Empowering Filecoin startups

On December 11th, ETH Global and Filecon hosted the Storage Market Summit (SMS). A portion of the day was dedicated to empowering Filecoin startups. Here are the summaries, themes, and conclusions from the different conversations during this portion of the day.

The following is an excerpt from a presentation given by Gabriel Anderson, Managing Director of Tachyon Accelerator, at SMS.

Tachyon is an accelerator for early-stage Web3 applications, focusing on the "0 to 1" process. As part of the ConsenSys Mesh, Tachyon provides accelerator participants with extensive tools and expertise within and outside the Mesh. Since 2017, Tachyon has launched a total of 4 teams with 39 active alumni.

So, what does it mean to go from 0 to 1?

Building a company can be an arduous process. At any given moment, you could literally be doing thousands of different things. How do you focus on the one or two things you should be doing? How do you know what’s most important and what to execute on?

The first decision to make is “launch or shelve”. An early stage idea or a project that results from a hackathon may or may not evolve into a sustainable, scalable product. First, you have to clarify what market you want to trade in, who your users are, what you are building, what is the composition of the team and what their skills are.

Once you identify yourself as a startup, you’ll go through three key stages of growth:

1. PSM (Problem, Solution, Market). Find a valuable problem to solve in a growing market.

2. Traction. Prove demand for your product by gaining traction and momentum in the community.

3. Fundraising. Raise funds in Web3 through many unique ways to plan your cap table to accelerate growth.

As for the Web3 founders themselves, they went through three major transitions when creating the project :

1. From building for yourself to building for your clients.

2. Organize a community to help Web3 startups grow quickly and build in public spaces.

3. Coordinate with key stakeholders to build connections with other communities.

Tachyon has partnered with Protocol Labs to launch the Filecoin Launchpad Accelerator. Over the past three months, the Launchpad Accelerator has worked with 13 teams and 32 founders from 11 countries.

The following is an excerpt from a speech given by Emma Cui, CEO and founding partner of LongHash Ventures, at SMS.

LongHash Ventures is a Web3-focused incubator and investor that specializes in bringing Asia’s web to Web3 startups . For LongHash, investing in Web3.0 means betting on a new type of company that will grow more collaboratively, more securely, and more efficiently.

Building these startups means creating a digital economy with true ownership, trustless interactions, and smooth transitions . A more open and interoperable playing field also means more investments are likely to yield returns, rather than the winner-take-all dynamics observed in most modern digital industries.

The Filecoin Frontier Accelerator is a 12-week accelerator led by LongHash Ventures that provides three major benefits to Web3 startups:

1. Structured guidance on the technical foundations of early-stage products.

2. Go-to-market strategy supported by LongHash’s advisor network.

3. Comprehensive Asia-centric network.

Filecoin Frontier Accelerator recently closed applications and is currently reviewing and interviewing. A total of 162 applications from 11 countries were submitted. Generally, the types of products submitted were divided into the following four categories :

1. File and data storage use cases

2. DeFi

3. Web3 Applications

4. Infrastructure and middleware layer

The following is a summary of the speech given by Sharlyn Wu, CIO of Huobi Group, at SMS.

The Huobi Filecoin Incubation Center is a partnership between Protocol Labs and Huobi Group that aims to allocate $10 million to support talented developers doing meaningful things in the Filecoin ecosystem.

Huobi Group will provide participants of the incubation center with access to the Asian community, wallet support, liquidity support, and an entrance to Huobi's vast global ecosystem. In particular, Huobi is interested in actively exploring the interaction of Filecoin with DeFi.