Fireside Chat with Lisa Cuesta Bunin and Kartik Talwar

[Music] Hey, welcome back everybody. Three more sessions to go and we jump into our happy hour and I want to just jump right in here uh for our next fireside and our last second last fireside for today. I want to bring on Lisa from Aztec. She's the CEO of Aztec Labs and we're going to cover a lot of things around how to scale a company in our ecosystem. So, please give Lisa a big round of applause.

Welcome.

Thanks for having me.

I am excited for this chat. I feel like we've uh chatted about a bunch of things without somebody recording this. So, this should be it should be fun. Um, I guess maybe the the setting here that I'd love to uh learn about you and have the audience know is what made you actually go from the investing side to uh being an operator um and joining a company.

Yeah. So on the investing side, you actually get to see a lot of everything. And so back in 2017, I was in New York and I met this startup uh called Consensus. Um, and it had a bunch of startups coming out of it. And so I actually originally learned about crypto through that through my role as an investor.

Um, and I met people that were building all kinds of decentralized things. Everything was going to be decentralized. And I just remember thinking at the time like, all right, these people have white papers. There's a lot that still needs to be built. I don't feel like while it's really exciting, this is the right time for me with my skill set to jump in because it feels like we they need people to actually build this stuff first.

And so I always kept an eye on on the crypto space generally. And in 2020 2020 um when there was just a lot of excitement around DeFi, around institutional adoption, Bitcoin being purchased by companies to put on their in their balance sheets, like it seemed like a more appropriate time because the tech had actually been built. Um there were people actually using this stuff. Obviously 2021 there was like a frenzy, but I still saw the same problems that I saw when I was originally using the very prim primitive products in 2017 around scalability and privacy. And so when I was thinking about, okay, I want to come into the space, but I feel like in order for this space to really blossom, I want to be part of something that's going to move the space forward.

That was kind of the spa, that was what I was focused on. And so when I met the Aztec team, they were ambitiously tackling both of those really key problems. And um actually you were part of my decision-m process to join the team.

I remember doing that reference call.

Yeah. Um and so I think I met the team, we clicked right away. The vision was clear. It was obviously a need in the space and um the team had obviously the right technical chops and kind of we're building a world-class technical team, but they needed someone to do all the other stuff. And so, um, I was really excited to join them as kind of the first non-technical person, um, back in 21.

It's kind of funny that, uh,

once again, I pointed out, it feels more odd than it should be, but you did join Aztec a few years after

they were working on the product and you are still the first non technical opaling up the company. Um, I guess what was that period like? What did you end up uh doing just kind of the first couple months in and uh and what were your kind of first impressions of working with an all engineering only team?

Yeah, I mean everything needed to be done, right? So I came in and I remember after my first week I was talking to one of my friends and it was like yeah this week I set up our CRM. I set up our like I had a bunch of partnership calls. I set up our recruiting process. like it was just the scope of things was just everything because you just like don't have you don't want to have the cryptographers and engineers spending time on that stuff.

It doesn't make sense. It's not their skill set. And so there was a lot of room to grow. Um and I quickly realized that you know we were building a product that we wanted people to use. One of the things that you know you need to do is tell people about it.

And obviously I didn't have the capacity to do it at the way that it needed to be done properly. And so in the early days, I was just kind of like looking for these critical gaps and being like, "Okay, well, how do we fill that gap?" And so a couple months after I joined, I got one of my friends who was really good at marketing and growth hacking and Twitter to like join to basically make sure that we able to get our word the word out. And so I think um yeah, it's just like being able to context switch really quickly, which I admire, one of our founders does that better than anyone I've ever met. But um being able to like wear a lot of different hats and be flexible kind of in what you need to do and what the role looks like and then um over time finding people that are like way better than you at that at the the critical things that the company needs and getting them to take it to the next level.

One of the things that I'm particularly excited about in this chat is that you don't often kind of get to have a conversation around scaling up a company from a non-CEO or CTO standpoint, especially in our space where things are so much tech heavy. Um, so I'm kind of curious to understand like what does it mean to be a CEO now of Aztec and if you can walk us through like the last couple years where you've kind of gone beyond more than 20 employees and uh things that you had to do to set up or things that you had to learn the easy or the hard way. Um, and just kind of what that process has been in setting up an org that's more than just uh kind of being a startup.

Yeah, I'd say it happened kind of organically. So when I first came on I was coming from an investing world and so they were like what do we do with you? like we don't really know what exactly your role is going to be. Um so I came in as head of BD and I was doing a bunch of the partnerships that for our first um kind of product that had uh private DeFi. So I was working with a bunch of DeFi protocols on integrations.

Um but just by virtue of like being at the organization and seeing other needs, I obviously like filled other gaps. So in a day I might be like doing financial models and working on fig figuring out our recruiting pipeline for the engineering side because we needed more engineers or doing partnerships. And um it actually wasn't until a year later um that I was about to head out on my first maternity leave that they were like well what who's going to do all these different roles? Like we need someone to kind of make sure that we have all these things covered. Um so that was a nice forcing function in my case.

I'd say like maybe others could have done it a little bit earlier but it was a good forcing function and it was actually good timing I think given um when I joined we were we just closed our series A I just like wanted to be a good steward of the money right and like make sure that we weren't overhiring or like growing too quickly and so it was fine to like wear the hats that I need to wear at that time but then you get to a point where like that's not the best thing for the company anymore and you do need to have someone that can like take it to the next level. So, I'd say, yeah, in my case, it happened more organically, but I think like looking kind of ahead. Um, you just want to make sure that you uh have what you need in order for people to do their jobs. Um, that's kind of like ultimately what the CO is responsible for, whether that's resources in terms of, you know, tools or people. It's thinking about like making sure that people have the context to understand like how their roles fit into what the company's goals are.

making sure that people know what the company is working towards and like how we're progressing towards those goals. Um, so I'd say like now it's like shifted over time to kind of managing a team and making sure that they have what they need to do their jobs, but then also doing that for the company to the best of my ability, whether it's through companywide processes or through the department heads that are managing those teams. How often were you in a scenario where you had to figure something out because the problem was unique to Aztec versus things you can kind of look up whether it's from friends or just general kind of advice that you can get on the internet on this is what you should do when you're 100% company or 50 person company or 200 person company. Were there any kind of moments where it was like not clear

um that this is kind of how you should set up anyone from a process to just solve a problem that's very unique to you?

Yeah, chat GPT didn't exist my first couple years. So, I'd say it's been a pretty big like a step function difference since that's been invented. Um, but yeah, back in the day, I think like I would use resources from like startups in general. There are tons of resources out there, whether it's like you don't want to build these things from scratch, especially given what I was saying, you're spending time on so many different things. Like, why not leverage the the things that are publicly available?

But in addition to that, I think there's also a lot of like really helpful peer groups um like in within the industry that can give you like industry specific information and um kind of be a sounding board when you're trying to figure something out. So I think a combination of like publicly available resources, just groups with other people that are doing similar roles to you. Um and then now chat GVt are probably the best. Um, and then also in addition to that, we have like world-class investors on our cap table and like thankfully have very good relationships with them. So, they've seen it work across dozens of companies and kind of can be a sounding board as well.

So, it's a combination between like network resources and then at the end of the day like it's not a one-sizefits-all. You need to like have things that are true to the process and the values and the kind of found what the founders want. And so I'd say like everything was adapted and like made purpose for our organization. So even if we got something off the shelf, it wasn't like we took it as it was. We needed to make sure that it was like consistent with how we wanted to build a company.

That makes makes total sense. Um what was Aztec back then when you joined and uh and how would you describe Aztec and what they're building now?

Oh my gosh. Um so when I joined, yeah, it was like the founders are now CTO who wasn't the CTO at the time, a couple of other engineers and cryptographers. And I just remember like it was very researchoriented. Um like the company started in 2017 with a completely different kind of objective. It was bringing corporate debt on chain which obviously like still

eight years is a bit early.

Yeah. A little early. Um but in that process realized oh like all these people we're talking to don't want to come on chain until there's privacy. Maybe someone should build that. And at the time I think Zcash was talking about you know extending to Ethereum

just come out. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we're still waiting for it. I mean, obviously there's like all kinds of great efforts now, but not a fully programmable um kind of layer on top of Ethereum, which is what we're building. And so I think that um at the time it was like very much more academic because it was like, you know, the people that were attracted to the company at the time were like doing the cutting edge research needed to now implement um this solution. And so lots of like cryptographers.

I remember joining um I mean it's seven people so it wasn't that many but I remember joining like cryptography lunch and learns and just being like you lost me after Alice and Bob. I like genuinely have no idea what you're talking about. Um but I found that a little bit intimidating at first because I was like I should understand this. It's critical to what we're building. But then I was like but wait these brilliant minds are spending time thinking about it and that's what they should be spending time on and I need to spend time on all these other things.

So I like quickly got over that. I think initially I was like, "Oh, I should learn it." And now I'm like, "Nope, I can't." Like there's there's like only so much that you can do. And I think everyone has unique things to bring to the table and you should just like swim in your lane and bring contribute in the way that is best to your skill set instead of trying to like, you know, uh, stretch into areas that like you have no ability to contribute.

I think that's generally a good advice, especially when you're figuring out things at the earlier stages. Um, the thing that I I kind of like about Aztec is that it's kind of uniquely set up to effectively do a lot of cryptography research. It's not just uh kind of taking things out of the shelf. They've had to invent so many things over the last six years. Um, and that kind of sets up a very interesting or setup where you have a pretty big R&D and just pure research department and then you have another subset of people that are implementing things and making a product.

um was this always the case or did this kind of become more common um as you kind of scaled up on on the team and overall I guess like what has been challenging or a breeze in setting up an orc that has such a big emphasis on on uh research.

Yeah. Um I'd say the proportion has definitely shifted where now we have way more engineers proportionally just because you need to to build all the things that we're building. Um like Aztec is building a decentralized L2 with a decentralized sequencer at launch. We have a we're building an AVM. We're building the client side proving and the cryptography that goes along with that.

We're building a language and all of the tooling that goes along with that. So like you just need engineers to build that stuff. And so we definitely still have a strong like um research kind of like heritage I guess and like history. And I think a lot of the people that came to the company came because of that and they were just like even if they weren't cryptographers they wanted to learn that and they were like intrigued by it and curious. Um but I think that uh yeah over time definitely got uh to pull from um different companies and places where people had experience like launching products and being in a more like structured organization.

And so the people that were attracted to Aztec in the like very early days are probably pretty different in terms of like their risk appetite and what they want to spend time on to the people that join today. Um because we're just like much closer to much closer to launching than we were when I originally joined. So like I think the people that join now are like you know very excited about the next part of the um of the journey which is basically like building an ecosystem around the technology

which is a whole different goal than just existing first and then you get to scale things up.

Um Aztec has been very kind of vocal, adamant and just a massive pioneer in uh supporting decentralization. Um I guess I'm curious um for at least the audience to know like how do you think about decentralization um as Aztec and and what does it mean and kind of what what values are kind of considered to be on the the strong side if this is considered decentralized?

Yeah. So I think you know technically ZK Money what we launched in 2021 is the first stage two rollup according to LTB which is cool. Um but yeah in terms of

that's a I just it makes sense. I just realized this.

Yeah.

This adds up. Yes.

Yeah. But um anyway, so we yeah, I think decentralization has just always been part of the kind of like vision of this uh fully programmable L2. We did build a centralized product. ZK money was a centralized product when we had it live um which allowed people to do private payments um private DeFi, but it was like a centralized solution. And so part of the rationale for why we sunset that was because we were like, okay, well, do we want to decentralize this thing or do we want to build towards our full vision of a fully programmable L2?

And what we realized is it's actually really hard to fit decentralization into a centralized thing like it just would require a lot more engineering resources than just like having decentralization be part of the whole protocol design at the outset. Um so I think you know we had done it the centralized approach we learned from it and we for now like this um fully programmable L2 that we're building like our entire test net process has basically been to like make it permissionless for validators to join the set which has been awesome to see just how much appetite there is for that. Um we have now I think 10,000 sequencers that are participating in our adversarial test net which is a scale that like just doesn't

crazy high incredible number. we have 20,000 nodes that are running like I think someone cited that it was like more than Ethereum like according to some website and I was like okay well that's pretty ridiculous that we're able to like do um like kind of run this network at such scale and so um I think it's a part partially from like kind of our experience partially from like the founders's vision and then also as like a privacy protocol we just like really want to make sure that we're building it in a way that um is a way that developers can kind of trust that there there's not someone that can flip to switch on them. Um, we want it to be something that like there isn't direct any one party that's like directly controlling the the network and that developers like have visibility and transparency into how the network is being governed.

Talk more about the privacy part. So

the the decentralization makes sense and the more people you have uh supporting the network are the greater kind of your odds of survival especially on managing the states of just kind of just the blockchain data itself. um what is Aztec's approach to privacy and uh and I guess why is that important?

Um in terms of what we're building, yeah, so this kind of fully programmable L2 that we're building allows developers to have complete control over what's public and what's private. Um so that's you know think about everything that you could build in Ethereum plus if you could do it privately. Um, that's kind of like one way we like thinking about it. And it basically enables you to do what Aztec set out to do at the very beginning, which is like, okay, if we want to get like enterprises and corporates to come on chain, like they have privacy concerns and considerations and responsibilities like regulatory um responsibilities. And so um they will have the ability to kind of build all the things that they're looking to build on chain, but have meet those regulatory obligations.

And so I think there's a lot of interest and conversation about privacy right now because there is a new wave of users and builders that are coming into the ecosystem that like realize that there are real limitations to building if you don't have the ability to decide kind of like what's public and private. Um and we're doing it in a decentralized way obviously like so there isn't going to be you know things that are done offchain to provide the privacy. The way that it's done is users are proving things uh client side and then setting a proof. And so basically that data doesn't exist anywhere but in the client on on the user's device.

Oh, interesting. Okay. That's a very very kind of important distinction. Um, I preface up by saying I I know it's not going to be a fair question to you specifically, but

do you have any insight into what the reaction has been for developers um when they kind of consider using

Noir or like or just Aztec in general for deploying a contract

um where they're getting privacy versus kind of convincing them altogether that hey privacy is important and you should kind of think about your application to have that as a default versus thinking about it later.

Yeah, I think well when people are building with noir I think they um Noir is a programming language like a universal zk programming language is that developers can use to build on any ecosystem that has um a verifier that is compatible with noir. So, um, you can use it across all the EVM chains, starknet, and then there's kind of other ecosystems outside of Ethereum, um, where you can deploy apps that have noir. And so, I think what we've realized is like there's a limit to what you can do because obviously when you're building on a transparent blockchain, like things have to be public just by definition. And so I think you know one it's um just there's limitations in terms of what developers are able to do with noir on other chains but then also it's like a better developer experience because Aztec is purpose-built for noir. Like it's it's you know we have

you get the best of everything especially on on the Aztec network.

Yeah. Like there's infrastructure and stuff that you would have to like build if you wanted to use uh build noir apps on other ecosystems versus in with Aztec it just comes out of the box.

That's simple enough.

Yeah. Um last question to you is um I guess what can we expect from Aztec over the next six to 12 months?

Yeah, so like I said we have our adversarial test net running right now. Um it's been very active and very exciting to just see um operators kind of permissionlessly adding themselves through an ecosystem project called ZK passport which allows you to actually do proof of humanity using your passport generates a ZK proof and then does it's a good zipple resistance mechanism. um we are using that adversarial test net in preparation for our ignition launch which will basically be the deployment of all the contracts onto L1. So that's our governance staking um to uh basically like the um all the sequencer kind of related things and then after that will be the upgrade that adds execution environment which we're calling alpha. Um so that's all in the next you know time period that you're talking about which is a lot to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amazing. Lisa, thank you so much for this amazing conversation and uh can't wait to see uh how Ignition goes.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Amazing. [Music]