Keeping the Faith and the Fall of Luna Crypto with Kene Ezeji-Okoye of Millicent Labs
Oct 04, 2023Season 2
James Johnson
Kene is a co-founder of Millicent Labs who recently won the prestigious G20 Techsprint 2023 held by The Bank of International Settlements and Reserve Bank of India.
He was struggling to drive interest in his business. People were caught up in the idea of 20% interest rates with Luna Crypto — when the concept behind Millicent Labs was the opposite.
It wasn’t feasible. Traditional. And quite contrary to what crypto was.
Shortly after Luna crashed, and then FTX — but instead of the industry going in Kene's favour. All trust was gone.
But he was clear on his mission, and trusted that the narrative would change.
In this episode, Kene and I discuss the battles of being a founder, striving to believe in your idea... when it seems like no one else does.
We talk about
Challenging hustle culture and understanding priorities
What helped him to stay in the habit of carving out time for loved ones
The validating turning point in the industry that helped Kene to get where he is now
Kene’s story is packed with setbacks, balanced out by signs that he was going in the right direction — that was all just a year ago! Tune in to hear where he is today.
Kene is a co-founder of Millicent Labs who recently won the prestigious G20 Techsprint 2023 held by The Bank of International Settlements and Reserve Bank of India.
He was struggling to drive interest in his business. People were caught up in the idea of 20% interest rates with Luna Crypto — when the concept behind Millicent Labs was the opposite.
It wasn’t feasible. Traditional. And quite contrary to what crypto was.
Shortly after Luna crashed, and then FTX — but instead of the industry going in Kene's favour. All trust was gone.
But he was clear on his mission, and trusted that the narrative would change.
In this episode, Kene and I discuss the battles of being a founder, striving to believe in your idea... when it seems like no one else does.
We talk about
Challenging hustle culture and understanding priorities
What helped him to stay in the habit of carving out time for loved ones
The validating turning point in the industry that helped Kene to get where he is now
Kene’s story is packed with setbacks, balanced out by signs that he was going in the right direction — that was all just a year ago! Tune in to hear where he is today.
I'm delighted to welcome to the show today Kenny. Kenny is a co-founder of Millicent Labs, who recently won the G20 text print 2023, run by the Bank of International Settlements and Reserve Bank of India. Welcome, kenny.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, thanks for having me. Fantastic to be here.
Speaker 1:
I mean awesome on the award, but the whole point today is to start off and go back to tough moments. So when are we going back to?
Speaker 2:
We're going back to May 2022, when we were really struggling to raise investment because a lot of people were caught up in this crypto narrative that you could get 20% interest on your money and our thesis was the opposite of that, and it was tough.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so what I'm hearing is you're. It was definitely a good time for crypto, but you were coming. You were losing out people that were just promising something that you didn't. You didn't think was feasible.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, our thesis as a company is we want to build at the intersection of traditional finance and digital currency, and we think that the structure of the current system and the consumer safeguards are good things, but the technology behind blockchain is great and has a lot of promise to make a lot of people's lives better and make the whole system run more smoothly. Okay, and we were talking about regulatory compliance long before. It was cool and there was a particular protocol at the time Terra, the Luna and the UST tokens and they had another protocol called Anchor that would pay you 20% interest on your dollars, and every investor that we spoke to said well, what you're trying to do is very boring and that's old school and nobody wants that. We're in this new world where I can get 20% on my dollars, and it was tough for us to swallow, because I think we heard it so many times that I almost started believing it, even though we founded the company on a different premise.
Speaker 2:
And this went on for a number of months and then eventually, at the beginning of 2022, may 2022, terra crashed and $20 billion in stable coins were wiped out, as well as the protocol's own token, which was, I think, $40 billion worth. So almost $60 billion worth of value wiped out overnight in something that looks a lot like a Ponzi scheme. And the founder of that protocol has now been arrested. He fled and was on the run and in hiding and they caught him in Montenegro and when this blow up happened it was really validating and I was almost happy in a kind of Schadenfried sour grapes kind of way slightly ashamed to say it, but it didn't last very long because it really set back the entire industry.
Speaker 1:
That must be so. So it feels like you've been fighting this battle for a year around, trying to get traction for something that is that you believe in is solving. Something is based in kind of what was being called old school, but in reality it's like real world fundamentals, and you're losing out time and time again to this. This, this pipe dreams, kind of New thinking was basically fantasy. How did you keep going?
Speaker 2:
It was tough. We did a number of investor calls and got knocked back and we'd go to industry events and people would be like, oh, what do you do? And you're like, oh well, we make plumbing for existal financing institutions like banks, etc. They'd be like, oh, banks disgusting. You read the kind of Peter Thiel books and it's like you need to be the contrarian and, within the blockchain industry, advocating for I guess what you would call traditional sensibilities is the contrarian move. And yeah, we got a lot of a lot of pushback for that and it was tough. But, you know, we got some validation along the way from from kind of traditional people, but not as much as we would have liked and we didn't really have the funding to push ahead as strongly as we would have liked either. But having a supportive partner and co-founder who we can really share these tough times with helped a lot, because you hear no and you hear you're wrong enough times and it starts to hit you.
Speaker 1:
So it sounds like you actually put quite a good support network around you during that period, in terms of you had a good supportive co-founder, you went out and found support from a coach. What made you aware enough to do that, do you think?
Speaker 2:
I definitely would not have done that if it wasn't for my wife. She put me in touch with the right person and, because she had done this training herself, knew the value of it. I, to be perfectly honest, before having done it, would have said it's nonsense, I don't need it, I'll get through this myself, etc. And I think the person I am today versus the person I was when I started this journey are two very different people, and I better understand how important mental health is and taking care of yourself and how vital the support network is.
Speaker 2:
We kind of laugh that you're on the startup roller coaster where within the same day, you can feel like you're king of the world or you've hit rock bottom. But that is the reality of it and you need some kind of a safety net for when things go wrong. And it's easy to feel like your startup is the only thing that you have in the world. And I think it's almost natural to feel that way because to make it you have to be laser focused and you have to put in the hours and you have to put in the dedication, and it does eat into the other parts of your life. But you do need to make some balance and find time to prioritize other things, just to recharge your own batteries or to get outside of the bubble where you keep going over and over the same ideas in your head. Outside perspective and support goes a long way.
Speaker 1:
Is there anything else that you either did or do to get outside that bubble?
Speaker 2:
Well, our business got started, moved from the idea phase to the we're actually building something phase when we got grant funding from Innovate UK and we got our grant on the 1st of June 2021. And my daughter was born on the 6th of June 2021. So I had a new business and my first child at the exact same time, which meant not very much sleep in the early days, but as my daughter grew up, I always made sure to carve out some time to hang out with her, and she's a lot of fun. That's probably the highlight, and when my brain shuts off and I can be present is when I'm with her, just pause it.
Speaker 1:
It just really resonates with me in terms of a lot of the things that you're saying like first as well. So blocking that, certain blocks of family time and trying to separate the two and actually becomes I think it does become easier once you have a child where pre it's like, can feel like work is everything.
Speaker 2:
Yeah especially with, you know, smartphones, which are obviously great for a lot of reasons, but you're always connected and Slack is always going to ding and WhatsApp's always going to ding, and there's always people that you can email. There's always things that you could be doing. It's a bottomless pile of work and you can't think that you're going to be able to get to the bottom of it by just doing it nonstop, because new things will come up or you need to prioritize what's the most important and sometimes that's your family and your mental health, and it will make you, it will make you deliver better for your business if you take care of yourself at least a little bit.
Speaker 1:
Yes, as I talked to my clients about, is this idea that we're kind of conned into thinking. The answer is how can we work smarter? And like how can we be more efficient? Because actually earlier in our career that is the question. It's kind of like we start work, I just like get our first job and we're given like a discrete task list, natural, figure out how to do it faster, and then you get a bit more senior. It's like okay, me and my team would kind of do this discrete list a bit quicker or better or faster, and then troubles. You take that mentality when you become a founder and actually your task list is infinite. You could like exactly you could, you could, you could fill up your week 500 times over just with just the new ideas you have in your head. And so actually we, we still start to tell you how can I, how can I do this quicker? And actually it's not the right question. The question is how can I do?
Speaker 2:
less Exactly this how can you eliminate the noise and do the highest, most impactful thing at all times and eliminate all of the noise and all of the distractions and some of those distractions, like you said, the new ideas? They will pull you down a path where you waste a lot of time or effort or money trying to do something that's not part of your core mission, that's not super impactful, that's not going to move the dial, because it's easy to have mockingbird syndrome and want to add one more feature or see someone else's shiny business, do well and sifted or tech crunch and we could add a little bit of that to our product. And staying focused and staying on mission I think, even going back to the original moment that we talked about, it is the staying focused and staying on mission that got us through that and through what came after that with the whole FTX thing.
Speaker 1:
Perhaps we go back to that story then in terms of the transition. So you have this, have this moment of kind of kind of validation where everything that you were saying came to pass, it's like, but you still, you lost when it was up, you lost when everyone was focused on it as a good thing, but it sounds like you then lost when everyone focused on it as a realized it was a bad thing.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, pretty much it was. It was kind of a lose-lose for us because people didn't buy into our traditional approach beforehand. And then, when it became apparent that, you know, the emperor had no clothes, a lot of people lost a lot of money and got very scared about deploying their money because what looked like it was a great idea wasn't and a lot of people got gun-shined. So there wasn't very much investment going on in crypto for a while and we decided to at that point to hold off raising money. We did take in a bit of money from some angels to, you know, allow us to expand the team a bit and crack on with what we needed to do. We said we'd hold off on the institutional round for a few months. Then a man by the name of Sam Bankman Freed started going to Washington and really being a proponent of regulated crypto and crypto is a force for good and you know we're watching this and thinking this. This is great. This guy is saying all the right things, people are buying into this. He's getting the lawmakers on his side. This is perfect. We should really think about doing our institutional round now. And then, of course, once again, the emperor had no clothes, and that meant that a lot of people viewed crypto with a well, crypto blockchain. I don't even know if crypto is the right word for what we do or if the word crypto now has such a stigma around it it should be avoided at all costs.
Speaker 2:
But essentially, when FTX came crashing down, everybody was skeptical about the industry, and even the most as we were. You know, we joined an accelerator with Barclays. Around this time. We had government funding, we're working in the FCA's Innovation Pathways program, and so we're trying to tick all the right boxes and be the upstanding citizens and all of a sudden, you're trying a little bit too much to be regulated. What's really going on there? And it again was just kind of a bit of a catch-22 for us. But the industry took another turn for the south that one. I think we took a bit more in stride than we did with the tariff stuff and, given that part of a big part of what we're doing is trying to tokenize commercial bank money.
Speaker 2:
And then the start of the year, you had all the bank runs in America and the SBB Silicon Valley Bank the SBB Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.
Speaker 2:
You know that again touched us and almost didn't even hit the side.
Speaker 2:
So it was another thing that should have phased us probably a lot more than it did, but we're just on mission now and building our product and I think that the narrative is starting to catch up with us a lot more now, with a speech that John Cunnliffe at the Bank of England gave not too long ago on a speech from the GM of the Bank for International Settlements.
Speaker 2:
They both talked about this idea of having a unified ledger and basically talking about what we've been building for quite a while, and that is a very validating feeling to finally have the narrative go from being something that you don't believe in and you have conviction in the opposite of. But the global consensus, or the industry consensus, is that you're wrong in their right and now that is pivoting to actually traditional finance. Moving on chain is likely and it's going to be very valuable and there's a specific way to do it that looks quite good and that happens to be the specific way that we've chosen to do it. So seeing these figures publicly make big speeches like this has been incredibly validating and helped us achieve some of the things that we set out to achieve.
Speaker 1:
So today, then, we talked about. You just won this award from a once competition, and there's quite a few other good things happening around the business as well in terms of joining the accelerator. And what is? Where are you guys today, then? Where does the story find you?
Speaker 2:
So, yeah, one of the the big high street banks recommended us for the law firm Alan and Overy, the Magic Circle law firm. They've got an incubator program called Fuse, which is very well respected and has been traditionally for legal tech, and this year they asked their clients which company in the digital asset space do you think is going to be the most transformative for your business in the future? Very flatteringly, they said us and this is one of the UK's biggest banks, so that was very flattering that we got nominated. And then we were surprised to have been chosen Happily surprised. So we're now a member of this incubator alongside the likes of Chanalysis, who are a massive company, raised their series F, I think, you know, half a billion in funding, working with the FBI, the DOJ, the SEC they're a huge company and Cominu, who are backed by Nomura, one of the world's biggest securities firms. So we're in esteemed company here and it's feel a little bit like we're punching above our weight to be honest, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:
It's like such a quick turnaround. And even from that point you're still kicked twice.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you know, when I just said that out loud I realized, you know, it's only been just over a year, but it felt like a lot longer while I was living it. In retrospect it it's not that long, but every day dealing with that stress is tough hmm, despite all the things you put around you like.
Speaker 1:
So a supportive wife, supportive co-founder, a coach.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think we spoke about this the last time we met about how being a founder is a lot like my Old hobby, ski mountaineering. You know, kind of walking and climbing and hiking up a mountain for six hours, eight hours, to ski down for two minutes. And it's those two minutes of skiing down where or where you get the photos that go on social media and what we call type 2 funds. It's not very fun while you're doing it, but it's fun to tell the story and I guess you know this is the. The two minutes of skiing down is talking about the journey with you, but it's it's all the things that we put on on our linked ins which is important and are valid because you do have Winds along the way as well, but it's.
Speaker 2:
It's a harder Undertaking than many people realize from the outside. Looking in, if you just see a picture of someone holding up their marathon medal with a smile, you're not realizing that at mile 19. They were thinking I should give up. My legs are gonna collapse. I don't care that much, I want to go home. But I can guarantee that most people who have run a marathon have probably had those thoughts.
Speaker 1:
And I'm gonna guess much fewer people have climbed up a mountain, ski down at the run, a marathon.
Speaker 2:
I've run a marathon.
Speaker 1:
I'm not sure I would climb a mountain ski down it.
Speaker 2:
But would you equate running a marathon with with being a founder? Does that resonate?
Speaker 1:
with you 100%. So much of it is around the post, as you say that it's a longer. It's a longer process than then you would Think about for doing it. I think a lot of people wouldn't even start doing it. They're just too freaked out by the idea of it. There's a lot of glamour around it, which which sort of the reality of like chaff nipples and sort of needing to find place to go to the loo before it starts. Everyone's like peeing and bushes everywhere. I mean there's, there's, there's so much people don't see you, do you actually do it?
Speaker 1:
You need to run a marathon to truly, truly know what I'm talking about. That just 100%. And also, like if you sprint out a marathon, I mean you're never gonna finish it. Like if you, if you, if you try and take it like a hundred meter race, you're gonna be, you're not gonna make mile 26. Yeah, and I also think that the for me, last time I did a marathon, I don't think I'd have finished it If it wasn't the fact that I knew my wife was at mile 23, because my hip went part, part way through and I was like, but just keeping it, I just want to get at least to her, and my sister was there as well. Just again, that support. So much of it, I think is is similar.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that really resonates that you know just wanting to get that the ex level see your wife and then you see your sister, and when you see them and it gives you the motivation and the support you need to make it that last Extra step to get over the finish line.
Speaker 1:
I think we put a very bad job as founders of like, of celebrating Reaching the finish line that's quite there is never really finish line. It's kind of like, once you've achieved, it doesn't feel like achievement, some of some of these to feel so it's kind of like Okay, well, I've done it and it can't be that hard, but also next, what's the next? The next race like yeah it's like it's madness you just from 26 miles, just maybe enjoy it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, I think I think is founders. You are innately wired like that, or you wouldn't be a founder in the first place. It's it's a game in a way, and every founder that I've met, even the nicest ones, are highly competitive and the number one person that you're competing against is yourself. You want to do more than you thought possible. You want to achieve the absolute most that you can. You want to do it in spite of the odds being against you. You know that the odds are against you when you go in. You know that most startups fail, but every founder believes that they're the one that's gonna make it, that they can be the next Zuckerberg. Pre transition to meta.
Speaker 2:
I think that if you don't believe that you shouldn't be a founder, but that the mentality has changed in the last 20 years, that you don't have to be this I guess hustle porn you know they call it above the, I'm doing 200 hour weeks and the rest of it we. You have to put in a lot of hours, yes, but you have to live as a human being at the same time. It's just like you said if you wanted to run a marathon, you couldn't do that by doing all the training that you did for the marathon in one week. You have to spread that out over six months. You know, get up to five K, get up to 10 K, etc. You can't just all just compress this into a week and then go run my marathon on Sunday. You need it. You need to be a sustainable human being in order to run a sustainable business.
Speaker 1:
I guess the lovely sentiment is it's so true like a sustainable human being to run a sustainable business and also just to be there for your team as well. Because if you're putting on people around your family, if you're putting yourself under that much pressure, what are you gonna, what are the people around you gonna be experiencing like? If your team can't celebrate success, close the next thing, or you're chasing to the next thing, your family kind of I've just got another five hours work tonight or this weekend or whatever like. Is that really a sustainable or enjoyable Race slash journey with the business?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I do need to caveat this because I know my wife is going to watch or listen to this. And yes, I realized that I do stuff on Saturdays and Sundays and on holidays when I probably shouldn't be, and I'm sorry. I know it's not ideal. Sometimes things, as a founder, you have to Go outside of your own rules, but yes, it's a general rule. I think that carving out some time is a good thing, but yeah, I do tend to do at least a couple hours on Saturday, so I can't pretend to be, you know, holier than that, etc.
Speaker 1:
I don't think. I think it's just step one is awareness. I think just step one of the conversation around Asperation the aspiration should not be to be kind of hustle porn. The aspiration should be sustainable and yes, we're all human and yes, we'll get pulled into stuff and yes, things will come up and it's like, in the same way, hustle porn is not a reality. The sort of the pure I will. I will block off this time and outside that I won't do any work. That's also not a reality because stuff comes up. But I think just having that awareness and that conversation is changing the conversation. I think it's so beneficial to founders.
Speaker 2:
No, I agree 100%.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, why? I Think we're Well. So you thought for me what's for any, for you? I'm just looking back at this again Is anything, has anything stood out?
Speaker 2:
For you. I think the the one thing that really Surprisingly hit home is how it's only been a year Since the moment that we talked about, and I guess the whole time has been relatively short in the grand scheme of things, but it felt really long. It felt exactly like our five going up a hill when you just want to turn around and I'll ski from three-quarters of the way down rather than make it to the top, and Having that feeling almost every day is tough, but Much like I guess, your friends pat me on the back or saying, come on, let's get up to this, to this bridge or whatnot. The support network is really important and looking back on it now I'm not going to say that it seems easy, but it it seems shorter than it felt like in the time and and maybe slightly less consequential.
Speaker 1:
Hmm, that's a great takeaway and it is actually just from the next time. It's amazing just the shift. Like you go from bit where like the narrative was totally against you, and then when it sort of went for you and then someone undercut it by by telling your narrative, but but, but under false pretenses, she kind of helped to then go to sort of Having it like winning a competition, like a high competition, having like the Bank of England chairmen sort of telling your story, like having institutional round that's going well, like that's such a transition the space of just over a year.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and Now that we say it all like that, yeah, I'm feeling like pretty good at the end of this podcast.
Speaker 1:
Well, maybe that's a good place to finish that. You are you really good. Thank you so much, kenny. That's been a really, really great chat.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, thanks for having me been fantastic.
Speaker 1:
As you heard today, coaching opens up a whole range of insights and areas to explore. If you have a potential moment to revisit on the podcast or just want to learn more about coaching, book in for a 30 minute chat with me at peer-effectcom.