Author: Jocy Source: X, @jocyln003

In June 2023, the cryptocurrency market was in a downturn At this time, Bitcoin was struggling to maintain around 25,000, and many investment institutions chose not to make a move or wait and see in the bear market. It happened that we met Pierre and Adli, the founders of Usual. In the midst of the shocking USDC decoupling, and the risk and fragility of even the safest stablecoins, USDT is reporting record profits and is on track to even surpass BlackRock this year. This contradictory phenomenon in the stablecoin market not only shows serious vulnerability but also contains huge potential.

In July, our investment team went to Usual’s office in Paris. At that time, they used their own funds to form a team of 8 people in a shared office in Paris. The office reserved a simple conference room for our pitch and conversation. We communicated for about 2 hours, and at the same time arranged a second interview about technology with Usual’s CTO Manfred that week. The founder of Pierre has an interesting background. He is a former French member of Parliament and an advisor to French President Macron.

When Pierre explained their vision to us, we were initially struck by the depth and detail. Their passion and thoughtfulness are evident, which means we have to spend more time understanding them and evaluating investment possibilities.

During the due diligence process, we had multiple meetings and detailed written communications both internally and externally, resulting in 50-70 pages of material. The more we dug into it, the more impressed we were at how they carefully integrated every detail into the larger vision. Their answers to our questions are never vague, but always based on sound research, demonstrating a deep understanding of the challenges ahead.

But what really sets them apart isn't just their technical prowess or attention to detail - it's their genuine passion and belief. Obviously, they live for Usual 24/7 (which is very different from the French people in everyone’s impression); their enthusiasm is contagious and makes us believe in their vision of subverting Tether. We clearly see that these people are not chasing a market cycle, but want to fundamentally change the stablecoin landscape.

We decided to make one of the largest seed investments in IOSG’s history. However, even after we committed to lead the round in August, it still took nearly two months to close the entire round. In fact, IOSG only invests in less than 15 deals every year, and we lead investment in about 5 of them. The process of leading investment is actually very challenging, which is vividly reflected in the usual case. After we confirmed that we were leading the investment, we compiled a complete list of Eastern and Western investors for the project. However, at that time, none of these investors gave any commitment within a month. Everyone wanted to continue to wait and see, not sure whether this financing could be successful. During the most difficult time, our colleague Momir even went to an investor’s IC in person to help that investment institution explain Usual’s entire stablecoin and DeFi mechanism design, and answer the IC’s questions. Fortunately, this institution came in. This deal gave us an unprecedented sense of non-consensus. When 20 mainstream investment funds in the industry said no, we still insisted on going our own way and continued to support the team in completing that round of financing. Of course, this also benefited from the tenacity of the founders. and persistence.

Ironically, even the fund that introduced us to Usual ended up abandoning the investment round. At one point, a local French early-stage fund pointed out that foreigners did not recognize Pierre's outstanding background, but they themselves passed on the investment round. Looking back at Usual’s financing history, it is regrettable that among the many VC funds they contacted, only 3-5 funds really studied the project details in depth.

In the three months since the financing closed, we’ve watched Pierre and Adli refine their vision and advance development. The resilience demonstrated during this period has only strengthened our faith. Ultimately, we were lucky enough to close this round with like-minded funds like Kraken Ventures, who also invested a lot of time in understanding the ins and outs of Usual’s idea.

After the investment, the team’s execution speed even surprised us. Their attention to detail in preparation translated into excellent execution in practice. The speed with which they achieved their milestones exceeded our most optimistic expectations. Later, IOSG's post-investment team joined in and internally compiled a list of well-known Eastern and Western KOLs. After many discussions and screenings, they helped the Usual team select some KOLs with different backgrounds and advantages, and then helped them to introduce them to the group one by one. and pushrecommend. In addition, we helped Usual successfully enter Asia's largest DeFi community through multiple pitches with the largest TVL community in Asia, allowing their product to successfully win the first 200m TVL during the grayscale testing phase.

Looking back on this journey, this should encourage future founders. It doesn’t matter how many “nos” you get; you only need one “yes” to trigger an avalanche effect. Today, we are more certain than ever that our “yes” to Usual will be one of our most important decisions. Sometimes, that's all it takes - saying "yes" to the right team, with the right vision, at the right moment.

The difficult journey makes these important milestones all the more gratifying. We’re excited to see Usual starting to get the recognition it deserves, but also soberly aware that this is just the beginning of a long journey. There is a lot of work ahead. keep going!