Daniel Ortega

Sat through 10 hours the last 2 days working with 20+ founders on thinking through GTM at @arbitrum Open House in Singapore. Here are my takeaways: 1. Tokenized stocks are clearly becoming the base asset for defi. Majority of teams who are building onchain products are leveraging tokenized stocks similar to how stablecoins were used in the early days of defi. 2. Knowing your ICP shapes your entire GTM. Teams building complex financial products (structured products, options, hedging tools for LPs) often struggle to decide if their product is geared towards retail or sophisticated traders. Can you clearly identify whether your first users are traders, farmers, or gamblers? 3. Incremental innovation has to be compelling enough to drive sustained capital Viral attention is easy. Building something that keeps capital and evolves into a real business is much harder. 4. Phased distribution strategy is your best shot out of the trenches Don’t bet everything on one (or a few) major channels (CEX/fintech). Build a path: first 100 users → 1k → 10k. Better to find a small set of day-1 partners who are incentivized to co-launch with you than to over-rely on one big distribution partner. 5. Incentives should come post-PMF Heavy points/marketing programs early often just mask structural problems. If you haven’t found PMF or a highly engaged cohort, you’re usually just delaying the hard part. -- To the founders I had the great opportunity to meet with and speak to, thanks for making the trip down to Singapore and spending time with us at the Open House. 💙