Naresh | Aptos

We went to 4 cities looking for the best builders in India. First stop Bangalore. Which pitch was your favorite?

global expansion GTM, ft. @nareshkx - global expansion lead, @aptos in this episode of the @touchgrass_pod, i sat down with naresh to talk about > what it takes to scale globally vibes and vanity metrics > how aptos chooses countries for expansion > why depth matters more than surface-level presence > walking the fine line in marketing: what works, what doesn’t and much more! key timestamps 1:17 - moving from india ops to global expansion 3:34 - biggest takeaway from being india lead 8:25 - evolving aptos india: accelerator → winter school 10:17 - hiring @srilakshmitc as india lead + handover 15:12 - global expansion principle #1: go deep 20:00 - marketing boundaries: what’s approved vs what isn’t 21:02 - picking regional leaders and trusting the hire 23:01 - setting marketing guidelines + content anchors 24:15 - top advice for aspiring global expansion leads

It’s been >15 years since the launch of Bitcoin, and the market is more focused than ever on real products solving real problems for real people. Real-world adoption has early signs of success and will grow exponentially in the coming years. In the past years since Aptos mainnet launch in 2022, we’ve built best-in-class infrastructure - the most scalable, fastest, and cost-effective blockchain ever created. We created products like Aptos Keyless to enable smooth Internet adoption and Geomi to accelerate builders. We made powerful strategic partnerships with builders to drive scale and adoption. During these same years, we also rushed and messed up the airdrop. We focused on the wrong metrics, like TVL. Alongside many incredibly valuable strategic partnerships, we also made some bad business arrangements that didn’t deliver value to the ecosystem we were expecting. We have learned much from these mistakes, made significant leadership changes and have done a lot of clean up this year. Difficult, out of the spotlight hard work, but necessary. These necessary changes laid the groundwork and strengthened our ability to execute much more in the future. My passion has always been the mission: unlocking financial freedom and financial equality. Historically, we’ve been conditioned to think of global equality in terms of the legal system and human rights. It’s not enough. Perhaps, the 1776 Declaration of Independence says it best that we are all “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” True global equality requires inclusive access to the world’s financial systems, from capital markets and money movement to wealth-management tools and stable stores of value. More powerful financial tools for everyone. It can be odd to think of fair and equitable global trading as a societal accomplishment, but the opportunities are not equal today. IPOs and private funding have limited access. Many other investment strategies have limited access, especially globally. A global trading engine can be built on a highly-customized and decentralized technology stack. It can be accessible to all with all the rules and operations codified. It can offer fair features not found in any centralized market today - such as protection against front-running, sandwich attacks, and hidden costs. Trading tools like delta-neutral strategies can be available for anyone to deploy and understand. No more hidden agendas and a level playing field. Ultimately, everyone having the same access to financial markets, global currencies, investment opportunities, and more is going to change this world for the better. We’ll look back at this time as the path to how we unlocked financial freedom. Our thesis-driven bets toward our mission are as follows: * Equitable and advanced global markets: Decibel, incubated by Aptos Labs, is the first fully decentralized exchange that will match the Binance/Coinbase speed and ease of use. At the same time, Decibel is innovating with new trading primitives, user protections, assets, and markets. With a successful Testnet underway, Decibel is accelerating toward a Q1 Mainnet and will iterate on the product quickly. * Next-gen cloud, data & AI: Shelby is the first hot decentralized storage protocol. It solves the data lifecycle challenge (i.e., hot, warm, cold) for AI use cases, creator use cases, and enterprise cloud infrastructure. Not only cheaper due to reduced egress fees when compared to traditional cloud infra, Shelby is cloud failure resistant, programmable, yet with full creator control. * Aptos Internet expansion with Namespaces: Namespaces offers turnkey, tailor-made blockchain infrastructure built on Aptos’ proven tech stack for any bring any enterprise or institution to bring its users into crypto and expand the Aptos ecosystem, similar to the way the Internet was built. The new Archon architecture fully enables fast and reliable connectivity for namespaces internally and across them. While it is still early for these products and protocols, the response from investors, partners, and the community has been strong and validating. Building the product vision, not just a tech narrative, is what sets Aptos apart. Our strategy is to deliver utility that drives organic revenue in every product and sustains the mission. This is a significant change to the previous years in how we have operated and we’ve been realigning and rebuilding for nearly a year now. The Aptos Foundation is working with us on how to best allocate resources to support these changes. The market continues to evolve rapidly and APT isn’t reflecting the fundamentals, ecosystem growth or progress in the mission. I continue to hold every token that was granted to me as a co-founder because I believe it's the right thing to do to serve this mission. Not many founders can say that more than 3 years post token launch. Mission not yet accomplished. And while we’ve done a lot of learning from and cleaning up past mistakes, we will look at every option to ensure our mission will be sustainable and successful. Looking back, we’ve learned from our mistakes, rebuilt, aligned, and are now executing on thesis-driven bets toward the mission. Our world-class team has never been as focused and effective as it is today. The world needs financial freedom and equality more than ever, especially in a world where AI is creating more information asymmetry and inequality. Let’s level the playing field for the future generations of humanity.

4 cities. 24 founders. Only 8 make it to mentorship. $350K up for grabs. The Aptos Accelerator is here - in a format you’ve never seen before 🎥 Full episodes dropping soon

I have put all of my chips into @Aptos. There are plenty of people against us and that’s what makes the stakes even more interesting. But if you think this team isn’t going to try and win big you’re absolutely insane. NFA

You hit play. It streams. Your fans watch. You earn. Infra that performs like Web2, with the upside of Web3. @rpranav from @AptosLabs explains:

Panora: The Super App and Execution Layer of @Aptos We’ve excited to announce that @PanoraExchange has successfully closed the funding round, led by @FrictionlessVC, with participation from @AveryChing (CEO & Co-Founder, @AptosLabs) and @Greg_Nazario (Founding Engineer & Head of DevRel, @AptosLabs). Let’s talk about what this means 👇🧵

Aave is live on @aptos.

Excited to share a new career update! 🎉 I’ve joined @Aptos as the Ecosystem & Development Lead for India (@aptos_ind) Over the past 3 months, I’ve been collaborating with the team and founders in a partner capacity, which only made me more bullish on the ecosystem. Now, I’m thrilled to officially join the Aptos team and work even more closely to support builders, devs & creators across India. A big thanks to @NareshKx and the entire @Aptos team for believing in me 🙌 Also looking forward to working with @sneha_bb again! Can’t wait to learn, build, and make big things happen together !

Demo day wrapped, but the impact of these 8 teams is just getting started. Here's what went down on stage with @newrl_layer1 @Plutopeio @kryzel_io @predictonfliq @conso_xyz @posterdotfun @crediblefin @Qiro_Finance

Life update

Introducing Decibel: the fully onchain trading engine that cuts through the noise—remastering DeFi for the new sound of trading. Access spot, perps, vaults, & lending in a unified, composable stack built for today's global, 24/7 markets. Trade onchain, trade loud with Decibel.