The Pomp Podcast - Alon Goren, Co-Founder of Crypto Invest Summit: The Early VC days of Crypto

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

Alon Goren is the Co-Founder of Crypto Invest Summit and Founding Partner at Goren Home Ventures. In this conversation, Alon and Anthony Pompliano discuss the upcoming CIS Conference in LA, how Alon got into Bitcoin and crypto, and what it was like to talk with Tim Draper during the early days of cryptocurrencies. ---- Totle is a rare blockchain investment opportunity, one that offers a live product, active customers, an established revenue model. Totle solves three significant problems with blockchain asset exchange: 1) Security 2) Complexity and 3) Pricing. Over $4 trillion of blockchain assets were exchanged in 2018 and growth is forecast for at least the next 10 years. Totle’s sophisticated platform powers the blockchain economy with safe, simple decentralized asset exchanges at the best price for traders, wallets, businesses and other financial apps. Totle’s B2C Web App and B2B API are live and serving customers today. Visit totle.com/pomp for more info. ----- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Alon Goren is a co-founder of Crypto Invest Summit and founding partner at Goren Home Ventures. In this conversation, we discuss the upcoming CIS conference in LA, how Alon got into Bitcoin and crypto, and what it was like to talk with Tim Draper during the early days of cryptocurrencies. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do as well. I'm sure a lot of you have used Kayak to find the best flight. Total is kind of like Kayak, but it don't find you no flights. It helps you find liquidity on decentralized exchanges and

it optimally routes your trades for execution. So Kayak, you find flights. Total, they help you find liquidity. We should get Kayak on for this spot that I'm providing them, but Total instead is our advertiser, and you should go visit total.com slash pomp. Again, that's total.com slash pomp, and let them know that I sent you. Tell them you love their product. Take a screenshot, tweet it at me. I'll drop you some fire emojis, and then we'll all be happy. So total.com slash pomp. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion

expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Bang, bang. All right, guys, I've got Alon here. Thank you very much for coming on, sir. Thank you for having me. Really excited to be here. You throw one of the largest conferences in all of crypto uh and it is coming up uh maybe tell us a little bit about life before uh cis and some of the stuff you're doing now what's uh what's your background yeah so uh yeah depending on how far back we want to go i've pretty much been a techie since uh junior high age um looking over my brother's shoulder who's an engineer and uh and so so got into got into uh into building

cool products from back then we built aol add-ons for people who wanted to do uh do do all sorts of cool stuff uh even back then and then um and then it sort of progressed from there got my first job outside of our family business was uh was at the systems architecture group at countrywide actually so that was the first time i worked for like a uh a a bank or or some kind of financial institution outside of being a teller for, you know, short stints of time in college. And then, you know, very quickly jumped out of there because I wasn't into it and joined MySpace, actually. So that was where it got real for me and where I felt like we're in sort of the modern age

of, you know, social and Internet and what we're all about today. what was it like working at myspace it was it was crazy so i had i for me it was like kind of this double weird thing so these this group that i i sort of knew uh sort of tangentially they were based in new york launched a company called k solo which was the first internet karaoke company and they were acquired by myspace and i was their first employee when they moved from new york to la so my first day at the office was their first day at the office and it was myspace's first day at a brand new office also so they they had just been acquired not long before by fox and so it was just chaos man like half the people weren't really working uh half the people felt like they

were like rock stars because at the time it was the most trafficked website on the internet And it was wild. I mean, it was the first early beginning stages of sort of nerds on the internet and weird niche kind of people being able to have the kind of distribution that they have today and go from, you know, being total unknown local scene kind of groups to being, you know, the most popular people in the world. And so it was fun to be in that office. It was fun to see things go. But I was managing support and product and stuff for MySpace Karaoke, which was its own weird thing. That's amazing. And so what'd you do after that? um so i actually while i was there i came up with an idea for a company called invested in um and basically the it stemmed out of it actually it stemmed out of what what you know in hindsight is is part of why we're here today um so at the time uh when uh i was at my space there was this really uh this this really crazy thing that happened um remember the game farmville

it was uh it was like the the one of the first sort of social you know uh super casual games that that were happening um uh on uh that was happening uh at the time and what happened was in farmville you could you know basically move faster or grow your crops better do something if you paid actual you know money to buy a tractor or to buy goods in the game and that year farmville sold more digital tractors uh more digital john deere tractors than john deere sold real tractors in real life and it was it was like mind-blowing it was it was literally a vanity metric right they're using real money to buy these digital goods in a way that we know is pretty normal today but back then was mind-blowing um and so we looked at that and when we thought how could we

use that same social technology that helps spread a game like this and let people buy things on the internet um to help people raise money online and that's how we ended up uh building invested in got it what was the biggest lesson you learned to build in the company well with well so so the idea for invested in came from there but i actually didn't um jump in to it being my full-time job till a few years later and in the meantime i got a job at imdb the internet movie database which was really awesome also and they're owned by amazon which is super cool but the um the biggest lesson actually you know at the very beginnings at least you know as we're going through it was that uh i was only like halfway in um and not going

full-time in i didn't realize i was making all these friends with all these different investors People seemed so interested. And then right at the finish line, it would drop off. And only a little bit later did I kind of realize the main reason was that I wasn't all in. And all these guys were seeing me kind of building this cool company. And we even had revenue. We're doing cool things. We're launching up on stage at different conferences and doing all this stuff. And what I realized is nobody's going to invest in your company if you're not willing to jump in and do it yourself. and so as you're doing this um when do you eventually first discover crypto right like

what's the first time that you come across bitcoin or some sort of cryptocurrency or blockchain related project so it you know invested in being sort of you know fintech and uh us being into the cutting edge kind of stuff we we did see it early on um we didn't really play with it much. So it's really funny. You had the podcast with Adam Draper the other day and I was actually watching it live on Twitter, getting all sorts of flashbacks because when we were first doing Invested In, we met Tim, his dad, and he came into our office or he came into the accelerator. We were part of Amplify in LA, which is a really awesome startup accelerator based in Venice. And, uh, we're sitting in the office and Tim comes in the office and one of

the partners points at me and he goes, Tim's going to talk to you, but not yet because you talk too much. And I go, okay. And the whole thing was Tim's got 10 minutes. He can't hang out, but he wants to say hi to all the companies and get a quick overview because he's an investor in Amplify. So technically he's an investor in you guys. So, you know, he's going to come talk to you last because I know you guys both talk too much. And I went, okay, cool. And he goes around, meets all the companies, and then he comes to us and he asks me what we're doing.

I tell him how we're basically built a technology platform to help people raise money online. We use, you know, social media and this and that, whatever, and sort of first-generation crowdfunding stuff. And he goes, that's really interesting. And he pulls up a chair and sits down and ended up sitting for like an hour. Um, literally the next morning I got a call from Adam and, uh, he hadn't announced yet

that, that he was leaving expert financial. Um, but, uh, he, he was, you know, thinking about it or, or I think it was official, but it wasn't really done yet. And he, uh, he calls us up, he comes down to the office, talks about how he wants to launch boost funder. And, uh, the rest of the story is really, uh, on Adam and it's in, uh, on your, on your But in dealing with Adam and Tim, we went from kind of learning and knowing about Bitcoin to really learning a lot more. And then sometime around 2012, I just posted it online because I wanted to show Charlie Lee because you're going to be interviewing him at CIS for the podcast and live up on stage.

um i uh at some time around 2012 we actually bought some uh some some super high powered graphics cards uh some box fans some motherboards and things like that and actually built a litecoin mining rig um it was intended to be a bitcoin one i think but uh we just couldn't mine enough even in 2012 we didn't have the power to do it all right and so what was the the thought process behind building this uh litecoin mining rig so so really it had nothing to do with our business we uh we were building crowdfunding platforms right so we we were just really into it it seemed super cool and we heard about people building mining rigs and doing things like that and we were we were very heavy on the engineering side in our office we were literally like seven dudes in a

mop closet in santa monica i shouldn't say dudes because half the team were female but there were seven people in a uh in this tiny little office in santa monica um i didn't even have a desk anymore i converted the little like table we made for uh for the little kitchenette into my desk and i like hovered over everyone like like some weird general and um and we we just kept reading articles about bitcoin and everything and we we did so much stuff on like the micro payment side we had to build technology to allow splitting payments and doing things like that. Because when we launched, um, adaptive payments didn't even exist. So adaptive payments are like where you stripe and you charge somebody on your website and 5% goes into one person's bank account. 95%

goes in the other that didn't exist when we launched this site. So we had to actually create our own sort of digital banking system within our platform. So, so we were just super into this stuff and thought this could fix that in the future and we uh we just for fun we just all these engineers in our office and and i was super into it we just went you know what let's do this so my partner and i uh with our own money because we felt like it was it was not really uh not really related enough to the company we bought some hardware and as a team building exercise just for fun we built it we figured it out uh it superheated our office and made it crazy hot so we were blasting the ac and uh the first power bill that came after it uh our landlord handed to

us and we were confused because we never paid the power bill before for the building um because it was just part of the part of the rent and our the power bill for the building was more expensive than our rent for our office and so we had to shut it down amazing and so i guess as you're doing this like you're really just doing it as a kind of a side hobby right you're not thinking that hey this could be something in the future um you're just doing it more for fun yeah i mean it was it was 1000 a fun thing you know we thought maybe there's some future you know in our minds a million years a way where this kind of stuff could help us with our platform and with with crowdfunding and and online investing and stuff like that but we didn't really you know take it that seriously back then

we knew that it existed um we knew adam and tim uh draper were doing really epic things and we technically were still involved with with boost in in a very tiny way even after boost funder was was uh was was taken down and and so we were just really into it so we it was more of a just fun let's check it out let's play with it and then honestly i didn't really touch it very much until probably like 2016 um so you know a few years went by where i really didn't do anything other than follow it i even all that all the litecoin that i mined at that time uh my my half of it my partner had half and i had half or something like that and uh all of it you know is is gone on on my previous laptop that had been formatted like four times since then

that's that's incredible and so i guess so how do you go from uh crypto as a hobby let's call it to uh you know being uh almost exclusively focused on it and spending the majority of your time in the industry? Yeah. So, so invested in sort of started to run its course. Um, uh, my partner had left at some point I was sort of took over as a CTO. I'm not a good CTO. Um, uh, you know, I, I decided not to go to school for computer science because all my friends who did were being begged to quit school, to work more hours at their companies. So I thought nobody gives a crap about that. So I'm going to go to school for business. Uh, so I, I'm not as technical as I probably, uh, would be at this point, uh, from where I was, you know, in high school to where

I am today, uh, kind of stunted. So, so I'm not a great CTO and I took on that role and had to manage technology and the company slowly kind of died because there wasn't a hustler out there selling. Um, and, uh, part of, you know, towards the end of that company, I was going to all these crowdfunding conferences and there was a bunch, you know, in Vegas and Florida, all over the States every few months and they all sucked. They were, they were cool in a way because I got to hang out with a bunch of my friends and have a beer with them, but they were all the service providers and all of the, uh, the, the lawyers and stuff like that. And, and so I, you know, I joked with one of my friends at the bar after, uh, I spoke at the conference, um, that, you know,

if I wanted to grab a beer with him, we should have just met in Santa Monica because he lived there. So we decided to start a conference together, like literally just spur of the moment decided, you know what, let's start a conference that is focused on bringing the actual investors and the actual companies raising money to the room. Because I used to get mad at my clients because I'm basically like launching their technology. I'm teaching them how to market it and what to do. And then they're at this conference hanging out with a bunch of other service providers and not hanging out with the people who are actually going to use their platform um so so we built like sort of the first mainstream crowdfunding conference uh called

crowd invest summit and um of course you know uh within a couple years of doing that the conversation slowly started shifting towards uh icos and crypto and all that because that's you know sort of the first time crowdfunding really hit in a way where there was significant money coming through and uh we decided at a certain point that i wasn't doing invested in my partner was still doing automated marketing stuff um for uh for for for for fundraising online but we were sort of going into crypto full-time and since we were going into crypto full-time and the industry was talking about it so much we just said screw this let's rebrand the conference to crypto invest summit and uh that was a couple years ago and we've just been been focused on that ever since

got it and so let's talk a little bit about kind of the event space in crypto because i think in the most people's first uh understanding kind of the mass consumer if you will was 2017 with all the ico mania but maybe give us a lay of the land in terms of there was a world before the ico mania and then talk us through what you saw in 2017's Bull Run and where we are today. Sure. So before 2017, the conference space was a lot of these more private events, a lot of these intimate group kind of gatherings, private things that nobody really knew about. There was, I think, BTC Miami existed, if I remember correctly. And that one was one that sort of slowly grew but there wasn't any of these sort of blowout big blockbuster conferences like

like there are today and even now i mean we we talk about uh cis being one of the biggest conferences in the space um it's still you know if you look at other industries you look at like collision conference or like tech crunch disrupt and these big startup conferences right like these uh those are those are big conferences even even ours in the big scheme of things we're not there yet right but but yeah so early in the 2017 days it was it was or before 2017 it was these these intimate gatherings it was these smaller events it was uh it was a lot of you know the the cool kids club of you know uh early adopters and um and uh misfits and nerds and and and in In 2017, of course, as money flowed in and people were printing money, they were...

Things really, really took off. And some of these conferences got huge. And there was this flash in the pan of end of 2017 conferences, especially beginning of 2018 conferences, where all the conference organizers and all these people... the the early ones the early ones kind of came uh grew and are still around uh you know similar to our trajectory but there was this this time between you know mid 2017 to early 2018 where anybody could just announce their launching conference and they would make money and people would come because it was the you know one of the biggest things that were being talked about

everywhere um and uh what happened at the end of uh 2018 at the end of last year was that all of these conferences and even you know some of the beginning of this year all these conferences became like a former shell of themselves so these people weren't actually very good at throwing conferences they were just uh right time right place kind of situation and capitalized on it And so we do have this kind of world where, uh, at the moment with conferences, nobody really trusts any conferences because they all think they're going to suck because they went to one last year, uh, that was like one in 2000, you know, 17, that was awesome. And then they went to the same one a year later and it sucked.

And, uh, and all the conference organizers kind of assumed it would just work the same way. So a lot of people got burned or there was not, it's just a different, different vibe in general. So what you'll learn is that the people who've kind of stuck it out and can consistently show quality, they're still around and they're still doing fine. It's not an easy world to live in at all, crypto in general right now. I know people that, uh, that, um, you know, have been building for the space are struggling to raise money and all the service providers and the conferences are, are, are, you know,

it's, it's much harder to, uh, to put on a quality conference is harder to close deals, but, um, you know, things, things are, are consistently growing. The quality is getting consistently better. And, uh, I think that we're seeing that with our conference as well, like quality is, is getting so much better. We've got incredible partners this time around. We've got like, you know, between Fincross and eToro and Salt and Total and Onera. Like we've got some great companies kind of leading the charge at the conference.

And I think as a whole industry in general, I feel that it's growing and quality is getting better, regardless of if, you know, some of the conferences are a former shell of themselves. For sure. And so I'm coming to speak at CIS this year, maybe give us a little overview kind of as to what your guys' goals are, how you set it up, what people can expect as they come. Yeah. So the thing that makes CIS kind of different from the rest, there's sort of a bunch of things. We never did it as a hardcore money grab kind of thing. Our business was... We never wanted the conference to be our full-time job. So, you know, the ticket prices have always been reasonable.

We always have given university students free tickets to events, military people free tickets to the events, scholarships to inclusion and diversity type of organizations. But we've always wanted to fill the room with the right people and the people who this industry is meant to help the most. And so from that standpoint, we never focused on really optimizing every square foot of the convention center to be sold. So we took what's literally like a third of our expo floor area and we give it to media partners. So like, you know, all of the the the, you know, Ken Bozax and Crypto Stash and Crypto Cafe and Security Token Academy and all of the media in this industry, we give a booth to to record video, to to record podcasts and to amplify everything that's going on in this industry and hopefully, you know, create more and more adoption. um we we reach out to mainstream media so every year cnn cnbc and bloomberg and fox come to the

conference and then so the first thing you see when you walk in is just media booths so you see video cameras and podcasts and all these cool things being recorded and then we have a whole expo floor that has uh all of the companies that are like the sponsors and and stuff uh for the event are on the expo floor just like you would see at most conferences in the middle of the expo floor we actually built a stage and there's plexiglass walls around that stage and the seating for it and that's called the expo stage and that's actually where we're going to have a litecoin uh builders track where pomp's going to do a couple of the podcasts um and uh and then there's a separate area that's a big main stage it has about a thousand seats in the room with

a big stage and that's where uh where you're going to be uh interviewing charlie lee and doing a live version of your podcast on that stage too so it's going to be really really cool we we kind of have optimized it every time around like if you if you know people that have come consistently you know to the conference kind of see it improve time by time by time and and so we we constantly optimize to make it awesome but you know if you can if if you guys can make it come um i'm gonna create a free code uh should we throw out the free code here in this thing or should we do it at the beginning or no let's do the free code right now i love free codes okay so let's say uh the first 25 people to use the code uh pomp vip so p-o-m-p vip will uh you'll get a free ticket to come to

come to the show and um and come see it for the for whoever can't make it though uh we will get take all of the content from all the stages at the event and we end up making it free at the end of the day too so we'll we'll share that also so you know if you're if you're in another country if traveling you know it doesn't make sense uh then then don't do it but for the rest of you if you can make it come to uh at c the the website is cis.la um the code is pomp vip first 25 people will get free tickets and then afterwards i'll make it massively discounted if you use pump vip so uh so so check it out see what happens guys you listen to the podcast you get free stuff that easy couple laughs some free stuff it's all good um all right so let's go through maybe give

us an overview of uh some of the people who uh who are coming to speak and and kind of what you're most excited about at the conference i'm going to put you on the spot what's the one talk or presentation you're most excited about well obviously i'm most excited for uh i was gonna make a joke and then say something that wasn't your session with with charlie lee you can't say my session aside obviously aside from the obvious the the charlie lee um uh you know off the chain podcast live recording with pomp of the i'm i'm actually super excited to hear um david blesnak interview um interview alex mashinsky i think that's going to be really really cool um i i'm really excited for you know we have um we have the head of

amazon's uh uh blockchain group uh speaking we have um we have a lot of really cool uh ami ben david uh who uh i'm you know full disclosure i'm working on a project called onero with him But he's going to do a presentation called Long the Bankers, which I know your followers and you will probably love. So that will be. What was that? So ridiculous. Oh, clearly he's trolling you. Right. So. But but it's it will be it'll be fun. But, you know, and I don't know. I think that it's not exactly, you know, the title. It's a bit of clickbait, but it'll be really fun. And there's so many good sessions this time around.

Obviously, there's so much hype and so much going on around security tokens. So there's a few sessions revolving around that, which is fun for us for a few reasons. One, all of the crowdfunding rules and laws I was forced to know, powering all of those websites over the years. And doing all that is now kind of coming to fruition in this space. And we decided to do a separate one-day conference a day before this CIS called Security Token Summit. So for that reason, it's super exciting for us. But also, it's exciting because one of our first sponsors, the first year we rebranded to Crypto Invest Summit. it so it wasn't you know crowd invest summit and crypto talk and all the stuff mixed together

was actually securitize and spice and they hadn't even launched yet at the time and now we're you know a couple years past that and they've done some really really epic things so kind of following up on this industry that that you know when all the ico craze was going on people thought were insane for talking security tokens now after the aftermath and what's going on it's it's it's a lot lot more interesting and there's a lot of cool things going on and so what are you guys going to do the rest of this year right so you guys do cis and then kind of just tell us your plans for 2019 more generally so so we actually you know it tentatively we plan on doing another cis in september actually the the idea was that we do uh we were originally going to do one event a year

and then pop up a second one like in new york or chicago um you know we we kept deciding like bouncing around ideas and doing different things and then we just kind of realized like we own la um i've been a local la startup person for for my whole life um the the the only other thing i i do now besides um what we're calling goran home group which is just me and joseph my partner that we do the summits with is is this thing called 805 startups which is um really i passed on to a friend of mine to run because i don't have time for it but it's it's the largest la based it's a lot one of the largest uh you know networking groups for investors and startups in the country let alone southern california so we we built that out and so we we have a really strong foothold

with the traditional vc world in la so we just went you know what instead of trying to go hey we should do a London event. We should do a New York event. We should do a Chicago event. We should do something else. We just went, screw this. Events should not be our full-time jobs. Let's build a team around the event. And let's just do two a year in LA and, you know, knock it off with these ideas of doing conferences everywhere else. And so what we're really doing is using the reason why I mentioned Goran Home Group, and technically we have Goran Home Ventures, which is just Joseph and I's personal stuff. We're using the conference as a platform to build a portfolio of really exciting companies in this space and then using the platform then to add as

much value as humanly possible to that portfolio. So like I mentioned earlier, I think I mentioned earlier, I'm an investor in Total. And David Blesnack, I think has been on your show. And he's one of my favorite startup CEOs I've ever met. So we invested in Total. And of course, the following conference, Total was the title sponsor of the conference. David was on stage interviewing Steve Wozniak at the conference. And we throw as much weight as we can behind the companies that we support. So this is an epic platform for us to do that. To get 6,000 people to come to a conference, you have to have a much larger email list. So our email list is knocking on the door of around 150,000 people. So we've built this

marketing machine around the conference. And we never wanted the conference to be our full-time job. We planned on raising a fund. And really, the conference took so much of our time. In hindsight, it was one of the greatest things that happened because we would have raised the fund right before all of the chaos of last year. And so in hindsight, it was great. But we've done well with building a small portfolio so far of cool companies we like. And we want to do a lot more of that and a lot less of the logistics for the conference. And so we have a team around us now doing the conference and we're focused on that. Got it. That, uh, that makes a ton of sense. All right. Where can, uh,

where can people find a CIS? What, what, uh, what website, what social media accounts? Yeah. So, so, you know, feel, follow me on, uh, on, on Twitter and on LinkedIn. All I do is, uh, is, is promote the stuff right now. Uh, it'll be nice to be after the conference if you follow me and you'll get a lot less of that and more of my thoughts, but, uh, it's at Alon Gorin. Um, but, but, uh, and, and Alon Gorin on LinkedIn. And then there's, uh, the conference itself, go to cis.la. That's a URL for, for CIS. Um,

if you'd like to join us for a security token summit, um, it's security token summit.com that one. Um, uh, we don't give away any free tickets for cause it's more intimate. It's at the Ritz Carlton and we'll, we'll probably fill, fill the room to capacity but if you use the same uh pomp vip code i'll go on to that one and and create a massively discounted ticket for for your followers too if you're into into the security token side um and then of course yet stay tuned i'll uh we'll we'll we'll share uh all sorts of stuff and you'll get to follow pomp of course you already do but stay tuned we'll announce who else

he's going to interview on the expo stage at the conference also don't tell them big secrets big secrets big secret pizza party all right sir listen thank you so much i'm excited to uh to see you in la uh hopefully we can get lots of uh other folks to uh to get there meet up for a little bit and uh we will uh we'll see how it goes in a week here or so sounds good yeah see you all in a week uh thank you so much for having me man stoked to be here appreciate it another word from our sponsors at total they're kind of like kayak which helps you find the best flights but total helps you find liquidity by aggregating decentralized exchanges and optimally routing trades for execution remember that's total.com slash pomp t-o-t-l-e.com slash pomp go check it out let me

know what you think tweet at me i'll drop you some fire emojis total.com slash pop hey everyone pop here if you like this episode of off the chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the apple spotify and other podcast charts please do us a favor and rate review and subscribe to review simply go to the off the chain homepage scroll down until you see the five blank stars taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off The Chain.