Source: When Shift Happens
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
Bobby Ong is the co-founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency data platform CoinGecko, which he built from scratch with $200 over 12 years without venture capital.
In the podcast, Bobby shared his personal experience and entrepreneurial journey, believing that CoinMarketCap's only advantage over CoinGecko is SEO, and responded to rumors of "selling at a $500 million valuation." The following are the highlights of the conversation.
Self-taught programming, entered the crypto field in 2013
Host: TM Lee was the CEO of CoinGecko for so many years. Why did you decide to swap roles with him?
Bobby Ong: Because both the crypto market and the company have reached a turning point. In the early days, it was like the "Wild West," but now large banks and institutions are entering, and the industry is changing for the better. Secondly, after 10 years of growth, CoinGecko has nearly 100 employees, and management direction requires leveraging different strengths. TM (former CEO) is a technical genius at heart. He now serves as president, focusing more on 0-to-1 R&D. I have taken over as CEO, responsible for the overall vision, operations, and direction, each playing to our strengths.
Host: What attracted you to the crypto field in 2013?
Bobby Ong: I have a background in economics. I studied economics at University College London, one of the best universities in the world for learning about money. I spent three years studying money, right after the big financial crisis. I was in university from 2009 to 2012, learning about bank runs, interest rate setting, federal deposit insurance, etc. However, after graduation, I saw the phenomenon of "negative interest rates" in reality, which shattered my understanding of textbook economics. So I quickly threw my university textbooks in the trash.
After graduation, I taught myself programming and spent a lot of time on tech forums. I learned about Bitcoin on the Hacker News forum. After reading the whitepaper, I tried to buy some Bitcoin. A few days later, the Bitcoin arrived, and I withdrew it to a self-custody wallet.
What really struck me at the time was: this is money I control myself. The money in your bank account isn't really yours; if the bank fails, your money is gone. What interested me more was Bitcoin's money supply: only 21 million coins, with a fixed supply. At that time, quantitative easing was happening, and the government was printing money to devalue the dollar. Who knows if the rules will change again in the future?
So the narrative of having hard money, digital gold, was very solid: the rules are written in stone and hard to change (unless everyone agrees). Also, in war-torn countries, many assets are real estate; you can't take them across the border, but Bitcoin can be carried in your pocket. For many people, this is a life-changing thing. Most of these traits still hold true today, even more so. So I think the foundation of cryptocurrency hasn't changed over the years.
Still bullish on NFTs, the big winners of future assets have yet to emerge
Host: What's the story with Pudgy Penguins?
Bobby Ong: One day I received an email saying they wanted me to invest in Pudgy Penguins. I am a big fan of NFTs. I had a call with Luca Netz and invested an amount. What I didn't know at the time was that Luca had been rejected by many VCs. I just wanted to support a fellow entrepreneur. He would be a winner in this space. I didn't know he faced so many challenges. For me, it was clear, but I guess not everyone had the same vision.
Host: What are your thoughts on NFTs in 2026?
Bobby Ong: Still bullish on NFTs. In this world of billions of tokens, a large portion will be non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Although NFTs seem to be in a downturn now, they will come back at some point. The vast majority of assets in the real world (such as real estate, contracts) are inherently non-fungible, and NFT technology is the inevitable choice for putting these assets on-chain.
Host: Who will be the winners of future asset appreciation?
Bobby Ong: I think it's something that hasn't appeared yet. Look at the tech industry: in 2000, you couldn't have imagined Uber or Airbnb. The Uber and Airbnb of crypto haven't arrived yet. Nowadays, companies grow to 1 billion users or $1 billion much faster than before. Old assets won't die; Bitcoin will always be around. But will Pudgy Penguins still be around in 5 years? Will CryptoPunks still be around? Who knows.
CryptoPunks is the first NFT series and may have historical artistic value. Pudgy Penguins ultimately depends on the team's execution. But there will always be new things in crypto, so you have to stay agile.
The DeFi explosion in 2021 was a turning point for the company
Host: Why the name CoinGecko? What was the early startup phase like?
Bobby Ong: In April 2014, I co-founded CoinGecko with TM Lee. At that time, crypto companies usually had very serious names like Coinbase or CoinDesk, but we wanted to use an animal name to add fun. We chose "Gecko" because geckos are adaptable, extremely fast, and widespread. We considered "CoinTeddy," but obviously, no one likes the bearish implication of "bear market."
In the first five years of the startup, to mitigate risk and fulfill a scholarship contract, I worked full-time in digital marketing until the crypto market exploded at the end of 2017, when I went full-time into CoinGecko. At that time, CoinGecko was extremely rudimentary, just a simple domain and basic server, scraping prices and social media data for a few hundred tokens, with almost no visual design.
Host: What was the turning point in development?
Bobby Ong: The turning point was the DeFi explosion in 2021. We did a lot that year, the most important being tracking the DeFi market. At that time, mainstream platforms didn't value long-tail assets on DEXs, while CoinGecko, by fully integrating on-chain data, tracked all DeFi tokens and gained a large number of users. At that time, CoinGecko was the only platform that could track these coins. We were ahead by 6-12 months, solidifying our position as the "go-to destination for crypto data."
No funding, forcing low-cost creative marketing
Host: Why not take VC money?
Bobby Ong: Early on, we talked to VCs, but no one really understood what cryptocurrency was, especially VCs here in Malaysia. Then we also went to the US. I talked to some people at Stanford and some in Silicon Valley, but they were a bit dismissive, thinking that making money from ads definitely wouldn't work. Well, if the Silicon Valley people themselves couldn't see it, there was nothing to be done. Of course, there must have been some VCs in Silicon Valley paying attention to this field.
We always kept operations lean. Bootstrapping was also interesting, like an experiment to see how far we could go without funding. I think not having financial resources was a creative constraint. It was a limitation we set for ourselves. The benefit was that no VCs forced us to spend at all costs to grow, but on the other hand, we had no cash.
So, how should we promote ourselves? How to do marketing? How to let the world know about CoinGecko without so much money? I couldn't go to conferences everywhere, sponsor parties, etc. I had to find low-cost, creative ways to promote us. This actually made our marketing team more disciplined. Optimizing search engine (SEO) was one important way we achieved growth at very low cost. Additionally, there were many other methods to help us grow quickly.
Host: What advice do you have on fundraising?
Bobby Ong: If you want to grow fast, go raise funds. But if you accept a slower pace of development, then you don't necessarily need to raise funds; you can develop at your own pace and control your own destiny. The benefit of not raising from VCs is that we never had to write any investor reports and didn't face any pressure from VCs.
If you need to grow fast or need to validate an idea, then raise funds. But it is advised to raise enough to reach a certain level and push the company to the next stage. However, raising too much money too early is not good because eventually, you will have too much money and lack discipline. You might have countless ways to squander the money, leading to over-hiring or doing all sorts of ridiculous things.
CoinMarketCap is strong in SEO, regularly evaluating investment choices
Host: How should users choose between CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko?
Bobby Ong: You need to understand the game rules of these two companies and how it affects users. We do what we think is good for the community and strive to provide users with the right data. Many users first discover CoinMarketCap through SEO, but after using it for a while, they find that CoinGecko's data is more accurate, covers more coins, and we have also started building Gecko Terminal, which includes even more coins, including all tokens on various DEXs on-chain. Many developers using our API also realize that reliability, accuracy, and uptime are stronger.
There are also subtle differences, like metadata, how we manage listings, how we check for updated information, etc. Ordinary users might not notice these, but industry insiders can immediately see the difference between CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap and the work we do.
Host: Where is CoinMarketCap stronger than CoinGecko?
Bobby Ong: They are definitely stronger than us in SEO. They started 11 months earlier than us, and they got a lot of media coverage. Generally, media coverage brings a lot of backlinks, which helps improve SEO ranking. Then, when journalists want to write an article next time, they search for the token, find CoinMarketCap, and start writing. So they built a virtuous cycle. We have been trying to surpass them in SEO, but it's not easy. This is one of their advantages; they have a very strong position in the existing market.
Host: There have been recent rumors that CoinGecko might sell for $500 million. What are your thoughts on this?
Bobby Ong: CoinGecko is a profitable, independent, and bootstrapped company. We often evaluate our strategic options, like whether to raise funds in the early stages. The discussion now might be slightly different because the industry is constantly changing. We are looking for opportunities, seeing what's on the market, seeing what choices there are, and then seeing how best to position CoinGecko to make it better, stronger, and provide the best products and services for our users and customers in the coming years. We don't comment on specific cases like this, but what I mean is, we regularly evaluate various options.
Host: When is the best time to sell?
Bobby Ong: There is never a so-called best time to sell. Timing also depends somewhat on luck. Ultimately, it depends on the co-founders, founders, or founding team, and what is right. And, ultimately, companies are acquired, not sold.
Related reading: CoinGecko seeks sale: The end of the era of independent crypto data
