The latest episode of The Blockcrunch Podcast by Jason Choi welcomes Tascha. Tascha has co-founded Alpha Finance, a project which helped innovate around some of the most popularized features of DeFi today.
Since then, the project has pivoted to become Alpha Venture DAO, allowing Tascha to use her experience as a founder of multiple products to help incubate and assist other teams building in crypto. She is also a mentor at Tangent, using her experience to help budding founders.
Read our notes to learn about Tascha’s experiences founding, and working with other founders in crypto.
Background on Alpha Venture DAO / Alpha Finance
● Started in 2020 as a DeFi lab (Alpha Finance Lab).
● The core thesis of supporting Web3 and DeFi as the major use case of crypto hasn’t changed.
● The goal of Alpha Finance was to experiment with creating multiple products and innovate at the forefront of Web3, helping build new projects.
● Helped pave the way for the leveraged yield farming category with their product Alpha Homora.
● Alpha Homora lead the way for things in LP pricing, and using LPs as collateral.
● At its peak, Alpha Homora had a TVL of $3 billion, with users around the world.
● More recently have released products Alpha X and Alpha Buy Wall.
Motivation Behind Building Alpha Homora
● The key is to catch the right narrative at the right time.
● Back in 2020, yield farming became the best narrative to use for growth and they wanted to capitalize on that.
● DeFi products at the time were capital inefficient, with a lot of room for improvement in the space.
How Has Alpha Venture DAO Evolved Over Time?
● What they’d done at Alpha Finance has expanded and transitioned over to become Alpha Venture DAO.
● The vision has remained the same; to build successful DeFi dApps.
● Have expanded to become an incubator as well with Alpha Venture DAO, as they realized building 100% original products in-house is not scalable.
● Alpha Venture DAO can be thought of as a Web3 builder and incubator.
● They are sector agnostic but have preferences regarding projects they want to build and incubate.
How To Identify Sustainable Trends
● There isn’t a general framework for products, but multiple variables that should be considered.
● People are much more hesitant to push the boundary and try new protocols in a bear market. They stick with what is proven to work.
● Catching the right narrative and building something that can utilize widespread market attention is important.
● Have to find a balance between catching a narrative and then building sustainable value in the long term.
Long-Term vs. Short-Term Problems
Jason Choi
● Painkiller products: products with long term view aim to solve massive problems
● Vitamin products: products that solve smaller day to day issues that users experience
● Contrary to traditional investing, painkiller products seem to do better in crypto.
Tascha
● As the space is new, predicting what’s going to happen in the future is difficult.
● As a new project, it is easier to come into the limelight from a short-term problem or narrative. After some time they can pivot their strategy and focus on a longer-term vision.
● In a bear market, it is better to solve for long-term, larger scale problems. (painkiller products)
● An ideal product pipeline could involve initially finding a small and sharp pain point to solve and then expanding from there.
What is Tascha Interested in?
● Within DeFi, she is excited about insurance products, which include risk management tools. She specifically thinks products that appeal to institutions that have issues using DeFi can find success.
● Within NFTs, she is excited about the bridge between Web2 and Web3 artists. She’s also interested in the utility being built around NFTs.
● Providing NFT data is also a good opportunity to build a product around.
What to Look For in Founders
● The founder should have a long-term vision.
● Professionalism is also important.
● A ‘never give up’ attitude and a fighting spirit is another factor that Tascha looks for in founders.
● Dynamics between co-founders help identify who is keeping who accountable in what area.
Advice for Founders and Investors?
● Founders often try to make it seem like their project is doing as good as possible, when investors may appreciate more transparency regarding how they are currently doing.
● Investors should keep in mind that there are a lot of complications in projects they are invested in.
● Best to just help founders build without thinking of the investment.