December 9, 2022: Llanero
Join the Llanero Llama Party at 9 AM PT
Join us at 9 AM PT for a live Llama Party with Llanero!
Llanero is an “operatooor roaming on the web3 frontier.” Llanero twice before was a web2 startup founder, including a big B exit. Since then, Llanero has taken the plunge to go full time into web3 at Aladdin DAO.
Come join the Llama Party to chat about anything you like at 9 AM PT!
Further reading:
CMC
Tell us a bit about yourself for those who don’t know you… who are you, what do you do, why are you here…
LLANERO
Hi, I go by Llanero in crypto. In real life, I’m a software entrepreneur with two successful SaaS companies that I started and sold. One very big one a number of years ago and another one that I just sold in March. I’ve also invested and/or been involved in a number of other startups as well as private equity.
I purchased my first cryptocurrency, BTC, in 2015 but the light bulb didn't really go on for me right away. I was fascinated by the tech but didn’t come across a killer use case. I got pulled back in around 2017 by a friend and started to get a glimpse of Ethereum and smart contracts. But I was just too busy with my startup at that time so I had to set it aside for a few years. So it wasn't until the end of 2020 that I started to dive in and that's when the light bulb finally lit up.
CMC
You had a big web2 life as a founder/investor — knowing you’re semi-anon, what good war stories could you tell us from your past life?
LLANERO
Oh man, so many.
I'll talk about how much timing can matter. When we sold our first startup to one of the top software companies, after weeks of negotiation, we had a deal that we had verbally agreed on. But it was the end of the week with a holiday weekend coming up and the purchasing company asked us if we could paper it the next week. I didn't think much of it so I was pretty much like, "Sure". But our lead investor jumped in and was like, "No way. We have to get this done today." So after some hemming and hawing, we managed to get the docs all signed but the fund transfer would be next week. Later, I asked our investor, "What was that about?" and he said that you never know what will happen in the world - the economy could melt, war could break out, the company could declare bankruptcy, etc.. On that very weekend, the buyer company ended up “parting ways” with our main sponsor, one of their top execs, at that company! In the world of deals, timing and urgency is crucial.
Happy to share more on my web2 experiences. I’ve been a CTO, COO, and CEO in startups ranging from just the founders to around 500 people. I’ve raised close to $100M of venture across multiple rounds and have sold startups to publicly traded companies and private equity.
CMC
What are your impressions on the differences between working in web2 / web3?
LLANERO
I’m going to compare and contract web2 business software and my web3 experience.
Startups are highly centralized and hierarchical around the founders. There's a very big divide between the founders and everyone else. This puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the founders who predominantly think of their jobs as “doing whatever it takes” to make their startup a unicorn. This creates an environment where the founders feel they have to will their startup into success which means a lot of centralized thinking and activity.
In my web3 experience so far, the goals feel more tactical, more short-term. I think that’s partly because it doesn’t require a lot of capital to get a project off the ground and dev timelines are much faster than web2 business software. Web3 doesn’t need a big team of devs, SRE, marketing, sales, and support. Projects are focused on shorter term deliverables that can create a lot of value quickly. So that makes web3 projects more agile and easier to pivot or outright abandon ideas that aren’t working.
This also tends to result in a different type of team. Whereas web2 teams are presented as exciting and empowering, they are still ultimately traditional employment models for the most part. There are employment agreements, titles, and career paths. Web3 teams seem to be a small core set of contributors along with a number of loosely coupled contributors. It’s a more informal relationship assembled for the purposes of achieving specific objectives.
Last thing I’ll mention for now is the role of community. In my web2 world of business software, community is mostly a euphemism for customers and the community usually looks like a traditional vendor-customer relationship. There are varying degrees of engagement and the best web2 companies are actively engaging their customers. But web3 takes this to a new level. The community is involved very early, taking on a much more active role. I think this is pretty cool and has the effect of helping achieve PMF better and faster. There is the downside, which many of us have probably seen, of communities becoming toxic.
CMC
You could have retired, but in June you cited several specific inspirations that pulled you into web3: blockchain, smart contracts, liquidity pools, dexes, NFTs, stablecoin. It seems like these use cases all remain just as valid even after the FTX collapse? Or does it make you reconsider retirement?
LLANERO
My goal has never really been retirement so much as the freedom to do what I love, and I do love DeFi. That said, I’m retired in the sense that I don’t have a 9 to 5 job or any particular obligations. I get to choose where I spend my time and I do it only because I’m interested.
I'm in the camp of the FTX collapse is really an example of why we need DeFi. FTX fell into a no-man land. It was tradfi operating in DeFi but it lacked the transparency of DeFi AND it lacked the regulations of tradfi. I'm still bullish on the future of DeFi.
You’ve helped a lot of people with your willingness to straightforwardly lay out your numbers investing in various platforms. What have you learned from this process?`
I learn best experientially so even when I think I get a project, I often have to just use it to really get to better understand it. A lot of them are really nuanced. I share my research and results because: 1) I figure others may learn the same way. 2) It forces me to actually research, evaluate, and understand the project more. 3) It puts myself out there so others can correct or challenge me, which forces me to learn even more.
CMC
Best way to play Chicken Bonds?
LLANERO
Ha, I haven't quite figured it out yet. Let's get TokenBrice or Diligent Deer on! Based on my experience so far, the blusd-lusd-3crv pool has yielded about 15% APR over the past month which is solid on stables. The chicken bonds themselves are neat because of the mechanic, the NFT, and the overall great packaging. However, as an investor, it really seems to come down to the price of bLUSD. I suspect the play has got to be somewhere between the price of LUSD, bLUSD, and the rate of bLUSD acquisition in a chicken bond.
CMC
You spend a good amount of time in Arbitrum DeFi — thoughts on the scene?
LLANERO
It's no secret that I'm a fan of GMX and UMAMI. GMX is clearly flourishing with massive growth during really hard times. I like UMAMI because I like their team and what they're trying to do around institutions. Unlike a lot of degens, given my background, I'm not opposed to institutional capital. I think that they can have a valuable role to play and the UMAMI team seems to have experienced adults in the room. I've dug around some of the other projects but haven't really dug into any deeply. Radiant spooked me a bit and I'm also getting a bit concerned about the number of projects that are built on GLP.
CMC
Gib alfa! …or just generally anything you’d like to share about Aladdin
LLANERO
Truly big brained, experienced, and well-connected people at Aladdin with a sincere goal of making interesting and valuable DeFi projects. Really enjoy working with them. A lot of alfa can be gotten from watching the community throw out ideas and the team reactions. Not every idea is practical or doable, and some might take a lot longer, but a lot of the projects are focused on making things work better with our products. The one we’ve been working on the most has been on the automated bonding strategy. It’s very cool.
Oh, I will definitely look and participate online