Ben Pasternak on Believe: the viral 4-week-old app that lets anyone launch a coin directly from X

see you guys. How you guys doing? It's good. We haven't talked in a few years. Uh, I'd love to just get the update. I had no idea what a tear you've been on. Yeah, we uh friend friend of friend of ours Dylan is here at the studio.

He's going to do a live interview later and he brought up he brought you up and John was like Ben Pastron like the we talked a bunch and then and had no idea he's so he's so locked in on on traditional tech that he had no idea what you were up to and then and then we explained of course.

So yeah, why why don't you actually just give me a g catch me up to speed on what you're building? Yeah. Um well believe is a platform for belief and people empowerment.

So uh if you want to contribute something to the world, if you want to build something, if you want to create art, if you want to create a song, whatever it is, uh you can come to believe and raise the capital you need. Okay. Break the the how how is this different than uh NFTTS?

What what technologies are we leveraging? It's obviously somewhat cryptoreated, but then uh comp it to a Patreon for me. Well, Zo, I'll give you some context. Luke Metro, friend of the show. I I believe he used believes that was believes John's familiar. Yeah, I have I've interacted with this. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.

It's basically um we enable people to launch a coin on Salana super easily. Uh you know the the tokconomics itself are pretty straightforward. Uh what we kind of introduced to the space is like a fee uh that's collected uh yeah basically a trading fee and creators are able to raise money through that trading fee.

Um, and yeah, the the product went like super viral this past month. It's only four weeks old uh because you can launch a coin directly from Twitter.

So, we're kind of tapping into uh the existing trend of builders like building something uh screen recording it, posting it on X and they can just tag Launchcoin to Launchcoin. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you're even removing even more barriers. You don't even have to go to the different website. No wallet or anything.

But I assume at some point you can interact with uh the blockchain at like a lower level through the actual app. But the the the initial kickoff and instantiation happens all on X. Is that correct? Exactly. Yeah.

So you you launch an X and uh you know assuming your coin does well you can download our app uh link your X and uh claim your fees, edit your project details and uh we're also building kind of like an ecosystem for people to like integrate their coin into that product.

Um you know engage with different mechanisms and that's all through the app.

So what uh uh sorry what what is kind of like the optimistic use case here for uh someone actually using this to fund kind of a new idea or new concept because that there are places where you can go and get a grant for something but increasingly it's harder and harder to get a grant for for great art or even raise money for the next movie because of Hollywood and all these other dynamics.

So uh what what does a win condition look like for you? Yeah, I mean I think it's a different depending on the industry you're in. Um, you know, tech obviously has venture capital which is a pretty good system.

Um, I think it is evolving just because you know I I guess the big trend is you're seeing a lot of ARR MR and people's bios and I think thanks to AI uh you know engineers are way more efficient. There's like less of a need to raise a huge amount of money up front.

Um so if you can like I guess bootstrapping is kind of in and this is just a great way to get started.

Uh so for tech I think that's uh the use case for other uh you know other industries like there isn't really a great way to fund raise for anything like you could start a gofundme um but those you know generally haven't gone too far uh I guess in you know some cases but pretty pretty mid mid outcome.

Um so this can lead to like massive funding uh you know for for those types of projects. Yeah. Do you think that uh there should there should be a link between the token and the equity in a company that's eventually created?

I imagine at four weeks old, you probably haven't figured out that interaction because that's probably the most complex legal uh menagery you can imagine. But uh talk to me about the long-term vision. Yeah. Well, so when we ship them, we thought they would be purely like attention coins and speculative.

Um but that quickly changed because you know the first launches that did really well started integrating their coins into their product um you know introducing different like burning mechanisms.

So I think that uh the kind of way I view it right now is uh you know they're essentially like utility coins uh and you know depending on how I I consider ourselves to be like the Stripe for coins. So we give developers the tools to like integrate their coin however they want.

Um but at the end of the day they're really versatile tools and they're going to come up with all different ways that kind of inspire us. Um long term uh you know yeah the regulatory environment is rapidly shifting.

So I think that uh you know we're planting a lot of seeds today and uh depending on you know what happens here and it's looking pretty good so far. uh you know you can do a lot more in terms of equity etc. It's very interesting.

Uh what's it been like building in crypto transitioning from uh it feel like to me watching what what you built with simulate from afar you know was always very high-profile always in the news um and more so than I think like a traditional uh CPG company.

So, in that sense, like just being good at thinking different and and capturing attention uh and leveraging that probably set you up pretty well for building in crypto. What what what have been some of the challenges?

I imagine you're not sleeping a lot because every every time you go to sleep there's something something's breaking or someone's yelling at you or something like that. But but what's it been like? Yeah. Well, you know, it's not my first rodeo uh to your point.

And you know, prior to Simulate, I built a a social networking app called Monkey that has tens of millions of users to this day. So I' I've got, you know, I'm familiar building consumer software. I think to your point, yeah, the crypto stuff is 247.

So, uh, it's, you know, in most spaces, you have kind of room to iterate and make mistakes. In crypto, uh, the market is less forgiving. Um, so it's, you know, it's a tricky balance because you obviously can't be stagnant, but you have to keep evolving and changing things.

Um, so yeah, definitely a pressure cooker environment. Uh, but you know, the outcomes are really crazy. And you know, the cool thing about Believe is we have uh you know, dozens, if not hundreds of creatives that have like raised funding. People have like quit their jobs and gone all in on whatever they're building.

Um, and it's rare you get to ship something and for it to immediately have a positive outcome for these people in a like life-changing way. So for me, that's like super energizing. And uh I hope we can continue to do that at scale. What do how do how do you think this evolves?

Uh right now it feels like Believe is a product for individual creators, entrepreneurs, artists like you're talking about.

Is there a world but but if you guys become you know stripe for coins uh or or however you phrased it is there a world where traditional companies in the future would would use believe to uh get on chain in some capacity. How do you think about that? For sure. Yeah, we're already seeing that.

So kind of the biggest case study is uh Dupe which is like a ventureback company. I can't speak to their exact revenue numbers but very serious company that has you know strong PMF. Um, and they launched a coin uh, and their coin has like crushed it. It's brought them like a new revenue stream.

Uh, it's like really activated like this new community for them. Um, and yeah, Bobby, the founder of Jeep, has just like really leaned into that. So, I think that is going to definitely uh, keep happening.

And, uh, you know, I I guess like some of these individual builders might like launch a project that later evolves into like an actual company and the coin is like, yeah, could definitely be tied to that. Um, you know, watching things watching how things unfold.

I want to talk about the line between like good and bad projects essentially. Like there's two narratives. One is uh look, it's all a casino. No crying in the casino. The the the Dgens's love to just do whatever and just like you know like you know what you're getting into.

Um the that the the the the flip side of that is like you know uh they're they're I I guess the question is like there are a lot of people that have launched stuff and it's gone super well and they built really cool things.

There's other stuff where it's clearly just been like a rug and a mess and a disaster and it chases them around the internet for a couple months or even years. Um where where is the line?

What would you counsel people to uh kind of rules of the road today for getting involved in this and not just frustrating a bunch of people um and actually having like a good experience and and kind of not just obeying the letter of the law but like the spirit of the law on that like decision- making around going you know doing curation versus just creating uh a platform and letting people do kind of whatever they want.

Totally. Yeah.

So uh you know I I consider by the I heard Alon on earlier levelon he's great um you know friendly with him and you know also pump is a huge innovator in the space I consider pump to be kind of like the worldwide web and what we're doing to be closer to the app store um you know you can't completely curate for reasons that I won't go into like we can't say hey this is good um because you know if if we do that we're going to be wrong some of the time but it is quite easy to say hey this is bad and uh when we identify bad actors there's like mechanisms we can uh integrate to kind of like get basically disincentivize them from launching uh with us versus like one of these other platforms.

Yeah. Um the I think like the biggest thing for us is you know founder education.

So you know I think most Silicon Valley founders like 99% have like really positive intent uh with you know things they do and uh it's our job to kind of like create harmony between the traders and the founders and we can just do like a way better job at that.

um similar to like you know if you fund raise with like a safe or even if you do like a priced round um your first time doing it you know there's usually a pretty big education curve like a lawyer is explaining to you what these different mechanisms mean um most people completely make a mess of it but by their series A they identified the problems they made so there there is uh education with like existing fundraising mechanisms and I think that uh for this to there's an education that uh we need to make like really easy yeah um I'm I'm interested I we we've talked to some founders who have kind of like curious about dipping their toes in the water.

And well, I remember it was we we we had some buddies to talk some people off the ledge. Yeah. After the Trump, you know, coin happened, why not me?

Uh we had some buddies that that were thinking about it and and ultimately at the time I think they made the right decision not to do something, but things are changing week by week. And the trick is like it it feels like the the most basic thing would be like don't rug. Don't don't sell what you own or whatever.

But there's this other dynamic that I learned about and this is probably obvious to everyone who's who's native to crypto, but um I could I could launch a coin um not sell any.

some traders could come and pump up the coin and then people buy when it's at the high and then it and then those traders sell and I didn't rug but like it feels like it rugged and people are like I lost money on your thing and then they're mad at me and so um I guess in terms of like the messaging and the riskreward like how do you think the rule which the rules what you're describing is there's like a PVP dynamic totally so I'm curious for you at a platform level do you think That do you think that like for example how you know are there things you can do at a product level so that if an artist comes on to believe is like using the mechanism to raise money you prevent it from turning into this like PVP warfare where people are duking it out.

I feel like we're going to reinvent accredited investor laws because because the whole idea is like is like a venture capital firm can lose a hundred million dollars on some crazy biotech startup or some hard tech startup and it really is no crying in the casino you know.

It's like it's like you guys did your due diligence, you signed the documents and you get you gave it a shot and that particular technology didn't work out and so as long as there's no fraud like you move on and you make money on the next thing.

But for you know like like random retail people sometimes they get caught up and they and and bad outcomes happen. I feel like there's some there's some vibes in in in the ecosystem that can just be enforced loosely. There's also some rules. There's some platform stuff.

So I'm interested in kind of how you're how you're dealing with that because it's obviously going to evolve a ton over the next few years. years. I mean, you're going to be running this for a long time. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

To me, it's uh so, you know, pump being the worldwide web, there's like very small mechanisms that you can integrate that I think just make the whole space a lot safer. Sure. Um and yeah, to to your point, we the snipers where they like buy a large part of they, you know, kind of dump at the top.

uh there's like a lot of mechanisms like I'm seeing that I think are really interesting which is basically you know having like uh you know extremely high uh fees for the first you know x amount of seconds at trading so that you know the snipers will still get some ownership but their the ownership is like greatly reduced um there's rate limiting so there's like a max purchase amount uh you know for the first couple seconds so yeah a lot of these anti- sniper mechanisms are just like kind of evolving right now um and I think they're going to lead to a much healthier ecosystem um and in addition like uh yeah I think it's like the the kind of fe it's it's hard to say what is good but it's much easier to say what is bad.

So if we if we do detect bad actors um it's uh pretty easy for us to kind of disincentivize uh future bad actors. Yeah.

H how much of the viral growth or the growth of the company right now has been would you attribute just to the specific kind of like viral growth hack of like being able to launch a coin directly on Twitter or X? Yeah, I'd say maybe like 50%.

I think the, you know, the other thing is that, you know, within the the so and so trenches is, uh, you know, they've been trading these kind of like traditional meme coins, uh, forever and there's, uh, it's a really fun game that everyone enjoys, but there is hunger for a new game and I think that, uh, the vision here has really like energized the whole space.

Um, so that narrative alone uh, I think has done a lot of damage in a good way, the opportunity, right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Anyway, anything else? Very cool. We're good. This is great. Thank you so much for bringing it down.

I'm sure you have a a bunch of new things to to work on in the in the 15 minutes that you've been on. So, good luck uh good luck building and uh yeah, excited to follow. Yeah, thanks for breaking it down. I actually Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. It's been cool to see uh everything blow up for you guys in a good way.

Yeah. Yeah, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. We'll talk to you soon. Great to chat. Cheers. Uh fantastic. Little round of applause to see him winning. If you're in CPG, private or crypto. Yeah, guess it works. It works. Guess that's the plan. Uh every once in a while.

Um, next up we have Tom from Dragonfly Capital coming in the studio. Um, we'll break down some more. It is, um, interesting to look at funds are working companies like Pump, which was only launched something like a year ago. Yeah. And now was done close to a billion dollars of revenue.

Then you have believe and and both these businesses look pretty obvious in hindsight, right? Um, but just required the specific type of founder to to unlock it. Really quickly, if you're designing a crypto app, you got to be on Vanta. Go to vanta. com. Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development.

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