Entrepreneurship is for the daring, for those who have an unwavering conviction in the potential of an idea and how it can change the world. In our world, founders have braved impossible odds and worked tirelessly to build category defining companies. This is no easy accomplishment and deserves to be celebrated, both for the company’s success, and for the founders’ tenacity in getting there. South Asian women, especially, are leading the charge here with incredible companies at various stages of the lifecycle that often go under the radar.
We’re excited to spotlight these incredible entrepreneurs, starting with Aparna Krishnan, a co-founder at Opyn. Opyn allows users to earn a premium or take views on assets by trading options on ETH and ERC20s. The company raised $9.1M from investors such as A. Capital Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, DTC Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures and numerous angels.
Aparna is the Co-Founder and CTO at Opyn. Aparna is a Thiel Fellow and also the Co-Founder of Blockchain at Berkeley where she taught the largest university accredited blockchain class.
Read on to learn more about her story:
What does being a South Asian founder mean to you?
Growing up in a South Asian immigrant family, you’re conditioned to work towards getting the best degree possible, getting a job and working your way up. No one influences you into becoming a founder and those of us who do, are going against the grain by doing so. While originally, my parents thought dropping out of college to become a Thiel Fellow was a huge mistake, my dad was supportive of my dream, even if it meant dropping out and him needing to rework his vision for my life and career.
Growing up, what influences helped set your course as a founder?
One of my biggest influences was discovering my love of crypto. I started my undergraduate career at UC Berkeley studying Computer Science which is where I picked up crypto as a side hustle. By 2017 though, crypto became my main job and school started to take a back seat and as a result, my grades started to fall. That’s when I realized I wanted to go all in on crypto as the space that I wanted to build in since I was so deep in already.
My team was a huge driver as well – my co-founders and I were a squad and I honestly just wanted to keep working with them and building with them. We realized that what we had with each other was real and we wanted to figure out a way to keep working together, whether it be joining a company or starting our own. My co-founders Alexis and Zubin who are every entrepreneurial also set the course for us to start a company together. Getting the Thiel Fellowship further reinforced my decision to start something. Even though I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I knew who I wanted to start it with and the problem space I wanted to work on and that was a good enough start for me to dive right in.
What is one thing you wish you would have known when starting out?
Entrepreneurship is a long journey that lasts way longer than a few months or a couple of years, especially when you’re doing something right. There are so many stories in Silicon Valley about overnight successes that the media further glorifies but that couldn’t be farther from reality. You need to be in it for the long haul.
What would you like to be known for?
I hope that whatever I have built is known. I’d be totally okay if no one even knew who I was. The internet is one of, if not the most ubiquitous thing in our lives, yet we don’t actually know who built it. Every single billion dollar company exists on the internet. I hope that whatever I build achieves that level of scale one day and that it becomes bigger than me.
Who are the people you admire and believe are accomplishing great things right now?
Three founders I really respect are Vitalik (founder of Ethereum), Patrick Collison (Co-Founder of Stripe) and Dylan (Co-Founder at Figma). What the three have in common is their humility and love for what they’re doing. They don’t care for superficial things such as press or wealth but are instead, pursuing their genuine curiosity to find the truth, and building things their users want. That’s what makes them all really special.
What value do you think Neythri provides, and what do you hope to see more of?
When I was raising our seed round, it was really important to me to have as diverse a cap table as possible. I wholeheartedly believe in the business impact diverse investors can have on company trajectories and the social impact with respect to representation in the boardroom. Neythri is leading the charge meaningfully here with the new fund that allows South Asian women to be LPs and check writers in the fund. I think it’s so awesome that Neythri is able to empower more South Asian women in becoming investors. Definitely an important step in the right direction.
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Author Bio:
Pranavi is an investor at Acceleprise where she manages our investing activities across our accelerator and seed fund. Prior to Acceleprise, she did early stage investing at a venture fund in the Bay Area where she focused on enterprise software and healthcare and spent some time on the trading floor at RBC Capital Markets. She also blogs at publicbeta.substack.com and her work has been published on platforms such as TechCrunch, Crunchbase and Hackernoon. She\’s passionate about emerging economies and the public sector, diversity in tech, and most importantly, people.
