DefiPodcast Interview with Emin Gün Sirer

The Story

I was drenched.

Between the Argentinian sun and hauling forty pounds of camera gear a couple thousand feet, the sweat marks under my arms looked like abstract art.

I had less than an hour to mic everyone, set the cameras, dial in the lighting, back up my cards, and make sure the scene looked halfway decent. Oh—and I was missing two mics. Perfect start for the moment I was supposed to direct and shoot an interview with the Blockfishter himself, Emin Gün Sirer.

Emin’s team was great, though the security felt like something out of a presidential detail. I guess when you’re a billionaire, that’s just normal. At one point an Ava Labs team member was literally running the AC for me. “Guys, this room is tiny and Will is boiling,” she said. She wasn’t wrong. I was basically a human humidifier.

Eventually I got everything as dialed as it could be. At some point, you just have to say, “Screw it—roll camera.”

Everyone settled in. We started the interview. The live band outside made things interesting, but miraculously no batteries died, no cameras glitched, and nothing went catastrophically wrong—aside from one mic I placed like a sleep-deprived raccoon.

For the chaos leading up to it, the shoot actually turned out pretty great.