The guy who launched the world's first bitcoin ETF has a theory about why most fintech founders build the wrong thing first.
The Summary
- Som Seif, founder of Purpose Unlimited, went from engineering to investment banking to launching Canada's first wave of ETFs and the world's first bitcoin ETF
- His central thesis: endurance in fintech comes from prioritizing customer needs over product innovation
- Seif's career arc tracks the evolution from Web2 finance platforms to tokenized asset vehicles, making him a rare bridge figure between traditional finance and crypto infrastructure
The Signal
Som Seif built the first bitcoin ETF not because he's a true believer in decentralization or because he wanted to ride a hype cycle. He built it because institutional investors kept asking for regulated exposure to crypto, and nobody was solving that problem. That customer-first approach, he argues, is what separates serial entrepreneurs who endure from those who flame out.
The timing matters. Seif's journey from traditional ETFs to bitcoin products maps directly onto the shift from Web2 financial platforms to tokenized assets. When he started pushing ETFs in Canada, he was democratizing access to diversified portfolios. When he launched the bitcoin ETF, he was doing the same thing for digital assets, just with a different regulatory wrapper.
"Endurance when building business in today's ever changing markets" isn't about pivoting fast or moving fast and breaking things. It's about solving real problems repeatedly.
What makes Seif's perspective valuable is the span: engineering foundations, investment banking operations, then serial entrepreneurship across both traditional and crypto finance. He's seen what works when you're trying to get institutions to adopt new financial infrastructure. The pattern he's identified is simple but ignored by most founders:
- Listen to what customers are actually asking for, not what you think they need
- Build regulatory-compliant solutions even when it's slower and less exciting
- Stay in the game long enough for the market to catch up to your product
The bitcoin ETF is the perfect case study. Crypto natives hated it, called it a betrayal of Satoshi's vision, complained that ETFs were just TradFi colonizing crypto. But Seif wasn't building for crypto natives. He was building for pension funds and advisors who wanted exposure without custody risk. He chose the customer who would actually pay, not the customer who would applaud on Twitter.
The Implication
If you're building in tokenization, DeFi infrastructure, or any product trying to bridge traditional finance and crypto, Seif's playbook is your instruction manual. The loudest voices in your space are almost never your actual customers. Find the people who have money, a problem, and no good solution. Build the boring, compliant thing that solves their problem. Let the revolutionaries call you a sellout while you build a business that lasts.
Watch where Seif and Purpose Unlimited go next. Founders who successfully launched the first bitcoin ETF understand something about institutional adoption that most crypto builders missed. That knowledge compounds in the agent economy, where tokenized assets become the rails for autonomous transactions.