How to hack your way into Y Combinator, Orange DAO and starting a web3 company with Matt Voska

Jonas -

When I visited Matt Voska in his bachelor pad in Rio de Janeiro, I was blown away by the beautiful view over the city his living room has to offer. (swipe right on the instagram post below to see the view)

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But as soon as I hit record and Matt started to share his story with me, the view was quickly forgotten.

Getting into Y Combinator

In this episode, we learn how Matt's passion for flying made him join the prestigious ranks of Y Combinator-funded companies. He dropped out of university and moved to San Francisco to join the ranks of silicon valley entrepreneurs.

He and his friends co-founded Flytenow. The startup was supposed to become the Uber for airplanes. But before having the chance to really take off, his dream of flight-sharing was grounded by regulators.

After his defeat, Matt joined a fellow Y combinator company. Bannerman was aiming to be the Uber for Security-guards. (Do you notice a theme ?)

The Orange DAO

Pressing forward. September 2021.

A group of fellow Y Combinator alumni who wanted to share their experiences in web3 started a WhatsApp group. The interest was so significant that the chat quickly outgrew the maximum number of 250 members. Matt and his friends needed a better way to organize this growing community and moved the community to a discord server. Out of this, the Orange DAO was born.

Co-founding Origami

The experiences of setting up a DAO with all of its pitfalls and quirks made Matt and his now co-founders experts in the booming new field of DAOs. Suddenly many companies were reaching out to them, asking for help to set up a DAO for their company or organization.

Matt and his co-founders, Ben Huh and Johnny Chin, saw that this could be an opportunity to build a company around. And that was the beginning of Origami, a company that helps web2 companies to start DAOs.

In this episode, we talked about:

  • How Matt hacked his way into Y Combinator
  • Why regulations crushed his startup dream of flight-sharing
  • How he and his friends built Orange DAO
  • Why he believes 2022 to be the year of the DAOs
  • Why Rio de Janeiro is an ideal city for digital nomads
  • Why Matt is not a tech-bro
  • Which gadget leads to a good night's sleep