Ep 90: Building the Bloomberg & Yahoo Finance of Crypto | TM Lee (co-founder & CEO, Coingecko)

TM Lee is the co-founder & CEO at Coingecko - one of the
world’s largest crypto data aggregators with over 150 million
users in 2021 alone! 


But before becoming a founder, TM was first influenced by his
brother to become a coder. He learned about Reddit and Digg, and
even ended up studying computer science at Purdue University,
where he was exposed to the likes of Jason Fried (Basecamp) - a
huge proponent of the bootstrap mentality. 


TM tried many things. He wrote an aggregator in college until
things went south, and eventually worked at a Big 4 audit firm
but at the back of his mind was the thought that he wanted to
start a business. 


Then in April 2014, he co-founded Coingecko with Bobby Ong. It
began as a side project with a starting capital of $100, launched
soon after the collapse of Mt Gox. And as you’ll see from our
interview, they went through lots of ups & downs to get to
where they are today. 





Highlights:


3:52 How his brother exposed TM to coding

5:01 Influenced by Kevin Rose (Digg)

5:44 Jason Fried of Basecamp

9:17 Evaluating business partners

10:35 Returning to Malaysia

11:47 Side projects

14:56 Building Coingecko

17:05 Meeting his co-founder, Bobby Ong

18:30 The early days of Coingecko

20:00 The significance behind the crash of Mt Gox

21:30 Why launch Coingecko right after the Mt Gox crash?

22:40 Building trust

22:40 Bootstrapping with $100

25:31 Building collaborations with universities

26:40 Scaling via organic marketing

27:47 Getting Coingecko translated into 15 languages 

30:19 Was TM worried about sharing his code to the public?

31:10 Getting investors on board 

24:12 Why the banking/fintech industry is so different from
the crypto industry

35:51 Why maintain Coingecko’s API for free forever?

37:05 How Coingecko ensures that they have accurate price
data feeds

38:25 Deciding on the tokens to list 

39:09 Sifting out the scams & rug pulls

40:53 Will Coingecko ever delist a token? 

42:21 Main milestones behind Coingecko

43:31 How the crypto space is impacted by banks (e.g. DBS)
launching their own crypto trading services

44:14 Impact of Binance’s purchase of Coinmarketcap on
Coingecko 

45:07 Is TM now more important to investors to remain
competitive?

50:38 NFTs

52:00 The secret behind Coingecko’s rocket growth in 2021:
From 50 million to 150 million in 11 months

53:03 Thoughts on the current bear market

55:34 Crash of the Luna token

56:54 Coinzilla’s malicious app script 

1:02:52 What to expect from Coingecko moving forward

1:03:42 Things to expect if the metaverse takes off

1:05:37 How much of your success is due to hard work v luck?






Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/90 


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