What is the single most important thing I can do today?" and come back to this very question before going to bed. I've built & broken many habits over the years. After reading Antifragile from Nassim Taleb, I started practicing stress-testing my habits.
e.g., if I'm used to going to a specific gym at a particular time, I switch up the time or pretend the gym is closed. This allows me to build more resilient habits that survive change, such as suddenly going into lockdown or moving out (which I do quite often).
What is different working as a founder for DeFi & blockchain topics?
I really believe in the ethos of launching fast. I was always a bit skeptical of founders telling me they were planning to work on their product for 5 - 6 months before ever having a single user touch it. Building a DeFI product has really challenged my ideas of this reality. But I still believe in it and it has pushed me to become significantly more creative in how I can achieve delivering value to the users.
Which tools do you use in your daily life as a founder?
Discord, roam research (where I'm writing this from) and stoic.
What are the best resources you follow to be always up to date on the DeFi and your niche?
What is your favorite DeFi Project?
I really like the general philosophy of Yearn. Andre has been working on a problem-centered approach. Most DeFi companies are stuck in the famous [solution searching for a problem] cycle. It's also proof to anyone out there that it's possible to build a crypto product in a lean way and without any prior investments.
Among the people you’ve interacted with in DeFi, who do you admire most and why?
Chris from Request. I saw him weather the bear market through relentless focus and integrity. I read Julien's post on DEFI CREATORS the other day and saw we share the same opinion.
What is your vision for your niche? What do you expect to come in the next few years? What developments in the field do you find to be the most exciting?
Our niche today is funding crypto content. But we believe the model that we will use to fund content there will apply to all writers. We believe everyone is a writer. Unfortunately, today's creator economy is organized in a way that mainly benefits people with great distribution (influencers, etc.). But that's just a tiny chunk of the population. There's an untapped source of writers that write great content but can't make a living because they cannot distribute their content well - we want to change that.
What kinds of challenges do you look for today?
I'm the kind of person who gets a kick out of going from chaos to order. I also read a lot about various unrelated subjects. By starting a crypto publishing company, I get to exercise the multi-disciplinary skills I've honed over the past.
Any tips for the beginners who aspire to work in this domain, but feel completely overwhelmed to even start competing?
Read about whatever interests you and follow your curiosity. Wander off the tech-bro book path.
Read about financial history. Don't look down on CeFi, understand where it comes from.
Build something. However small, however ridiculous. Not inspired? Here are two weird ideas that pop through my head:
- Ever thought you should've HODL? Build a smart contract where you can lock some ETH there, and it doesn't allow you to return it before a set date.
- Want to write more? Build a smart contract that uses an oracle to see if you publish articles at a given rate and sends money to your least favorite DeFi projects when you don't match the criteria.
