How to raise $3M for a crypto startup: 5 failures, then success | Sergey Kuznetsov, INXY Payments
No Bullsh!t, June 20, 2025, 28 min, 107 views. The guest is Sergey Kuznetsov, co-founder of INXY Payments, a service for accepting and exchanging crypto and fiat payments for classic online businesses. An unusual format for this site: here Sergey is the guest on someone else's show about delegation rather than the host.
| Published | |
|---|---|
| Length | 28 min |
| Views on YouTube | 107 |
| Language of the episode | Russian |
| Where to watch and listen | YouTube, Spotify, Telegram |
Date, length and view count according to data from the episode page on YouTube, as of the page update date shown in the footer.
In short
The conversation starts with the jurisdictional limits the company works under and then moves to the fundraising story: five failed startups behind Sergey and roughly as many behind his co-founder, a bet on strong industry advisors and smart investors, a failed first attempt to raise in the United States at the moment a large exchange collapsed, and the eventual move to a European jurisdiction. There is also a block on what makes the product different: instant conversion of incoming crypto into fiat and transfer to an account the same day.
Key ideas
- The compounding effect of failure: five failed startups for Sergey and roughly the same for his co-founder. Experience accumulates and the odds improve with each attempt.
- Strong advisors with relevant industry experience are often willing to help for free or for a symbolic 100 to 200 dollars if the team and the project genuinely interest them.
- At the earliest rounds investors assess the team rather than the idea: the chance that the starting hypothesis survives unchanged is low, so what matters is how fast the team learns.
- A clear split of roles between co-founders works as insurance against conflict: partners who are too similar overlap and collide.
- A simple personal sign that a task should be delegated, at home and at work: if you catch yourself procrastinating around it, it is either not yours or not needed.
- Entering a new market through your own unfair advantage: if the group already has an adjacent business, the product is tested on it first and only then taken outside.
The full transcript
The episode is recorded in Russian, and the full transcript of the conversation is on the Russian page of this episode. English and Spanish subtitles for the strongest episodes are rolling out on YouTube in waves.
Open the transcript