Before Ethereum had a market cap, it was just an idea at the head of college.
The largest crypto companies are not planned in classrooms. They are built in dorm rooms, group chats, and founders of founders who do not wait for permission (many of them do not graduate from college). This is not by chance. This is a repetition of a pattern we have seen before: bold ideas, early actions, and zero considerations in the institution’s time.
In 2014, a group of students launched the Blockchain Education Network (BEN) to connect students who explored Bitcoin and Blockchain to college campuses. Within a year, Ben has grown in more than 160 chapters in more than 35 countries.
Beginning as an education of indigenous peoples has quickly become a launchpad for builders.
Ben has become a catalyst for its main members and for a global group of students who have seen crypto as a blank canvas. Some have fallen. Others remained. Almost everyone began to build before the whole world was caught. Projects enlarged by that ecosystem continued to reach more than $ 20 billion in climax values, including IOTA, Optimism, Bass, Augur, Wanchain, Notional and Roll.
The same spirit of early action led me and Erick Pinos, former president of the Bitcoin Club of MIT, to co-found dropout capital, supporting the child, technical founders to move before the world’s notices.
Erick Pinos will speak to Consensus 2025 On May 16 on a panel titled “The Talent Pipeline: How To Find A Crypto Work.”
As the pinos puts it:
“In the past seven years we have met countless students founders and at least half a dozen unicorns … We are excited to give others the opportunity to be a part of funding the next generation of blockchain change.”
This urgent is not new. It is the same drive that shapes early giant tech. Steve Jobs (Apple), Steve Wozniak (Apple), Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square), and Patrick & John Collison (Stripe) all left college to build companies to redefine their industries.
Web3 founders follow the same path
Some of the most influential crypto founders began in the same way:
• Vitalik Blerin goes down to the University of Waterloo to launch Ethereum (that -peak at $ 500 billion+)
• Charles Hoskinson left the University of Colorado before establishing Cardano (that -peak at $ 70 billion)
• Jed McCaleb, Ripple and Stellar co-founder, dropped to UC Berkeley (Ripple to sink to $ 130 billion)
• Jesse Powell left Cal State to build Kraken (worth $ 10 billion)
• Shayne Coplan dropped NYU in her first semester to start Polymarket (approximately $ 1 billion)
• Joey Krug left Pomona to co-found Augur (peaked in $ 1 billion)
• Jeremy Gardner, co-established Augur with Krug, dropped to the University of Michigan (sank to $ 1 billion)
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• Noah Tweedale, Co-Founder of Pump.Fun, never enrolled (approximately $ 1 billion+)
In the Capital Dropout, we backed up early stage companies including:
• Vana, established in MIT, which builds a decentralized data market
• satlayer, initiated by mit alumni and former VCS, creating a bitcoin-fashioned compute for AI
• Tenderize, launched by students at Marquette University, who builds a liquid staking marketplace
• Algebra.Finance, founded by a Ph.D. In computer science with background on mobile operating systems, re-ponder
One place where these stories are, and the stories of the next generation have been shared that are the chainsories, a podcast I have posted next to Erick.
Chainsories capture listeners behind the scenes of some of the most successful projects in the crypto, including the Plume Network, YesNoError, Algebra.Finance, Virtuals.io, Ton, Horizon Labs, and many more, falling down how real companies are built from the idea to launch, and help the founders and VC to understand the decisions, the parties, and the founders and the VC to understand the decisions, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, the parties, and the founders and the VC to understand the decisions. risk that will occur before those who are noticed.
The future of crypto is not theorized at conferences or slow through corporate committees.
It is built by people moving early, take risks, and start developing before the world even realizes what is happening. And, if history is any guide, the most important companies are not to wait.
