tell them they're too poor for your product

A solo founder in Seoul for a conference had built borrow-USDC-against-tokenised-stocks. Good wedge. He was about to put up an invite-only waitlist and work the room.

I told him to change the landing page right there. One line: the next big decentralized finance (DeFi) primitive is here, for people holding 2 million dollars of on-chain stocks. Don’t explain the product. A form. Email, wallet, and optionally your Signal ID. Not Telegram. Signal. People see that and think, what is this, what do I not know.

Then at the event: I don’t take calls, I do demos in person, 15 minutes. I’m not interested unless you have a couple of million in stocks. If you don’t, please don’t talk to me. The moment you do this at an event, people remember you as the guy who told them they were too poor for his product. That’s a pull. You’ll never push your way to that.

Fintech learned this decades ago and crypto hasn’t. Uber didn’t launch with Toyotas. They sent Rolls-Royces and BMWs so everyone felt the city had changed. Constrained supply makes demand feel poor, and poor people want in. Skimming the milk.

High net worth sales works the same way. You make the customer feel small. “What’s the minimum you’ll guarantee? Don’t tell me 5,000, come on.” You’ve set the frame. You’re judging them. The second someone’s judging you, you’ve lost.

Why this matters at the earliest stage: you want the 50 or 100 power users who already do this manually every day. One whale with 2 million is worth 30 retail users with 500 dollars each, and he introduces you to his friends. Two intros from someone who knows the biggest holders beat thirty intros from someone who knows everyone. Tell your network: don’t send me names, send me a number. Anyone above 500k, connect me and I’ll cut you in.

Keep features private. The moment you show the whole roadmap to a wallet team, they go back to Slack and propose building it. Share insights, not the product.

And this isn’t only for whales. A trader bot that works should be a 5,000 dollar a month package sold one on one to people doing 2 million in monthly volume, with a 15 day trial. Not a Twitter product. A sales product. You can’t afford this, sorry, but here’s a trial. They’ll be addicted in a week and one trade pays for the year.

the call where i said it best

Same founder said he’d tell his Monad contact he had a 50-person waitlist. I said no. Say you got 25,000 signups at the conference and you’re only taking meetings with people above 2 million in stocks, but since you trust his judgment, a 250k customer is fine. He hasn’t slept in six days. The story does the selling. Anyone good will catch the bluff, which is fine, because the bluff is just the cold start and the product is real.

do this this week

Find the five biggest possible customers for what you’ve built. Not the easiest. The biggest. Message them first.

the line to remember

attitude is the biggest way to create a pull rather than you having to go and push in sales.