Zack Markman

@zackmarkman

consumer products @krakenfx, prev @Sydney_Uni

New York

Joined September 2020

198 Following

182 Followers

162 Posts

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can

@can

3 months ago

your db query is slow? just add this! boom, now you are ai-native instead of lazy!

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Arjun Sethi

@arjunsethi

7 months ago

We just announced that @krakenfx has raised $800M, a milestone that reflects years of work, discipline, and conviction. I am proud of what our team has built and grateful for the partners who chose to join us. But this is not a post about a fundraise. I want to share the side of the story people rarely talk about. The truth behind what it actually takes to build an enduring company. The real story lives long before the headlines. It is about conviction when the world questions you, partnership when few are willing to stand with you, and the choices you make when things are hard rather than celebratory. When I think about the last decade, people often ask where my conviction for crypto and financial infrastructure came from. Before @tribecap, I spent years working alongside some of the best quantitative and growth minds in the world. These were the people who built the analytical systems and growth engines behind the largest trillion dollar companies in the world. Learning from them shaped how I think about data, experimentation, compounding outcomes, and decision making at scale. At a certain point, I felt the need to put those frameworks and hypotheses into practice. That decision led to the creation of Tribe Capital. I am fortunate that many of the same people who taught me those frameworks and worked with me in those earlier chapters eventually became my partners. Together, we set out to build a firm grounded in data, truth seeking, and conviction. Starting in June 2018, we built Tribe across multiple asset classes with a data driven mindset, beginning with early stage venture and later expanding into crypto. By 2020, we launched our crypto funds because the evidence pointed to a fundamental shift in how global financial systems would be rebuilt. In 2022, everything changed. Public markets sold off. US markets lost nearly $11T in market value that year. crypto lost more than $1T in market cap. Fear was everywhere. Some of our more conservative LPs who had lost money in FTX urged me to step away from crypto entirely. They told me to wind down, settle positions, and avoid challenging the institutions who were now pointing fingers at the entire space. Many of our LPs were not reacting to data or long term outcomes. They were reacting to reputational fear. They cared more about protecting themselves than protecting the institutions they represented. Venture, at its core, is supposed to be about partnership, long term innovation, and return multiples earned through conviction. Yet in that moment, a meaningful group lost sight of that. They wanted safety, not truth. Optics, not alignment. And they asked us to behave the same way. At the same time, private markets and venture financing were effectively frozen until the release of ChatGPT reignited belief in long term innovation and infrastructure. And during that same period, I was personally debanked by SVB, FRB, and others. Quietly and without explanation. And yet that moment became the period in which we made our strongest decisions. Instead of stepping back, we stepped forward. We deployed more capital in 2022, 2023, and 2024 than in the years before. Looking back, those became some of the best investments we have ever made. As demand temporarily declined, our conviction increased. Prices reset. Our entry positions became exceptional. And we put significant capital behind the founders and companies we believed would define the next decade. Part of that effort led us to help cofound Kapital, a regulated bank serving customers in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru. Kapital has been profitable since day one. Today it is worth more than $1.5B and is on track to exceed $400M in revenue. I am grateful to the team that built it with us and proud of what we have created together. Throughout this period, I continued to spend my time and attention on the companies I believed would grow regardless of the market cycle. This is the part of the story that matters. @jespow, a partner, a friend, and someone I deeply respect, chose to bet on me at the exact moment I was betting more on him. When many people were retreating, Jesse leaned in. When others questioned whether the industry had a future, he committed to building. Trust like that is rare. Alignment like that is even more rare. And that shared conviction is what ultimately led me to join Kraken full time. We stayed focused on the data. We stayed focused on the long run. Since the downturn, Tribe has deployed another $500M into our highest conviction companies. We built deeper alignment with the businesses we believed would matter over the next decade. And one of those companies was Kraken, which became a central part of my journey with Jesse Powell and the conviction we shared about where this industry was heading. When I became Co-CEO of Kraken, that conviction became personal. I doubled down with my time, my capital, and my full attention. If I was going to lead the company, I needed to be fully aligned with its future. That meant investing not only through Tribe Capital but also through our own family office. My parents and my family, including my kids, supported me, and I love them for their support and their capital. Together, we helped shape the first tranche of the new round at a time when Kraken had raised only $27M in primary capital, and we committed more than $100M with belief in what Kraken could become. I am grateful to the partners who joined alongside me in that first tranche, including DRW, HongShan, formerly Sequoia China, Jane Street, Oppenheimer, IMC, Wintermute, and many others. Their willingness to step in at a crucial moment strengthened the foundation for everything that followed. And I am proud to welcome Citadel Securities as our partner in the second tranche, bringing total capital raised to $800M for Kraken. Their conviction reflects the strength of the work we have done and the long term opportunity ahead. Here is what I want people to take away from this journey. Fundraising is never easy. Not when you are early. Not when you have traction. Not when the market is against you. Not even when the market turns in your favor. What matters is whether you lose your values along the way. Many people do. It is the easiest shortcut in the world. We did not. Kraken did not. Tribe Capital did not. We stayed committed to our culture, our mission, and our values. We chose partners who believe in resilience, transparency, and long term thinking. Partners who believe that financial infrastructure should be open, global, and accessible. Many of these partners have supported us through multiple cycles, and I am grateful for them. Now we are focused on what comes next. A unified liquidity and collateral system. A new architecture for financial services. A global platform that brings traditional and open finance together for everyone. This journey has never been about being right in any single moment. It has always been about staying right over the long run. Arjun https://t.co/17rvyzEHoV

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Marko @markosaniga

9 months ago

Siri is evolving, just backwards

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Zack Markman

@zackmarkman

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