Kat

Building Atrium - principle-first risk structuring layer on @Arbitrum
prev @PrimeVaultsHQ

[Kat @0xKat11]

https://t.co/GdfWJKDrzj

[Sandeep | CEO, Polygon Foundation (※,※) @sandeepnailwal]

I realized that founders dont get paid for their hard work or smartness, they actually get paid for their suffering, and their biggest job is learning to manage the suffering as they go.

there are days where nothing feels like its moving, youre getting pounded with negative news from every side at once and you cant catch a break, and it really gets to you.

most people on your team are working as hard as you, but nobody is suffering as bad as you, and that suffering is what you get paid for, because that suffering is literally the fear of death constantly looming large on your head, no matter what stage of your venture youre in.

[Kat @0xKat11]

@tarunchitra I'd say tokenization is more like a system where trust is actually priceable. I can quantify custodian and oracle risk. I can't price "will this guy answer his email." That gap is the whole thesis.

[Kat @0xKat11]

@brettcalhounn Governance > equity split.
I actually commented on your post about our experience with giving veto rights to non-CEO founders. It’s a great way to ensure fairness without causing CEO gridlock.
Sharp pick btw.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

I talked to a founder today whose customers are all really nice people, because their initial market happens to be one that attracts such people. The founders themselves are nice for the same reason. They're enjoying starting a startup as much as any founders I've known.

[Kat @0xKat11]

@lalleclausen Agree. Useful agents need provable on-chain settlement to act safely.
Yield tranching delivers it on-chain: verifiable senior principal + deterministic loss waterfalls. Programmable risk layers that fit Cost of Trust 2.0. Thoughts?

[Kat @0xKat11]

@vimjam282 21 year old turned $150 into $40M.
99% of 21 year olds turned $40M into $150.
Different skill issue.

[Kat @0xKat11]

@samkazemian Distinct recognition, Frax earns it!

[Kat @0xKat11]

@derekhsue @dguido @alexsotirov Wild how losing your own money becomes the best teacher. That lightbulb moment clearly shaped everything after.

[Balaji @balajis]

The right kind of ambition is to compete against yourself. To be the best version of yourself.

[Kat @0xKat11]

@karrisaarinen @NoelChurchill This is gold, thanks for sharing so much info here.

[Kat @0xKat11]

hello sam, i built a plug-and-play layer that can be integrated on top of any yield-bearing stables and RWAs.
our tranching math enables competitive yields of 5%+ for institutional capital—keeping their principal fully whole in USD—while allowing retail participants to access returns of 17%+.

is your DM open?

[Kat @0xKat11]

The fundraising process is dynamic, chaotic, and sometimes flat-out weird. All you have to do is dance. 🪩

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A.

12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going.

I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital.

You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious.

It's a dance.

And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious.

If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird.

No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there.

It is weird.

[Kat @0xKat11]

Building on @arbitrum.

If you work on institutional on-chain credit, RWA infrastructure, or DAO treasury allocation — DMs open.

More soon.

[Kat @0xKat11]

Every yield protocol on-chain protects yield.

None protect principal.

For institutional capital to actually allocate on-chain, that has to change.

[Kat @0xKat11]

Atrium's answer to (2):

3-tranche, not 2. Mezz absorbs second-loss before Senior.

Junior's risk premium isn't diluted across the whole sub-pool.

Smaller Jr position. Higher Jr yield.

[signüll @signulll]

a founder has three jobs. everything else is serious amounts of noise.

1. you have to tell the story. roughly in three registers. first investors need inevitability. customers need to *feel* what you do/stand for. & your team needs a mission worth their best years.

2. you must secure the capital before you need it. running out of money is running out of options. you have to be relentless about it.

3. you must obsess over the product. product is the story made accessible for everyone. every shipped detail is a sentence back into the narrative in point number one.

this is the entire job.

everything else you either delegate or kill. early on with a really small team, delegation is a huge tax so you have to learn to kill more than you delegate.