Joseph Lubin is the co-creator of Ethereum and the CEO of ConsenSys, a blockchain venture studio. In a recent interview, Lubin explained what ConsenSys has been up to as of late, and why it doesn’t matter if the company isn’t as profitable as it once was.
Ethereum Gets Its Grand Entrance
Lubin first met Vitalik Buterin – the primary brains behind Ethereum – in 2013. He worked with Buterin and his team to build the Ethereum Network and establish its reputation as not just a cryptocurrency, but a platform that could pave the way for future cryptocurrency projects built on Ethereum’s now ever-popular blockchain.
In 2014, he left and founded ConsenSys, which has worked to build startups from the ground up by helping them establish proper executive teams, build revenue and raise capital. Since its inception four years ago, ConsenSys has created developer tools, decentralized apps (dApps) and even its own education and training academy. Many of these projects have since gone on to raise their own capital.
A Simple Project Goes “Boom”
It’s safe to say that ConsenSys has become a solid ecosystem rather than a simple blockchain project. Lubin is said to be the world’s single largest holder of ether – the official cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network – though he’s been putting much of those funds towards keeping his business in operation. ConsenSys has taken some nasty hits this year with the extended price drops of cryptocurrencies like ether, but this isn’t necessarily getting under his skin.
Always Seeing the Positive
When asked if ConsenSys was still profitable, Lubin said:
“We’re still in the burn. We’ll probably be that way for a long time, just because we’ll continually invest rather than try to extract profits. If you [were to] consider some of our token launches revenue, then we’d be profitable, but a lot of those tokens are things that we’re going to keep frozen for a long time. If we calculated everything, then yes, we’re above zero.”
He also says that nothing could have prepared him for the growth rate of ConsenSys, and he admits that the company potentially “grew too fast.” So fast, in fact, that he had little to no time to induct every employee or new individual into the company culture appropriately, though in the long run, he comments that fast growth is always better than slow growth:
“Tons of growing pains, sure. We’re trying to get better with our onboarding process. We’re growing too fast; we felt that was necessary because the alternative, growing too slow, would have been much more problematic for our product teams and consulting arm.”
Let’s Keep Things Fair!
In the end, he comments that ConsenSys isn’t trying to rule the world like Amazon or Apple. Rather, the goal is – and always has been – to keep the world from being ruled:
“We’re trying to decentralize ourselves. Essentially, various technologies have enabled technologists to pile stacks of value higher than ever before. Those stacks of value [have been] contained within firms, but if we have these protocol-based open platforms, these network business models, then ownership will be much more decentralized. We’ll have companies [with] tokenized securities, and we’ll have these networks that offer products and services.”
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