Original Title: How I Broke the Startup Playbook - $0 to $50m In 1 Month
Original Author: @PerpetualCow, Founder of Wagyu
Original Translation: Luffy, Foresight News
This is my startup story. A month ago, I came to the X platform as an anonymous user, with no money, no followers, no connections, and no funding.
Starting from nothing and making a breakthrough is usually a long shot, but I did it. Now, I want to share my success experience and tell you: you can do it too.
My Startup Starting Point
The reason I registered this account was due to the plummeting price of the HYPE token I heavily invested in; all my savings were in it.
I thought, at the very least, I could open an account on the X platform, write down my views and investment logic regarding HYPE, and demonstrate to everyone why this cryptocurrency is severely undervalued, hoping to drive up its price.
So, I wrote an in-depth analysis article and published it on this newly registered account, hoping to reach more people. To my surprise, the article went viral.
If you are not a player in the cryptocurrency field, you may not have heard of the Hyperliquid platform, but that is not the focus of this article.
However, I firmly believed from the beginning that this ecosystem holds enormous potential.
I began to think about what else I could do besides posting to promote HYPE, to personally contribute to the growth of its trading volume and market cap, thereby driving the token buyback and enhancing its market attention and influence.
The First Failed Attempt
I decided to develop a product on the Hyperliquid platform to create more trading volume and revenue for the platform. This way, the platform would not only increase its buyback of the HYPE token but also enhance the token's exposure and market consensus.
At that time, the Hyperliquid ecosystem was already quite mature, with developers creating many impressive financial tools, such as the platform Ventuals for trading unlisted company stocks and the tool trade.xyz for leveraged trading of stock futures.
But one thing was overlooked: forex trading pairs. As one of the largest derivatives in traditional financial markets, no one had yet brought it to the Hyperliquid platform.
Let me explain: Hyperliquid is a permissionless trading platform where anyone can issue their own trading products.
The daily trading volume of the forex market reaches $7.5 trillion, which is ten times the total of the global stock market. With my experience in traditional derivatives, I keenly sensed the enormous opportunity here.
I was sure that other developers had no idea how big this cake was. As long as I could be the first to launch forex trading pairs on Hyperliquid, I could make a fortune just from the commission sharing.
I could hardly believe that such a great opportunity had gone unnoticed for so long.
I knew I had to act immediately and race against time; it wouldn't be long before other developers discovered this hidden opportunity.
I took 20 mg of Adderall (a central nervous system stimulant), ordered a few bottles of Red Bull from a delivery platform, and immediately dove into development work.
I coded all night, and by the next morning, the product prototype was completed.
I registered the domain Hyperfx.xyz and even prepared 500,000 HYPE tokens worth about $15 million as payment for the platform's deployment fees.
I felt that my moment was finally coming.
However, I made a fatal mistake.
Before the effects of the stimulant wore off and I became drowsy, I deployed the product to the testnet as per standard procedure and then went straight to sleep.
This was the most serious mistake I have ever made in my life.
I had no idea that someone would closely monitor new deployment projects on the testnet. When I woke up, I found that the news of my deployment of forex trading pairs on the testnet had already spread in the private developer community of Hyperliquid.
The entire Hyperliquid ecosystem was in an uproar; everyone knew that a new developer was about to launch forex trading pairs on the platform. They suddenly realized that there was such a large gap in the market. Before me, no one had thought of doing forex trading pairs.
The news quickly reached trade.xyz. This company reacted swiftly, immediately seizing the JPYUSD trading pair and announcing that it would be the first to launch forex trading products on Hyperliquid.
You should know that trade.xyz's platform has a daily trading volume of billions of dollars, with the funds behind its trading pairs amounting to hundreds of millions.
I knew very well that I could not compete with such a giant.
On the Hyperliquid platform, what is the point of becoming a second-rate forex trading service provider?
One wrong step, and I lost everything. I personally buried my bright future.
Rather than launching a homogenized competing product in the market and diluting the platform's liquidity, it would be better to abandon this project altogether. After all, contributing to the Hyperliquid ecosystem was my original intention.
Sure enough, not long after, trade.xyz officially launched the EURUSD trading pair.
I was shaking with anger; the rage was indescribable. If I hadn't been overwhelmed by despair at the time, I would have smashed my computer to pieces. I never knew I could be so blinded by anger.
But more than that, I was angry with myself. How could I make such a basic mistake and hand over the fruits of my labor so easily?
This is basic knowledge in the startup field, yet I stumbled in the gutter. This time, I lost completely, and I might have missed the opportunity to earn $1 billion in fees over the next few years.
A foolish mistake caused my entire plan to die in the womb. I could hardly believe my eyes. I had made many mistakes before, but never had any been as absurd and ridiculous as this one.
I vowed to myself that from now on, I would never deploy any product to a public testnet again.
The frustration, combined with the lethargy after the effects of the Adderall wore off, plunged me into severe acute depression. I became a dejected cow.
Until one day, I finally couldn't take it anymore…
I had to pick myself up again.
I began to brainstorm and think of other possibilities. Since no one had thought of forex trading pairs, there must be other overlooked opportunities.
Although I was temporarily setback, I would not stop here. I was determined to find a new breakthrough.
After all, the territory of the financial system is vast, and I am sure I can find some unknown market gap. But this time, I would not repeat the same mistake.
I noticed that there was a serious problem in the Hyperliquid ecosystem: a few leading developers were copying each other, which was quite shortsighted and would only lead to a severe diversion of the platform's liquidity.
For example, trading pairs for popular stocks like Tesla (TSLA) and Nvidia (NVDA) were repeatedly deployed by multiple developers.
No one was willing to innovate; everyone was just copying and launching similar products. Of course, this approach could bring some trading volume and revenue, but it was ultimately not a long-term solution.
The Road to Comeback: My Moment of Success
At this point, I noticed that the demand from the Monero (XMR) community had long been severely neglected. Due to Monero's anonymous trading characteristics angering regulators, this token had been delisted from most trading platforms.
Even so, Monero still ranks among the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap, with a market cap of nearly $10 billion and a large, loyal community of users. The market urgently needed a platform to meet the trading needs of Monero users.
This was simply a perfect fit for Hyperliquid. After all, the existence of a permissionless decentralized trading platform is precisely for this purpose.
Let me briefly introduce the background: before I launched wagyu.xyz, it was extremely difficult for ordinary people to buy Monero.
You could either use some obscure instant exchange websites, paying over 1% in fees to complete the transaction, or you could rely on centralized trading platforms, but these platforms often freeze your account directly when you deposit or withdraw Monero.
Nowadays, most centralized trading platforms have delisted Monero. Even Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced last year that it would delist Monero, and other trading platforms followed suit.
I saw the potential in this and created wagyu.xyz to make trading Monero unprecedentedly simple. Users only need to deposit any token (ETH, BTC, SOL, USDC, etc.) on the Hyperliquid platform to exchange it for the XMR1 token I issued.
Once you hold XMR1 on the Hyperliquid platform, you can easily withdraw it to your Monero wallet through wagyu.xyz with just one click.
I made a short demonstration video explaining the entire process. This video quickly went viral, causing a huge sensation in the Monero community.
Video link: https://x.com/PerpetualCow/status/2002112238044483642
My product is more convenient and user-friendly than any similar tools on the market. After all, an excellent product is always the winner in the market.
The pure Monero token is a treasure for users. The Monero community users are ecstatic; they have never seen such a thoughtful tool that completely addresses their trading pain points. In contrast, previous alternatives were simply terrible.
Since then, the Wagyu platform has been on a rapid rise. Within just two weeks of launching, the platform's withdrawal amount exceeded $10 million, bringing over $20 million in new trading volume to the Hyperliquid platform.
Since the platform went live, we have given more investors, who previously had no access to Monero, the opportunity to buy this token. When people can buy Monero without worries and safely hold it in cold wallets without fearing account freezes, the market's buying pressure will naturally continue to flow in.
Now, users can easily buy or sell Monero at a scale of millions of dollars using a time-weighted average price algorithm and securely store the tokens in their wallets. The platform's order book liquidity has become very abundant, and as time goes on, the liquidity will only improve, especially since we have only just started two weeks ago.
Two-Week Valuation of $50 Million
In just two weeks since launch, the Wagyu platform generated $200,000 in revenue, with an annualized revenue of $5.2 million.
I initiated a small-scale fundraising round targeting members of the Hyperliquid community and friends I met during my entrepreneurial journey. The company was valued at $50 million, corresponding to a price-to-earnings ratio of 10 times. The fundraising amount was quickly snapped up, clearly indicating that many people have already seen the enormous potential of this project.
However, my steps will not stop here. The success of Monero is just the first step in my layout.
I plan to build wagyu.xyz into one of the top developer platforms in the Hyperliquid ecosystem and launch a points incentive system to encourage users to provide liquidity and create trading volume for the platform.
My goal is to make Wagyu a platform that can compete with other leading projects in the Hyperliquid ecosystem. We will focus on developing high-quality products that users truly need and are willing to trade and hold.
Entrepreneurial Insights
This story teaches us a lesson: When you think of something, go for it.
Seek out market gaps. There are still too many unmet needs in this world waiting for you to discover and realize.
We are in a golden age of entrepreneurship, and success is within reach. Don't follow the trend to create those cookie-cutter AI products; instead, build truly hardcore products that have market demand.
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