ETHKL24 | Panel | Malaysian OGs: The Untold Story

okay ladies and gentlemen the next panel that we have for you is something very close to my heart because I think it was around 2021 when I started coming into this space and I discovered that some of the most um recognizable names in the blockchain world names like coin gecko names like ether scan all had their offices based right here in Malaysia and that was that was a revelation so can we give them a round of applause welcome our Malaysia B Spirit ladies and gentlemen for the panel on Malaysian OG's the Untold Story please welcome TM Lee from coin gecko Matthew tan from EOS scan and my good friend moderator harff [Applause] [Music] kamaru all right har take it away thanks Chu so we we don't have that much time so I'm going to go right into it I'm sure everybody here knows about mat and TM and ether scan and coino already uh we want to get the untold story so hopefully I get to ask some spicy questions um but before that um maybe not introduce your companies but can you explain your story about how you got into crypto what you were doing before and how you started into the crypto space can go ATM um so I I I I guess I discovered crypto sometime in I I mean I've seen it sometime in 2011 2012 uh on the internet uh but I just like brush it off because I don't really know what it means like I saw Bitcoin uh you know people getting losing their coins and whatnot um but my but my background is technical uh I have no idea about Finance right so it doesn't really relate to me um but I think when um I came back to Malaysia cuz I was studying in the US for a bit I came back to Malaysia and I was trying to build a um uh assess product but it wasn't easy to get a payment provider so there was no stripe there was no brain tree there's no way for like uh solo def to build a website and charge people globally for it um I contacted a few payment provider locally and they said you know I need like 250,000 ring and a company incorporated with the startup Capital to get the paperwork going so then I discovered that I could charge people with Bitcoin and that's sort of like where the turn the Turning Point started uh and then I discovered uh um I sort of understood like how like gold and silver kind of work in you know history of money and then sort of tied together and that sort of like a matchmaking heaven and got me down further into the vit hole Yeah M yeah so I I've been in the i space close to 30 years so uh so I think uh so I first actually started my my career as an IT specialist in the late 90s so I did that three years uh some of you probably not born yet uh and uh spent the next 15 years uh during the transition from the web 1.0 to Web 2.0 so uh we were actually building out a lot of software and a lot of cool stuff back then so in uh 2013 uh I actually I first heard of uh Bitcoin 2011 so it was from uh Hacker News and uh being a Malaysian right uh when you come across a news that says hey you know you you have a way to literally print money so it was really exciting back then uh so 202 2014 uh started building out some apps and obviously in 2015 with the Ean white paper well actually was just in 2014 I decided to do this fulltime and uh yeah here I am so we've been building over the last nine years and uh TM so you're not the only founder uh of quango can share a little bit of how you guys met each other and started on this journey um yes so so Bobby uh which is uh my co-founder um we've been doing this for 10 plus years already K 10 sometime in April um it's been a long journey and I think it was very much by chance so um when I got excited about Bitcoin sometime in 2013 14 I was actually working in Singapore for a company at the time and uh I was really really excited about Bitcoin I've been telling all my colleagues about it and so happened uh Bobby was friends with my my boss my CTO at the time and he happened to visit the office and so happened I was there as well and he said that hey why don't you guys chat because seems like both of you are you know the two guys who are crazy about Bitcoin because nobody understood what we were talking about so at that time it was really a close Niche group um I remember when in Singapore um I attended the first Bitcoin Meetup there was only about like what 15 to 20 people uh and then as the price of Bitcoin moves the size of the meet up will sort of like go along with it right it will expand and contract depending on it so that was like uh the time and but yeah it was it was really by chance uh I never knew uh him before like from from a long time and then we exchanged uh contact and when I get back to Malaysia we decide to just build something together right so there is quite a journey because like you know we don't really know each other enough so what we end up doing was Bobby was building his altcoin crypto newsletter and I was building a micro payment um uh service in Bitcoin and then both of us start of like okay both of us are quite into this we can probably combine our Str bank and built something and we were just going on the list and then eventually we decided on coin Geo because that's sort of like the strength that that we have commun in the product and um yeah so you've been together a long time just want to touch a little bit um and your co-founders firsttime co-founders how do you handle like a shared idea of the direction of the company and any disagreements that you can share about with the audience yeah actually for me I I actually have a little bit of experience uh with co-founders even before uh with Bobby right so actually when in college I work with two other guys um really really talented people actually uh we actually built like a flight search aggregator together right so this was um uh something like just three of us like we don't even know like we didn't plan for anything we just go ahead and build this thing right and um obviously like a lot of things weren't T out and we didn't discuss UPF front and we never had any direction and then there were a lot of like conflicts here and there but eventually um we had different direction and we had to part ways but I think from that experience itself I I knew what to look out for and that's also the reason why Like Me and Bobby like we built our own thing to test the water and slowly like gradually get into things right so uh I actually had some experience in in in that episode and um and then when comes to this um I I guess it's more like at a time we were treating K as a as as a side project so none of us also have much of expectation we only have interest in the space and the interest s of like continue to stay align for a long time I mean there are going to be some shortcomings and what not but I think at the end of the day is um are are we are we sort of like seeing this journey as bringing us forward into the industry and it did right because both of us sort of like Get to You know speak to people in the industry like coming from from from from someone with no Finance or you know big Tech background like we get to speak to smart people and whatnot so I think like that s of like brought us all the way in but of course there's always going to be ups and downs along the way and Matt you're CTO for a very very long time uh what pushed you into becoming a CEO of your own company um I'm actually still a CTO um so uh so on on my end as far as like uh Founders and all uh so I obviously had a I was a co-founder of different company and uh we were actually doing it for uh 15 years so one five it's a very long time uh when you work with someone for 15 years and you're basically Partners right um I think if I had one advice on like the co-founder portion right uh don't do your shares equally don't do 50/50 it just leads into a lot of issues and we had it in a 50/50 partnership so I think along the way uh people kind of drift away and then your alignment kind of changes so no wrong no right just your alignment changes over 15E period uh as for uh I think at heart I'm still a software engineer um and um being a CEO it's probably easier to be a CEO if you are trans transitioning from a CTO versus Vice Versa I think that's how kind look at it and I think uh having uh being a CTO it allows me to understand what the engineers are running to issues and a lot of product related issues uh so to summ it up I think it's something that it's one of those things that you have to do right so then you kind of Step Up and figure out how to do it and uh there are a bunch of deps uh in ESL uh so if any of them are interested in founding their own startup uh and they're technical people uh is there any suggestions for you guys in like how to come uh up as a Founder how to find a co-founder whether you should be more a CEO or just focus on the technical part you mean like starting up a Cy yeah like someone here possibly uh who just finished this the hack on uh what would be like any advice you can tell them so I think a lot of us actually started our projects as site projects right uh when I started ether scan it wasn't I was kind of fun project back then uh and I hope it's still fun it's still fun I think uh still fun so we started it more like a fun project that I started M fun project that you could uh add value back to the ecosystem uh as for advice for someone do it I think the advice still the same regardless of whether it's VY uh obviously uh you want to find I know it sounds cliche but I think you want to find something that you have interest in so it shouldn't be purely money driven I think the money and the money and stuff those things will come later but find something that you want that you're genuinely interested in the reason I say that is because I think that whole journey when you spending a lot of time right it actually goes down a lot to your ability to preserve uh having GD and uh just being able to push on and that will eventually come back and uh that passion will come back and help you drive through yeah I think on my end is never be afraid to just put things out there in public so as def you're always just building um it could be a product that you can just put out in a world or it could be your open source code page can just put it out on on GitHub or gitlab and get criticized by by people right so I think that's the fastest way to to learn um because like how how you're going to get like intense training I on my end like I never had experience working in like big tech companies or whatnot but it's more like putting out there people criticize what we work on and then just figure out and then when you hit a roadblock and and then just keep trying and I think there are people who will give you ideas along the way so I I I think along the way is just putting things out there and never be shy about what because I think we Malaysians we tend to be very reserved we always want to put out the best code out there before we are ready but even if it's heart break like just release it okay and U this might be a spicy question um so uh both coin Geo and ether scan are seen as by a lot of people as public goods uh in this space um so both of you are running for-profit companies uh can you share like how you got to that direction at the start of the company uh whether to do it as a for-profit or as a nonprofit okay uh so I first took my my serious step into like this industry in uh was 2013 so I built out a produ called block scan which is like a Explorer for Bitcoin back then so uh the the first the first way I did it was I I when I went to the space I was trying to figure out like I know if you want to build something how do you keep this sustainable right so obviously I put in my own money back then uh but that didn't really turn out well so the project collapsed uh so when etherum came along in 20 14 2015 each right so I I try to I try tried to do a slightly different approach so I applied for Grant uh but obviously this was back in 20 early 2015 and the ecosystem was I me back then ether was like 90 cents right uh the ecosystem was a lot different um and understandably we did not get the grand so when we did not get the ground then I it was back to the the drawing board and trying to figure out okay like so I will still put in my own funds but you know like how long are you going to be able to put in your funds that won't take you so long so uh back in 2016 we kind of decided okay uh maybe what we can do but it's 2015 so we we would go with the traditional route so this was before icos so you didn't really have an option uh so we actually like raised a very small round uh in in Silicon Valley and stuff like that you know that very traditional route uh the only difference that we did is that instead of staying in us we brought the money back and we decided to uh build out the company where it is so that leads us to where we are with ether scan today so uh how do I describe ether scan so it is a for-profit company but that doesn't really fully maximize The Profit portion and it's somewhat of a public good so it's kind of how we arrive at that portion and that's still the driving force that we have today yeah um yeah I think definitely because um um Bobby and I has this um philosophy where we follow the the the thinking of David H Hansen and Jason freed from Bas cam where you bootst your company and go for profitability as soon as possible so for coin Geo's case like we bootstrap the company and we actually aim for profit uh as soon as we can because we have no Runway of VC funding to back it so what we end up doing was running it as cheap as possible and just enough to S like payback is server cost and whatnot so I have some um we we we kind of have experience with running advertising uh uh products in the past so we were putting ads in in Co Geo and at the time even though the market is small but because we keep our like cost really low and it's just two of us so we are always aiming for profitability from the start because that's the only way to keep your company like sustainable over time um but I guess um sometime in in in in in the middle of the journey we decided to open up our API which is uh we give out for free uh it's a public API that anyone can just build I think the mindset at the time was that the crypto Market was in a bad market and how else can we like expand the pie right so the only way is to give our pricing data for free so developers can come in and build something using the price API for free and move on and and and introduce new use cases so that was a time where I feel like we were kind of borderline we subsidizing the market um but at the end uh as the market grows and grows like we have to find a way to keep this public good continuing uh but with the mindset of still aiming for profitability to keep the company sustained so today like API has both a public free model and a paid model again I think very similar to Ether scan like I feel that people tell us that we leave money on the table here and there often very yeah but uh I guess that's the the the nature of of what drivve US yeah okay and um you've been through uh a lot over the years uh have you ever felt like basically just giving up and you know retire and enjoy your early gains um yeah first actually there was a time where both of us were about to give up and like sell the company it was about 201 um 16 2016 yeah it was just I think it was at a time where Bitcoin was like Rock Bottom um $200 I think and then even the Bitcoin Called Death decided to quit right I I don't know if anyone remember that moment but then we were like oh our two of us like like are we are we the idiots now like are we in this space that's never going to grow um so we actually were looking for buyers um but I think the space was just too small for anyone to even consider us um so then what ends up happening is that yeah we can't sell the company so let's just keep running it and maintain the server as is and then yeah I think what happens in 2017 we were just seeing growth that we cannot ignore and then yeah that's when we decided to just go all in but there was a period of time where it was very close uh I think a lot of Bitcoin companies or crypto companies at the time were in a tough situation and a lot of them if they held on like things will be very very different as well I think that's when I I met uh Bobby and TM so we actually had a chat I think in uh like o or like somewhere right so we were actually looking at um investing in K Co so that's one of the big regrets that we didn't manage to make it back then uh but I totally understand I think we were actually so that's how we kind of got to know each other uh I met these two really young bright kids back then I think probably is still working back then uh uh um yeah so I guess on my on my end uh I haven't really spoken much about this publicly um maybe it was maybe it was just once that I I I wouldn't say I wanted to give up but I there was just once when I thought like why am I doing this I mean it's just like like it's a lot of pressure and and stuff like that so maybe once in 2016 so way back before we kind of took it up so I think it was uh so yeah so we so again here I was like uh 41 years old you know and like two kids in school wife still working in a company and stuff like that right uh and so we were supposed to go down to Silicon Valley do the the accelerator right and so I had I spoke to a friend who was supposed to to accompany me but he bailed out ffk last minute uh and then uh it was another person who also ffk ffk meaning they they bailed out the last minute and so it's only I think I it's one of our teammates here uh Von who actually decided to say hey um I I I'll follow you right so uh so shout out to ban uh so I think was during that time I had a conversation with my wife actually back then uh like like whether or not we should actually do this uh so I think that was the only time that we actually kind of shed tears and stuff like that I know it kind of sounds weird you shouldn't be doing that but uh you have to understand I was doing what I was doing for the last 15 years it was very comfortable and to restart everything right and give up a relatively comfortable thing going to a space that is just so much different from me that requires you from a CTO going to coo just I I I didn't like to go out and pitch I didn't like to go out and talk but you can see Val one of the things that you have to do you have to pitch every day and I actually hated it uh yeah and I I don't even like talking here too much but uh so that's the whole thing I force into this well Force do it and we just do it I think and that's one one of the things that we always try to do we just try to push forward take baby steps and move forward and hopefully that that P off some dividend uh and I think one of you mentioned icos uh just now so the flip side of the question is has uh have either of you been tempted to do an Ico with the crazy valuations that everybody raises um have you ever had that Temptation we always talk about it think about it but um but I think like like the thing is that if you do a token you need to have a reason for it and utility for it so but we always like joke about it so yeah I think we we we always have that conversation uh tokens no tokens I think at least for me personally right um I I I think I want to believe right at the end day right uh you can get byy over a longer term period just by by building a product that has value supporting your users and be more user and product even uh the icos kind of make sense I guess for certain projects know if you're a network based and stuff like that but I think for projects like what we're doing it doesn't really make a lot sense and it kind of feels like it's uh in Easy V maybe were people like it tortured not maximizing profits um and so you've been here since 2013 is both of you uh from the early days when you were having sort of crypto meetups with maybe like I don't know 10 people at a papa Rich um so how has the scene changed uh both Malaysia and internationally um what have you seen change and what have you like excited about yeah I think the scene uh well the the kind of crowd that that um I think that's evolution of the type of crowd right so in the early stage it's always like the early adopters these are people who are technologist or um uh people who are looking for the best way to you know um remit money and you know it's always that kind or people who are libertarian and whatnot and then as it evolve I think something in 2017 there's like more and more like mainstream people from like other sector coming in into the space so I think like that's like the thing that sort of like evolved but I think one thing that's always concerned is always uh developer involvement so I think even in 2013 I think what fascinated me or what attracted me to the space was that um uh I was a developer myself in the web to space but when I came into the Bitcoin uh Meetup I saw some developers building like exchange POS system uh or even a way to tokenize something because they were playing with like color coins and whatnot so I thought that was very very interesting and that actually got me in and and gave me a and even today like we are looking at deps right death crowd but that was the time like even Bitcoin days there were like death crowd as a temperature check but even until today like that's the crowd that always remain constant and as long as there is these Builders like like the industry will continue to see use cases and grow but yeah so on my end uh what one question you obvious got asked is about Talent right um so I think uh at least for me the the main big difference right now is that there's more awareness ecosystem uh there's this younger breed of talent uh meaning that you have strong support from the uh universities and all so it's actually probably just I guess it's easier to get people to work on projects right now in V three in comparison to back then so back then it was just an extreme Challenge just to explain to people what back then was blockchain so it was actually extremely difficult just to explain what blockchains were and if you you actually explain to someone what what blockchains where they they always thought it was a like a scam or like a money game so today it's probably easier in that aspect so basically more aarness this kind of out of it okay I think I have time for maybe one or two last questions um something that actually has been happened for the last one year plus for both companies is that you've had uh Acquisitions of other uh projects um so can you share some of the sort of experience what that was like as a Malaysian founder acquiring other companies so I think relative to e scan we do a a small acquisition very simple straightforward one so um the process was was quite quick um we I think we spent about like four five six months or so um I mean if I think back like I I was just long story short there's a lot of lessons for me to learn um obviously you hear a lot of acquisition stories like here and there um but it's also a lot of work that goes before and after and post and whatnot um but I guess right now is uh yeah there is a lot that goes into it and I think for me is I know what to look out for in the future but uh there's always a lot of thought that needs to be put out before you decide to put a trigger and stuff like that so I think on our end we also did a a very a relatively small acquisition around the same time as uh they did and it's kind of weird we actually acquisition of his company one of the companies that invested in so to uh cut short I think um we would at least like I wouldn't be able we wouldn't be able to put it off uh on my own so obviously was help from the teammates and all uh one of the things I think that we actually looked at was very simple we actually didn't really look at the the company we didn't really look too much on the product but we were actually looking just at the team I think the key for us right is at the end there is a team I think if you have a strong team and we actually evaluated based on that was the team good will the team be able to stay on the last thing you want to do is to do a small acquisition get half the team to leave within the next six months so uh on my humble opinion one key thing you should look at is the team all right and on that note uh thanks for your time and please give them a round of applause to everybody thank you you thank you TM thank you Matthew and thank you haris you did a really good job interviewing your boss