Tachyon 10: Jack Spallone

April 15, 2025

TACHYON 10: Lessons for Founders

Welcome to Tachyon 10. In this new series we ask Tachyon alumni, mentors, and investors 10 quick fire questions to get real and actionable advice for first time founders.

What’s something that happened this month in crypto that has caught your attention?

The continued resurgence of Farcaster DAUs. They have recently shifted frames to 'mini-apps' and I believe have created the best testing ground for quick iteration for consumer focused apps not just in crypto, but in the broader ecosystem of any apps that involve payments between users.

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What’s your best advice to founders for persevering during a difficult fundraising climate?

1. Resilience. It is essential and nothing is personal. VCs have unique circumstances that are not often transparent: how narrow their focus is at present, what sort of valuation / allocation they are looking to do, or even how much of their fund is left and how they are pacing that. These are important questions to ask, but don't expect everyone to be forthcoming. I've spoken to VCs who I felt had a thesis that fits perfectly for what we were doing, only to be turned down. Don't dwell on that and move on.

2. Timeliness. Avoid using VC conversations to adapt or figure out what you're doing if you want them to invest. You want to get them to a decision as quick as possible and that requires having all information upfront.

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Share a commonly given piece of advice that you completely disagree with.

"You have one shot to impress." No. I'm not being too controversial to say that you need to ship fast and quickly, but you need to ship the half-baked things, too. You not only have many chances to impress, you sometimes need to do it 5-7+ times just to be remembered. Let your guard down and don't concern yourself with first impressions.

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How do you make your first hires?

This is hard. If you're starting with people you don't know, hire on a paid contract for a test period. Set expectations upfront about what you expect and what you can afford. Any early employee or cofounder at a company needs to be a multiplying force in their role, whether that's engineering, growth, or ops — but most importantly they need to balance that specialty with the goals (and constraints!) of the business. If they can't do this, part ways gracefully but quickly. Your company's livelihood depends on it.

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What’s an underrated skill every founder should develop?

Taking action in the face of uncertainty. We use phrases like 'idea maze' or big words like 'pivot' but in reality there are micro versions of these happening every week. There's a famous Brian Armstrong quote, "Action produces information." I love this quote. You will hit moments where things require change and the next move isn't obvious. Doing nothing is never an option and action always gives you the proof you need to chart the right direction be it a way of seeing something, describing a product, GTM, or the product itself.

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What banking and back office partners and tooling do you like the most?

Great question. My founder stack:

Banking — Mercury
Legal Formation — Stripe Atlas
Accounting — Google Sheets and Quickbooks
Legal Contracts — YC and chatGPT w/ review from Cooley (crypto knowledgable counsel) and DocuSign

Avoid DocSend (Too $$$) and use Notion or Figma. People are going to share it either way if that's their plan.

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Why did you apply to an accelerator program like Tachyon?

Consensys Alum and I love the team. They continue to be some of our biggest supporters even after taking much larger checks.

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Which partnerships have actually moved the needle for your startup, and how did you land them?

Incredibly specific but we found small influencers on TikTok that did some paid posts for us for only a few hundred bucks. Each one gave us a sub $1 CAC. This was way better ROI than any larger influencers who charge much more.

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Link the most recent X post that made you laugh out loud.