At just 25 years old, securing $134 million in funding, an article interpreting the founder of Story Protocol
25-year-old Jason Zhao is a young entrepreneur raised in Silicon Valley, passionate about entrepreneurship and sharing ideas. He started experimenting with entrepreneurship in high school and founded a campus publication focused on the intersection of technology and society during college. Inspired by blockchain research, he quit his job to establish Story Protocol, which received continuous investment from a16z, with a total funding amount reaching $110 million. Jason believes that doing what you want to do is the simplest way to achieve success and happiness.Original source: Story_Liu00 X Account
Original author: Story_Liu00
Compiled by: Daisy, Mars Finance
Did you know that StoryProtocol raised $134 million, but its founder jasonjzhao is only 25 years old?
Here is the untold growth story of this young entrepreneur.
In addition to Silicon Valley, the U.S. has Silicon Hills.
As the most livable city in the U.S. with no personal income tax, Austin has a long history of technological innovation.
It is the headquarters of Texas Instruments, and many large tech companies have their second headquarters located here.
"Keep Austin weird" is the belief held by Austinites, where technology, art, and a spirit of rebellion converge in this city.
Jason grew up in such an environment.
Jason Zhao has had an entrepreneurial spirit since childhood, passionate about sharing ideas and supporting young entrepreneurs.
During high school, Jason was responsible for TEDxAustinYouth locally, supporting participants in exploring new ideas and innovations through interaction.
He enjoys collaboration and is open to communication.
During the same period, he began to try his hand at entrepreneurship. In ninth grade, he and his friends conceived a startup.
After several changes in company strategy and facing numerous setbacks, he realized that young entrepreneurs face many challenges.
Later, he created Project Zilker to guide young entrepreneurs to avoid detours using his own experiences of failure.
In the summer of 2016, Jason Zhao joined the MIT Launch Camp. During this two-month summer training camp, Jason Zhao and his peers established PolitiFund, a platform for crowdfunding through political lobbying to help people enhance their political expression.
During that time, Jason sent at least 1,000 emails to promote the platform.
This honed his ability to handle rejection and acquire resources.
It's hard to imagine that outside of these activities, Jason also participated in Model United Nations and was an Eagle Scout (top 4%) in BSA.
Jason consistently maintained top grades in his class and graduated with honors, being featured in school reports.
With a perfect SAT score of 2400, Jason Zhao chose Stanford among full scholarship offers from Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Wharton, and others.
Jason Zhao obtained a bachelor's degree in Philosophy from Stanford and pursued a master's degree in Computer Science.
During his studies, he devoted almost all his time to AI, conducting research projects with PhD students and interning at DeepMind early on.
He was eager to transform fresh research findings into useful commercial products.
It was during his internship at DeepMind that he reread the white papers of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Compared to the AI industry, he was shocked by the equality in blockchain research, the efficient transformation from technical research to product implementation, and the Darwinian environment of on-chain evolution.
This is a testing ground for cutting-edge technology, political philosophy, and the organic interplay of capitalism, resonating with Jason Zhao's soul.
During his undergraduate years, Jason Zhao founded Stanford Rewired, dedicated to the intersection of technology and society.
This publication aims to amplify marginalized voices, providing diverse perspectives and interdisciplinary stories.
As the editor-in-chief, he deeply contemplates the intersection of politics, philosophy, economics, governance, and technology.
AI reshapes creativity, making content infinitely rich.
Blockchain establishes digital property rights, granting data verifiable scarcity.
AI + Blockchain + IP = Story Protocol
This exciting idea led the youngest PM at DeepMind to resign and start his own venture.
In the CSS accelerator organized by a16z, Jason met the experienced young entrepreneur SY.
They were both excited about solving practical problems in the field of intellectual property.
After working together for a month, Jason Zhao wrote the first draft of the Story Protocol white paper! 
What will the world look like?
What do we need to do to make intellectual property fully programmable?
Just as blockchain makes currency programmable, we can unlock an internet through Story that allows creativity, intellectual property, and ideas to have ownership, and not only ownership but also programmable ownership.
This is a vision for a new era of creativity.
Building this infrastructure will spark a renaissance.
The rest of the story is well-known.
From the first contact with investors to completing the first round of financing, Story Protocol took only three weeks.
a16z invested in three rounds, raising the total financing amount to $134 million. At this time, Jason Zhao was only 25 years old.
"The simplest way to achieve success and happiness is to do what you want to do."
From childhood to adulthood, Jason has never wanted to be anything but an excellent entrepreneur, and this has shaped who he is today.
