Blockworks

Jason was working in consulting in 2017 when he attended a random talk on Ethereum at a "how to build a consulting firm" event in New York. He went home convinced he'd found his next venture—consulting for Ethereum companies. His roommate Mike woke up the next morning with a more pragmatic idea: "Nobody will buy consulting from 23-year-old unknowns. We need to build trust first. What if we hosted events?" They'd noticed an event they attended made $5,000—real money to them at the time. That insight became their genesis.

The first Blockworks event happened in February 2018. Jason and Mike had zero media experience and no network. Their strategy was brutally simple: wake up at 4 AM, jump on LinkedIn, send 300 messages daily. Ten percent replied. Three percent actually bought tickets. Their first event drew 220 people and grossed $12,000. "Off to the races," Jason recalls. They then partnered with a podcast host named Pump (later called The Pump Podcast), where Jason did everything—recording, editing in Garage Band, designing graphics on 99designs, selling sponsorships. It was an agency model: they owned no IP, just helped run other people's shows. When COVID hit in 2020, 80% of their revenue (from events) evaporated overnight.

The early customers came from that relentless LinkedIn outreach, but the real scalability came from understanding event economics. Jason learned that unlike Eventbrite's low-margin ticket model, the money in conferences comes from three channels: premium sponsorships (Coinbase spending $1M+), networking floor deals where attendees make business transactions, and high-ticket VIP access. Small events are "a shit business model," Jason explains. You need to go huge. They consolidated to two flagship conferences—Digital Assets Summit and Permissionless—and booked venues 4-5 years in advance. Permissionless alone generated over $10M in revenue.

What worked: (1) They bootstrapped and became profitable from day one, giving them control and optionality. (2) They diversified beyond events into podcasts, newsletters, and eventually Blockworks Research (a subscription SaaS launched a year before this interview). (3) They treated events like real estate—"you're creating a marketplace for three days"—and didn't chase volume. (4) The subscription research platform became their hedge against cyclical crypto markets and ad slowdowns. What didn't: the agency model of hosting other people's podcasts; the early consulting consulting idea; chasing too many small events (Coin Desk almost died in 2019 when attendance collapsed 80% after the 2018 boom). The cyclicality of crypto made predicting event sizes years in advance agonizing.

Blockworks scaled to 65 employees across media, events, and research. They exceeded their $20M revenue goal in 2023 and have been profitable since day one. In April/May 2023, they raised their first outside funding: $12M from 10T and Framework Ventures at a $135M valuation. The subscription research product proved resilient during market downturns. Jason and his co-founder Mike transformed an afternoon idea born from ignorance about Ethereum into a diversified media and data business that brings millions in GDP to host cities like Palm Beach. Cities now actively court Blockworks for their conferences, understanding the economic impact.