Coinbase: Brian Armstrong

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2021

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brian Armstrong wanted to be a tech entrepreneur since he was in high school, but his first serious venture—a tutoring website—never quite took off. Around 2010, while looking to get a job in Silicon Valley, he stumbled across an intriguing idea for a peer-to-peer digital currency called Bitcoin, which quickly turned into his obsession. Brian's initial prototype for a hosted Bitcoin wallet got him accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator program, and he launched Coinbase soon thereafter. Many experts warned that cryptocurrency was no more reliable than Monopoly money, but the startup prevailed, surviving wild swings in the crypto market and steadily building a user base. Today, Coinbase is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, with 7.4 million monthly users, 2,700 employees and over 80 cryptocurrencies traded on its platform. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	When you leave home, can you ever really go back?
0:12.0	Made a version!
0:13.0	Soccer legend Leo Messi and I both left Argentina as kids.
0:17.0	You know you're that piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit anywhere.
0:20.0	To so many immigrants, football is a way to reconnect.
0:23.0	Listen to the last cop in the embedded podcast feed
0:26.0	to hear the latest collaboration from MPR and Fuduro Studios.
0:32.0	Somebody has to be a little crazy to join something so early stage
0:36.0	where it's like, okay, it's two people with a laptop and a dream.
0:40.0	And it was incredibly difficult to hire the first people.
0:45.0	In the early days, I was just relentless.
0:47.0	Like, if I went to a networking event in Silicon Valley,
0:50.0	I'd walk up to every single person, are you interested in crypto?
0:53.0	I'm doing this company in this early stage.
0:55.0	If you have any interest in trying, I'd love to catch up.
0:57.0	Can I get your email?
0:58.0	No, no, no, no.
1:00.0	I'd get one yes after ten.
1:02.0	I'd go do 30 more.
1:07.0	From MPR, it's how I built this.
	...

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