Relentless
00:14:03 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[00:14:03] S1: Why do you think most people get that wrong? [00:14:05] S0: I think it's just lack of experience, but it's also... It takes another layer of processing in your mind. I don't know. You have to actually simulate the other person's brain in your brain to some degree. I mean, it's not like running a full simulation, but it's like a lightweight simulation, and you have to predict and interpret. So, I mean, it's partly probably an IQ thing, but I don't I don't... That sounds like mean. Don't like... Sound like... I actually think lots of people could do it if they were just practiced it a little bit more. Like, you have to not give into your first instinct, which is just to blurt out the thing you really are upset about. [00:14:39] S1: Going back to kind of the moment that you were founding Coinbase, there's this interesting video online of you and Paul Graham practicing the pitch at Y Combinator, and I think it was like 2012. What was it like doing that with him back in those days?
00:14:39 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[00:14:39] S1: Going back to kind of the moment that you were founding Coinbase, there's this interesting video online of you and Paul Graham practicing the pitch at Y Combinator, and I think it was like 2012. What was it like doing that with him back in those days? [00:14:54] S0: Yeah. Well, Paul Graham's a legend. You know, I had read almost all of his writing on his public website, which is still there, and I really admired him. He... I... He was like he's like a hero of mine. Right? I... And I... My dream was to kinda get accepted into Y Combinator. I applied several times. Like, finally, I got accepted with the the idea for Coinbase. And it was great to have access to someone like that and the other partners who were there. Like Sam Altman was running it at the time, and Gary Tan was there, and he was one of the partners. And Paul McCoy, Jessica Livingston. And and many of these folks are now doing amazing things in the world, and Gary's running YC now. So I really felt like I had gone to Mecca. You know? Like, we were living in a golden age of innovation and software. Like, this was my moment to shoot my shot, and I was sitting around, like, these people that were that were my heroes. Right? And it's actually kind of intimidating, like, when you're... You know, if you're really, like, excited about somebody and then you... Finally, you're in the room and you're like, you don't wanna say something stupid or whatever. Right? [00:15:51] S1: Especially the first time that you're doing that. [00:15:52] S0: Yeah. It gets
00:15:52 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
[00:15:52] S0: Yeah. It gets [00:15:53] S1: a little easier after the, like, tenth person that you've, you know, only ever seen online. [00:15:57] S0: Exactly. And there's actually something very valuable about getting in the room with these people by any way, shape, or form you can because you start to realize, like, they're not, like, on some pedestal. Like, they are human, and they're incredibly impressive, and you can learn from them, but they're not, like... Fundamentally, they're made of the same stuff as you. And you can take the best parts from them, and they can be a mentor, and then you can also do your own thing. So anyway, in that moment, I was really just trying to, like, if Paul Graham tells me something, I'm gonna try to do it. You know? I'm gonna try to internalize it. I didn't have enough ego or too much ego to say, like, I know better than this. I'm like, this guy has literally helped, like, thousands of companies get off the ground. If he tells me something, I'm just gonna default do it and not try to be super innovative. I'm first just gonna learn from the masters, the best the best practices. [00:16:41] S1: I think the best people in history learn from the greats and, like, copy as much as they possibly can before start, like, innovating on their own. [00:16:47] S0: Yeah. It's dangerous as a beginner to be like, know, I'm gonna do my own thing. It's like... I think that is dangerous.
00:16:47 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
[00:16:47] S0: Yeah. It's dangerous as a beginner to be like, know, I'm gonna do my own thing. It's like... I think that is dangerous. [00:16:52] S1: It's like going into a kitchen and just starting, you know, fucking with shit. Yeah. Fred Wilson was talking about this in in the Coinbase documentary right before you guys went public. And he said there's... He's never seen another cofounder, like, give their other cofounder more equity in hindsight, in, like, retrospect. What did you see in Fred Ehrsam when you were first meeting him, getting to know him, building that relationship? And then what made you do that decision?
00:17:17 · Brian Armstrong
[00:17:17] S0: Yeah. Well, Fred Ehrsam, who co founded Coinbase with me, I mean, he's he's a beast. You know? And there's a lot of things I saw early on as we started working together. But I think the key thing that made me... I'll I'll talk about that in a second. I think the key thing that made me wanna give him more equity was I knew we were just starting out on this journey. He had... We had tried working together for a few months or something like that, and I was like, okay. This guy is the real deal. Like, he's... This is going much better than I expected. And I knew the company was gonna go through crazy ups and downs. And, you know, if I ever... If I felt... I knew... I was basically preempting this moment where there was gonna be a big down, and if he didn't feel like he had real ownership, then he would probably... He would bail or whatever. You know? And so I was like, okay. I... If this is the real deal, I gotta get this guy even more bought in. I I like Fred Wilson's comment, and it made... It makes me sound, like, magnanimous. I think it was... It... You know, it was all mutually beneficial, but that's the point of, like, building something with someone is you can actually... It's greater greater than the sum of the parts of what you could do individually. But, yeah, what I noticed with working with Fred early on, because Coinbase had just come out of Y Combinator. Fred was really the first person that I connected with, and we're like, all let's try working together for a few weeks. And he started adding value from day one. I mean, had studied computer science, but he also had done FX trading at Goldman Sachs. He deeply understood finance. He was a jack of all trades. So he was just like, I'm going to start recruiting people. I'm going to start doing customer support. I'm going to write some code. And then he also started doing a bunch of stuff that I didn't even think of, which is like analyzing the flow of funds through the app. And he came back one day and he was like, I think we're losing money on every sale of Bitcoin. And I'm like, how could that be possible? And he whiteboarded the whole thing out, and then there was time value of money on this step and blah, blah. And I was like, oh, my gosh. He's right. So this was an... That was just one example. The other big thing was his work ethic.
00:19:06 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
I mean, we were there till, like, you know, one or two in the morning every night, just working crazy hours, and he was all in for that. He's he's a very intense competitive person, and when he puts his mind to something, there's, like, nothing stopping him. And I think that relentless drive was really critical to Coinbase's success. And, yeah, I mean, Coinbase wouldn't have succeeded, I don't think, without Fred there in the early days helping get it off the ground. [00:19:28] S1: What do you think that he did that you just could not have done on your own?