The Original Pitch Deck of Coinbase
Coinbase original pitch deck.
I was acting like an archaeologist and decided to dig through all my old emails from past founders who have gone on to do extremely amazing things.
Archaeology is an incredibly hard word to spell by the way. Someone really wanted slow people down before writing the word archaeology. It would be a far more popular profession if the word didn’t have this ‘aeo’ section in it… after a little research it turns out there is a raging battle between those who believe it should be spelled with an 'aeo’ or just an 'eo’, so it turns out archeology is perfectly acceptable, and I will use that spelling from now on. Sorry, that was a bit off topic from the post I’m writing right now, but I’m sure the title garnered enough interest for you to still be reading at this point.
In my findings as an archeologist, I digitally tripped over this pitch deck in my email (this is a link to a slideshare) from when Brian pitched me. I’m posting the slide share, I can’t figure out how to upload a slideshare into the newsletter yet.
Investing in Brian Armstrong and Coinbase determined a lot of my future career over the last 8 years as a Bitcoin enthusiast and investor in fantastic entrepreneurs in the space. Boost VC has now invested in 100+ crypto related startups, and for me, all of it started with Brian.
I actually had forgotten that Brian Armstrong had been pitching Coinbase as a payment network. They were pitching Bitcoin volume, the $2m/day in volume slide is not Coinbase volume, that is the entire market of Bitcoin, which I believe today clears $2B in volume per day, and at this moment they had $65,000 in total volume, which is laughable.
In Brian’s pitch, he had to explain what Bitcoin was, and then explain how his business worked on top of it to investors. In 11 slides, he was able to clearly articulate his business and vision. And even though the “Payment Network” is still a hotly debated topic amongst all Bitcoiners, this power point shows Brian’s clarity of thought.
I think that clear thinking is the most important compounding characteristic of an entrepreneur.