Hi everyone, we're here at Solana Breakpoint and I'm joined by Emon Mutamari, who's the head of Solana Incubator at Salana Labs.
Imon, thanks so much for coming.
Thank you for having me, Rachel, really happy to be here.
So let's just start with some basics.
Tell me a bit more about Solana Incubator and the programs that you run.
Yeah, so Salana Incuputer sits within Slana Labs, as a lot of folks know, Solana Labs built the original Validator client, a lot of the original products and protocols of the network.
But as the network has grown, as all these amazing developers have come in, we ask ourselves how do we scale the knowledge, the expertise that we've built up over the years across the ecosystem to hopefully propel the next blue chip company to get created on Solana, the next Phantom, the next Jupiter, and that's really where the incubator.
Came from, where we work with 4 to 6 teams at a time, a very small group of teams.
We bring them to our New York office for 3 months, and it's really hands-on collaborative trying to propel them forward to create this, this next major company on Solana.
And so there's so many things that we could unpack there in terms of like what you look for.
Maybe we start off with the what you would look for in, from the actual product perspective or the idea perspective.
Yeah, it's a great question.
So as we think About this and, and for folks who are familiar with our prior cohorts, cohort one, we had Sanctum, which is a major LST player on the network.
Cohort two, we had Marinade, which has done a lot in the staking space.
And so, um, we tend to be very stage agnostic for the teams that we work with, where whether it's a team that's very early on and we're trying to propel to be an incredible company or a team that's more established, that piece of it we're, we're sort of agnostic too.
Um, and idea wise.
As well, vertical wise, um, it, it's not hugely important for us for it to be, let's say, just a deep end player, just an infrastructure player.
I think the thing that we care most about is first and foremost, the team.
Are they a team of technical founders that really care about the product that they're building?
Do they have founder-market fit around, around what they're doing?
Um, and then are there people that we want to enjoy in the office, you know, are they, they friendly?
Are they gonna get along with the rest?
The cohort.
So I think that's a big piece of it on the idea side.
And then the second piece of it is, is it something that we believe can be, uh, transformational for Solana?
Something that's really pushing the, the network forward, something that we haven't potentially seen before.
And the third piece that we care a lot about when we think about the ideas that we want are, are, are they actually things that can drive sustainable businesses on Solana.
Um, ideally businesses that can, uh, you know, draw in revenue.
Actually be profitable on their own merits, and then hopefully uh businesses that are actually um bringing crypto to the real world, to the masses, where we're going beyond just this sort of salonna and web 3 bubble and and actually affecting the lives of real people.
So those are some of the different considerations we have around ID.
And so without giving away too much information, I know you've just closed your next cohort, so maybe not a sneak preview into what some of the ones are coming up.
But staying for a little bit longer on the founder piece and the team's piece, how do you then train them or take them to that next level, because obviously being a startup at early stage is different to taking it then to the 100%.
And, and I will say, so we actually um recently announced cohort 4 applications, so if people are interested, they can still go ahead and apply.
I think the application deadline is December 19th, so folks want to get their application.
Before then they're able to.
But I think the way that we help startups is really three pieces.
The first is kind of this build alongside Solanala's experience where, um, we offer the full bench of personnel that we have to, to really jump in and support these teams.
But what does that mean?
Um, so we meet with every team on Monday to understand what are the things, the, the major challenges you have going on that week.
So, uh, for one team, they might say, we're working.
Through user experience design this week and we'll bring in the head of design at Salonna Labs to jump into their figma to leave feedback on, on what their design is.
Another team might say we're working through our marketing strategy.
So on a Monday, our head of marketing might go in, talk to them about what they're trying to do.
Maybe on Tuesday we have a document that we're working through with them, and then on Wednesday we're actually thinking about how to execute that strategy.
And so it's really hands-on kind of building alongside Sallana Labs as, as that first.
Um, the second piece is uh what I think about is all of the traditional Y Combinator type elements where we have office hours, workshops, speakers, dinners.
We have about 90 of these types of events per cohort where we bring in really high-quality folks, whether it's this past cohort, we had the founder of Venmo come in, the founder of FanDuel come in, we have Raj and Toli come in every time.
Um, we also bring in all the major VCs, the capital allocators, and so you really.
Create this experience of being at the nexus of the sauna ecosystem and, and getting to meet with some of the top folks.
Um, and then I think the final piece is what I think of as the cohort camaraderie, where, um, you're in a room building with the top founders in the ecosystem back to back with them.
Above you, you have Sona Labs, Slona Foundation, and ons on that floor.
Below you, you have the, the ecosystem floor, um, and so many positive synergies have come from that, where we've had, um, Companies in the cohort partner with each other, we've had some founders go and join other companies within the cohort, and I think what we always hear from teams is it really feels like a family, and, and so I think that's the final part of the experience that really brings it all together.
That's fantastic, and I imagine there's a little bit of a, Let's say cohort camaraderie and also a bit of a cohort alumni, right, like going back, you said you're now on, yeah, we're we're on cohort 4 and it's really amazing to see that the alumni who've come through.
We're we're we're now at probably 18 or 20 companies who've gone through the program and some of the biggest companies on Solana, like I mentioned, you know, Marinade, Sanctum, Crunchow, Chokra, Easy Labs, there's so many who have come through, and actually we just ran the numbers and out of these 18, I think 7 of them.
Have raised $5 million or more in funding so far, and that's only with cohort 3 just finishing, so we'll see what what cohort 3 ends up doing.
All the companies too have have gone fully bootstrapped, so, you know, Marinnade, Flash Trade, they actually haven't even raised funding because they've they've been able to be profitable.
So it's been really amazing to see the success that the companies have had and also to your point, the alumni experience where our teams are looking to help each other across cohort and how can we all support each other to, to push Solana forward.
That's great.
I mean, it's excellent what you're doing, very excited to see what comes out of Crow Help 4, so thank you so much for hosting us here at Solana Breakpoint and for having me on the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Rachel, I appreciate it.
Thanks, Yvonne.
