Founder's Journey: Agne Linge | Building Through Curiosity, Trust & the Early Days

[00:00:03] Welcome back to the Crypto Hipster podcast. Today I'm joined by Agne Linge. She joined me last year and it's a pleasure to have her back. Now, if you've spent any time around financial markets, you've probably heard plenty of discussions about prices and stuff like that, what happened to our announcements, and we're not here to talk about that. We are interested in the people behind the work. And we're interested in the decisions, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and experiences, direct experiences.

[00:00:33] that helped shape a founder, entrepreneur, and their journey. So today we're going to explore Agne's path, what drew her into the field, the challenges, and she countered along the way, and what she learned about people, you know, and trust and uncertainty and all that. So, Agne, welcome back. Agne Linge Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be back. As you say, it's been one year, but feels much longer. So many things happened in macro and in the world of politics.

[00:01:03] Agne Linge Not even mentioned crypto. So thank you for bringing this topic to take time and talk about the people and the psychology perhaps that is shaping those decisions. Yeah, I'm looking forward to diving into this with you. And, you know, I first want to find out, you know, the young Agne, before the expertise, before your expertise occurred, you know, what did you think that you would become and what drove you into or what brought you into this industry?

[00:01:33] Agne Linge Right. So I think if we talk about young aspiring professional, let's dive back into teenage years. And I very clearly remember that I wanted to become a financial, I wanted to become a banker.

[00:01:47] Agne Linge I grew up in a country that is Lithuania. It's in Eastern Europe now, very prosperous country, part of big part of the European Union economy and overall amazing place to be. Agne Linge At that time, for me, it felt rather small. And I had a vision as very many other people to go into the deeper worlds into the West, especially in America or to Great Britain to gain education there.

[00:02:17] Agne Linge I wanted to work in investment bank. I saw some movies and it's a trading floor. I read about stock market. I read some information that was available and becoming available at that time because computers were already there. Agne Linge At that time, we had a computer at home, the big box. But for the Internet, you had to wait with all the sounds to connect and then one website would upload very slowly.

[00:02:46] Agne Linge At that time, the majority of information that I found at that time was also in libraries and using public Internet. Agne Linge At that time, this was how my desire to become part of the world of finance has been shaped. Agne Linge At that time, for me, numbers were very exciting. And it was exciting that such a big part of the world, of the global economy is actually run by finance.

[00:03:10] Agne Linge At that time, so I wanted to understand everything about this. And therefore, I went to London to study finance and it was a part of my journey. Agne Linge Right. So, I too got a master's degree in finance, but the finance that we learn, I think, is different than the finance that happens in the digital economy.

[00:03:33] Agne Linge At that time, right? So, how did that transition happen and did you know that you wanted the digital economy to be your career once you discovered it? Agne Linge At No, it was not clear for us as yet. And Internet was clearly adding a lot of value for us in those early days. Agne Linge At that time, but it was nowhere near. The abundance of information was nowhere near as it is right now.

[00:03:58] Agne Linge At that time, so I didn't know that I wanted to be with digital, but I knew that I wanted to be in the world of finance, in the world of economics. Agne Linge At that time, and this is what was interesting for me. And I think same principles of macroeconomics, microeconomics, supply, demand, all of those principles are applying. Agne Linge At that time, and when I understood that I wanted to be part of the digital economy of the crypto digital assets economy was back in 2016.

[00:04:25] Agne Linge At that time, when I saw my small country Lithuania was very rapidly positioning itself as a fintech destination. Agne Linge At that time, I took up to study some programming courses just to understand how it works. Agne Linge At that time, and there was a buzz about technology, and I found out blockchain back then, back in 2016.

[00:04:46] Agne Linge At that time, I did hear about Bitcoin and internet money a little bit earlier, but I was in such early days that, you know, secret, secret people or like some groups, you know, on chats gathering and buying and selling Bitcoin for $1 already back then. Agne Linge At that time, so there were people who understood digital economy, but I came a bit later into 2016.

[00:05:10] Agne Linge At that time, and when I found out about blockchain, I thought of it as a network like of like of internet, where all the data will go, and it will be communicating among each other, and this that this will be the match the future of our financial and economical world, and also society.

[00:05:30] Agne Linge At that time, so I read the book about, I don't remember the name of the book, but it was by Alex Tapscott, the first blockchain book, which was very interesting for me at that time. Agne Linge At that time, and that was the end. That was the end of how my decision was made to be in this industry. Agne Linge At that time, God, I was going to ask if there's a white light moment and you read Alex Tapscott's book and yeah, that makes sense.

[00:05:56] Agne Linge At that time, so you know, when you when you entered this industry, it was around the same time I did and a lot of people thought that we were on the skinny branches of society. Agne Linge At that time, you know, what risks did you take around, you know, in your life that people didn't really understand at first? Agne Linge At that time, yes. Yes, it was very, very much of the reluctance from the normal world, let's call it this way.

[00:06:22] But I was lucky that from the early days, we made the small societies. So I started organizing crypto dinners in Lithuania. Then we started doing some events, some blockchain societies started coming up. So I was always surrounded by people who were into that. And the rest for me were outsiders.

[00:06:41] Agne Linge At that time, we started to explain how blockchain will revolutionize things. Now we will take our words with a pinch of salt, because we know that not everything needed already to be on the blockchain. Agne Linge At that time, we saw there was a lot of other things and speculation besides building the technology. Nevertheless, it was all help to boost and to hype up the blockchain.

[00:07:04] But yes, you're right. It was like an outsider's world. But deep into my heart, I knew that we are right. I knew that digital money is coming. Agne Linge At that time, I already saw by studying economy, how currencies are completely unstable and are reliable. I understood that there was a gold back money, how the fiat money was made, understand how stock market is operating.

[00:07:29] Agne Linge At that time, I see that this is a normal evolution of money. And remember, back even before the Bitcoin, there was a special drawing rights by IMF, already basket of currencies that can be easily represented now in something that token. Agne Linge At that time, I thought, yes, for sure, in a digital economy, we'll have digital money and we already have it. Agne Linge At that time...

[00:07:54] Agne Linge At that time, you have legacy, even though the crypto winter happened, you had no desire to quit, you wanted to stay? Agne Linge At that time, I was there really for technology. I studied a masters degree in blockchain and digital currency. It was from 2017-2019 at University of Nicosia, which gave us a solid academic background about cryptography,

[00:08:18] We really studied how blockchain and Bitcoin blockchain specifically is being built, how smart contracts are operating. So I was already from early days away from the hype. Yes, I saw that. We saw the ICOs, we saw STOs, everything. You know, you have to be part of this and keep reading Twitter, keep watching YouTube, you know, to be on the pulse of this market. But I always wanted to be on the serious part that we are building the infrastructure.

[00:08:48] And I was lucky to work with such teams, whether it's building centralized exchanges or decentralized exchanges, utilizing zero knowledge technology. I was lucky to work with the very smart people who really cared about even finding out new ways to do. ZK is a new mathematics from what I understood. It has some old elements, but it's a completely new field, which is extremely useful in privacy for company sharing, for personal information.

[00:09:18] So it's very interesting. And then as the time went past, you saw more and more smart people are coming into this either events or private gatherings. And some conversations really spark your mind so incredibly that you feel very lucky to be to have discovered already this secret society, if we can call this this way of the crypto communities. It's really felt this way. Got it.

[00:09:46] So you're organizing this then as you're on people, you get your master's degree, then you start you're around smart people. You know, what was that transition like learning and being around people who initially were smarter than you? I know your learning curve caught up, you know, to them, but being around, what was that experience like? Incredible experience.

[00:10:11] I remember earlier this in 2018, we went to Ethereum community gathering in France. It was in the castle, maybe you heard of these events. And this was really incredible. There was separate rooms where people already showing presentations of technology, how they made from AR, augmented reality, virtual reality, how they already connected brainwaves to show something that's on the screen.

[00:10:41] These kind of things already are now more widespread. We know about them all. But in those earlier days, you really got to meet people who are visionaries in many other things than cryptocurrency, let's say. Got it. So you met them and then you started becoming a builder, right? What was that transition like to being, you know, one of the builders in the space?

[00:11:06] I think we can now very well assess some of the successes of the projects over a period of 10 years. And you being early in the days, you probably know yourself how you thought about certain projects and, you know, how will success look like. And we saw many founders who saw projects and what goes up.

[00:11:32] So I think to be a good builder, to be a good founder, you really need to be a great risk taker in everywhere. And then I think that for sure you have to have a support team that is together with you, together with you, the builders. Believing in your vision and supporting this vision in crypto industry from, let's say, a bit visionary and technological point of view.

[00:11:58] And also you have to have a team that will help you with the operations and help you with managing normal stuff. So let's get back to the question. What changed? What I saw? What does it mean to be a builder? I think what I learned is having a good idea and being a visioneer, it's part of the thing. And then when it comes, it's all implementation. This is the daily work. And this is what you have to structure.

[00:12:25] Because if you are very far away from your idea, from creating this vision, let's say, building a decentralized exchange that never existed before, you cannot manage your daily tasks and make sure that all the people are doing what they have to do, also pushing through vision. So what I learned is that you need to have a support and great team, not only the idea itself. Got it.

[00:12:50] So we're from an industry where things change daily, right? Or it seems daily, at least weekly. You know, how do you stay committed to your vision and your dream despite all the noise that happens out there? That's a good question, actually. Good question. Good question.

[00:13:16] I think the core vision of me as a person, as you asked, what drove me is to be part of the financial world, of the future of finance. And however, shape or form it will change, whether we'll have more AI, we'll have more Web3, we'll have more other things. I want to be part of this. This is my industry. This is interesting for me.

[00:13:43] In what element and shape or form is also to decide. Somebody may be building the projects and you can build it themselves now very easily using all the AI tools. Or you might be looking at people's point of view, how people are using these digital tools and digital payments, etc. So it's up to us to decide how we can be flexible with our path. And yes, there are setbacks. You know, you take your time off.

[00:14:10] Maybe you don't read the crypto Twitter so much. You don't watch the YouTube. You read something else. You talk to other people. And then you recalibrate and you get back to thinking what you want to do. Nice. So you're successful. I would say you've been successful. But I would say that success has a cost maybe that people don't see.

[00:14:34] It's kind of like you see the tip of the iceberg through the water, but you don't see everything under the water. Right? So what has success cost you and what have you learned from that success while getting up to the top of the glacier? For me personally, I think that your daily routine is a very great hack. Sports and having a nice daily routine, no matter how long you work, it's very good.

[00:15:03] You know, all of us, we like to work a little bit longer and push and things. But this is why we have day and night. We have cycles. You need to work. You need to rest. And if you can manage to find some perfect, not health maxing to the crazy extent, but if you can find some easy, normal routine where you can get your body moving, you can get outside, talk to people, then this simple balance is what makes people happy.

[00:15:33] I wish I listened to that advice back in 2018. I ended up having two heart attacks because I kept pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, right? So how do you actually bring yourself back into that routine? It's a lot easier said than done. That's true. For me now, it's already been many years. So even if I fall back, I know that you just have to go. Don't think about this too much. Just go to the gym in the morning. For me, it works in the mornings. For some other in the evenings.

[00:16:02] And yeah, you will feel definitely very uncomfortable first day, even if it's been a week. It's kind of always you start new. But you just go and that's it. The minute you do it, you'll feel better. Got it. Got it. So I wanted to find out. You know, yeah. So I guess my bigger question now is, you know, what lessons did life keep teaching you until you finally listened? We'll find out. Yes. We'll find out.

[00:16:32] I think that what I'd like to see from people's point of view, because this is a topic for our generation. We have to keep reinventing ourselves. Maybe for other generations as well. But for instance, me, when I studied finance and we had a financial crisis in the world. The world has changed a lot. Then people move to something else. Then there's technology. Now we have AI.

[00:16:58] So what the world is teaching me that you always have to keep going and always have to be observing what's happening. However, with too much information, too much distraction, you might be completely inundated with what's going on. And then forget about these daily things that actually makes us happy in this relatively short time. You know, so there's no point to push if you're not happy after all.

[00:17:25] And the daily routine, I think that would be the secret to happiness over the long period of time. Got it. So you've been in the industry for 10 years. I've been in it for almost 10 years. What today matters to you more than what you did when, you know, than you believe 10 years ago? What's your expertise have become?

[00:17:52] How do you see things now differently? And what matters to you differently today than did 10 years ago? I have less rosy glasses about how the world works, of course. And there is no point of saying things are unfair because things are fair. We live in a free market. You know, there is some flexibility there. Somebody is building that.

[00:18:20] So you just have to keep going instead of complaining and you will find the opportunities. But yes, perhaps when I was starting my career, I saw that, you know, being in the bank or being in the legal world, this is the correct world where all the right things are being made. And you can see that everything is fragile. All the systems are fragile. Things are changing. Technology is changing. So, yeah, there are lots of opportunities.

[00:18:45] And we just don't need to be stuck up and too serious about something, except if these are our own values for the daily basis. Got it. So markets are systems and businesses are systems. And where do systems, where do systems like, especially AI, right? How do the systems misunderstand us? You think they do? They misunderstand us? I think they do.

[00:19:14] I think they're always optimizing for results without understanding our work. That's an interesting discussion. What have you experienced? Because, you know, everybody has had some interesting hiccups with using the AI tools. I get emails all the time, you know, saying that they want to place my books or they want to place my pocket, they want to place the stuff. But they don't.

[00:19:42] All those, none of them reference the work. None of them reference the chapters. None of them. They all reference the metadata. But they don't reference the internal, you know, being of what you've created. So I want to find out from a project perspective or from your expertise, what, you know, what you've noticed, if it were more focused a bit on the metadata or if these systems actually understand who you are? I'm not sure yet.

[00:20:10] And I've been listening to these very interesting conversations by AI professionals and by some skeptics. It's interesting for me to observe. But I don't have the answer. The only answer that I have is in many times it has led to funny errors. Let's say funny errors, like basic errors.

[00:20:33] And I think that in no way you can rely for AI agents or someone completely replaced or anything. It just doesn't capture the important information. It doesn't have a decision making. It doesn't have, you know, the stored leadership that a human would be. And simple tasks, they will be made and completed in a biased way and not necessarily in a way that would help business, that would help anything.

[00:21:04] Right. So I think that the more I see human input will be much more valuable than before. Now, that makes sense. So what have you what are you like? So that becomes back to a bigger question, right? Because blockchain is supposed to be able to be a trustless system and AI is supposed to be able to help us trust better. But what have you learned about trust and the importance of trust?

[00:21:31] And what do you feel is important about trust from your perspective? Yes. Trustless systems and blockchain were very much valued by serious crypto individuals and cryptographers. We saw that the real blockchain and real protocol should be trustless. So trustless, that would be like perhaps like the Internet is just running, you know, by itself.

[00:21:59] I'm not sure if it's completely trusted, but should be already hack prone and just run by itself. And if it's an error, it's an error. We saw that in the world of business and in the world of finance, this would be perhaps too expensive to run completely trustless blockchain protocol. Because if there is an error, you have to start from the beginning. Something like that.

[00:22:29] We have seen that this kind of trustless and also some of the norms of the blockchain were, how to say, were voted to be in another favor. You know, some of these hard-coded rules in blockchain, they were abandoned in favor of the market. But so I think trustless systems are important and they will perhaps evolve.

[00:22:57] Right now, we have to monitor how the machines are, you know, communicating with each other. Definitely, it's much better than it was before. But for completely trustless system, I think we still need human intervention to be available at all times. So how does somebody gain your trust? My trust? Yeah. I think trust is gained over time. It's gained over time.

[00:23:28] So consistency and continuity. Yes. Consistency, continuity, ability to admit mistakes, ability to be humble, ability to stand up for yourself or other people. And this kind of features you see with people over time. That makes a lot of sense to me. You know. So what have you learned over the past 10 years as far as incentives?

[00:23:59] Incentives are very important. They make things work. Yes. They make things work, you know, in crypto, in DeFi protocols. There would be none of the hype without incentives, incentive mechanisms. You have to reward people for the task. This is how DeFi was built. But this is also valid for other, let's say, areas of life.

[00:24:29] Sports. I don't know. Even love, perhaps. Yes. You know, if you get incentive with spending time, you know, enjoying this, you're releasing some happy hormones as an incentive. So incentive, I think, how the world is moving. Of course, incentives at a very basic level would be food because you have to eat. But then, you know, the more we go up the Maslow pyramid, the less basic they become.

[00:24:58] So, yeah. I don't think anybody really achieves self-actualization. Or what do you, like, that's the highest point in the hierarchy? What, where do you think you fit into that hierarchy and why? That's an interesting question. I think that I feel pretty high up.

[00:25:21] You know, I'm very lucky to have been able to think philosophical thoughts and to build in the system that is not completely, hasn't been proven as yet. Yes. So I think that everybody in the digital asset ecosystem, perhaps now in AI, the same, they have to be a little bit more open-minded and think about things like Robespierre. Let's put it this way.

[00:25:48] So I see the people who are thinking about more philosophical things there, they already have the ability to do that. I think that's fascinating. You said the systems haven't been fully been built yet. And a lot of people have said it's been built and it's a failure. You know, so your view and my view are the same as many people out there. So what makes you believe, and I like the belief, what makes you believe that the systems isn't done yet being built?

[00:26:21] From the users that I see, it's still very scattered. There are lots of elements that are being built, but we still need to synchronize everything. And we have a lot of new elements that are coming in, such as AI, such as the machines, such as macro maybe things and other things. So the systems are continuously evolving.

[00:26:51] Got it. So it sounds like you're still trying to, you're still trying, you have an open mind. You're still trying to, you're still trying to figure things out. What are you still trying to figure out as you, as you build it and help companies and work in the industry and, and, and, and, you know, and personally too, what do you, what are you still searching for to figure out?

[00:27:19] That's an interesting question. Interesting question. I'll have to think and get back to it about this to you, because clearly there is something that we all trying to figure out, but it feels a very responsible question to answer. Do I have an answer? I'm still trying to figure out the difference between like my,

[00:27:48] my, my conflict is ownership versus stewardship. I'm still trying to figure out how to be a, how to be a good steward for my family and for what I've built in the industry, like how to bring it forward to other people in a way that they can understand things. I think versus, you know, versus the incentive of the ownership. So I mean, have this like internal conflict. And so. Okay.

[00:28:18] That's an interesting journey to go to try to figure out. I'm sure by talking to people and asking questions like you just did now to me, you might find some interesting, interesting thoughts. I would like to share, perhaps you read the book sovereign individual that talks about the systems of the past and also of the incentives of how the governments were formed, how tribes gathered together for various incentives, such as protection, for instance.

[00:28:50] I got to check it out. What, you know, we really just asked each other interesting question. What, what, what questions should people ask you more often that you'd like to be asked? I think that, uh, I like to be asked question. What are you thinking today? What is some interesting thought on idea?

[00:29:20] Um, and that this answer would require a cup of tea, a quiet, even a 15 or 20 minutes, small conversation. Um, I think that, uh, I really value this in the world of digital communication. Give me an example, please. Give you an example. So, um,

[00:29:48] a book time with a friend to have a British tea. Yes. And we just talk about the ideas that been coming into our heads today, like just yours, something philosophical, something about people, about humanity, how do people feel? And in the world of AI, of course, how do you feel about your job, about your purpose in life? Um, what kind of struggles as a human are you thinking of today? Uh,

[00:30:16] do you feel secure in this world? Do you feel that, um, you're living an interesting life to yourself? Uh, do you feel that there's lots of that you're missing out? Like this kind of a topics that perhaps lead to a longer discussions. Yeah. So if you, when, when, when people look back on their work years from now, you know, in this, in today's time, what do you hope that they'll understand?

[00:30:46] Um, people, when they look about their work. Yeah. When they look at this time, this time, this time in history, and they look back, what do you hope that you'll have understood? What do you hope that they'll understand? I'm sure they will understand that they will have had to spend more time on themselves. And, uh, uh, I'm not saying family and things, just thinking about themselves more, not saying work less,

[00:31:15] but most likely, yes. Uh, in a lot of ways, this, this work, work culture has scammed people to unhealthy and unfulfilled lives, notwithstanding that the money is there. So if there's anything else that you'd like to achieve right now, that you haven't achieved yet being in this space, what is that? What would, what, what would that be?

[00:31:45] Perhaps similar to yours. I would like to contribute my knowledge and experience to continue building, building the space. And I think that we have a duty now that we've seen highs and lows and spend lots of time studying, uh, the protocols, knowing the people, um, um, finding out peculiarities of what might work, what doesn't now have a duty to transmit this information to people who are now coming into this industry, either from business point of view or from,

[00:32:15] from personal point of view to find out. So to make sure that we are now sharing what we have learned. I think that, that, um, brings some satisfaction to some people sharing the knowledge. And that definitely brings satisfaction to you. Yes. Yes. Awesome. I want to thank you very much for your time today. This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you very much as well, Jamil Hasan.