Written by: Jocy
In June 2023, when the cryptocurrency market was in a slump, Bitcoin struggled to maintain around 25,000. Many investment institutions chose not to act or wait and see in the bear market. We happened to meet Pierre and Adli, the founders of Usual. At that time, the shocking USDC decoupling incident occurred. The safest stablecoin also had risks and vulnerabilities. Contrary to this, USDT was reporting record profits and was expected to surpass BlackRock this year. This contradictory phenomenon in the stablecoin market shows both serious fragility and huge potential.
In July, our investment team went to Usual’s office in Paris. They had formed a team of 8 people with their own funds at the time and booked a simple meeting room in a shared office in Paris to pitch and talk with us. We talked for about 2 hours, and arranged a second interview about technology with Usual’s CTO Manfred that week. Pierre, the founder, has an interesting background. He is a former French parliamentarian and an advisor to French President Macron.
When Pierre presented their vision to us, we were initially struck by the depth and detail. Their passion and thoughtfulness were evident, which meant we had to invest more time to understand them and assess the potential for investment.
During the due diligence process, we conducted multiple meetings and detailed written communications both internally and externally, ultimately amassing 50-70 pages of material. The deeper we delved, the more impressed we became with how they carefully integrated every detail into the larger vision. Their responses to our questions were never vague, but were always well-researched and demonstrated a deep understanding of the challenges ahead.
But what really sets them apart is not just their technical prowess or their attention to detail - it’s their genuine passion and belief. They clearly live for Usual 24/7 (which is very different from the French impression); their passion is contagious and makes us believe in their vision to disrupt Tether. It’s clear to us that these guys are not chasing a market cycle, but are fundamentally changing the stablecoin landscape.
We decided to make one of the largest seed rounds in IOSG's history. However, even after we committed to lead the investment in August, it still took nearly two months to complete the entire round of financing. In fact, IOSG only invests in less than 15 deals each year, of which we will lead about 5 projects. The process of leading investment is actually very challenging, which is vividly reflected in the usual case. After we confirmed the lead investment, we listed a complete list of Eastern and Western investors for this project, but at that time, these investors did not give any commitment within a month. Everyone wanted to continue to wait and see, not sure whether this financing would be successful. At the most difficult time, our colleague Momir even went to an investor's IC in person to help the investment institution explain Usual's entire stablecoin and DeFi mechanism design and answer IC's questions. Fortunately, this institution came in. This deal made us feel unprecedented non-consensus. When 20 mainstream investment funds in the industry said no, we still went our own way and continued to support the team to complete that round of financing. Of course, this was also due to the founder's tenacity and persistence.
Ironically, even the fund that introduced Usual to us eventually passed on the investment. 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. Looking back at Usual's fundraising history, it is regrettable that among the many VC funds they contacted, only 3-5 funds really dug into the details of the project.
In the three months leading up to the funding round, we watched Pierre and Adli refine their vision and push development forward. The resilience they demonstrated during this period only strengthened our belief. Ultimately, we were fortunate to close this round with like-minded funds such as Kraken Ventures, who also invested a lot of time to understand the details of Usual's concept.
After the investment, the team's execution speed even surprised us. Their attention to detail in the preparation stage turned into excellent execution in practice. They achieved milestones faster than our most optimistic expectations. Later, the post-investment team of IOSG joined in and compiled a list of well-known KOLs from the East and the West. After many discussions and screenings, they helped the Usual team select some KOLs with different backgrounds and advantages, and then helped them to introduce and recommend them one by one. In addition, we helped Usual successfully enter the largest DeFi community in Asia 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 be an encouragement to future founders. It doesn’t matter how many “nos” you receive; 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 - a “yes” at the right moment, to the right team, with the right vision.
The journey has been difficult, which makes these important milestones even more gratifying. We are happy to see Usual starting to get the recognition it deserves, but we also know that this is just the beginning of a long journey. There is still a lot of work to be done. Keep going!
