Matthew Vogas

A few months ago, with two partners, we started Hoosling: a crypto crowdfunding platform. The idea was simple. Let anyone invest in startups with crypto, no matter where they lived or how much capital they had.

I was 16 when we started.

Why crypto

Traditional investing is broken. If you want into a promising startup, you need to:

Be an accredited investor (have a lot of money)
Know the right people
Live in Silicon Valley or somewhere like it
Survive endless legal process

With crypto, those barriers go away. Anyone with a wallet can join. The problem is we also removed the protections that exist for good reasons.

What we learned

In the first three months we got over $60,000 in proposals. We hit $2K MRR. Not bad for three teenagers in Costa Rica.

We also learned that:

**Regulation exists for a reason.** A lot of the "projects" that came in were obvious scams. Without a legal framework, protecting investors is almost impossible.

**Technology does not fix everything.** You can ship the cleanest smart contract in the world, but if people do not understand what they are buying, you are building on sand.

**Timing matters.** We launched right before the crypto market crashed. A lot of our early adopters lost money, not because of us, but because of the market.

Futuristic or stupid?

Both.

It is futuristic because that is where things are going. Tokenized assets, broader access to capital, fewer middlemen. That is going to happen.

It is stupid to do it without thinking about the consequences. Without financial education. Without basic protections. Without remembering that behind every transaction there is a person who can lose their savings.

What I would do differently

If I started Hoosling again today:

I would start with education, not product
I would look for a regulation-friendly place (maybe Switzerland or Singapore)
I would pick a niche instead of "every startup"
I would build community before technology

The future of investing is decentralized. Getting there takes more than code. It takes patience, education, and a lot of common sense.

I wrote this at 17. Looking back, we were probably too naive. But we also learned more in those months than in years of school. Sometimes the best way to learn is to build something and watch it fail.