#196 with Dan Held - Who Really Created Bitcoin & Other Crypto Startup Ideas

**Sam** (0:00)
All right, there's this amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You've Got. I read it a few years ago and it changed my life.
And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have.
Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by Business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller, who I'm gonna tell you about in a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book and the things that I learned in this book. It's called How To Make Money With What You Already Have. It's an incredible episode. Talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book. The host is Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently, but over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said, you have to check out Donald Miller. He's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of HubSpot's Podcast Network. You can check it out, Business Made Simple Podcast. It's where he coaches you on how to build your business like an airplane, where the cockpit is your leadership, the body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing, the left engine is your sales. You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called Business Made Simple with Donald Miller.
If you told me that it makes him personally $30 million spread evenly over the next 10 years, I wouldn't be surprised.

**Shaan** (1:22)
All right, what up?
Sean here, we got Sam, and then we got special guest Dan Held, the Dan Held from the Bitcoin space. And on Twitter, you probably see him around. I told my brother-in-law that you were on the pod today. He was very excited. I've told him about every guest so far, and you got one of the biggest reactions. He was a, I think he's a paid subscriber to your newsletter or something like that. So he's very into you.
And on the other hand, I think Sam has no fucking clue who you are. So I think it's a perfect mix. I know some stuff about you. Sam knows nothing about you. And I think it'll be fun for that reason.

**Sam** (1:54)
I only know that Shaan says that you're cool and you're in Bitcoin. I know nothing about you.

**Dan Held** (2:01)
We got an hour to figure it out.

**Shaan** (2:03)
Whenever one of us proposes a guest, it's like you put that guest, it's like you have to go take the stand and have an oath that this person is going to be good. And then you better be able to lawyer up and defend why this person is a guest. And so every time he mentions the name to me, I'm like, why the fuck are we having that person on? And then he'll like defend it. And then same here. I was like, no, no, no. This is going to be interesting because I think a couple of reasons. We should talk about crypto and then we should talk about, I think, like kind of like building your personal brand because you've done a really good job of that.
And so we'll do both of those during this convo.
But I want to start with like, give people the like, what's the one minute story of who the heck you are? And yeah, I don't know. Like give us the one minute story of Dan Held.

**Dan Held** (2:44)
Yeah, the elevator pitch. Yeah, so I'm from Texas originally. I grew up in Dallas, 25 years in Dallas. I studied finance in undergrad, stumbled and bumbled my way into tech. I didn't know what I was doing when I first built my first software product in the space. It was successful. From there, I learned how to formalize some of my skills around product management and marketing, worked at a couple of different early stage crypto companies. So I was at some of the first crypto companies I worked at, like blockchain.com.
I've had two exits in the crypto space. So I've sold two of my products.
And then I've also worked at Uber, where I was on Rider Growth led by Andrew Chen. So I was one of his directs and the growth marketing team. So I've had big company, classic tech experience, but also a lot of kind of that startup hustle in early stage crypto, which early stage crypto is kind of wild west, which I guess fits my Texas attitude.

**Shaan** (3:35)
And so tell people the source. You got into crypto, Bitcoin, Bitcoin specifically. You're a Bitcoin guy. I shouldn't keep saying crypto too much.