“Be prepared to do more with less,” Framework Ventures’ Michael Anderson said
Framework Ventures co-founder Michael Anderson | DAS 2025 New York by Mike Lawrence for Blockworks
This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
“Be prepared to do more with less,” Framework Ventures’ Michael Anderson said on this week’s Empire round-up.
Empire co-host Santiago Santos joined the Bell Curve round-up to chat about the cycle, and he talked a lot about what this moment means for founders, given that the overall attitude around crypto is pretty bullish…and yet it’s a tough time to build in crypto.
As Dragonfly’s Rob Hadick told us yesterday, the valuations are pretty high at this point, and Anderson added another interesting layer: This industry has to be “efficient with the money that we’re using.”
“ There is generally going to be less money than people expect. Every year over the last five years, we’ve had less money than the previous year from a venture-allocation perspective,” he added.
For the founders out there, Santos offered some advice from his unique position of being both a VC and a founder himself: Keep at least 24 months of runway and “understand your position in the stack.”
Which means having an understanding of a monetization plan.
Santos added that Facebook, back when it was planning to go public — and even after it IPO’d — didn’t have a monetization plan. It actually got dinged by investors for it, if you look at the historical data.
“It just said, we’re gonna build a killer product that people love and we’ll then figure out how to monetize,” Santos said. But as crypto evolves, the path towards monetization models will also become more clear as users come onboard and — as Santos put it himself — “ if you have attention of the user, you can monetize the shit out of it.”
So go forth and monetize…one day.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- Blockworks Daily: Unpacking crypto and the markets.
- Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
- Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
- 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox.
- Lightspeed: All things Solana.
- The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
- Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.
Mon – Wed, October 13 – 15, 2025
Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.
Industry City | Brooklyn, NY
TUES – THURS, JUNE 24 – 26, 2025
Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.
SUN – MON, JUN. 22 – 23, 2025
Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]
Research
Helium stands at a pivotal moment in its evolution as a decentralized wireless network, balancing rapid growth, economic restructuring, and global expansion. With accelerated growth in domestic DAUs and Hotspots supporting its network, Helium is leveraging strategic partnerships and innovative proposals to scale internationally. The recent implementation of HIP 138, “Return to HNT,” has unified its token economy under HNT, simplifying participation and strengthening liquidity, while HIP 139’s phase-out of CBRS refocuses efforts on scalable Wi-Fi offload. Meanwhile, governance shifts under HIP 141 raise questions about centralization as Nova Labs consolidates control over the roadmap.
news
Breaking headlines across our core coverage categories.
Tokens worth 20% of the current supply of the TRUMP memecoin launched by the president are set to be unlocked tomorrow
Fed Chair Powell assured markets that the labor market is in “good place,” dependent on price stability
As uncertainty reigns, the Philly Fed manufacturing index fell to a multi-year low, but layoffs have slowed
Base launched two tokens as part of its ethos that everything can be tokenized, but the move sent Crypto Twitter reeling