Why Crypto Has a Brain Drain Problem | Dom & Phil Kwok
episode
Talking Tokens: Crypto, Onchain Finance, Investing
48 min
3 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
How did Dom and Phil start their sibling‑run crypto education business?
Just on the AI side, the valuations are obviously very high. Maybe they'll come down a bit. I think that in terms of usage, I don't think there's a usage bubble. I don't think it's like everybody's using AI now today and then they're going to suddenly stop. AI has now empowered anybody to be an entrepreneur. And even just most people in the world in general haven't yet realized how much power you can get from having access to Fable. Literally anybody can start their own business. And so we have now this full complete funnel where anybody can learn about these blockchains, get IdeaMarket fit for it, and find their first backers.
Today's guests are Dom Kwok and Phil Kwok, the co-founders of Easy A, a platform for developers and consumers to learn about blockchains. Guys, welcome on.
Thanks for posting us.
Yeah. Okay. I've got to start by asking, and I think by the look of it, you guys are brothers, right? Cause you have the same last name and you guys kind of look like well-guessed.
Yes.
Otherwise we would have had to cancel that intro. Um, why did you guys decide to start a business together? And what's that like working with a sibling?
We'd actually been building stuff as kids. So when we were at school, we'd always been building high school and then university as well. Dom and I co-founded two startups, eggs did both of those. And so when it came to starting EZA into what it is today, it was kind of like, I think Dom and I looked at each other and we were like, okay, we're just going to do the next one now. So it wasn't really a massive thing. I know lots of siblings don't necessarily get along with each other or they're like, I could never start a startup with them or, okay, I'm going to try it. And then it doesn't work out. For us, it had kind of been tried and tested. And so it was more second nature.
Your parents must be happy that you guys get along this much. What were the first two startups that you guys did together?
We're actually in the lending and borrowing ecosystem. And so at the time, this was in the sort of mid 2010s, coming towards the end of the 2010s. And all of the big things at the time were how can we build this sharing economy? So we had startups like Airbnb, Uber, which were all really flying off. We were at university, so I was doing my undergrad at Cambridge in the UK. Dom was at UPenn at Wharton. And the students, the sharing economy, there's nothing better than the sharing economy for students. And so we built one of the first applications that actually allowed anybody to lend and borrow goods. So it was very much a marketplace. and scale that to many colleges. It's very, very exciting. Actually, the founding team that we put together, they've all gone on to build incredible things as well.
One of the first engineers at this startup actually went on to lead AI safety over at Anthropic. And so it's been a crazy, wild journey just seeing what everybody was building at the time and then also building afterwards. So yeah, really, really cool stuff.
From lending and borrowing to EasyA, what was kind of like the impetus behind this startup then? What did you kind of see as a gap in the market back in 2022 when you guys founded this?
Great question. Yeah, go ahead. I think the main thing that we really saw was so much amazing technology getting built, so many cool blockchains getting funded, raising massive rounds and building really transformative blockchains, essentially, but not enough people actually knowing about them and not enough people actually knowing how to build on them or why they would build on one blockchain over the other. And so for us, we really saw a huge gap in terms of actually educating people on these different blockchains. And ultimately, that's one of the reasons why ETA became so popular, because they would hear about all these different chains, they would hear about all of these different, amazing pieces of technology, but not really have anywhere to go to actually dig in deeper.
And so for us, We really solved that problem for developers while at the same time solving the problem for blockchains, which was really not having enough distribution and really not being able to tap into the world's smartest developers and bring them onto their blockchains.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Dom and Phil start their sibling‑run crypto education business?
0:00–5:41
2
What market gaps did they see that led to the creation of EasyA?
5:41–12:00
3
Why are developers and consumers shifting their interest from AI back to crypto?
12:00–18:12
4
How is AI changing the crypto workforce and startup ecosystem?
18:12–23:28
5
What’s the long‑term vision for balancing product roadmaps with market cycles?
23:28–27:50
6
Why is founder‑led marketing crucial for early‑stage crypto projects?
27:50–33:12
7
How are Wall Street investors and institutions finally embracing crypto?
33:12–39:52
8
What advice do the brothers give to founders trying to navigate the current crypto landscape?
39:52–48:36
Speakers
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