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A College Dropout Builds $1B Startup at 22 | Injective, Eric Chen

EO10:47Added Aug 31, 2026

"Finance is truly a game for the rich, and it really shouldn't be."With this conviction, Eric Chen co-founded Injective Labs, building a blockchain designed ...

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  1. Intro

  2. 00:00We certainly, you know, had a decent early success working with different types of investors. A lot of them were promising and also big deal at the
  3. 00:08time. And after that, um, then came the crypto winter.
  4. 00:15We were watching Bitcoin falling below $6,000 overnight and all of those alternative coins were down by much more. There were just a loss of VC
  5. 00:24interest. uh there were loss of institutional interest and it's about minimizing like uh me and like my co-founder's cost of living at the time.
  6. 00:34Obviously there were a lot of you know stress there's a lot of uh concerns about what if you know the money runs out tomorrow. So for us you know we had
  7. 00:42to earn every single user we gained over time. We had to earn every single dollar that came in. We had to really really learn how to be extremely efficient and
  8. 00:50scrappy with the incubation capital that we were given.
  9. 00:55I think we had a lot of privilege by initially going through the 2019 period.
  10. 01:01We had the experience and understanding that capital might be very very hard to come by for an extended duration of time
  11. 01:09and that's been basically the mindset that we have. Ever since then, that made us uh to be conservative during
  12. 01:19very optimistic times and at the same time being extremely um optimistic during very fearful times.
  13. 01:27The way we did it was focusing on the long term. Plan for the future, ignore the present conditions. So, if I have a
  14. 01:35time machine and go back and and tell myself at that time, it would be cherish that moment because you're not going to
  15. 01:42have a lot of those. And it's probably the most powerful feeling in the world. Hi, I'm Eric Chen, co-founder and
  16. 01:51CEO of Injective Labs. We built Injective, which is a blockchain built for finance meant to democratize financial access for all. Injective is a
  17. 01:58multi-billion dollar network that's currently delivering more than $50 billion of exchange volume with more than 1.4 million addresses and users as
  18. 02:07well as 1 billion transactions. I studied uh computer

  19. Turn Your 100 Critics into Allies

  20. 02:14science and uh finance in college. I was in a bit of a soul searching process where I didn't really know what I was truly good at. I couldn't really find
  21. 02:22something that you know really piqu my interest. Everyone doing finance wanted to go into like the banking, hedge funds, private equity, whatever. And
  22. 02:29everyone like doing computer science wanted to go into like Google. For me, it was just uh very very torn. I think one of the most interesting part of my
  23. 02:37college life was certainly learning more about crypto and understanding that there's a lot of very interesting like research uh subjects. But the first thing I did of course was trying to mine
  24. 02:46with the free electricity from the dorm room. What truly made me excite excited at the time was when I was doing research on you know a particular issue
  25. 02:53that was like plaguing the industry which was uh front running exchange collision sandwich attacks and stuff like that which basically the simplest
  26. 03:01way to understand it is that it makes general users or traders lose part of their money because some guy can find like a better price elsewhere and then
  27. 03:09arbitrage their orders on chain. For us, it was basically a very simple understanding is that it's a it's a problem. We can come up with probably like a pretty elegant solution to solve
  28. 03:18it using some cryptographic trick. I think the most interesting part about Injective is that it's very much of a blockchain built for finance. Let's say we were talking about a smart contract
  29. 03:26platform which is like Ethereum, Salana, etc. The way these blockchains operate is that it tries to be web through computer that no matter what you toss at
  30. 03:35it, it will figure out like a way to make it work. The way Injective works is that instead of always having to figure out ways to optimize for application
  31. 03:43trends or use cases, Injective decides to be anchored for financial applications. Hi, I'm Albert. Hi, I'm Eric. We are Injective Protocol. The
  32. 03:52best and most secure experience for the centralized exchange. During the early days, in the way the first 100 user that was acquired was actually very simple. I
  33. 04:01basically went into uh every single group chat that had anything to do with uh crypto to reach out to a lot of the participants or the vocal members and
  34. 04:08trying to tell them about hey like use uh this interactive exchange try it and let us know what you think you know whe what whether it makes sense whether it's a horrible idea and then we should stop
  35. 04:17doing it. I just kept doing it the first 50 the first 100 the first god knows how many hundreds or thousands and I think the most interesting part is that there's a lot of very vocal and negative
  36. 04:25people in a lot of these like public group chats or you know public forums.
  37. 04:29Hey, like why do you have this? It doesn't make sense. Why do you have this feature? Like no, no one needs it. It's always very very stressful for you to talk to them or for you to even reach
  38. 04:36out to them. But if you fight through that like initial embarrassment interfacing or like dealing with their negativity, they end up being a lot more valuable of an ally than you can
  39. 04:45possibly imagine. A lot of these like highly critical people are equally critical to everyone and therefore it means that they first of all they care and second of all they give you
  40. 04:53extremely valuable feedback and third of all they're a lot nicer than what they perceive to be. facing that negativity with a very positive light and more
  41. 05:01importantly listening and give everyone no matter how negative they are or how positive they are time of the day to listen to their feedback and implement upon it and it's about presenting to
  42. 05:10them with a positive can do attitude addressing every single concern or problem that they might have listening to every single one of their feedback the product around people that voice
  43. 05:18their concerns and opinions and really iterate that way because you don't know the right answer especially as a builder to what's going to happen in the future
  44. 05:27with a 100 or a thousand% precision and accuracy. What you really need is have user informed the direction that you're building and listening to them because a
  45. 05:35happy user will become the most valuable ally for no matter what industry you're in, no matter what product that you're

  46. Ignore Present, Focus on Future

  47. 05:47building. We certainly, you know, had a decent early success working with different types of investors. A lot of them were promising and also big deal at
  48. 05:56the time. And after that, um, then came the crypto winter. We were watching Bitcoin falling below $6,000 overnight.
  49. 06:04And all of those alternative coins were down by much more. There were just a loss of VC interest. There were loss of institutional interest. We had to
  50. 06:13really, really learn how to be extremely efficient and scrappy with the incubation capital that we were given.
  51. 06:19being crammed in a 70 or 80 square ft uh apartment within New York with three other roommates moving around in a world
  52. 06:27trying to source talents at a cost-effective way and trying to work with as many globalized you know developers and users and trying to
  53. 06:35figure out ways to you know make everything work. I think we had a lot of privilege by initially going through the period where we had the experience and
  54. 06:44understanding that capital might be very very hard to come by for an extended duration of time that basically made us
  55. 06:51to be conservative during optimistic times and at the same time being extremely optimistic during very fearful
  56. 06:59times. It allows us to basically no matter what condition it is always ensure that you know we have a certain amount of runway and we always can
  57. 07:07survive for more than 5 years. The way we did it was focusing on the long term plan for the future ignore the present
  58. 07:14conditions. Being around enough cycles helps a lot because during extremely bullish times uh during extremely
  59. 07:23optimistic times we slowly become more and more jaded more and more fearful. we have like a innate sense of uh it's almost like a primal instinct that
  60. 07:32something is about to go wrong and I think this helped a lot because it's basically like an instinct that was like developed over time after being in so
  61. 07:38many cycles even before an injective on another hand it's just like aial question like have you earned it? uh a lot of times you know like the success
  62. 07:47is asymmetrical to the output and to the fundamentals and oftent times we at all times question ourselves whether we have
  63. 07:55like earned the success that we have we are often very very critical so we always doubt that we did earn it and I think that's still a very strong
  64. 08:02relative benchmark to see how long-term you are I think the most exciting thing

  65. Finance for All, Not Just the Rich

  66. 08:10about uh injective especially at the current stage is about decentralizing the access to finance to everyone.
  67. 08:16Finance is truly a game for the rich and it really shouldn't be. Whether you have just $1 or like $5, you get to have access to the same type of opportunity
  68. 08:24to those with uh, you know, $5 million or $10 million. And this is completely not the current financial world.
  69. 08:30Basically, if you want opportunity, especially high growth, it's just layers and layers of like investment advisors, brokers, and stuff like that to purchase
  70. 08:37one share of Apple, you have to have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars. There's not even a fractionalized concept within the stock market. For us right now, the most
  71. 08:45exciting thing is about being able to bring in real world assets, being able to tokenize so many exciting opportunities happening in the cross-section of traditional financial
  72. 08:53world and also the crypto world. This has just been always a dream of us, even during the early days of Injective, which is being able to access a lot of
  73. 08:59these traditional products like Tesla or GameStop, creating it in a platform that also has access to different types of
  74. 09:07crypto primitives while at the same time being able to access it from all over the world, from Argentina to Europe to Asia and everywhere in the same easy to
  75. 09:16access, easy to use platform. Basically making uh financial products and assets more accessible than ever.
  76. 09:25I don't think there's going to be a lot of uh material change uh for people in the world. Their day doesn't just suddenly become completely different at
  77. 09:34full 180. But I think it's really about the subtlety of things. Maybe you just have more savings in your bank. Maybe you can connect with your friends 20,000 miles across the world a lot easier.
  78. 09:45Everyone is just a little bit better off because of the opportunities that was now accessible to you. I remember I uh
  79. 09:52came up with Injective at the stolen co-working space from my friend. It wasn't something too flashy. It was just
  80. 10:00hey this could be a solution to something at that time. It was a very very rare feeling to have the space especially at a time was just
  81. 10:07ostentatious way too much grandiose like visions and stuff like that. So oftent times it felt like it was losing touch with reality. So that was a very rare
  82. 10:16feeling for me even though these days I get more and more of these feelings. uh uh at this point in time. It was very very rare at the time. So if I have a
  83. 10:24time machine and go back and and tell myself at that time, it would be cherish that moment because you're not going to
  84. 10:31have a lot of those. And it's probably the most powerful feeling in the world.