Pol Martin

Pol has been enthusiastic about entrepreneurship since he was 16 years old. He also grew up fascinated by how financial systems worked and started reading up on traditional investing and trading in his free time. After discovering blockchain and the technology’s potential for disruption, Pol became an ardent supporter and devotes himself to the crypto space.

At just 20 years old, Pol is currently pursuing his passion as a CEO and yield strategist, dedicating his time to build Rand to enable others to benefit from DeFi in a simple and frictionless way. During the last year, Pol built a team of 15+ experts globally and raised more than $3M in several funding rounds with some of the most influential firms in the VC space.

Pol hopes to teach others, specifically Gen Z, how they can leverage technology to add value to their savings seamlessly. With Rand, he aims to accomplish this by providing a fully customizable platform to support the financial independence of the coming generations.

Where did the idea for Rand come from?

Rand started 1 year ago, the day I wanted to move to NYC with 2 friends. Back in those days, I was building several yield strategies on multiple protocols but logically, my friends, who are not crypto natives, didn’t understand what I was doing and how I was making money out of it. At that point, I realized that we needed a mobile app that was very easy to use and that allowed us to put set aside side income every month, produce yield on autopilot through several DeFi yield strategies, and then use this yield produced to pay the water bills, light bills or to even pay a whole month of rent.

What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?

I normally wake up around 6 or 6:30 am, sometimes a bit later if it is a very cold winter day :), Then, I eat breakfast watching some crypto podcasts and try to exercise. Some days I go to the gym, and the rest I go running with my dog. After my daily workout, I have a shower and I start working. The first thing I do is respond to all emails and DMs. After that, I do all paperwork, if any, and the rest of the day is a sum of calls with the tech and marketing team to design strategies and workflows. Around 8:00 pm, I turn off my laptop and start planning the next day.

How do you bring ideas to life?

For me, an idea is just a step towards a larger goal. When an idea comes to my mind, the first thing I do is write everything down and transform it into a game plan with OKRs and deadlines. Once I have the idea transformed into a game plan, I ask the rest of my team what they think and we discuss if it makes sense to include it into the current roadmap. After the game plan is validated, the execution can start.

What’s one trend that excites you?

I am very excited to see how the DAO ecosystem will evolve during the next few years. Specifically, the new ways of organizing work-groups and product development that will arise as a result.

What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?

This year, I started with the habit of doing all the tasks that I don’t like to do in the early morning and leaving the exciting ones for later. This allows me to always have time to do my harder tasks and doesn’t allow me to delay them.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I would give my younger self the advice of not worrying about committing mistakes, they are a big part of the process.

In the past, I used to ruminate over every single mistake I made, but I learned that as long as you are open-minded about being able to change when something unexpected happens, you will always find a way to achieve your initial goal.

Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.

Not many people around me agree, but I think that going on a trip alone to enjoy myself can be better than doing it with more people.

As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?

Don’t be super excited when good things happen, and also don’t be super worried when something goes wrong.

As an entrepreneur, you receive good and bad news every week. If you don’t train yourself on how to react to them, you will end up in a roller coaster of moods that will result in poor decision-making and productivity.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?

Make sure everybody can fall in love with the reason why you start your business.

The best way to get the best people around you, and around your project, is to make them love the story behind it. If you have a great and solid foundation, marketing, and product, your project will run in a very smooth and aligned way.

What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?

At the beginning of my project, I was easily rejected by more than 100+ VCs and angel investors. Early in project planning and development, your game plan is not developed enough, and not many people will understand or see the same value that you do. That’s ok.

You have to be strong and keep moving forward without allowing short-term failures negatively affect your long-term goal.

What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?

I hope someone develops a money market like Anchor Protocol with Euro-peg stablecoin.

Currently, there are no euro-peg money markets with high liquidity. So, when retail users want to obtain yield with their savings, they have to expose their capital to the price difference between the Euro and the Dollar.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?

I recently bought a new RGB light for my studio that definitely helps me have a more chill environment when the sun goes down.

What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive?

We recently set up all of our marketing timelines with Asana, and I have to say it’s a very easy and intuitive tool to manage goals and tasks for the entire team.

What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?

If you are starting in crypto, I definitely recommend you read “Infinite Machine” by Camila Russo. It explains the entire story of how Ethereum and the blockchain started.

What is your favorite quote?

There are two quotes that I really love and that I repeat to myself on a daily basis.
1. “Take care of the work and the work will take care of you”
2. “Persistence is the vehicle to success”

Key Learnings:

• Further development of DAO landscapes will be a very exciting space to watch grow in the coming years.
• Doing hard tasks in the early morning allows you to be more productive.
• Don’t try to skip phases of development to avoid committing mistakes, you will commit them anyway. Instead, focus your energy on learning from them.