The state of things in August 2024
I wanna say, this might have been the roughest I’ve felt in my career as an entrepreneur since ever, August 2024 I mean. And there are levels to it. Starting from the bad macro news you hear all the time, wars, collapsing institutions, etc. Then, on the Kiwi News level, it’s just been an absolute grind with regular “all day” work days. Get up, work, go to bed, sleep, get up again, work. There’s no leisure in between. It’s usually just a continuous grind from 8am to 10pm. But most frustrating about all of this it is on the personal level, because you’d think that this intense work pays off by enabling freedom in private life. The truth is, it doesn’t.
Bootstrapping is just mental. In Berlin, I hardly ever meet someone that works harder than me. Not that I think everyone works less hard. But it’s also something different if you’re deleveraged. But what’s crazy is that I feel this entitlement for a capability of treating myself better than others. I work 16 hour days,… it just seems logical that I then get to indulge in the luxuries of the world. Well, I don’t.
Our runway with Kiwi has run out around 1-2 months now. I had sold the top in 2021’s bull run, and because I didn’t want to invest the cash in others, I was like: “I’m gonna invest this in myself,” and so Kiwi was born. Don’t get me wrong, it was a grind too when I was still spending down the cash from the all time high. But I literally live mint-to-mint these days. This means the income we’re generating from Kiwi News is put into an Aave account, I withdraw USDC, swap it to EURE and put it on my Gnosis Pay. At shops, that’s my primary payment.
A really hard part in all of this is still standing strong in light of all the “well-intentioned” advice I get when explaining this situation. The most mid-curved advice being “oh you can just raise venture capital,” completely ignoring the entire context of the operation and the thousands of hours we’ve already spent building a project that is perfectly optimized to turn a sustainable profit in a few more months time — IF EVERYTHING GOES TO PLAN!
It’s crazy to say this with ETH hovering around all time highs etc., but summer 2024 has really been one of the roughest economic times I’ve experienced as an entrepreneur. I think there are many features to this and ETH hovering around ATH is also somewhat clouding the perspective. Appcoins like Gitcoin are down from 200 million USD market caps to 30 million (having 20 million in their treasury). That’s nuts! Since BOJ’s rate hike the market has been hanging there like a flaccit penis, it cannot pump anymore. If you’re reading the analysts (I read cryptohayes), it’s hard to gain a positive outlook and we might as well be in for more pain.
Then there are all the pains from running the business with our strategy and our limited manuverability. We cannot innovate in the Ethereum wallet space. Others seem too incompetent to do it. We’ve tested the business model and the unit economics are hard to work with (but not impossible). The advice is often: “Oh just do this new thing and you’ll be alright!” Motherfucker have you looked at the market? Even scam coins, usually a perfect liquidization instrument aren’t going up anymore. You are suggesting we spend more money on a speculative thing that might not work? Interesting idea! Meanwhile, people are dumping everything. They’re dumping coins, they’re dumping their accounts. It’s fucking over.
This is my second or third cycle in crypto. In the 2017 and 2019 cycle I actually had to capitulate in some shape or form to “stay in the market.” In 2017 I just sold most of my stuff and I was like “fuck this shit, I’m gonna earn my money by working smartly.” In 2019, having seen the 2017 cycle, I was like: “I’m so god damn broke from working in crypto, I’m gonna need to get a job,” and so I did. That one worked out, but I had to exile from the space for 1-2 years working on a calendar app because conditions had become so harsh. This cycle, and I knew this actually from the very beginning of founding Kiwi, I told myself that I’ll stay. That is because I know that if I’ll stay and grind through it, that at the end of it there’ll be the gratification of having dedicated myself to the projects and others will see this as inspiring and trustworthy. I’m still completely locked into this goal. But it sucks so badly. The last holiday I had was in Feburary, 3 days of skiing. It was amazing. Right now, it’s all so tiring, we need tailwinds so badly.