SLP347 Kyle Murphy Building Pleb Lab: Bitcoin accelerator, community hub

Kyle Murphy of Pleb Lab and Austin Bitcoiners Club joins me on the show to talk about the Austin Bitcoin scene and his role in growing it. We also get into what Pleb Lab is and the bitcoin entrepreneurship in Austin, Texas. This is a great show to get a sense of the community in Austin as well as thoughts on how Bitcoin’s ecosystem grows.

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Podcast Transcript:

Stephan Livera:

Kyle, welcome to the show.

Kyle Murphy:

Thanks Stephan. Glad to be here.

Stephan Livera:

So Kyle, I know you’re working on this whole idea of Pleb Lab and all this stuff, and you’re in Austin—obviously Bitcoin is a growing scene and there are a lot of Bitcoiners coming to Austin. So let’s hear it from you in terms of how you got to Austin and the Bitcoin scene there and how you found all this?

Kyle Murphy:

Yeah, good question. I would say a good degree of it is just happenstance, just the kind of lifestyle I had built pre-Bitcoin and pre-Austin was very nomadic, so I ended up wherever the wind blew me. And post-pandemic, I left San Francisco, my van life community of army veterans just spread out across the country and ended up wherever they went next. Late 2020, I got into Bitcoin. I had heard about it in 2016, but 2020 was when I got skin in the game. Six or seven months after skin in the game, I was 100% in, and shortly after that, it was like, Where do I go from here? And the two options that presented themselves were (1) leverage and gamble the Bitcoin I worked my ass off for, or (2) try and find a way to add value to the ecosystem somehow. I was visiting some family in Dallas, heard whispers in the wind about this event called BitDevs that was happening once a month down in Austin. So I came down to check that out. I missed the one right when I arrived in Austin. And because of that I was like, All right, wasn’t really feeling it, didn’t get into the Bitcoiner scene—was here for like 10 days before I ended up buying a one-way ticket to Mexico, got to Mexico, and realized that the travel days were over. I for sure did need to find a way to be in Bitcoin somehow. I made my way back, made it to a BitDevs, saw 150 Bitcoiners in a room—no masks—kicking it. I was like, All right, this is my scene, so I stayed. And yeah, that’s the start of the journey making my way to Austin. So it was just: got into Bitcoin, heard there were Bitcoiners in Austin, made my way to Austin, saw the Bitcoiners, met the Bitcoiners, and never left.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. And so can you place this in the timeline for me? So you got into Bitcoin hardcore in 2020, you went all in. And then at what point did you actually come to Austin?

Kyle Murphy:

So skin in the game was July of 2020. I would’ve landed in Austin shortly after my 32nd birthday, so we’re talking probably early April of 2021.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. And how was the Bitcoin scene growing at that point? Because I know the BitDevs community grew very rapidly. And so it came from just this small group. I think it was Justin Moon, maybe he started that. And then obviously the guys like Buck Perley and Parker [Lewis] and @benthecarman have been very proactive in building and growing that scene. I’ve been once or twice myself—I really enjoyed it. So at that time in April, how big was it then?

Kyle Murphy:

It was already bigger than the onset, from what I understand. So I’ve heard stories about the 15-20 person start when Justin Moon launched this thing years ago. But by the time I arrived here for that April meetup, I think that April meetup probably had at least 115-120 people. Somewhere over 100 people at the first meetup I ever saw.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And I can definitely add something there in terms of my own experience of going to Bitcoin meetups around the world. I was very impressed at the level of the knowledge, the technical depth I was seeing in the meetups that I was attending in those one or two times I went, just because of the number of people there and the amount of high-level discussion that you could find there. So I was really impressed by that personally. And so I see it as being a real Bitcoin hub in America, for obvious reasons. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience of that and seeing Austin grow into this real Bitcoin hub?

Kyle Murphy:

Yeah sure. So I arrived mostly for BitDevs. That was really the driving thing. Parker Lewis put out the bat signal, If you’re a Bitcoiner, come to Austin. I made my way down here. I saw 125-150 people in a room. I stayed. I think I went to maybe two BitDevs meetups before I realized I just wanted more. I was not getting enough time around Bitcoiners. I wanted so much more. So listen, what you just said, the technical knowledge and the depth of discussion at BitDevs is amazing, but BitDevs was very technical. So for two hours, it’s this very technical conversation. Everybody’s quiet, it’s a little bit of participation from the crowd, but mostly listening and learning. And then it’s followed up with Cooper’s barbecue where everybody goes, they socialize. They have that good time. For me, being non-technical especially—I’ve gotten more technical sitting in an office with Ben Carman, Anthony Ronning, a bunch of wizards have made me a hell of a lot more technical than I was 7-8 months ago—but I wanted more of the Cooper’s barbecue and less of the technical. So the thought process was like, How can I find a way to just kick it with Bitcoiners? My first thought was like, I’m just going to send out a tweet and be like, I’m under this tree in a park if you want to hang out with Bitcoiners. That’s where I’ll be. I ended up meeting Car González, who is now the co-founder of Austin Bitcoin Club and Pleb Lab, through a simple outreach on Twitter. I saw he owned a Bitcoin media company—I had questions about media. That conversation spawned. We realized we both wanted to kick it with Bitcoiners more often. So within three months of being in Austin, we had hit the ground running to launch the Austin Bitcoin Club, which is now the other side of the coin to BitDevs. The BitDevs is the very technical, the Austin Bitcoin Club is the very social network-oriented. We do 15-20 minutes. Very generalized conversation, low level stuff. I turn off the microphone, and we just eat food, drink beer, and kick it with Bitcoiners. So that was the progression of Austin Bitcoin Club. Now we’re up to two meetings a month in the city of Austin. I’m still not sure it’s enough. We probably need more at this point. It’s wild. It’s growing fast. We’re up to two meetings a month, well over 100 people apiece. And I think the demand is probably there for even more of it.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, that’s excellent. I can share even on this, I was one of the co-organizers for Bitcoin Sydney back when I was there, and we were doing basically a similar setup, actually. We would do one main meetup where there might be someone giving a talk and that would be general, but sometimes more intermediate or advanced level, and then discussion. Sometimes there would be two talks and that’d be the main one. There would be a drinks meetup. And then there would be an online Socratic. So we had three meetups on the calendar every month, ish, although obviously with lockdown rules and things that was more difficult, but nevertheless it sounds like you’ve got a similar thing going there. And the other interesting part is building that community around it. Like there might be chat groups going, there might be other ways to keep people connected. So what are you doing in the Austin scene?

Kyle Murphy:

That’s correct. At this point there’s two Austin Telegram groups. There’s the original Austin Bitcoin developers one, there’s the Keep Austin Pleb Telegram group. And then even the Texas Beef Initiative I would say is maybe not specifically Austin, but a very Texas-oriented Bitcoin beef byproduct Telegram as well. So plenty of conversation going on in the scene. At this point, the way that I stay most connected is through the two meetings. I go to BitDevs every month. We host Austin Bitcoin Club. And then, really, the big development that spawned for us out of Austin Bitcoin Club is the development of Pleb Lab. It was probably after our first meetup where the theme from the community continued to be, We want to get devs together, we want to get devs together, we want to get devs together. So within a few weeks after the launch of the first Austin Bitcoin Club meetup, that was where we started looking at taking things next. There were all kinds of different ideas like mini-hackathons, Bitcoiner salons. I had all these concepts tossed at me, but the theme was they wanted to get developers together. And we just started looking into it. One thing led to another. The place where we host the Austin Bitcoin Club meetups at Capital Factory saw us looking at houses. We were looking at real estate. In the early days, we were looking at something like a hacker house kind of thought process. We sat down and had a conversation with some of the team here and they believed in the vision of what we were talking about and what we were looking at building, and we set up a partnership for a 10-person office space. And thus began Pleb Lab.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. I love hearing it. And so can you give us a little bit of an insight there into how you selected the location and then how you were going about—because obviously I’m sure many people are thinking, How are you funding this? How is this going to work? So could you spell some of that out for us?

Kyle Murphy:

Yeah. How we’re funding It currently is strong partnerships through Capital Factory, and then just a lot of sweat equity. We did not start Pleb Lab with a lot of funding. We started Pleb Lab with no funding, the same way we started Austin Bitcoin Club—a couple of bottles of water and some fricking sandwiches from the grocery store. But yeah, honestly the one thing that I would say we’ve done really well since the very onset is that we just execute small tasks daily. The long term, like, How does this thing get funded? How do we create this large-scale picture was never something that we spent a lot of time focusing on. I’ve started to get lost in it a little bit here and there of late, but we’re trying to keep it in this very grassroots, pleb-driven—it was just an idea. We got an office space, Capital Factory hooked us up with a very fair deal, and my thought process after we came into that deal with Capital Factory was like, Look, I don’t have any capital. I don’t really have a deep network of connections in the Bitcoin space. I do have an office. I do have a belief that I could help given an opportunity to help. I like networking. I like people. I like building community. I believed, given enough time, I could build that network around what we would start building. And the thought process three ways between me, Car, and another co-founder, Keyan, was this concept of like, Let’s essentially try to build an accelerator. So we got the office space, I went back down to the BitDevs meetup, I went on Twitter and I just made announcements. I was like, Look, I have 10 desks. They’re free. I don’t want money for the desk. I don’t want equity in your company if you’re one of the startups. I just want to help. Because I believed that if we could actually show that the model worked, then I could leverage that success moving forward to actually start building something monetarily around it. So how to keep it going was show that it works first and foremost. If the model’s not going to actually work, if we’re not actually going to be able to build it, no amount of money would’ve helped that. So we had a fair deal. I gave away the value proposition that we were building for free to prove that we could do it. And that’s where we are today. So where we sit today in the process is that we brought in three, it became four, products in the office that are early seed or pre-seed stage Bitcoin companies. The first to complete their raise was Stacker News. They raised $300,000. We have three left to go. We have Zaprite, Oshi, and just recently launched Lightning Escrow. So Zaprite has some news coming down the pipeline very soon on the state of their raise. I’m really optimistic that Oshi will be not far behind it. And Lightning Escrow, literally the day they launched, we did their video from the Austin Bitcoin Club meet up last month, Tim Draper’s team saw Lightning Escrow, was in his DMs, was in literally all of Pleb Lab’s DMs. So it’s looking pretty bullish that all four of the projects are likely to get funded based on the kind of money that the co-founders or founders are looking to raise. I think round one of Pleb Lab probably produces four companies that have raised somewhere between $1.6 and $2.2 million. And yeah, that’s been the process. So we’re at the point now where I think we’ve shown that it works. We’ve put in a lot of proof of work with very little capital behind us. We just finalized the Pleb Lab C Corp, and are now getting ready to make a more public announcement about the fact that we are raising ourselves.

Stephan Livera:

That’s great to see the community ethos and the building aspect and encouraging people to actually build a business and try to create a product and a service. And so how long has the Pleb Lab been operating for at this point?

Kyle Murphy:

Three months. It is super early. Super early. Crazy how fast things move though. That three months—I feel like we’ve been doing this forever, Stephan. It’s crazy. I just last night heard people talking about things we were doing a few months ago and I was like, Dude, I know it feels like that was a few months ago, but that was a few weeks ago. So this is not specific to Pleb Lab by any stretch of the imagination. Time in Bitcoin is just crazy. One year in Bitcoin is like five years in normie-land. But it is crazy how fast things have moved. It’s been a breakneck pace in the first three months of Pleb Lab so far.

Stephan Livera:

And what does it look like then space-wise? If you’ve already got four Bitcoin startups operating out of the office and there’s 10 desks, what does it look like then if you wanted to actually bring in more people? Would you then have to try to upgrade the space requirements?

Kyle Murphy:

Yeah, it’s a good question. And we’re obviously at three months in—we’re constantly developing our plans as well. With the relationship we have with Capital Factory and where we started things, the original thought process of Pleb Lab was that we bring you in, the first round goes until the end of March. I don’t think we’re going to need that long to get everybody raised. And obviously with only four companies, as you’ve pointed out, and 10 desks filled, a handful of those desks are guys who are just working at already established, funded companies. You’ve got the Ben Carman, the Anthony Ronning, Paul Miller, guys who just use the space really more as co-working. And in my mind when we first started, the thought process there was that like, Yes, we’re trying to build an accelerator. I am one guy, Car is one guy—how can we really make it work? My mind was like, If I could get ten startups, I’d probably be overwhelmed. I wouldn’t really be able to focus my efforts on a handful of people. So I brought in a handful of startups and a handful of guys who just use the space to sit and do work, but who can occasionally add high-level insights from their years of experience in the Bitcoin space to help foster growth of these companies that are working to develop new things into their own products. So it’s a hive mindset. There’s a lot of intelligence passing back and forth around a bunch of different people. The thought process going forward is that obviously once you’ve raised, the partnership we have with Capital Factory right now is that we have a really good discount. They give us 20% off of the membership packages that they host themselves in the co-working space. So the people who are with us now will likely shift into something more co-working oriented, and we’ll cycle in the next round, if you will, of people who are building companies. That being said, I think we’re shifting away from the ideal of a cohort model where it’s like people start on this date, people end on this date—feels very fiat. It feels very Silicon Valley. I think what we’re trying to do at Pleb Lab is really much more like we want to work with cool fucking people who are building cool fucking projects. We’re really trying to be that grassroots, like build the culture around what’s happening on the ground in Bitcoin. So we’re abandoning, for the most part, the idea of a cohort. We’re just going to keep the stream coming. If we find somebody that has a cool idea and seems ready to work their ass off, those are the criteria for Pleb Lab. And so far it’s been a good criteria: interesting project that I think has potential, that you can help me understand as a Luddite, and are you going to give your company 110%? Because that’s what I’m giving. And that’s where we’re at. We’re just going to bring people in and we’re going to work with them until they’re ready to leave the accelerator experience and go forward hopefully a successful leader who can take their company to great places.

Stephan Livera:

So as I’m reading you then, it’s a combination of accelerator, co-working space, community hub, networking aspect, events, all rolled together?

Kyle Murphy:

Correct. And we’re also actively building into the curriculum mentorship, coaching, and, outside of our space, actively trying to build around the need for more projects actually being developed. So we’re actively getting involved with education and hackathons. We are looking at doing four hackathons a year moving forward. We’ll be throwing our first one during South by Southwest in March. More info coming soon, but Sats by Southwest is officially a go.

Stephan Livera:

I love the name. It’s a great play on the already existing title, obviously. There’s so many things going on with Austin because the broader technology world even outside of our Bitcoin world, a lot of them are coming to Austin. And so you can pick from that talent and pick from the conferences there and benefit a little bit from that network effect, because there may be non-Bitcoin developers or non-Bitcoin technology workers who are looking for an opportunity. And so that might be an opportunity there. And I like that idea around the hackathons. That’s something we’ve seen. I know there was a smaller event, [PlebFi]. There was a little hackathon there just in the old Unchained office. So I guess that’s part of building the Austin scene. And actually I wanted to get your thoughts on this other idea, because in the Bitcoin world, it’s actually quite common that there’s remote working. That there are some, if not many, Bitcoin companies that are actually remote-only. So isn’t it ironic then that there’s a Bitcoin co-working space?

Kyle Murphy:

It is a bit ironic, but it’s an interesting dichotomy, because while the company itself can be remote and often is, I think there’s something to be said about community and about that culture of being around Bitcoiners. We have a lot of room on our end at Pleb Lab for growth of the co-working idea. Just from internal, inside of Pleb Lab, I know that the big challenge we’ve faced thus far with the model of co-working is that it’s currently co-working inside of Capital Factory, which is antithetical to some of the thesis of what makes a co-working space for Bitcoiners great, because in the broader ecosystem of Capital Factory, it is very oriented towards fiats and altcoining. So it’s a bit challenging. Our office space inside of Capital Factory is limited. We have plans and ideas for growth into a new space where I do believe that those challenges are alleviated, but yeah, I think people really want to be around other people. Maybe not all day every day, and maybe they don’t necessarily need to be particularly locked down in the city that a company is headquartered, but if you have a city where Bitcoiners are gathering and congregating, if there’s a space where you can go to work and hang out around Bitcoiners, I think Bitcoiners want to do it.

Stephan Livera:

I’m also struck by this idea that maybe historically people were saying things like, If you wanted to be in show business, you had to go to Hollywood, or you should go there. Or if you wanted to be a finance person, then you need to be in the finance hubs like New York and London and Chicago. And so I see it like maybe Austin is going to be one of those hubs from a Bitcoin point of view, and maybe it’ll be Austin, and maybe there will be a little bit of Nashville, Tennessee in there. What are your thoughts on that idea?

Kyle Murphy:

I don’t think it will be—I think it already is. And yeah, there’s a handful of scenes popping up. I think Nashville is a great city. If Austin didn’t exist, that’s probably where I’d be. And yeah, we’ll see how it plays out. I think the scene for building in Bitcoin right now seems to be centrally located in Austin. I do believe that there’s room for growth and there will be growth in other places. I think Nashville’s probably the top contender for being the second place where people go to build and hang around community. But right now, without question, Austin is the epicenter of—more specifically than just Bitcoin community—Bitcoin community with the builders. Like the people that are building on Bitcoin are in Austin and seem to be continuing to move to Austin. So it’s a really interesting place to be because the kind of monetary revolution that we want to see happen is being built here on a daily basis, and to have the opportunity to be plugged into that is really fascinating.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah so maybe it’s a cliche to say this, but it’s like people are seeing Austin like the new San Francisco, because San Francisco used to be like the whole tech startup place. And obviously with the events of the last two years and all this, we’re seeing all this shifting of energy, shifting of ideas, and shifting of people, to places that are perhaps more amenable to that. So then in terms of someone who’s listening and they’re thinking, Okay, I want to come to Austin. What’s the best way to get plugged into the scene? Like turn up to the meetups? Or what would you suggest?

Kyle Murphy:

Yes, that would be the easiest way to get started. Obviously there’s two meetups a month. If you’re really just trying to get plugged into the scene, show up at BitDevs, show up at Austin Bitcoin Club, and then get plugged into the Telegram groups. Keep Austin Pleb is one Telegram group. And then I think it’s just Austin Bitcoin. Those are great places to get networked and connected before you arrive in Austin. But I mean, if you just show up there’s first Thursday, third Thursday, you’ll run into probably 200+ people over the course of two meetups. I don’t know how you could get any more networked quickly than that.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. And I also note that there are different cities with different flavors, right? So as an example, if you go to Houston, the Bitcoin meetup there is very mining-focused. And that was also a big meetup. The one I went to had probably 300 people there, and it was massive. And it was only relatively new at that point. So it was pretty incredible to me to see how quickly things have grown, but it seems to me like Austin has that more technical and entrepreneurial focus, or at least the company-building side of it. Whereas the Houston side of it tends to be also entrepreneurial, but more in the mining way.

Kyle Murphy:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Houston is going to also be a Bitcoin city, and it’s going to be a Bitcoin city because it’s already been super plugged in to the legacy oil and gas institutions. It is a big energy town. And as we know, Bitcoin is a big energy consumer. So the natural progression of the merger of the two makes absolute sense. Texas in general at this point is going to be a Bitcoin state. We’re seeing it right now in politics play out. We’ve got three people running for governor in Texas that have Bitcoin heavily focused and announced in their campaign. So we’re starting to see it all play out. And it’s just not going to slow down. I do want to add, it’s interesting that you said the San Francisco thing going on here in Austin—we’ve had that conversation before, and it does in many ways feel like we’re in the pre-Silicon Valley explosion here in Austin, but I’ve also heard it related to and agree, that it is also similar to the pre-1776 boom as well, and maybe even more closely aligned to that. So what we have is definitely very tech-focused here, but with Bitcoin moving to Austin as heavily as it is, especially with developers, I think what we’re seeing is almost more aligned with the revolutionary beginnings of the United States of America than it is just Bitcoin. Like, Yes, Bitcoin is great, but we all know Bitcoin is bigger than Facebook and Amazon. It is literally going to change the way the entire world works. So it feels like we’re literally preparing for the red coats here in Austin on a daily basis. It’s fascinating.

Stephan Livera:

The hopes for resisting, and building the citadel, as I’m sure many Austinites will be happy to tell you about, and tell you that Austin is the hub.

Kyle Murphy:

Yes. This will be the first citadel city-state. I intend to make that happen. So we will secede from the state of Texas and become our own independent nation-state on a Bitcoin standard sooner or later.

Stephan Livera:

So what would you say then—I’m curious as well, because people often mention this idea of, Okay, there’s like blue cities inside the red state. Do you get much of a pushback on that angle? That, okay, it’s like a city and you’re going have to work with all the other blue city people, even if you’re in a red state.

Kyle Murphy:

Yes, I understand the sentiment. Is Austin perfect? No, it’s not. Is any city perfect? Not that I’ve found in my years of traveling. So, room for improvements? Absolutely. I am really bullish that with a giant bloc of single issue voters, we can actually spread awareness and education to both sides of the political parties. We all know Bitcoin is for everyone. So yeah, really I think the first step, the most important fundamental thing for building something like an actual Bitcoin standard in a blue city or a red city, is that have to grassroots this thing. It’s great if you start having politicians that are talking about it in their campaigns, yada yada yada yada. But if people aren’t accepting it and using it and understanding it at the community level, then it’s really all for naught. So that’s one of the things we’ve really been focused on at Austin Bitcoin Club and at Pleb Lab with things like the Block Party, where we got a bunch of businesses onboarded through Oshi and tried to introduce everyday people in the ecosystem—that is our economy right outside—to what this thing is and how it works and to the power and value of doing business not just in Bitcoin, but with Bitcoiners. And we saw that that really worked. So we had the Block Party. Now we have businesses reaching out trying to get onboarded on a daily basis. We’ve got ranchers, we’re trying to get more farmers. I’ve got a diesel mechanic getting ready to get onboarded. That trend of like, get the community more and more involved. Eventually you need to start working top-down as well. You get Parker Lewis voted in as mayor and you start building the infrastructure in both directions until it’s just done. It’s ubiquitous, if you will. But yeah, we’ve got a lot of things to clean up in Austin. It is definitely a blue city. It trends a little more like people wearing masks and some businesses having mandates or whatever. I mean, I almost got arrested at school when I first arrived in Austin for refusing to wear a mask on campus. It’s a bit silly that way, but the idea that it’s some liberal hellhole, it’s like, Uh, have you been to San Francisco or literally any city on the west coast of the United States of America? Because those are much closer to liberal hellholes if you ask me. So again, super bullish on the idea that we’ll fix things by just continuing to increase the voter bloc that is single-issue voter, which is what we’re doing with Bitcoin.

Stephan Livera:

Great answer. And I definitely agree with you that the sentiment there in Austin, although it is a blue city, it is better than some of the other blue cities I’ve at least visited. And I’d love to hear a little bit more as you were saying around businesses, and businesses accepting Bitcoin. And I know there’s the business Oshi as well that’s quite involved with this. So can you give us any insight there? What does that looks like speaking with local businesses to get them to take Bitcoin as payment and to use Bitcoin?

Kyle Murphy:

Yeah. So Michael Atwood, the co-founder of Oshi, is much more boots on the ground than I am. I am inside of Pleb Lab trying to help Oshi progress forward as a business, but from what I’ve seen and from what I’ve heard talking with him, at least here in the city of Austin, the process of onboarding businesses is significantly easier than it was where he came from in Redding, California. That being said, Redding, California is still, based on his work there, is the highest per capita of companies accepting Bitcoin in a city anywhere on Earth. So that’s really fascinating. But yeah, I think it’s really growing as far as the awareness of the everyday person. And from the experiences he’s had here in Austin, it’s like you kind of go—you say, Hello, have you heard about Bitcoin? In Austin, it’s often, Yes. And even often that it’s not only have they heard about it, but they already have some, they’ve started their journey down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. So getting them to accept Bitcoin as a payment system for their small business has not been all that challenging. I think really, like everything else, it just boils down to incentives. It’s like, how easy is it to get them onboarded? And how easy is it to keep everything running efficiently on that system? And again, that’s what we’re hyper-focused on here. I think the idea of having a Bitcoin Lightning-focused accelerator is that in my mind, the healthiest Bitcoin system is a robust Bitcoin ecosystem. There’s so many applications for what this thing can do, and we need to continue to pump out as many of these companies—quality companies. It’s obviously quality over quantity, but the more of these use case scenarios we can actually get out into the ecosystem, the better it is for the community and everyone else at large.

Stephan Livera:

And what has it been like for you in terms of your time commitment and Car and Keyan as well? In terms of managing the space, managing Pleb Lab—what’s that been like?

Kyle Murphy:

It has been a lot, man. So as I pointed out earlier, it’s built more on sweat equity than capital. It was more hustle than capital really is how this whole thing started. For probably the first six weeks of Pleb Lab’s existence, I was working like 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. I have had to scale that back a little bit. The burnout started to get very real. I’ve been trying to take a healthy dose of time to myself on the weekends to just relax, get in touch with whatever that’s not work, going back to church, getting into a little bit of meditation, just taking some time for myself. But even with that, it’s like I’m still in the office Saturday mornings, sometimes Saturday evenings. I’m here 7 days a week, Car is often here 7 days a week. His schedule is now all over the place with the split between Pleb Lab and his job over as the producer on TFTC. And Keyan is also the founder of Stacker News. So he’s also running his own company. Keyan is our high-level developer guy. When me and Car started this whole thing, it was like, We understand that if we’re going to try and build something for devs and for founders, neither one of us had any experience in either one of those places. Keyan had already started and was working with several companies, and was a developer. So having that high-level technical insight into how to build something for that community has been highly valuable. But he gives us his, like, This is how many hours a week you get from me, so use it wisely. But yeah, it’s been all-in, man. It’s been a nonstop grind, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. That’s how we do. And I think that’s one of the things that in the early days of Pleb Lab helps us stand out from something like Y Combinator, Techstars. There’s a lot of places you can go and get capital thrown at you and you get a badge—even that’s diminishing with Y Combinator doing 1,000-person cohorts now or whatever. Like, how unique does that feel? But if you’re a young startup in the Bitcoin space, pre-seed, have never like talked to VCs, don’t know how to talk to VCs, don’t know how to reach out, are still really even trying to just work through the ideas, build pitch decks—where are you going to go where somebody’s going to be at the office with you on Saturday morning at like two o’clock in the morning, working on your shit? I don’t know of anywhere else that’s going to do that other than Pleb Lab. Because the way we look at it is it’s like our success is built on their success, and it really isn’t a numbers game for us. This is not a thing where we’re just trying to get as rich as possible by getting you in, getting you out. We’re friends, man. This thing’s working because it’s a room filled with people that I actually care about that I want to see succeed. So I give it that energy every day. If we’re just going to talk about how much energy has been put into it, it’s the kind of energy where it’s like, Look, you’re a good friend of mine, man. I care about you. I want company to succeed. And that’s what we do here. I come in every day and I just try to help my friends succeed.

Stephan Livera:

Excellent. And I think the other aspect of it is that because it’s a Bitcoin-focused pleb lab, obviously, you’ll have already existing connections out there with venture capital investors who are already investing in the Bitcoin space. So they’ll already have their eyes trained towards you and looking at, Hey, who have you got in there? Who’s got something interesting?

Kyle Murphy:

Right. Absolutely. So again, in the early days we didn’t have that network, which is why there was no value proposition. It was like, You guys come in, I think I can help you, I think I can build that network which helps you, so just let me try and we’ll develop our thing as we go. And that’s where we’re at. The network of the people who are interested in getting involved with the people in our facility grows on a daily basis. And now it’s—honestly, it’s just getting more organized. It’s taking some of the things that do work from things like Techstar and Y Combinator and trying to build out a more well-greased machine. We have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to just stay alive. Again, that’s the battle and trade-off if you will, that we’re also a startup trying to grow through startup pains alongside our other startups. It’s like double trouble. But as it’s come along, it just keeps getting more organized and hopefully more efficient. So that by the time we bring in new people, it’s like: we now have a mentor network. We have the understanding of like how to get the business legally structured. We have a handful of investors that have invested in Pleb Lab, so now we can make those early connections right from day one. We can introduce the new people to the people who have invested in Pleb Lab, because obviously those people are interested in the things that are coming through here, the projects that are coming through here. And all of that stuff just keeps getting more organized. I think organization is probably one of my strong suits. So we just keep trying daily to get more established and more organized so that when you come in, we have this well-greased machine that’s just like, This is how things go. This is what we can do. This is what you have to do. And everybody knows what is required of them, and how the collaboration works the day you come through Pleb Labs’ doors.

Stephan Livera:

So what companies are already involved in some way in supporting Pleb Lab? Or any companies or individuals in the space?

Kyle Murphy:

Yeah, so we’re in talks with a lot of people right now. Just this week we got the C Corp finalized for Pleb Lab. So we have one verbal commitment. I have a handful of really bullish people who are waiting to circle back and have the next level of conversation. As far as just assistance, we’ve had obviously a whole lot of value given to us and accrued through our connections here at Capital Factory. We do a lot of back and forth with the guys down at Unchained Capital. There’s going to be some new announcements coming there as well. That’s where we’re at right now. So it’s a handful of angel OG Bitcoin whales, some VC funds, a couple of family practices, and then just Bitcoin businesses that we have built and established relationships with through Austin and abroad.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. Well, it’s great to hear that it’s coming together because, at the same time, this has to be a sustainable model for yourself and Car and for Keyan as well, because you guys have to get paid and you guys have to eat as well. So it has to all work together. But it sounds to me like you’ve got some connections, you’ve got the right connections being made, and there’s a real community growth happening here that you’re building and you’re a big part of that. So that’s really cool to hear.

Kyle Murphy:

We’re a scrappy bunch. We have that low time preference. We do believe that what we’ve built and continue to build daily is producing something of real value. And just personally—I can’t speak for the rest of the people that are part of my team—but personally I’ve found over the years that if I believe in something enough, if I have enough passion for it, and I put enough time behind that belief and that passion, there is a way to figure out how to monetize that somehow. Again, am I going to get rich building Pleb Lab? I don’t know. I don’t really care though. I want to produce something that produces value for others. As long as I can get to a place where we have enough money to put the roof over our head and eat, as you kind of just alluded to—I can’t do free forever. I, more than anyone else can do free for a pretty long time. I have built a sovereign lifestyle before I was ever in Bitcoin. So I can go almost indefinitely without ever really making another dollar or bringing in another sat. Obviously I would like to continue to stack a few sats here and there, that’s on my roadmap for progress. But I am fairly optimistic that we will get it done, because I don’t think there’s anybody who’s going to work harder to get it done. And again, I think what we’re building is something of value. I don’t think a healthy Bitcoin ecosystem thrives without continuing the growth of that Bitcoin ecosystem. And what we’re producing is a space where companies can come and hopefully learn how to leave here with a better understanding of how to be a successful company. Because there’s lots of people building things all over the place, but they don’t have any resources, they don’t have anybody around them to help them grow their thought processes, their understandings. They don’t necessarily know how to go about all of the intricacies of going from an idea or a very early stage product, to a fully fleshed out, funded, functional company. And that’s what we do.

Stephan Livera:

So for anyone who’s listening and maybe they’re thinking about starting a business, are there any things you could share for them? What are some common misconceptions or things that people don’t know when they’re coming in and they’re like, I want to start this Bitcoin business or software. What are some common things that you are seeing?

Kyle Murphy:

I think the question is a little broad. Can you reframe it?

Stephan Livera:

Sure. Well, as an example, are there things that they might not have thought about? Okay, this is how I need to go about with fundraising. Or, this is how I need to go about finding the right talent. Are there any tips or things you could share for people from what you’ve seen?

Kyle Murphy:

Yeah. So again, most of who we work with is really, really early—we’re pre-seed. So some of the challenges, if you will, at the pre-seed stage are mostly the lack of connections. It’s like how to get networked and plugged into the space, because there’s a lot out there, but if you don’t necessarily know how to go about getting seen or getting into somebody’s DMs, it’s really challenging how to figure that out on your own. So I think the first thing is networking. Whether you’re in Pleb Lab or not, getting into the space and actually starting to make connections with more people is probably, I would say, the backbone of everything we do, which is why none of this would’ve even existed without having first just started Austin Bitcoin Club. We just created something where we just created a space for people to get together and network. And from that spawned Pleb Lab, and Pleb Lab is still, at its roots, based on that foundation. And the foundation is community. So I would say first and foremost, work on networking. Just be to talking to and meeting with as many people in the space as you possibly can. If you’re trying to build something on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Twitter is okay, LinkedIn or whatever is okay, but probably figure out how to make a transition to a place where everybody who’s building on Bitcoin is building on Bitcoin. I know it’s not an easy thing to say just like pack up your life and move to somewhere like Austin, but at the end of the day, if you have a deep desire to actually build something on Bitcoin, there’s not going to be a better opportunity than to bring what you’re working on to Austin, because this is where that network and ecosystem already exist. So networking, networking, networking. Probably make a move to somewhere where you can do that more efficiently. Other than that, I think a lot of the challenges are just really exposure. And that’s what we’ve tried to really focus on at Pleb Lab in the early stages, is like building out—I touched on it earlier—building out the idea of creating a thing that creates the culture around Bitcoin. Car’s going to kill me for using this: he doesn’t want me to put it out there too much, but the idea of Sub Pop has been this theme lately, where in the early 80’s, there was a small indie record label called Sub Pop. They were responsible for Nirvana and a handful of other band in that era that really built the culture of music. And they eventually went and they went off to the Sony record labels and the other things. And that’s what I think we’re doing here, is we’re taking these guys, these teams, and we’re bringing them in, we’re helping them create a look, create an image, get their pitch deck ready, get their presentations ready, understand really at their core what they as human beings are capable of. And then we take that new understanding of like, Okay, I can do this, we pump it out into the ecosystem, we get people talking about it, and then they can go from there. We’re just really helping foster the visibility, if you will. So I don’t know. I guess ultimately the answer is really just networking. You just need to get your thing more visible.

Stephan Livera:

Well, that’s great to hear. It sounds like you’re doing great work out there and I’m keen to meet you in person. Hopefully I can come down next time I’m down in Austin. And for anyone who’s listening and they want to get in touch, what’s the best way for them to find you?

Kyle Murphy:

You can find me on Twitter, @the_bitcoin_bum, but probably the easiest place to get a hold of me, especially if you’re looking to do anything related to Bitcoin building, Pleb Lab, Austin Bitcoin Club, would be Kyle@AustinBitcoinClub.com. I’m pretty much always in the e-mails looking for people who want to get involved. So if you’re out there and you’re looking at moving to Austin, or you just have a Bitcoin project that you want to work on, but haven’t considered Austin, you could do worse. So join us, let us know.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. Thanks for joining me, Kyle.

Kyle Murphy:

Yeah. Thanks Stephan.

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