TM Lee is the co-founder & CEO at Coingecko - one of the world’s largest crypto data aggregators with over 150 million users in 2021 alone! 

But before becoming a founder, TM was first influenced by his brother to become a coder. He learned about Reddit and Digg, and even ended up studying computer science at Purdue University, where he was exposed to the likes of Jason Fried (Basecamp) - a huge proponent of the bootstrap mentality. 

TM tried many things. He wrote an aggregator in college until things went south, and eventually worked at a Big 4 audit firm but at the back of his mind was the thought that he wanted to start a business. 

Then in April 2014, he co-founded Coingecko with Bobby Ong. It began as a side project with a starting capital of $100, launched soon after the collapse of Mt Gox. And as you’ll see from our interview, they went through lots of ups & downs to get to where they are today. 

Highlights:

• 3:52 How his brother exposed TM to coding
• 5:01 Influenced by Kevin Rose (Digg)
• 5:44 Jason Fried of Basecamp
• 9:17 Evaluating business partners
• 10:35 Returning to Malaysia
• 11:47 Side projects
• 14:56 Building Coingecko
• 17:05 Meeting his co-founder, Bobby Ong
• 18:30 The early days of Coingecko
• 20:00 The significance behind the crash of Mt Gox
• 21:30 Why launch Coingecko right after the Mt Gox crash?
• 22:40 Building trust
• 22:40 Bootstrapping with $100
• 25:31 Building collaborations with universities
• 26:40 Scaling via organic marketing
• 27:47 Getting Coingecko translated into 15 languages 
• 30:19 Was TM worried about sharing his code to the public?
• 31:10 Getting investors on board 
• 24:12 Why the banking/fintech industry is so different from the crypto industry
• 35:51 Why maintain Coingecko’s API for free forever?
• 37:05 How Coingecko ensures that they have accurate price data feeds
• 38:25 Deciding on the tokens to list 
• 39:09 Sifting out the scams & rug pulls
• 40:53 Will Coingecko ever delist a token? 
• 42:21 Main milestones behind Coingecko
• 43:31 How the crypto space is impacted by banks (e.g. DBS) launching their own crypto trading services
• 44:14 Impact of Binance’s purchase of Coinmarketcap on Coingecko 
• 45:07 Is TM now more important to investors to remain competitive?
• 50:38 NFTs
• 52:00 The secret behind Coingecko’s rocket growth in 2021: From 50 million to 150 million in 11 months
• 53:03 Thoughts on the current bear market
• 55:34 Crash of the Luna token
• 56:54 Coinzilla’s malicious app script 
• 1:02:52 What to expect from Coingecko moving forward
• 1:03:42 Things to expect if the metaverse takes off
• 1:05:37 How much of your success is due to hard work v luck?

📍Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/90 

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