Founder Playbook: Crypto Listings and VC Investment Strategies

October 29, 2025 | Founder Playbook: Crypto Listings and VC Investment Strategies

Speakers:

• Shusen Yang (Deputy Head of Partnerships & Business Development, OKX)
• Wei Dai (Research Partner, 1kx)

Description: This session focuses on the founder and investor perspective. Shusen Yang will detail how leading exchanges evaluate new tokens, what goes right (and wrong), and how founders can prepare for a successful listing. Wei Dai will discuss how top crypto venture funds identify promising projects, which signals truly matter, and how strong token design and founder-market fit drive long-term success.

Speaker Biographies:

• Shusen Yang is a seasoned Web3 executive and early DeFi builder, currently Deputy Head of Partnerships & Business Development at OKX. Since joining in 2020, he helped design OKX’s token-listing framework, contributed to OKX Earn during DeFi Summer, built OKX’s public-chain ecosystem, and established the OKX Wallet ecosystem. Previously he worked at TRON DAO and DDEX.
• Wei Dai is a Research Partner at 1kx, focusing on infrastructure and crypto-enabled networks. He was previously a research partner at Bain Capital Crypto and has advised numerous crypto startups. Before investing, he published over a dozen academic papers in cryptography and blockchains. Wei holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC San Diego.