Founder's Story - She Backed Bitcoin Early. Now She’s Betting on What’s Next | Ep 228 with Laura K. Inamedinova Chief Ecosystem Officer at Gate.io

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Laura Inamedinova, one of the most influential women in Web3. From her accidental entry into Bitcoin during college to leading investments at Gate Ventures, Laura shares unfiltered insights into crypto, venture capital, and what most founders get wrong when pitching investors. Key Discussion Points: How Laura’s curiosity in college led to early Bitcoin investments Why being early in an immature industry gave her an unfair advantage The biggest mistakes crypto founders make when raising capital How VCs actually think—and what they look for in a pitch Why personal brand is both a superpower and a liability in VC The tension between real utility and hype in token-based projects How to pitch in 5 sentences or less and actually get a callback Takeaways: Entering an immature industry can fast-track your expertise—if you're willing to take risks. Most founders pitch dreams. Investors want clear paths to 10x returns. “Being cheaper or faster isn’t a competitive edge. It’s just noise.” Want funding? Don’t tell your life story. Share your token model, GTM plan, and why your cap table matters. Closing Thoughts:Laura leaves us with a reminder: if you're serious about raising from top crypto VCs, do your homework and respect their time. The best pitches are clear, specific, and relentlessly focused on how everyone wins. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everyone. Welcome back to Founders Story. Today we have Laura Enamedinova, an award-winning serial entrepreneur investor, keynote speaker, just got the Forbes 30 under 30, which is huge and currently serving as the chief ecosystem officer at gate.io and principle of gate ventures. And Laura, I'm really excited to dive into all things about investing in companies right now because I'm curious as to what does an investor look at? How do they see this and your whole story with how you got to where you are today? Because I'm sure it's going to be super inspirational. So let's just kick it off with what was the spark in your life that made you say this is the industry I want to be in? So first of all, happy to be here. Thank you, Daniel, for inviting me. How did I went into crypto? Actually, I mean, I'm in crypto for almost 10 years and I got here by accent.

So back in my day in college, I was studying physics. And all my classmates were geeks looking for. or interesting things and based upon Bitcoin, the magic internet money. And I remember I was in one of the last years of college, I was 2016, and they were telling me how there's going to be new currency on the internet, and it's not going to be tied to any government on central bank. And that was very interesting for me. I was very curious about it.

Unfortunately, I was a pro-college student, and I couldn't tell my parents, yeah, sell the house, get a second mortgage, let's go all in Bitcoin, but I'd purchase a little bit. And that was kind of the first step. And then after I graduated, I worked a lot with tech companies and startups, helping them go to market. And so it happened that I was approached by a few founders who were founding a business in crypto. That was one of the first ICOs back in 2016. I remember they came to me and they were like, hey, Laura, we're going to have three doubles, website, white paper, and a wallet. And trust me, we're going to make it.

We're going to phrase. do you want to be part of it. It sounded crazy. I was like, who are these people? Why they're building this weird structure of ICO? Like, it was absolutely not what I was used to working in the startups, understanding, you know, how to do fundraising, go to venture capital and so on. And you know, something clicked. In my brain, I was like, I just graduated. I have nothing to lose. I might as well guys help you out because it was interesting. And I already had some exposure into crypto. And so it happened that were raised seven figures in a week. And that was the point. I was like, that's it. I'm going all in. And I was 21 back at a day

and I realized if I'm going to go in Detroit 5, I'm going to be working in tech, I will always have to compete with people who will be 10, 20, 30 years older than me and they would have that advantage. Whereas a crypto was such a young industry back in the day, was just emerging. If I go together with an industry, in a couple of years, I can be already considered OG, basically. So this is how I enter. It was completely by accident. But me being a little bit adventurous back in a day kind of helped me to get exposed to it and now have almost 10 years' experience. I think a lot of people might look at an industry and if an industry is maybe less mature, they might be concerned about going into it.

what advice or suggestion do you have looking back to when what was you know there was some motivation that made you say okay this is safe enough for me to do it because I think a lot of people they're held back by this fear of doing something when it's less mature or the industry is just not old enough yet so crypto already now is quite mature we have regulations in a lot of countries we have a lot of big funds pension funds coming in and buying a Bitcoin as part of their strategy. So this industry already maturing quite well. Plus, a lot of major banks are already using stables from cross-border payments. So blockchain as a technology and crypto as a currency is not new anymore. But when it comes to entering new emerging industries, yes, it's a risk.

When I went to crypto is always a very, very risk industry because back in a day, everyone associated Bitcoin with buying illegal goods through, let's say, darknet. But the thing is, if you want get a competitive advantage, you have to be early. You have to make some sort of compromises and going to industry that is not yet developed. Because if it's already developed, there are a lot of ways it's going to be very hard to enter. That barrier of entry is going to be very expensive. Whereas the industry that has nothing, if you're coming and building basic products, providing basic services, you're going to be miles ahead. So that is the risk people need to take in order to achieve something more, or they can go into mature.

For example, real estate. Very good example. It's a very mature interest. It's been for thousands of thousands of years, but their turns are very low. Whereas crypto, where it's very risky, their terms are much higher. And they're going to higher because there is risk in a mall. So it's up to every person's risk profile and risk tolerance. What do they prefer and do they want to risk it with their country?

career analyst or with investment with their career orientators that might, yes, go to channels down the line, or they want to have a more secure path. You mentioned all the things that have happened within crypto. You have a lot of big players coming in, traditional players. How do you see this in the next two, three years and then the influence of all these other emerging technologies with AI advancing and quantum computing company? All these things are coming. How do you see crypto being intertwined? So with every year, crypto as an industry becoming more and more mature. And I would say within a couple of more years, the gap between crypto and trade-fi is going to be shrinking and shrinking. And we're going to be part of traditional finance probably in 10, 15 years. AI is, I would say AI is a good addition to crypto. AI can be as a standalone industry. but crypto is leveraging it a lot for trading, for easier payment solutions.

There are a lot of ways how crypto can utilize the same way as AI companies can utilize crypto, for example, for payments. So they're interested that are going kind of side by side. Quantum computing, again, there are these kind of conspiracy theories that once quantum computing becomes accessible, crypto is going to be basically debt. because then you can mine the coins at the very quick speed and you're not going to eat minors, but I think that's more conspiracy theories than reality. There's always a lot of conspiracy theories.

So I'm very interested about the VC and investor space. What is the pulse right now of how VCs and funds, like the ones that you are a principal of, how are you looking at investments? and is there money that is flowing? So BC space right now is very interesting. I would say there is definitely more money than good projects and VCs are struggling to find the right founders to back. The issue is a lot of people who come into crypto space,

they come without prior crypto experience and they live all of these stories that read in media, especially at 1718, where you could come in, write a white paper and have an ICU and raise no 7. figures overnight. Unfortunately, not the case anymore. The industry matured. And now, these are bagging products that have experience in this space, have built something, a track record, a clear strategy of go-to-market, how, especially if they're doing a token project,

how they're going to sustain the token price after the listing. And a lot of founders don't have this experience. And then they come into space expecting for quick money, quick BCRAs, because that was kind of the misconception that we had. And then get, unfortunately, sideline because again, it's not happening anymore. So money is there. The founders are not. Number two, right now a lot of founders, a lot of Sauri BCs are looking into liquid strategies. That means rather than investing into early stage projects because the ROI are not good, they're looking into liquid tokens. And that's the top 50 largest coins like Solan, Ethereum and others, where they can easily go in and go out, stay with a coin for a couple of months up to a year,

rather than locking in their money for a couple of years or more investing in a project. Do you think that there should be a mixture of somebody who has had business success before mixed with someone who maybe understands crypto combining forces? Because I hear this a lot around what you were saying is people come. They don't really have much success before. Maybe they're doing the same thing as everybody else. or they're trying to do something that would have been, you know, maybe successful many years ago and there's just not enough good projects.

Do you think there needs to be more marrying between co-founders or partners of different strengths, but maybe somebody who had at least some sort of business success in the past or maybe a successful exit in a non-crypto industry? Yes and no. Of course, any prior track record is always a plus. the only issue is Web 2 works very different to Web 3. And building a successful product in Web 2 takes very different skill sets

and very different strategies compared to that 3. As majority of 3 investors, business models are tokens. They're raising not for equity but for token. It means their whole strategy should be of sustaining the token price. And token points can be very roughly, and that's not

exactly very roughly compared to the stock price of the company. It's not the same, but kind of we can build a parallel there. So if the founder has an experience of maintaining a stock price, yes, that's a very, very good kind of at its value. But the problem is majority of founders have successes in, let's say, B2P businesses. And building a B2B assess business, we see a lot of founders coming into crypto.

It's very different to build a community-driven business, where it's all about BTC and the token price. Crypto businesses invests way more money into market. marketing into creating hype, creating excitement because you need to sustain the token price. Also, it's about token utility. Where we see a big issue is that founders have token for the sake of having token because it can bring you more liquidity or capital when fundraising rather than because there is an underlying need for a token.

So when that kind of product for sake of having it, of course there's going to be no success in the token price is going to crash the moment you get listed. So the key thing is understanding how crypto-neutral. narratives works, how corporate industry works, and what it takes to sustain a token price. Whereas also, what I always say when we talk to founders is you don't usually need a token. 80% of corporate projects don't need a token. Just have a good business model with good revenue, optimize for profit, build the company, be happy. Don't put in the token. But the problem is token is easy to fundraise. Token gives you liquidity. So this is this double-edged word.

There's a lot of founders choose to do, but in the end, that is why they fail. Pitch deck or no pitch deck? You always need to have a pitch deck. What is the perfect pitch for you? If you could think of the company, you don't have to say like a company name, but this could be a hypothetical. What's the perfect pitch? So one thing founders fail to understand is that VC are giving money,

not because it's charity. We're not giving grants. We're not philanthropic organization to fulfill your dreams. We are a business. We're here to make money. And what does it mean? It means we need to provide our returns for either our LPs or ourselves, depending on a fund structure. We invest our money, so we need to base it returns for ourselves.

And that means we're here to make money. And founders need to focus when they're pitching all around that. And again, VCs are not in a business to make two X. They're not in a business to make 10% per year. If it's 10, 15% per year, you can get in the stock market. Up to 50% per year, you can get in yield-bearing strategies. So we're here to make multipliers. So the founder needs to basically tell these venture capital firm they're raising or an angel

or whatever they're raising from, how will he or she make those returns for the investor? How are you going to get those 10x? What is the proprietary knowledge you have, access, what is your competitive? edge. And I wrote a lot about it in my LinkedIn and then people come and approach me and pitch me. And I'm like, so what's your competitive edge? We're faster. We're better. We're cheaper. It's not a competitive edge. Being slightly cheaper than someone else is not a competitive edge. Competitive edge is something that's never done before. It gives you unique access to whatever audience you're asking. It's something very different to what is in the market. And founders forget that.

And then they pitch you a project that is some kind of knockoff. We call it a fork from something else. And we just don't see money here. And they're like, no, but we have a dream. We're going to figure out. We're going to pivot. No. You need to tell me how you're going to make 10x with my money.

And if you have this mindset when you're pitching, when you're creating pitch debt, when you're reaching out to investors, how I'm going to make 10x for them. That's going to be the best pitch. And how you're going to make them is 10X is how you're going to launch a token, how are you going to sustain the token price, how are you going to sell your product, how are you going to generate revenue? And it has to be very specific and exact. And if everything is around, how are you going to bring money to investors, that's going to be a great pitch. Thank you for sharing that.

I think everyone needs to know what is the perfect pitch. And if they've never heard it before, you need to hear it straight from the investor like yourself. so you've had great success. You've made it to this executive position. You're also running the principle of the fund. How has personal brand and personal brand building on whether it's LinkedIn or other social media played into that? It's again double-edged sword. On one hand, I get incredible opportunities because of my personal brand. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I educate a lot through LinkedIn for founders on how to pitch, how to prepare meeting investors because I want to get really good projects but on their hand when you're on the by side of the equation and people know

you are there if you go to a conference everyone knows who you are and on one hand it's very nice to come in a conference be like oh excuse me are you laura like yes but then after a 10 15 person comes and you want to be nice and kind to them and listen and give them advice your social battery kind of gets drained so on one hand it's amazing for opportunities on the our hand in my particular venture capital position is a little bit hard because sometimes I like to be unknown and invisible. I could see it being exhausting, you know, depending on. So when you go to an event, are you someone who needs to go and then recharge back? Or are you someone who could just talk all day? Because some people love it. They could just go to an event five days. They still

have energy where like my wife, for example, after, you know, 30 minutes of talking, she needs to go back and recharge and then she can go back to the event. I love events. I can definitely spend quite some time. They're like people approaching me. But when everyone approaches you with the energy of take, because they want to take something, they want to take an advice, they want to take capital. It gets tiring. It's definitely getting starting. And now last week I was in a conference in Dubai. It was a whole week. Had nine panels throughout a week in different side events. At the end of this week, I was drained. And people would approach me. And again, I want to be kind. I want to be nice to everyone. But when you have no energy,

I'm like, I'll give you my email, I'll give you my time. Just please send me things like, I don't have the energy to like, it's not about you. It's, it's me problem. So on one hand, personal buying is really good for you because you get a lot of opportunities, but it also comes on a cost. It's like being a celebrity, I would think. I can tell you this before when I would hear the stories of celebrities, like, oh my God, paparazzi, oh my God, paparazzi, oh my God, people approach me. I just want to have my meal. We're like, why you're complaining?

You are like famous. You should be happy you wanted this. And now when I, in like very specific small niche, I'm known for like very specific kind of function and people the same way approached me. I had this one conference where I literally had a line of 15 people waiting, talk to me, 15 people waiting each one of them talk to me. I understand. I genuinely understand.

It's nice first five times. But the sixth time you're like, damn, I still have another nine people. I need to be at the good energy, nice, kind, appreciate. You know what I mean. It's like I get when Senate already started. You only get it when you are in this position. I can see that. I know.

It's hard not to judge people until you're in something. Exactly. And then you realize like how people feel. If somebody thinks of the same for you and you could be at these event that you, you know, they might be the hundredth person that you've talked to and you're already tired. How can they add value to your life before they ask you for something? So, you know, in my case, I don't mind them asking for something because, again, I need to look for good projects to invest in, but I would better say how to talk to VC.

So every VC has some sort of thesis, how they invest. There are specific narratives, stages, types of companies they invest in. And there are usually these like 5, 10 criteria that is black and white, yes or no. Is it in this narrative or not? Is the company the size or not? Are they raising a valuation, we're in comfortable investment? saying it or not, it's like five times. So what you can do as a founder when you go to these events and you grab a VC, you tell them in five sentences, who you are, when you're

raising, what you're raising for, one sentence, what's the ass, what is the valuation of how much you're raising, who is on your cap table? Because that's very important. And then any sexy statistics partners or anything you can brag about. And that should be five, maximum seven sentences. Very straight to point. Let's say, hey, I'm Daniel. I have this podcast. We have 100,000 listeners every month. We had these notable people coming to space. We have, let's say, Ellen Mas coming in often. We're looking for sponsorship. That's $10,000. And in return, we'll sponsor, we'll give you five minutes of our time. Straight away. Like this. So like, it has to be very much straight to the point.

because then it saves your time and investors time. And then they can say, is it interesting or no? And then if it's not interesting, that's fine. You didn't waste 30 minutes because the big issue is founders come and then you start pitching you 30 minutes and are telling you all the backstory, how they were the kids and they saw this need. And then they were like, I know you have an amazing story. I have 20 people with an amazing story.

I cannot go for every one of them. So if you could save your time and you need to probably, I'll talk to 20 investors and you don't have an energy talk between the same level. Give me these five sentences. If it's a win for us, let's exchange details. Then we can set up a call. If it's not, well, you didn't waste our time and you didn't waste my time. Well, thank you, Laura, because one, you just gave me the perfect pitch.

I'm going to use that, by the way. And then two, everyone needs to hear this. We do, I can totally think back to many conversations I've listened to. people going through the whole life story for 45 minutes and we already know people have the attention span of just a few minutes on top of having to think about all these other people that you you also have to listen to so get to the point make it i'm going to break down this whole thing later we'll put it in in the notes i think that was really good so thank you for sharing that but laura if people want to get in touch with you maybe they can send you something so they're

not exhausting you at an event or they can maybe plan something at an event to meet you, to talk to you about something so you're not exhausted at that time. But I'm sad I missed token, by the way. I heard it was epic. I think I might see you out in the Philippines, which I'm excited at Philippine Blockchain Week in 2025. But if you want to get in touch with you, how can they do so? So we, first of, we invest only tokens, no equity. and we're mostly excited about stable coins, defy, infrastructure, payfai,

interested in early stage violations under 50 mil. And if you're building that project, reach out to me at laura at gait.io. Laura at gait.io. Well, Laura, this has been great. I know we've been chatting back and forth for a while trying to set this up. So I'm glad we're able to make it happen today. And thank you for joining us on Founder's Story. Thank you for having me here, Dale.

Thank you.