Molly Mackinlay, Swaroop Hegde, Ayush Ranjan, Masa 'Senshi' Kikuchi I Pragma India 2023
summary
Teams trace product-market fit from HackFS 2020 to live protocols: one group ships peer-to-peer WebRTC video rails (now Huddle01) and raises a $1.7M pre-seed; another pivots Powerloom with grant funding and developer tools; a third builds a live decentralized bond market (staking and fixed‑rate primitives go live mid‑December). They credit Protocol Labs/Gitcoin accelerators for introductions, cite legal and hiring pain points, and note the cohort raised $56.5M collective as momentum.
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chapters (21)
- 0:00Welcome & panelist introductions
- 0:44Early experiences at HackFS 2020
- 3:41Huddle01’s origin during COVID & Zoom bombing
- 5:11Powerloom’s spontaneous entry & inspiration
- 6:14When hack projects became real companies
- 7:23Secured Finance’s unexpected founder journey
- 9:16Powerloom’s pivot and grant opportunities
- 10:14How Protocol Labs & PL Network helped
- 13:07The emotional side of the founder journey
- 14:33Fundraising experiences & first rounds
- 17:16Navigating investor alignment
- 19:10Legal structures, SAFE vs equity tips
- 20:33Current founder struggles & feature requests
- 22:10Hiring challenges and high-impact early team
- 23:22Regulatory uncertainty in Web3
- 24:24New trends founders are excited about
- 25:26Web3 social, staking, and communication rails
- 27:38Secured Finance and the decentralized bond market
- 28:50On-chain infra and scaling excitement
- 29:55Advice for ETHIndia hackers & future founders
- 31:30Final takeaways from the panel
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