Building a Startup in Web3
summary
Describes building Airstack from private beta with ~180 developers to 490 customers and over 1B API calls in eight months, driven by an AI layer that turns cross-chain onchain and offchain data into millisecond JSON queries. Explains the engineered onchain graph that links multiple wallets per person for recommendations, growth via repeated ETHGlobal hackathons, and concrete wins: 700M calls in one month, dev onboarding cut from months to milliseconds, and hard lessons on tokens and product–market fit.
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chapters (25)
- 0:00Intro: Jason Goldberg on stage
- 0:33Early startups and founding OST
- 1:51Discovering Ethereum in 2015
- 2:25Attempting decentralized social in 2016
- 3:01Pivot to OST and early infra building
- 3:37COVID-19 and shutting down projects
- 5:06Lessons from building too early
- 6:35How Airstack was born
- 8:02Developer pain points with infra
- 9:31What is Airstack today?
- 10:03AI-powered querying for Web3 data
- 11:03Product iteration via ETHGlobal hackathons
- 12:09Onchain graph and product-market fit
- 13:11Airstack growth: 1B API calls
- 14:11Web3 social as identity and behavior
- 16:08Ethereum is the real social network
- 17:27Building Airstack after OST: key lessons
- 18:59Tokens and product utility
- 20:37Building fab.com and Amazon competition
- 21:42How to think about Web3 competition
- 23:22Building products for developers
- 24:54Advice for DevTools founders
- 25:53Final startup advice for Web3 founders
- 26:232024–25: The onchain app explosion
- 27:26Outro and final applause
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