Many of the tools available for companies to use are not user-friendly, especially for those new to web3.
New York-based Starlight is trying to simplify the process for companies to enter the space. The company's product allows companies to set up a wallet and manage their digital assets on an ongoing basis, all in one place.
The two co-founders left their jobs at other tech companies to participate in a fellowship hosted by South Park Commons. The pair wanted to pursue a venture in the web3 space, and went through about 20 different ideas before they decided to work on a business providing tools for DAOs. The market for DAO tools was too crowded. Customers were still working through fundamental internal questions and weren't ready to commit to using a particular product, so they felt they were still so early in the space.
Grey and Ben are the co-founders of Starlight.
The challenges they faced trying to launch this DAO tooling venture revealed a much greater opportunity for them as they attempted to manage their startup's expenses.
It was then that we realized that we had a problem of needing some coins for our company. We needed to pay for things on the mainnet, pay for services, pay our people, and we had a difficult problem with converting our dollars in a bank account into digital currency.
They tried to get on board with every major exchange, but it can take months to get on board. The most popular solution for companies in the space was to wait to get onboarded by a big exchange, regardless of how long it took, or to use their own personal wallet to manage their companies.
They were in disbelief when they couldn't find a solution that would get them up and running with their own wallet. The solution they needed instead of the DAO tooling project was similar to corporate card and spend management startup Ramp, Brex, and Mercury.
There aren't a lot of players that offer a comprehensive corporate spend management platform for cryptocurrencies in one place, but other startups have built tools focused on specific areas under the corporate expense umbrella. Businesses can use Paysail to make cross-border B2B payments incryptocurrencies, as well as companies such as Bitwage that help companies compensate their employees incryptocurrencies.
Many of the companies that are core to Starlight's business are new to web3 and need to convert some of their cash into digital currency. He said that there is a need for them to convert cash intocryptocurrencies because of the interest in its product from other companies.
The interface for treasury management is called Starlight.
In the future, Nguyen hopes that Starlight will be able to meet the needs of every business that needs to interact in the new economy of web3.
Regardless of what you do, you will need some sort of currency in your treasury to operate in thecryptocurrencies economy, whether it is paying for services, paying people, or buying certain things.
The product will be launched in the coming months, according to the founder. While the platform only supports a handful of cryptocurrencies today, it's plan is to support many more at its public launch. He noted that the startup is working on adding support for the two cryptocurrencies, and that it is chain-agnostic, meaning that it decides which cryptocurrencies to support based on user demand.
The platform will be free for users, though it eventually hopes to monetize through other revenue streams, like offering its customers the ability to stake theircryptocurrencies and taking a percentage of the yield they earn by doing so.
Part of the reason a solution like Starlight hasn't been built at scale is that builders in the space have been focused on other projects and are not used to relying onduct-tape solutions. Having gone through so many ideas before deciding to build Starlight is a major advantage for the startup according to the founder.
You really need to be a second, third, fourth or fifth-time explorer to find a problem like this. First or second-time builders are the majority of the people who are building the products. If they find a solution to this problem, they will probably just ignore it and build their thing. It happened to us the first few times when we came across it.
A* Capital co-led a $5 million round of seed funding for the platform, which will be ready for a public launch.
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