Injective Cofounder Eric Chen's Exclusive Interview: From NYU Dropout to $50M Blockchain Startup Success. This insightful as-told-to essay, edited for clarity, details Chen's journey from a Bay Area upbringing to building Injective, a leading blockchain network, securing over $50 million in funding, and attracting investors like Mark Cuban. Learn how he navigated college, discovered his passion for cryptography, and ultimately chose entrepreneurship over a traditional career path
Growing up in the Bay Area's vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem shaped my perspective. Before college, I was surrounded by founders, making the idea of starting my own company—Injective, a blockchain network—seem less daunting
Growing up in the Bay Area, surrounded by entrepreneurs and founders, starting my own company felt less like a radical leap and more like a natural progression. This experience shaped my journey building Injective, a blockchain network revolutionizing decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure
In 2018, I launched Injective, a blockchain network providing crucial infrastructure for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. We've secured over $50 million in funding, including investment from Mark Cuban, fueling our mission to revolutionize the financial landscape
Injective Labs: From College Dropout to $50M+ Funding & Mark Cuban Investment
At 22, I left college to pursue my passion: building Injective, a blockchain network revolutionizing decentralized finance (DeFi). Securing over $50 million in funding, including an investment from Mark Cuban, validated my decision. This journey, fueled by a Bay Area upbringing and early exposure to entrepreneurship, proves that sometimes the best path is forging your own
NYU Business & Computer Science Grad Builds $50M+ Blockchain Startup: Eric Chen's Journey
Driven by a career-focused college plan, I soon discovered a passion beyond the traditional finance and tech pipeline. My true goal became identifying and pursuing my strengths and passions, a journey that ultimately led to co-founding Injective
My fascination with blockchain technology led me to pursue an academic exploration during college. Hours of study were captivating, fueling my passion for this transformative technology and ultimately shaping my entrepreneurial path
My passion for cryptography ignited early, but formal coursework wasn't available until later in my NYU computer science program. To accelerate my learning, I proactively joined PhD student reading groups and research labs, immersing myself in the field before it became part of my curriculum
Gaining valuable industry experience, I began part-time work at a New York venture capital fund in late 2017, providing crucial exposure to the investment landscape before launching Injective in 2018
By the summer of 2018, I had ramped up my work with the fund to full-time and was seriously considering taking a leave of absence from college.
I wanted to be fully immersed in the blockchain finance space, and felt that staying at college would be too time-consuming for me to do what I wanted.
Gaining more industry and subject understanding helped me develop the idea behind Injective.
I noticed a problem in the industry: decentralized crypto exchanges had performance issues, like not being able to process orders quickly. I wanted to create something with the same efficiency you’d expect from traditional finance, but in a more decentralized way.
The space was so nascent, and it felt like a once-in-a-generation opportunity where someone like me, who didn’t have industry experience or a lot of academic knowledge, could jump in and contribute value right away.
In the fall of 2018, I took a leave of absence from college and officially started Injective. I got a cofounder to help split up the engineering and research tasks. We recruited engineering talent so we could build out our own exchange product more quickly.
When it came to figuring out how to operate a company and get investor buy-in, I engaged with other people in the industry, including my contacts from the fund I worked at, but I also had to figure out a lot of stuff by myself. The industry was so new that people who’d worked in it for a while didn’t have standardized answers.
I took some college courses on the side because my parents encouraged me not to drop out, but eventually, in 2020, I decided not to devote any more time to finishing college.
We vastly underestimated the engineering challenges of building a decent-sized exchange infrastructure with such a green team. Our product iteration process took roughly two years.
If we had millions of dollars in the bank, iterating would have been quicker, but acquiring funding and interest from investors was challenging. At the time, investors didn’t believe that decentralized exchanges had much promise, and having no degree or much industry experience probably didn’t help.
We were bootstrapping and living on low costs to make things work.
When the space started blowing up in 2020, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. We raised a decent seed round, which allowed us to accelerate.
Our head of business once saw Mark Cuban speak at Harvard, where he shared his email for people to pitch him ideas.
Our team decided to pitch him. At the time, the GameStop saga was causing upheaval because Robinhood had prevented people from buying GameStop stock. Mark Cuban commented publicly on it. In our pitch, we spoke to that moment and shared that we were building an open platform with no entity that could control what people can or can’t do.
It kicked off a whole email chain in which Mark asked us questions about our solution, and we had to answer as accurately and quickly as possible. After a bit of back-and-forth, he decided to invest.
Our strategy was to be down-to-earth, so we were honest about our product and not upselling it or exaggerating what we could achieve.
In total, we’ve raised over $50 million.
The first few years after leaving college were the most challenging of my life. I was constantly drowning in work and felt pressure to make things work.
I didn’t have a strong dissatisfaction with college; I just felt there were better opportunities for me than being locked into that route.
The space I was building in would’ve been so different if I’d waited just a few years, so I was forced into action.
My most important takeaway is that if you have an opportunity you’re passionate about, you should take it.
Do you have a story to share about dropping out of college to become a young founder? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com.
Source: Original Article