myst520.lens ❤️ Memecoin

my 2.5hr interview with @KevinWSHPod, summarized in 50 points. with some additional hints and details 👇 1/ life is summarized in 4 places - south of china (childhood), UK (teenage/adult/work), seattle (start of Kaito), singapore (now) 2/ most of my professional career at Citadel - trading equities 2017-late 2021 - believe it’s one of the most hyper-competitive places on earth 3/ loved Citadel for being purely meritocratic and results-driven - doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, who you know 4/ quit Citadel in late 2021 to join Millennium - forced out of the market for 6-months due to non-compete, but used it to trade crypto full-time, one of the best times in my life 5/ realized the information inefficiency in crypto was unbearable 6/ the market’s momentum is also insane - mean reversion rarely works because markets can stay irrational longer than you can survive. understanding momentum in mindshare and sentiment is key 7/ couldn’t wait for others to build it - started Kaito 8/ 3 reasons for the name “Kaito”: a) our early engineers were anime fans, b) “AI” is in the name, c) Kaito means “sea” and “people” in Japanese - aligns with our mission of helping people navigate the sea of information 9/ moved from the UK to seattle for a bigger engineering talent pool - mobility is key for entrepreneurialship 10/ 6 months into building Kaito, chatgpt launched in nov 2022 - aha moment to rebuild search from the ground up 11/ while others focused on chat interfaces, we used LLM for the entire production pipeline - your AI is only as good as your data 12/ Kaito wasn’t all smooth sailing - we started during a 1.5-year bear market 13/ struggled with monetization at first - targeted the wrong users before launching the right features 14/ best decision was becoming more public - started writing trade theses using Kaito in jan 2024, and suddenly people realized what it could do 15/ adoption accelerated rapidly after that - looking back, the change was so quick it was almost unimaginable 16/ learned as a founder you must be your product’s biggest evangelist, everywhere 17/ broke even in jun 2024 - a big moment, but still early days 18/ Kaito’s goal isn’t being an alpha platform - it’s about fundamentally changing how people work 19/ since jun, we doubled down on helping project teams with growth and marketing 20/ memes and the attention economy gave us a huge tailwind 21/ believe valuation = attention x narrative - true for memes but also many other things in crypto 22/ attention has fundamental value 23/ in crypto, founders are most willing to pay for two things: liquidity and attention 24/ attention also ties to liquidity - it dictates how much people care 25/ why tokenize Kaito? a) our retail strategy, b) yaps is demand-pulled 26/ retail strategy isn’t a lite Kaito version - exploring a new model where everyone can participate 27/ yaps addresses the broken KOL model: complicated, ineffcient, opaque, exclusive, and lacking accountability 28/ Kaito’s KOL analytics revealed a market desire for reinvention 29/ we launched yapper leaderboard to solve these problems: simple, no middlemen, freely accessible, transparent, and merit-based 30/ yapper leaderboard isn’t the end 31/ believe there are 3 stages of information efficiency: a) disorganized info, b) AI distribution, c) market-driven distribution 32/ as a trader, I respect the market as the most efficient distribution model 33/ polymarket is a great example but tough to cover the long tail - AI fills that gap 34/ Kaito moved crypto from unorganized to AI-powered - next is market-driven efficiency, our InfoFi vision 35/ soon launching a market-driven yapper leaderboard launchpad where yappers decide how attention is distributed 36/ as market forces grow, Kaito’s role will naturally decrease, reducing centralized risks 37/ big prediction for 2025: yaps become a currency 38/ yaps = tokenized attention; account-level yaps = tokenized influence 39/ yaps is Kaito’s points program - many lessons from hyperliquid on distribution 40/ yaps is hard to earn, with strict anti-farming measures to protect the ecosystem 41/ farming peaked during xmas but died quickly - it not only doesn’t earn yaps but hurts reputations 42/ ideal state: people forget about yaps and focus on building their brand 43/ best way to describe Kaito is crypto’s distribution center, for info, attention, and capital - powered by AI 44/ Kaito is a hybrid software and crypto company, not so much of an analytics company 45/ believe the space moves forward when people think on first principles and push boundaries together 46/ hope for 2025: people realize Kaito’s vision and what we’re actually building - hoping for that aha moment 47/ yaps is highly expandable across other social media platforms and beyond crypto 48/ north star: everything we do should positively impact the industry 49/ one day, people may forget kaito, but the network we build will be our legacy 50/ Kaito can rise and fall - your brand is always your brand. don’t farm yaps - build your brand