I Raised My Seed Round During the FTX Collapse: Hard Truths with Aya Kantorovich

"I read the news and just slid onto the floor under my desk."

What happens when you’re closing your first funding round the exact week the industry’s biggest exchange implodes? Aya Kantorovich (Co-Founder & Co-CEO of August Digital and UpShift) joins Catherine Ross-Mychka to share the "unfiltered" reality of building in the trenches.

From surviving the FTX contagion to managing two companies simultaneously with a 9-month-old, Aya breaks down the "vaultification" of crypto, why she admits to being a micromanager, and how she uses AI to remove human bias from her management stack.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The "Trench" Reality: Surviving the week term sheets were pulled.

• Operational Excellence: Why 9-to-5s are dying and how to set real SLAs.

• The AI Manager: Using Claude to reclaim 30% of your efficiency.

• Founder Balance: Managing two startups and motherhood through "pockets of focus."

• Vaultification: Why the future of on-chain asset management is in vaults.

Aya is a relentless buildooor who proves that stress is a privilege - as long as you aren’t bored.

Timestamps:

1:54 VC Perspective vs. Founder Reality

4:33 Why 9-to-5s are dying in crypto

9:10 Running two companies at once

11:50 Making the wrong priority decisions

12:55 The "Micromanager" Hard Truth

17:04 Using AI to remove management bias

20:20 How we use Claude in our startups

22:30 Founder's daily schedule

25:40 Is "Stress" a privilege?

29:39 How a baby made me more efficient

32:20 Raising a Seed round during FTX week

36:15 Hard Truth: It won't get easier

43:30 The "unwind" ritual

48:33 A book every founder should read