Build Early Stage Businesses in Web3

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Diana Biggs got into hacking when she was 11 years old. She was natural. At 15, on a lark, she hacked Tom Green’s site. The comedian had fun and made her a regular guest on his weekly radio show, she appeared as Hacker Girl.

Years later, Biggs earned an MBA, worked for a management consulting firm, focused on finance, spent time in banking in sub-Saharan Africa, and eventually helped start a trading company. electronics that operated between Kenya and New York. But transferring funds to Africa was a heavy headache and full of costs. Was there a better way? His younger brother, a programmer, told him, Oh, look at bitcoin.

Suddenly, Biggs discovered a field that combined her teenage obsessions (computers and hacking) with her adult calling (banking and fintech), and since then she has been an integral part of the crypto space. Biggs served as Global Head of Innovation for HSBC Private Banking, she was CEO of Valor and is now a partner in 1kx, a seed venture capital fund.

It’s really hard to be an entrepreneur, Biggs said during a recent Denver coffee shop interview. Biggs knows. She’s been on both sides of the table at scrappy startups and deep-pocketed investment firms. So she shares some hard-earned advice on what founders can do to get noticed by VCs, what it’s like to work at a fund (Spoiler alert: It’s not a cushy gig) and why her prediction for space is huge growth.

The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

You joined 1kx in October 2022, in the heart of the crypto winter. How has the bear market impacted your work?

In some respects, it is not. One of the reasons I was excited to join 1kx is that they are very crypto native, working with builders across crypto and Web3. So I get closer to technology.

And when you get closer to technology, are you less confused by the macro environment?

Yeah, I would say that. Especially for early stage projects. When you are a large company and have customers in many different industries, the overall economy will affect you more in broader areas.

What are you most excited about in space right now? What are the use cases that most of us overlook, that nobody talks about?

Well, I don’t really know what people are talking about, but one new area they were really interested in is chain gaming. This can unlock a lot of great opportunities on both the demand side and the supply side with people making games. It might inspire games you haven’t even thought of.

There are a lot of interesting new projects around co-creation. A kind of collaborative economy of creators.

Song Camp, which is one of our holding companies. People come together not only to create music, but also to create your own label.

OK, I’m going to ask the old question, what problem does this solve?

The way the music industry tends to work now, if you’re a solo artist and you’re collaborating with your producer and your mixer, there’s so many stories of musicians getting screwed over by their label or their record company. So to be able to create this all together from scratch [via smart contracts] I think that’s great.

Allows you to pivot to your work itself at 1kx. What does the job look like? What are your goals?

The real focus of my role is to help our portfolio companies, primarily with institutional connectivity. Helping them reach a wider audience and bridging the gaps between traditional businesses of all types. And understand, what are the needs of these types of businesses? Can they build or partner with our portfolio and then help the portfolio through different types of growth?

Interesting. Taking a step back, people might think that once they have a brilliant idea for a Web3 startup, all it takes is a bit of quick coding and they’re good to go.

But it’s much more complicated than that, isn’t it? And that requires the right connections, communication and marketing.

Yeah. Some people might just need conversations to understand an institutional market. Others might need other types of support. There’s a holding company I work with, it’s a very technical proposition, so I’m helping them develop their messaging and working it in a practical way.

What are the most common things you help portfolio companies do?

I would say a lot about messaging, developing proposals, pitching, and helping with some strategies.

What is the average age of the people you work with? Are they all 22 years old?

Not everyone, but most people are probably in their mid to late twenties.

What are your schedules ?

The team works extremely hard. And I’m kind of still active, just like space. But they love it. They are an incredibly passionate group of individuals. They should be for the amount of work we do.

For real, though, what kind of hours do you work, if you don’t mind sharing?

Yeah. I am not a healthy example. [Laughs.] And having been in the space for the past nine years, a lot of my social network is also crypto. Then everything blends into one. [Editors note: This answer is strikingly similar to what fund-manager Magdalena Kala shared in a recent interview.]

And when working with start-ups and as a VC, you need to test, try, experiment, and read all the latest stuff. And it’s also a highly technical space, so there’s always a lot more to learn.

At this point, how do you stay in the know? What are your productivity hacks for media consumption? What tools do you use?

Yeah, I don’t have a hack. But certainly Twitter, and also Telegram groups of trusted people I’ve known for a long time. Discord is a necessary evil; It’s not my favorite thing, but it can be very useful for connecting with specific communities. Conferences are also very useful to meet people and see where there is energy, movement and so on. Even though crypto can be an endless lecture circle, this is a really important aspect.

What are your specific goals when attending conferences? Are you looking to discover new projects? Create new relationships?

For me, it’s more about meeting people. In Denver, it was great to meet our existing portfolio, the people I actually work with. To meet them in real life.

What advice would you give to founders or people creating in the space right now, who might one day want to be part of your portfolio and work with you?

For people who want to get the attention of a VC or an investor, I think you really need to be part of the community. It will depend on what you’re doing, so it’s not advice to everyone. But be deeply involved in what you build and actually participate. For crypto specifically, I would say you should participate in that community or network.

Say I was interested in doing a ZK [zero-knowledge proofs] Begin. There are ZK-specific hackathons happening all the time. In fact, we’re sponsoring one right now. Go to these hackathons, build and do whatever you can to prove and test your idea and be ready for conversations. I think there’s a surprising number of people who are like, Oh, I have this idea. Like, do you want to chat? You really must have done your homework.

And there is a lot to be said to demonstrate his enthusiasm.

From what I’ve seen in my experience, when you see entrepreneurs become very successful and build different businesses, when people are really, really passionate about what they’re doing and really committed to that idea, it can be manifest.

How about that separates the projects and founders that flourish from those that, for whatever reason, don’t succeed? What characteristics or attributes would you name?

I would say the willingness and ability to take feedback, for personal growth.

It’s very selfish of you, because as an advisor, you’re the one giving your opinion, isn’t it?

It also comes from my experience of being on the management team of a number of different startups.

When you build a startup, from experience, it takes your whole life. You have to really believe in your idea when everyone tells you, no, that’s crazy, and that can never happen. This is how the best ideas begin. So, on the one hand, you have to stick with your idea and really believe in it.

And then, on the other hand, you have to be able to understand when something isn’t working and then be able to pivot and grow. I think it’s very hard to think of a company that hasn’t had some sort of pivot, or a need to change course.

In your opinion, it’s been a while since Apple focused on Macintosh desktops.

Yeah. So this ability to evolve and take feedback. And also to make the tough calls and then stick to it. I mean, in crypto, you can easily tell who the good weather is, right? Everything happens at 100 times the speed of normal life. So you see, who’s gonna hold on? Not everyone can. It’s really hard to be an entrepreneur.

Predictions for space over the next few years?

I think it was going to continue to see phenomenal growth. Obviously, this is difficult in terms of the expectation of regulatory clarity. And there’s so much more scrutiny now because of recent events. But what seems different [from previous cycles] it’s that the institutions are no longer going the way they used to. In every other bear market, we’ve seen people say, OK, it’s over and shut things down. And there are companies that had a blockchain team and they didn’t continue. But you don’t see that in big banking, you don’t see that in media and entertainment. It’s not going to go away.

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