From Nine Days of Runway to the Data Behind Crypto | Codex

0:00Josh Han Welcome back to the Content Suite in Singapore. Today, we have Mike from Codex and Defined. Codex and Defined is one of the biggest data providers In crypto, and Mike is CEO and co-founder. Today, we're gonna be learning more about the business As well as what they do. So Mike, if you wanna give a quick introduction About yourself and Codex, that'd be amazing. Yeah, sure.

0:22Mike Rowe I started off as a degen, Just like a lot of other founders in the space. So I was sniping coins before it was called sniping Back in like 2020, 2021, doing a lot of on-chain stuff And really wanted to build something That gave me an edge on that. And eventually that turned into us growing to a business That's like the size of 20 people now And I don't trade at all anymore. So it was kind of backwards from how I intended it To pan out, but yeah. So now with Codex, that's our main business. We powered charts and pricing information, Wallet data, metadata, And hundreds of other data points and endpoints And anything that you can think of for companies Like Coinbase, FOMO, Pump.fun, MetaMask, Phantom, RickBot and Phanes, the list goes on and on.

1:24Mike Rowe Pretty much if you see a chart Or a price on the internet, It's more likely that it's coming from us right now. So it's been a long journey. We've been building it for five years now And this year has been great for it. That's great.

1:40Josh Han So if TradingView and majority of the charts That you see today are powered by Codex, I think that gives you the opportunity To build a consumer product, Maybe for a previous degen version of yourself now. And I think that's what you're doing today with Defined. Do you wanna speak a little bit more About the journey of Defined As you guys have built out Codex And what you want that to be in the future?

2:01Mike Rowe Yeah, Defined was actually a product before we had the API. So it was what we launched back in May, 2021 As really like an alternative to DEXTools back then. And we ended up switching more to a B2B model And selling the data Because we just couldn't find a good way To monetize Defined at the time, Which ended up saving our business. And we've done a lot better on that side of things Ever since then. But yeah, Defined for the most part Has always just been a showcase for our API And proving how good our data is, how fast it is. And really being that place Where we can tell developers to go and check it out, Like we can prove that we are good. And now over the past few months Or like I really over the past year, We've been focusing on launching a new version of Defined, Something that we care a little bit more about That has the ability to do more things.

3:00Mike Rowe You can trade on it. We have a brand new mobile app out as well. We have a Telegram bot. We have the ability for you to use it anywhere. And that's one of our main priorities right now Is we're doing really well on the Codex side of things, But we also wanna diversify our revenue, Figure out other places to kind of gain momentum And gain mindshare as well. Cause if Defined does well, then Codex does well as well. So we have a nice big banner advertising Codex For every new user to Defined. So if we're able to draw users in the majority of people Or like some people at least are gonna be devs Or working on other projects in this space And see that they're like, oh, this data is really good.

3:48Mike Rowe I can get it from the provider who powers all this. So it's really a good flywheel for us.

3:54Josh Han I think you guys are definitely winning in the sphere Of like Codex providing data for charts And all like data visualization. In terms of like the current landscape of businesses For screeners or trench tools or trading terminals, Can you give me a little bit of a lay ground Of like what that looks like first And then we can go into how Defined is standing out?

4:19Mike Rowe Yeah, I think kind of the default That everybody uses right now is DexScreener. And to be honest, like I'm jealous of their business model And like, and the amount of users that they have And everything like that, like, And I've met their founders as well. They're awesome people. So I have nothing bad to say about DexScreener, But I think there's also a lot of positives To using Defined. Like we are more research driven. You can do a lot more kind of analysis around coins. We do a lot around figuring out what scams are, Our scams in general, like, And our trending is the best trending in the industry. Like it's almost instant. So if a new token comes out and it's really popular, It gets up to number one trending within minutes.

5:07Mike Rowe Whereas like you're not gonna find it On any other screener for hours Because it's gonna take a long time for that to take up. So I think with Defined, Especially over the like the last few years And like the last couple months We've really been wrapping up users, The people who use Defined are the best traders. They're the ones that are making the most money. They're the ones that do it full time. And I think that's kind of like where we're able to grow From the people who are really serious about it And wanna do a lot of research And wanna have a lot of tooling. Because I think right now, If you know how to use Defined to its full capabilities, You're going to have such a huge edge on everybody else Because we've spent the last five years perfecting the data And we have a lot of it.

6:00Josh Han I definitely have experienced Like putting in multiple terminals at once And seeing your guys' charts move faster than everyone else. So I think it's clear that if you have the fastest data, You will get the best opportunities to find runners Or trenching on Defined. Outside of that, I've noticed that you guys have gone into prediction markets As well as like features a little bit as well With this new modular terminal. Do you wanna speak a little bit more about like The future ideal tool that you have for Defined?

6:31Mike Rowe Yeah, I think with Defined is like pretty much anything That you can do on-chain, You will eventually be able to do on Defined. So you have one centralized wallet That is kind of just like powered by Turnkey And you can bridge across chains with like Relay And like everything else that pretty much Every other app is using right now for making things simple But being able to do things like Get money into your purpose wallet, Get money into Polymarket and do prediction markets. Maybe in the future we'll do yields and lending And things like that. So being able to have one place Where you have your kind of day-to-day de-gen money Or investing money or whatever you want it to be Like have it accessible from anywhere in the world. So you just have like the Defined mobile app And you could just do whatever you want Based off of like what's happening in your life, What's happening in the world, things like that.

7:23Mike Rowe So I think there's like a lot of opportunity there For us to keep building on top of what we already have And then everything that we put into Defined by default Also has to go into Codex. So our Codex's customers are also benefiting from that And they're able to use that data And we're able to get more like analytics About what people want and how people are using it From the Defined side of things Which also benefits like all of our customers. And like of course there's always gonna be a lot of overlap Between us and our customers as well. So like we do have, we try not to compete directly But to be honest like it's crypto. The main use case is trading shitcoins.

8:11Josh Han The token is the product.

8:12Mike Rowe Yeah, the token is the product. So everybody has some sort of way to trade coins And like that's pretty much the main way That we like main thing that we power On the Codex side of things. Like a lot of our customers are trading terminals. They're information bots. They're the things that where you're checking prices, You're trading, you're doing the thing That everybody else is doing. Right.

8:38Josh Han It makes a lot of sense that since you guys are seeing How the data is being used, You can kind of reformat that Into your ideal trading terminal, right? So I think if you're trading perps, Prediction markets and trenching, Defined is one of the best places Or like one of the few terminals Where you can do that all at once. Maybe talk a little bit about What are you surprised about In terms of like that no other terminal Or screener has not done yet And you want to implement in Defined Or want Defined to become.

9:10Mike Rowe I think the biggest thing is that discovery On other terminals is really difficult. And that's something that we've prioritized. Like if you've ever used Defined And really dug deep into how you can filter tokens, You'll know exactly what I'm talking about. It's crazy how many things that you can filter by And try to find a token that's going to Like be the next big thing is a lot easier on Defined Than it is on any other platform Because there's a lot of kind of garbage trending That really doesn't really exist outside of our dataset Because we've put so much work into that. And our trending can be found across like apps All over the internet like through Base app And like I guess Coinbase Wallet and things like that as well.

10:01Mike Rowe So it's like we need to make sure That that's as good as possible And there's as little scams as possible in there Which is an extremely difficult problem To tackle when 99.9% of tokens That are launched on a daily basis are scams. Right now we just crossed like 107 million tokens indexed And I would think that maybe 100,000 of those Are like real projects.

10:29Josh Han Do you wanna talk a little bit more About how trending is getting filtered right now And why you think that gives the best edge to traders?

10:37Mike Rowe Yeah, so we use a massive amount of different things And we're building on top of it every day But for the most part over the past few years It's really been a combination of unique wallets, Volume of course, liquidity of course And then kind of we started adding Like what the wallets look like. So if a wallet had traded a lot of scams before And then all of a sudden is trading this token It would penalize that token. But if there was a lot of like big winners Who trade a ton of different tokens That are legitimate tokens Then it's more likely that that token Is going to be a legitimate token as well Or as legitimate as you can get. But so we just keep on adding on top of that As we grow out our data And kind of make sure that we are trying to Stay ahead of the scammers Because they always come up with something new And we have to kind of like battle that as well.

11:39Mike Rowe So we see a new scam trending, We have to figure out what they're doing, We remove that method of scamming From our trending algorithms And then they do something new as well the next day And we just, it's an endless battle. Right.

11:52Josh Han I mean, it makes sense that there really Isn't a secret formula to like trenching But there is a way of protecting users As well as yourself from not buying Honeypots or scams, right? Yeah. Do you have any stories of traders Utilizing trending or like tokens That have really done well through your platform Or traders that have done well?

12:11Mike Rowe Yeah, we have endless amounts of people That have reached out to us And said they wouldn't have been able To find a token if it wasn't for us. I think one of the people I remember Like back a couple years ago, There was like the token called Peanut or something And he said that he found it at like 20K market cap And it ran to like 100 mil or plus And he would not have been able to find that If it wasn't for Defined and the filters that he had set. So like he was a huge fan And he's a huge proponent of us now. So I think it's like if you use Defined, You start to understand it Because if you put in the effort To learn how everything works, You're gonna be able to build a system Around the way that you trade That is going to be extremely powerful.

12:59Josh Han Mike, can you give a little introduction About yourself and how you got into crypto? Yeah, for sure.

13:05Mike Rowe I used to be a professional poker player Back in like 2009, 2010 And when Black Friday I think it was called Happened in the States where they really shut down All the ways to get money into poker back then, There was a lot of people trying to figure out Like how to continue playing And that's when people started finding Bitcoin Like pretty early. So I ended up buying Bitcoin for the first time in 2011 For I think it was around $30 at the time And of course sold it for like $60 a piece of nice to end And nice to X, thought I was a genius And then kind of forgot about it for a few years And then in 2013, I bought 12 video cards And then started mining Dogecoin, Litecoin And then was one of the first people To put their like graphics, Like their compute power into like the pools Like NiceHash I think it was called Where you were able to rent out your compute To other people who were trying To mine shitcoins as well.

14:08Mike Rowe So that was a lot of fun and I did pretty well on that And but during that time, I was just like building startups And in 2013, I actually joined a company At my first like real job And that's where I ended up meeting everybody Who ended up being a co-founder of Defined and Codex. Wow. So we worked together at a company And we became quick friends And like worked together for a couple of years after that, I ended up leaving, started something new And in 2019, the five of us who are founders Of Defined and Codex, we built a consultancy Where we would just build software products From idea through launch. So we built something called Waking Up Which is a meditation app built by Sam Harris Who's like a famous philosopher and podcaster And then we also built something called Supercast Which is like a podcast platform For monetizing your subscribers And we were just continuing to do that.

15:12Mike Rowe Then in August 2020, I deposited another $1,000 Into crypto and quickly found Uniswap And realized that if I just was the first person In the world to buy and sell every single token That I would make a lot of money And it didn't really matter if it was a scam or not Because I would just buy and sell Before the rug was pulled and like the liquidity was gone. So I ended up doing really well doing that And I ended up showing it to my co-founders Of like the consultancy at the time And did well enough where we were able to fire All of our clients from the consultancy And started working on what ended up becoming Defined. It was originally just like trading tools for me To do better at sniping tokens But then we realized that there wasn't Any good data sources.

15:59Mike Rowe So we built our own data source in-house And then we realized that that could be a product And we built a front end for it And ended up raising two and a half million On that idea to build out Defined As kind of like the front page of DeFi at the time. So that's kind of where everything started And since then we've, That was five and a half years ago now And since then we've grown to 20 people now And most of us are all based in the same city. We went full nepotism with our hiring practices And hired all of our friends. I think of the 13 or 14 of us Have been friends for 10 plus years And it's a great environment, a lot of fun.

16:46Mike Rowe It's awesome working with your friends every day, Especially when they're all smart.

16:50Josh Han I do wanna dig into that a little bit Because you guys were doing meditation apps And non-crypto businesses. I know that you got into crypto early DeFi But there's been so many ups and downs since then And there's five co-founders. How do you guys kind of go through the trenches Or all these lows of crypto together And kind of like stay committed to this industry And two to one another as well?

17:14Mike Rowe I think we work really well together. We've never had an argument like in this entire time, Even when we had nine days runway left, We weren't fighting about things. We were just hoping for the best And figuring out ways to get to the next day. And the five of us, Which is a massive amount of co-founders for a company. You really shortened how five co-founders in a company. We stood each other really well. I'm the business guy, but I'm also pretty technical So I can keep our devs out of calls With the engineering teams. And then we kind of step all the way down From like really front end oriented down to like DevOps. And everybody has like a minimal amount of overlap Between the other founders.

18:03Mike Rowe So we all know exactly where our places are And what we're best at And we just kind of stay out of each other's way. And then we've done also the same With all of our hires as well. We don't have any management. We don't like really tell people What to do on a day-to-day basis. We say like, here's our roadmap, Pick what you'll like to do And then go build it, we trust you. And for the most part, it's been the best way to do it. And especially with agentic coding now, I think it's how a lot of other businesses should be built. And we kind of lucked into building that perfect Like business before agentic coding was a thing.

18:50Josh Han No, I mean, from working with you guys, I think all the team members Have a very symbiotic relationship Where like you've mentioned, You really protect everyone's time So they can cook within their individual craft. And that's something that I really respect And it makes a lot of sense of how you guys operate. Well, Mike, I know we are approaching The end of the interview, But I know you're gonna be around Token2049 With a couple of gift cards Or incentives to get people started on Defined. If you wanna speak to the camera And talk a little bit more about what you have going on, That'd be amazing to wrap up.

19:23Mike Rowe Sure, yeah. So, well, we have a few gift cards of $350 off Codex And then to $25 in like added to your cash balance For Defined. So if you're able to find me during the conference, I'll give you guys one of those. But yeah, it's been a pretty good year, to be honest. And like, it's been a lot of work to get here. I think at one point we had like nine days Of runway left or a bear market. So getting past that hump and being now to a point Where a profitable company powering a large majority Of the heavily used products in the space Has been an uphill battle for sure. But it's been a lot of fun And I get to work with my best friends all every day.

20:08Mike Rowe So it's definitely worth it. That's amazing.

20:11Josh Han Great, well, today that was our interview With Mike from Codex and Defined. Thank you so much for tuning in And thank you very much, Mike, for your time. Thank you.