Good morning, Monday! …and its the first one after Singapore.

If you’ve ever liked what you read here, sharing this one with one person is the most helpful thing you can do.

Right.

For few weeks I’ve been warming you up for TOKEN2049. Few editions of foreplay. Now the main event has happened, it’s finished, and I can’t let it pass without telling you what I think actually went on there.

THE MAIN EVENT WAS THE SIDE EVENT

Start with the obvious: everyone I spoke to loved it. It was a proper conference, exactly what you’d expect from Token. Sold out, 25,000 people, and for the first time it had a dedicated institutional day.

I’ll say it out loud. TOKEN2049 has become the number one conference in digital assets, and rightfully so. It’s extremely well organised, it steals the spotlight every year, and it’s now the one everyone aims to be at. If you’re not there, I think you’re losing out, at least somewhat.

What’s interesting is that it wasn’t first. Consensus was around long before. It had the brand, the head start and the audience.

But there was a gap, and Token filled it better than anyone. Outside a few niche events, I don’t think anything else is close.

There’s a lesson in that which has nothing to do with conferences.

Now read that again, but think about your strategy instead of a conference. Same rule(s) apply.

Alpha isn’t a moat. It’s a short-term lease.

I didn’t buy a ticket. I got one free as we were one of the finalists in the NEXUS startup competition. (Small brag. I’ll allow myself one but just one.) But honestly, I’d have been fine without it.

At this stage, a lot of people don’t bother with the conference ticket at all, and the ones who do barely go inside. Nobody flies to Singapore for a panel. The magic happens at the side events only: the dinners, the receptions, the small rooms where people can actually hear each other.

So if you’re wondering whether to buy the ticket next year, here’s my honest answer. The ticket is optional. The side events are not.

QUANTS LAB

Which brings me to ours.

The evening before Token kicked off, we hosted Quants Lab together with POD. It was an invitation-only reception for allocators and emerging quant managers, built around SMAs and fund structures. No badge scanning, no stage, just the people we know in one room, with space to talk.

It was a genuine success. A lot of you came, and I’m grateful. Thank you to everyone who showed up, and a big thank you to Cathal and the POD team for co-hosting with us.

We all go to these weeks for one reason: to find new partners. Did we? Yes.

We found new teams, some of them genuinely strong, the kind you won’t find on any list. We found new allocators too, which matters even more after what I wrote last week about nineteen kids per parent.

If you’re an allocator working with us and you didn’t make it to Singapore: we went for you. That’s our job, and it is included in our service to you. A lot of travel, a lot of late evenings, a lot of conversations that go nowhere before one goes somewhere. I even sacrifice my liver - drinking beers so you do not have to. Finding really good teams and keeping relationships with them takes work, and we did that work.

Every new team and every new allocator makes the network more valuable for everyone already in it. That’s the network effect, and it’s why we’re here.

THE MANAGER WHO NEVER SHOWS UP

One conversation from the week has stayed with me.

I spent time with a manager who isn’t really public. He doesn’t market and rarely appears anywhere. This year, he decided to come.

His reasoning was simple, and I think he’s right.

Allocators are meeting teams in person now. If you’re the team that never shows its face, especially when your strategy isn’t having its best stretch, plenty of other teams are showing up. They’re shaking hands and building rapport with the same allocators you hope will call you.

Those conversations are different. When two people have actually met, sat at the same table and been genuinely interested in each other, the relationship is easier to nurture and the deal is far easier to close. Trust compounds faster face to face than it ever does over Telegram.

So if you don’t show up, someone else takes your spot in that allocator’s universe. Probably not because they’re better. Because they were there.

Remember the lemonade. Nineteen kids per parent. If you’re not at the party, you’re not even one of the nineteen. You’re at home with very good lemonade and nobody drinking it.

Here’s the uncomfortable version:

In this market, an average team that shows up will out-raise a great team that doesn’t.

I don’t love that. It’s not how it should work. But it’s how it does work.

I can already hear the objection: “What about the elite teams who never market and never appear anywhere?” I’ve written about them myself. One-page PDF, a fund admin contact, done.

Fair. But those teams don’t need you. They’re turning capital away. Invisibility is a luxury reserved for teams that are already full. If you’re raising, you’re not in that category, and acting like you are is just a slower way to stay small.

We’ve covered what makes a team institutional many times: communication, verification, a real team, proper materials, disclosure. Add one more. An institutional team is one that raises at scale, and part of raising at scale is consistently showing up. You can’t stay completely outside, never seen, and expect allocators to wire seven figures to a Telegram handle. YkyK huh.

THE COMEDOWN

Now for this week. It will be crazy for everyone.

There’ll be follow-ups and calls that were never on the calendar, while you work out which of the dozens of Singapore conversations will actually turn into business.

The next few weeks will be swamped. I have a lot of unread messages and honestly haven’t even started on them. A week like that takes a few days to come down from. I took exactly one day off, today, Sunday, and tomorrow it’s back to the grind. (As for the hangover I promised myself I wouldn’t have… I’ll take the Fifth.)

Practical advice, from someone currently failing to follow it: triage fast.

A conference conversation has a shorter half-life than a funding arb.

The warm “let’s talk next week” from Thursday is lukewarm by next Thursday and cold by the one after. Sort your follow-ups by who can actually move, send those first, and let the rest wait without guilt.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE A LEAD

One last thought, because I think it will help some of you more than anything above.

Never underestimate a lead.

You know the moment. You’re at a side event, stuck with someone whose work has nothing to do with yours. He’s explaining his Web3 project in great detail. You’re nodding. And a voice in your head is saying, “Can we wrap this up fast, please? I came here to meet allocators.”

We all do it. Every one of us. And the circle keeps circling. Everyone wants to find only what is relevant to them, and to find it - you have to search. It is a volume game.

…But don’t let it show. This person, the one you’re trying to escape, has a network. And now you have a personal connection with him that no cold email will ever give you.

Last week I wrote that nobody cares about you or your product; everybody cares about solving their own problems. This is the other half of that rule. Every human being is mainly interested in their own importance and their own problems. Dale Carnegie wrote that down in his book, and the human brain hasn’t shipped an update since.

So use it. Show genuine interest in what he’s doing. Ask about his problems. If you can help solve one, even a small one, he becomes far more likely to help you solve yours: an introduction to an allocator, a team, a partner you’d never have reached on your own.

Obviously you can’t do this forever. You only have so many evenings. But some of my best introductions came from people who had nothing to do with what I do.

Treat every person as a door to their network, not as the network itself. The price of entry is curiosity.

BEFORE YOU GO

If we met in Singapore and you haven’t heard from me yet, you’re not forgotten, just in the queue. If it’s urgent, [email protected] will reach me faster than Telegram this week.

If you’re an allocator who missed the week and wants to know what we found, reply to this email and we’ll walk you through it.

The referral offer stands, as always. Know someone genuinely worth an introduction? Make it, and we’ll pay you for it.

Stay patient. Stay honest. Stay alive.

See you next week.

Quants.Space is an institutional discovery engine for systematic and discretionary trading strategies: 130+ independent, world-class quantitative and discretionary trading teams, each with vetted track records and unique alpha sources, plus a dedicated Emerging Managers sector for early-stage teams. Our mission is simple: connect institutional capital and allocators directly with best-in-class teams, all within a secure Separately Managed Account (SMA) framework. If you’re an allocator active in the SMA space, or a team opening SMA capacity for institutional tickets, get in touch at [email protected].