Jesse is the creator of Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 incubated by Coinbase, where Jesse has worked since 2017. Less than one year since its mainnet launch in August 2023, Base has quickly become the leading L2 by many metrics as of the time of this episode's release. Prior to Base, Jesse led all of Coinbase’s consumer-facing engineering from 2017 to 2021. Jesse originally joined Coinbase through the acquisition of Clef, a passwordless identity solutions company he started. Follow Jesse @jessepollak on both X and on Warpcast.
[0:00] - Jesse’s story and path to Coinbase
[7:02] - How a sabbatical led Jesse to build Base
[13:30] - How Coinbase's culture enabled the creation of Base
[16:48] - Taking iterative shots with a talented team
[21:06] - The importance of persistence
[26:27] - How Base's builder-focused culture came to be
[29:05] - Navigating when to move fast and breaking things versus when to make decisions carefully and deliberately
[34:46] - Why Jesse believes many L2s will be successful
[43:19] - Coinbase Smart Wallet & Onchain Summer II
Mint this episode for free onchain on Base at pods.media/pod-of-jake/172-jesse-pollak
For more episodes, go to podofjake.com.
Previous guests include Mark Cuban, Vitalik Buterin, Brian Armstrong, Balaji Srinivasan, Keith Rabois, Ali Spagnola, Anthony Pompliano, Raoul Pal, Julia Galef, Jack Butcher, Tim Draper, and over 100 others alike. Learn from founders and CEOs of companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Solana, Polygon, AngelList, Oura, and Replit, and investors from Founders Fund, a16z, Union Square Ventures, and many more. I appreciate your support and hope you enjoy.
Thanks to Chase Devens for the show notes and Yiction for the music.
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