Empowering Filecoin Startups

On December 11, ETH Global and Filecon hosted the Storage Market Summit (SMS). A portion of the day was dedicated to Empowering Filecoin Startups. Below are recaps, themes, and conclusions from different talks during this portion of the day.

You can browse the agenda and check out the full Investing in the Filecoin Ecosystem section here.

Filecoin Launchpad Accelerator powered by Tachyon

The following is a summary of a talk given by Gabriel Anderson, Managing Director of Tachyon Accelerator, at SMS. Watch the full recording here.

Tachyon is an accelerator for early stage Web3 apps, focused on the process of going “from 0 to 1.” As part of the ConsenSys Mesh, Tachyon provides the accelerator participants access to the wide range of tooling and expertise within and beyond the Mesh. Since 2017, Tachyon has launched a total of 4 cohorts with 39 active alumni.

So, what does it mean to go from 0 to 1?

Building a company can be a daunting process. There are literally thousands of different things you could be doing at any given moment. How do you focus on the one or two things you should be doing? How do you know what is the most important thing to focus on, and what to execute?

The first decision to make is the “startup or nah” decision. The projects that are early-stage ideas or come out of a hackathon may or may not be able to evolve into sustainable, scalable products. Early on, you have to articulate what market you’re paying in, who your users are, what you’re building, what your team’s composition is, and what their skillset is.

Once you decide you are a startup, you’ll have three key phases of growth:

1. PSM (problem, solution, market). Find a valuable problem to solve in a growing market.
2. Traction. Prove demand for your product by getting traction and momentum from the community.
3. Fundraising. Lay out your cap table map for accelerating growth through the many unique ways to fundraise in Web3.

For Web3 founders themselves, there are three major transitions they undergo when founding a project:

1. Evolving from building for yourself to building for your customers.
2. Organizing a community to help the Web3 startup grow fast, and building in public.
3. Coordinating with key stakeholders to create connections with other communities.

Tachyon has partnered with Protocol Labs to launch the Filecoin Launchpad Accelerator. For the last 3 months, the Launchpad Accelerator has been working with 13 teams and 32 founders across 11 countries. The Accelerator is wrapping up, with demo day in January.

Venture Building the Web3 Journey

The following is a summary of a talk given by Emma Cui, CEO and Founding Partner of LongHash Ventures, at SMS. Watch the full recording here.

LongHash Ventures is a Web3-focused incubator and investor with a speciality in bringing Asia’s network to Web3 startups. For LongHash, investing in Web3.0 means betting on a new breed of companies which are more synergistic, more secure, and more efficient in growing. Building these startups means creating a digital economy with true ownership, trustless interactions, and smooth transition. A more open and interoperable playing field also means more investments are likely to generate returns, rather than the winner-takes-all dynamic observed in most modern digitized industries.

The Filecoin Frontier Accelerator is a 12-week accelerator led by LongHash Ventures providing three major benefits to Web3 startups:

1. Structured guidance on the technical foundation of early-stage products.
2. Go-to-market strategy, supported by LongHash’s network of advisors.
3. Comprehensive Asia-focused network.

The Filecoin Frontier Accelerator recently closed applications, and is now reviewing and interviewing. In total, 162 applications from 11 countries were submitted. Generally, the types of products submitted fall under 4 categories:

1. File & data storage use cases
2. DeFi
3. Web3 applications
4. Infrastructure & middleware layers

Huobi Filecoin Incubator Center

The following is a summary of a talk given by Sharlyn Wu, CIO at Huobi Group, at SMS. Watch the full recording here.

The Huobi Filecoin Incubation Center is a partnership between Protocol Labs and Huobi Group to allocate $10 million USD to support talented developers doing meaningful things in the Filecoin ecosystem. Huobi Group is going to provide participants in the Incubation Center with access to the Asian community, wallet support, liquidity support, and entry to Huobi’s massive global ecosystem. In particular, Huobi is interested in actively exploring Filecoin’s interaction with DeFi. Contact Huobi at filecoinincubation@huobi.com.

Storage Market Summit wrapped up on December 11, 2020. Watch the full recording on YouTube.

Disclaimers:

• Nothing in these presentations is investment advice.
• Any models shown in presentations are based on many assumptions, and should not be relied upon as the source of truth. Any estimates should not be relied upon and are for illustrative purposes only. You should build your own models based on the code and the Filecoin spec.