ANIL LULLA took a leap of faith in 2018 when he quit his job at Deutsche Bank on Wall Street to co-found the crypto research company Delphi Digital.
But what is the story behind Anil Lulla and the success of his firm?
Who is Anil Lulla?
Anil Lulla was born in the US in 1992 and like many of those who have broken through in the crypto space in recent years, was involved in finance before making’s transition into blockchain technology.
“Ever since I was a kid I’ve always been really interested in finance and business strategy,” he said in an interview in 2020.
“So, in college, I majored in finance and minored in entrepreneurship funny enough. And essentially, after college, I went on to start up Bloomberg.”
Graduating from Rutgers Business School in New Jersey in 2014, his time at Bloomberg saw him working on corporate bonds. He left after less than two years to join Deutsche Bank in 2016 where he was responsible for designing leveraged finance products.
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Although he was exceeding in his job, Lulla found the corporate world frustrating with not enough challenge.
He once said: “I felt like 25 percent of the job was what I was interested in and another 75 percent was just learning the processes and paying the politics games.
“So, anyone who knows me knows, like, everything, like learning and I’m always pretty, very curious.”
He continued: “When 25 percent of my job is just focused on the stuff I actually liked and 75 percent is processes that five years are now I’m not really going to care about or even be doing anywhere, then it was time for me to leave.”
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In 2018, Lulla co-founded Delphi Digital with the assistance of four colleagues he had met while working at Deutsche Bank and Bloomberg. Their goal was to provide reliable, practical research in an area where loud clout-chasers and ensnaring fraudsters dominate.
Quitting his job to found the start-up was a great risk, and one that not everyone agreed with. Crypto had just entered the “great crash” of 2018 with prices plunging by as much as 80 percent compared to their peak.
“During my exit interview, my MD laughed and said ‘I thought that Bitcoin thing is over now?,” Lulla said on social media in 2020 as he recalled telling Deutsche Bank of his plans.
Following the firm’s success, he added that he wished “I could see her face” today.
Delphi Digital describes itself as a “research-driven firm dedicated to advancing the understanding and development of the growing digital asset market”.
Headquartered in New York City, the firm provides insights on macro developments, digital asset valuations, ecosystem dynamics, and network activity. Delphi Digital’s research is used by institutional investors, funds, and family offices.
Its products include research reports, an institutional-grade crypto asset data platform, and a real-time market intelligence feed.
It was a slow start for Delphi Digital, with the firm failing to attract the initial interest that it had hoped.
Lulla said of the first couple of years: “Honestly, while research was ‘not doing well’ from a financial space, we were honestly still pumping out research where we had maybe three or four subscribers.
“So we were just giving it out for free to everyone and acting like it was a very premium product.
“So it was a little bit like ‘fake it until you make it’.”
He said he and his colleagues ended up subsidising the research side of the business with consultancy work until “over time, research saw a lot of subscriber growth”.
In 2020, Lulla and his Delphi Digital co-founders decided to take the brand to the next level by launching a venture capital fund to “become more active participants” in the projects it believes “will make a material impact on the space”.
At the same time, Lulla created the Shard governance token for the well-known cryptocurrency-driven game Axie Infinity due to his interest in the emerging gaming industry supported by NFTs.
It has now been four years since Lulla first decided to quit his job at Deutsche Bank and set up shop with his friends. And there’s one metric in particular that highlights just how much of a success their venture has been: Delphi Digital is now thought to have an annual revenue of over $13million.
