Summer 2009
There have been a few periods in my life that felt acutely exciting. I vividly remember the summer of 2009 as exciting. With my 2 cofounders, we packed all of our belongings into the trunk of my car and drove across the country to Silicon Valley. [1]
If I had to break that down into what was exciting, the biggest thing was a sense that something big was about to happen. The App Store had just launched and there were a lot of opportunities to start something early in that. I remember living in a hacker house and walking to cafes in Palo Alto. There was definitely a sense of “there’s something happening here” and you could feel it, just walking around.
There was also a time we went to watch a movie together as a team, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what I was building for the whole movie. For some reason years later, I still think back to how I wanted to get out of that theater and get back to work. I’m also recalling this in a much more positive way. In reality, I was probably panicking about how Apple was moving too slow at approving our apps with a demo day approaching.
Whatever that summer of 2009 was, I’ve felt it lately. Which is weird, given the current market. My Twitter feed is full of influencers talking about how bad things are and how bad they’re about to get. A major algorithmic Stablecoin was presumably wiped out in a matter of days. You’d expect me to be feeling grim about the future because of the economy. But it feels like the opposite.
By the way, 2009 was conventionally a terrible time to start a company (maybe). Today would probably be an equally terrible time to start a company. And yet it feels like the most exciting time. I’ve watched some of the best companies started under these conditions. Stripe was in my batch, and it felt like the world was crumbling around us as we all scrambled to build stuff.
Moving to Texas might have contributed in a positive way, but in the past year of living here, only the past several weeks have felt more like 2009 than any other time I’ve spent here. I think most people would agree that it feels like 2009, but they’re probably not feeling the excitement that I am. No sane person recalls 2009 in a positive light. So either I’m crazy, or there’s something else going on.
So where’s my excitement coming from? Perhaps it’s because I’m comfortable operating in wartime environments. Once you’ve gone through starting a startup in 2009, you’re ready to do it again. The pain of current market conditions isn’t as strong as the excitement of what I believe will happen next. It’s like my loss aversion has flipped.
I’ve been watching Web3 since 2011 when I wrote a Bitcoin miner to help me understand how it worked. I didn’t have the foresight to see just how big it would get (and I can’t think of anyone who could when it was that early).
I think gaming has a chance to be bigger than everything we’ve seen combined in Web3—it made up 49% of global blockchain usage in 2021 (and it was more than half in March 2022). Web3 today feels exciting in the same way that Summer 2009 felt exciting. [2] It feels like something big is about to happen. [3]
[1] California was a different culture back then. Even though I still visit back on occasion, I don’t feel the same sense of “things are happening here” that I used to.
[2] Critics are quick to point out how many scams exist in this space. The Internet was criticized heavily early on too. As always, DYOR and don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose.
[3] I could be wrong, and this could all be a fad, but I’ve been watching this play out for over a decade now. It’s hard to become pessimistic when you’ve heard the same pessimistic voices turn out to be wrong for 10+ years. And they sound the same today as they have in the past. These things always take longer than you’d think, so maybe in the short-term we continue to see losses and stagnation, but I’m bullish on the long-term prospects of Web3.