A Conversation with TrueNorth Co-Founder: Infinitely-User-Approached AI, A 24/7 Degen Crypto Partner

TechFlow: Zolo

TrueNorth: Willy & Alex

Translator：Cheryl L

In the rapidly evolving crypto AI sector, where AI-driven meme coins can launch in moments, TrueNorth distinguishes itself as the industry’s first AI-powered value discovery platform. To mark the closed beta launch of TrueNorth, TechFlow conducted an in-depth interview with its co-founders, Willy and Alex.

• “TrueNorth is pioneering adaptive UI/UX design. Our platform dynamically tailors the interface to match users’ investment preferences in real time. Additionally, our Agent search delivers results from multiple data sources with latency under 10 seconds, and with further refinements, we’re achieving user-specific responses in just a few seconds. No other crypto application currently matches this performance,” Alex shared.

• TrueNorth also addresses the core priorities of crypto users. Discussing the distinct role of crypto AI, the co-founders explained: “crypto often presents the greatest disconnect between what users want and what they achieve, but AI can bridge that gap effectively. Moreover, crypto is inherently tied to financial outputs, with users focused on maximizing profits or minimizing losses. In essence, crypto AI tackles precise, practical challenges with clear real-world impact.”

• Drawing on deep insights from both IT and crypto sides, Willy shared his approach to quickly building user awareness of TrueNorth: “Navigating crypto can feel like charting uncharted waters. TrueNorth aims to serve as a guiding star, helping users cut through market noise to find optimal opportunities.”

In this feature, we explore Willy and Alex’s insights into TrueNorth’s unique positioning, technological edge, and product development plans in the highly competitive crypto AI landscape.

AI to Solve The Biggest Crypto Pain Points

TechFlow: We’re thrilled to have this opportunity for an in-depth discussion. To start, could you both introduce yourselves?

Willy：

Hello, I’m Willy, co-founder of TrueNorth.

From mid-2022 to late 2024, I worked at WOO, a centralized cryptocurrency exchange that also operates WOOFi, a decentralized trading platform. I initially served as COO and later took on the role of Acting CEO. During my tenure, I spearheaded the company’s expansion into Europe, Southeast Asia, and South Korea, driving significant business growth. My responsibilities included shaping the company’s overall strategy, overseeing business development, ensuring legal and regulatory compliance, and, most critically, building the WOO ecosystem. I led initiatives such as establishing the WOO ecosystem, expanding DeFi operations, integrating cross-chain functionality across 14 blockchains — including EVM chains and Solana — and managing the listing of the WOO token. That was my first chapter in the crypto world.

Before entering crypto, I was a software entrepreneur. From 2015 to 2021, during the peak of the SaaS boom, I founded a SaaS company focused on CRM and ERP solutions. The company grew to nearly 200 employees and raised funding from angel rounds through Series B, with major investors including Shunwei Capital, co-founded by Lei Jun. In 2021, I stepped away to explore opportunities in crypto.

Alex：

Hello, I’m Alex, co-founder of TrueNorth.

My background is related to AI. I earned my PhD at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, focusing on AI and domain-specific computing. Previously, I worked as a researcher at Intel Labs, specializing in machine learning acceleration.

During the second year of my PhD, I ventured into entrepreneurship, joining Iluvatar CoreX, an AI chip company, where I led software and hardware system development for their North American R&D efforts. After graduating, I returned to Shanghai around 2020 to join McKinsey, where I advised clients in industries such as semiconductors, cloud services, AI-driven retail, and gaming. My work focused on go-to-market strategies and implementing new business models.

Later, I joined Temasek, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, where I managed technology investments across Greater China and the Asia-Pacific. My portfolio spanned AI, semiconductors, and crypto, covering primary and secondary market investments as well as founder funds. After two years at Temasek, I moved to a leading AI chip company with a post-investment valuation of approximately $3 billion. There, I oversaw product development, strategy, and capital markets, managing four generations of GPUs and establishing one of Western China’s largest AI data centers. I also secured key partnerships with major tech company clients. Last year, after completing a major delivery phase and supporting preparations for a STAR Market listing, I decided to dive fully into the AI startup ecosystem.

I met Willy during my time at Temasek. Having been deeply immersed in AI, I recognized the potential for combining AI with crypto as the Agentic AI trend gained momentum. Willy and I hit it off immediately, and that’s how TrueNorth began.

TechFlow: Both of you have extensive experience in IT and consulting, and have now fully committed to the crypto + AI space. Could you share what you find most compelling about this sector?

Willy：

When I first transitioned from SaaS to crypto, my biggest realization was this: tech industry democratized information, while crypto is democratizing money. By “democratizing,” I mean making the benefits of technology more accessible to users and society at large. Building on this idea, I started to see that combining crypto with AI could unlock a wide range of unique possibilities.

I was deeply inspired by The Network State, a book by Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase. It offers a macro perspective on how global dynamics, like US-China competition, are accelerating the formation of cultural communities. These communities aren’t tied to nations but to decentralized networks, where digital identities and assets exist in a trustless, distributed form. This vision excited me and drew me into crypto.

However, over the past three years, I’ve noticed that crypto’s adoption has progressed more slowly than expected. Challenges like poor user experience and regulatory hurdles have held it back. While technologies like chain abstraction and account abstraction wallets have advanced, users still lack an intuitive entry point to crypto and its benefits. Early last year, during a conversation with Alex, we recognized the pivotal role AI could play in addressing these barriers. That insight sparked the creation of TrueNorth, which we see as a significant opportunity to bridge that gap.

Alex：

I’d like to add a perspective from my experience in SaaS, where I closely observed many SaaS companies, particularly in ToB (business-to-business) applications. Early on, I recognized the transformative potential of AI, especially with the rise of Agentic AI. These agents fundamentally reshape how users interact with interfaces and systems.

In the tech industry, SaaS companies often aim to deliver highly standardized products to scale efficiently and reduce costs. However, standardized solutions struggle to meet diverse, complex needs, particularly in scenarios requiring extensive customization. The emergence of AI agents has changed this by significantly narrowing the gap between user intent and achieving desired outputs, thereby enhancing user experience. We’ve already seen this shift in the tech industry within specialized fields like legal and medical services, where AI has transformed user-agent interactions. I noticed this trend about a year before agents entered mainstream attention, and I believe its impact is comparable to the Mobile Revolution — akin to the groundbreaking UX/UI paradigm introduced by the iPhone’s multitouch screen.

Agentic AI represents a paradigm shift. While OpenAI’s approach might evoke the image of users chatting with an agent via text, modern agents are evolving to proactively deliver tailored outputs based on user preferences, guiding users on what to prioritize. This proactive model was a key assumption we embraced when envisioning the agent revolution.

As for why crypto, we believe that among all user journeys, crypto presents the widest gap between intent and outputs — or, put simply, the greatest friction. For example, in crypto, decentralized infrastructure often dictates user experience, rather than user needs shaping the infrastructure. This dynamic creates unique challenges.

We see Agentic Technology as a powerful solution to crypto’s most pressing pain points, enabling users to better capture alpha, seize financial opportunities, and navigate complex systems. As Willy mentioned, combining AI with crypto can further democratize access to information and opportunities, making them more equitable and tailored to individual needs while lowering the barriers to DeFi participation. Our goal with TrueNorth is to leverage AI to address the specific challenges faced by the crypto community and enhance the experience for future users entering the space.

Crypto AI: Closer to Capital, Easier to Implement

TechFlow: The crypto + AI narrative is trending, but some in the AI community remain skeptical about crypto AI’s development, questioning both AI development capabilities and product outputs. How do you address these concerns, and what do you see as the core value of crypto AI?

Alex：

Let me start with the first question: What makes crypto AI stand out?

In my view, crypto is an industry that sits extremely close to money. All transactions happen on a transparent, decentralized ledger. This means, to some extent, if you dig deep enough, no secret remains hidden. That’s the fundamental difference between crypto and traditional finance. In the early days, crypto had fewer participants, so less data was mined or brought to light. But as more people enter the space and parse this data, a clear opportunity emerges: since on-chain data is publicly available and factual, how can we process it in real time, present it transparently, and make it accessible to help users gain a clearer understanding of crypto?

Additionally, because crypto is so closely linked to money, user intent is more straightforward from an AI perspective, with fewer detours between intent and output.

For example, when you use a search engine, your queries can be broad — weather, food, or news — creating multiple paths to fulfill your intent. In crypto, however, user questions tend to be simple: How do I make money? How do I make more money? Or how do I lose less? The path from intent to output is clearer, and AI can leverage existing data to level the playing field, enabling better asset management or, more bluntly, uncovering wealth-building opportunities. This focus is what sets crypto AI apart. Compared to traditional AI tools, crypto AI tackles more targeted problems, and by aggregating on-chain data and tailoring it to individual needs, it has greater potential for real-world application.

Now, addressing the second question: Why do many people believe crypto AI struggles to deliver?

If you look closely, the grand narrative of AI centers on achieving breakthroughs in general-purpose capabilities. Take OpenAI, for instance — it can assist with financial analysis or track an F1 race, aiming to push the boundaries of universal functionality. This vision is ambitious but challenging, gravitating top talent to focus on these broad advancements.

In contrast, many crypto agents are designed to solve real, tangible problems, such as improved UI/UX, personalizing experiences, or information overload. As I mentioned, crypto AI focuses on more defined issues, but with two stages to unfold:

At the outset, crypto AI can be quickly validated or exposed as ineffective because it’s ToC. Users immediately sense whether a product performs well or falls short. In the past, crypto projects — like building a blockchain — could take years to prove their worth, with narratives shifting alongside market cycles. Crypto AI, however, moves at a faster pace. The first wave of crypto AI was largely meme-driven, with technically simplistic projects like GOAT. Initially, people found GOAT amusing, but few cared about its actual value or purpose. In such a fast-paced, easily scrutinized environment, ToC crypto AI products face more intense pressure.

Well, where there are challenges, there are opportunities. As the industry recognizes that crypto AI is more than just memes, the focus shifts toward developing more effective solutions: How can we build better solutions? Specifically, how can crypto AI address real user pain points? For instance, in high-frequency, high-stakes scenarios, AI can help analyze why prices rise or fall, what to focus on, and how to act. Countless real problems are waiting to be solved, and this is exactly what TrueNorth is aimed at.

TechFlow: Building on your response, what do you think could be the catalyst to attract more general-purpose AI developers to crypto AI?

Alex：

From a vision perspective, TrueNorth is precisely that catalyst.

TrueNorth’s mission is straightforward: every morning, you check your wallet to see if you’ve made money. TrueNorth aims to optimize your asset allocation — whether to buy or sell, and why prices are rising or falling. We’re working to streamline this entire process, making it seamless and enabling AI to deliver personalized insights for every user.

Currently, crypto’s penetration rate is only about 5%, but some CeFi users are already using AI-driven tools to manage assets and capture wealth opportunities in crypto or DeFi. Could TrueNorth today become the first tool used by the next 5% of users entering crypto? That’s the ambitious goal we’re pursuing: ensuring that every new crypto user, who inevitably needs asset management support and guidance on spotting opportunities, has a tool to navigate the overwhelming noise and information overload. TrueNorth is designed to be that intuitive solution, attracting more people into the industry.

In essence, when people first step into the crypto world, we want TrueNorth to be the product that comes to mind.

TechFlow:

Absolutely, many people new to crypto get confused by the simplest terms. For example, a friend recently wanted to buy a subscription on an overseas site using USDT, but didn’t know how to buy USDT, how to transfer it, or what TRC and EVM addresses mean. There are countless foundational challenges to address. As Alex mentioned, bridging the gap for crypto beginners needs significant effort in contents or product design — a massive market opportunity.

Willy：

I totally agree. I’ve seen this myself with friends, and in our recent user interviews, we’ve heard a lot about these difficulties people face when getting started.

When it comes to attracting more talent to build in crypto, I think things are a lot harder now than before. Especially since many copycat projects barely recover. That’s why crypto projects today really need to be good at finding real user needs. This approach shares similarities with Silicon Valley methodologies used in the tech industry: you have to identify a clear pain point and solve it with an easy-to-use app or functionality. If you get this right, you can both win over users by meeting their real needs and attract great talent who want to solve real problems.

Beyond identifying pain points, success then comes down to a battle of vision and expertise — how well you execute technically, chart your implementation path, and make smart strategic decisions. These factors are critical for talented individuals to willingly join your passion.

The last thing is execution. I recently shared a chart on X highlighting this. As Alex noted, many things in crypto are hard to disprove, but from an application perspective, we need clear metrics to evaluate product performance. Execution hinges on tangible outputs, like delivering products on time and meeting user expectations.

TrueNorth: Your 24/7 Crypto OG Companion

TechFlow: You mentioned the product vision earlier: when people first meet crypto, they’ll think of TrueNorth. A project’s name often reflects its core mission. Is there a deeper meaning behind the name “TrueNorth”?

Willy：

The name TrueNorth was Alex’s idea. For most users, entering crypto feels like embarking on an adventure. It’s actually dangerous — easy to lose money, overwhelmed by information, riddled with pitfalls, and highly complex. We believe this journey needs a guiding force. “TrueNorth” symbolizes a compass, much like the one explorers relied on during early Arctic expeditions, or the Northern Lights illuminating a path through the cold wilderness. It’s a beacon to make the journey less daunting and isolating.

Additionally, the industry is filled with noise. The “True” in TrueNorth reflects our aim to cut through the fog, helping users uncover the truth and reach their goals.

TechFlow: For TrueNorth newbies, how would you describe the product in the simplest terms to help them quickly grasp its unique positioning in the crypto market?

Willy：

In simple terms, TrueNorth is the first AI-powered value discovery engine in crypto space. It brings together a wide range of data to help users stay updated on the market and make smarter, more efficient investment decisions.

What really sets TrueNorth apart is its personalized experience. It adjusts to each user’s level of crypto knowledge and preferences. Through our AI Portfolio feature, TrueNorth continuously monitors the market around a user’s assets, delivering signals based on their habits and future needs. These signals support better investment decisions and effective risk management, making the trading process simpler and more efficient.

Alex：

I envision TrueNorth as the first app crypto users open each day. As we’ve discussed, crypto users need to manage wallets, accounts, and market movements. It boils down to three questions: What’s happening? Why is it happening? What should I do next?

These questions could, in theory, pull data from countless platforms. We want TrueNorth to aggregate that information based on a user’s specific needs, presenting it in a trusted hub that reveals the truth behind the data. In one word: TrueNorth is your reliable partner, guiding you through the chaos of the crypto industry.

To take it a step further — if we personify it, TrueNorth is like your 24/7 crypto OG companion. Ask it anything you are confused about crypto. Every morning, it’s your first place to check what's going on in the market today.

TechFlow: Here’s an interesting question: issues like AI hallucinations have raised a lot of concern. TrueNorth provides users with a lot of information, but how can users trust its output? How can the accuracy of information be ensured?

Alex：

That’s an excellent question. On one hand, TrueNorth pulls from a wide range of real-time on-chain and off-chain sources: on-chain sources including trading and asset stats from various blockchains such as Solana and EVM-compatible chains; off-chain data including diverse shilling or pumping signals across mainstream social-media sources such as CT influencers, alpha Telegram groups, even rug pull gangs, etc.

On the other hand, we aggregate this vast amount of data with high precision, using reinforcement learning in our underlying Agent system to refine how it processes information based on real-time market changes. With such comprehensive and up-to-date data sources, our AI employs cross-validation logic to form a closed loop, leveraging large language model capabilities to synthesize its insights as close to the truth as possible.

For example, you might see a project being hyped on Twitter today, people shilling or calling for big incentives. But does that mean it’s a good project? Not really. You need deeper data: things like market cap, on-chain liquidity, future roadmap, etc.. TrueNorth conducts multidimensional due diligence, presenting users with the most comprehensive and accurate data without distorting results through external incentives.

I think this is one of the key things. It’s all about giving the most honest feedback based on real market data, totally different from the usual hype and shilling. I believe this will give users a truly unique experience.

“Personalized” Frontend, Ultra-Low Latency Backend Efficiency

TechFlow: Given the technical insights shared by Alex, could you both elaborate on what cutting-edge functionalities are developed on TrueNorth? What challenges deeply tested your team? Any stories behind it?

Alex：

TrueNorth’s technical foundation rests on three core modules:

• Generative UI/UX: TrueNorth delivers a dynamic, highly personalized interface that actively adapts to each investor’s interactions and evolving market conditions.

• Agentic Flow: Our proprietary, scalable AI framework leverages advanced multi-agent collaboration to seamlessly integrate discovery and execution functions. TrueNorth infers user intent from historical behavior and preferences, orchestrating complex investment workflows to reduce cognitive load and simplify operations.

• RL Bootstrap: TrueNorth employs advanced reinforcement learning techniques, including self-play, multi-agent reinforcement learning, and human feedback-driven reinforcement learning, to continuously optimize agent performance.

I believe generative UI/UX is a truly forward-thinking concept. While it’s gaining attention, our ultimate goal is to achieve "genuine personalization". Early in our discussions, when Willy and I were brainstorming, a team member pointed out that even during the mobile application era, UX adaptation is not as ideal as what many tech companies plan. However, we thought AI agents could be the key to achieving genuinely personalized UX, overcoming the limitations of previous approaches.

In crypto, generative UI/UX is the critical path. During a crypto user life cycle, we focus more on how to efficiently visualize all kinds of informations such as technical index, TLDR briefs, or trading signals. We even designed a functionality called "Look Through Someone's Lens", which will put together thoughts from the perspectives of a KOL or influencer. That’s where generative UI/UX comes in, using AI to create real-time, customized visualizations like data modules and charts — think of the widgets in Apple’s Health app, but tailored entirely to user preferences.

For instance, Willy might be a long-term investor, while I’m focused on meme coins. Our priorities differ, so TrueNorth dynamically adjusts the frontend interface to reflect our unique needs. This level of customization was previously unattainable with traditional, template-based approaches. Our breakthrough in generative UI/UX is a key innovation and one of our product’s standout features.

The biggest challenge in achieving this was perfecting customization. Blockchain’s advantage lies in wallet connectivity, which provides access to users’ transaction histories and behaviors, enabling robust personalization from the start. Leveraging this, our product prototype has already delivered impressive results.

The second story involves Agentic Flow. The concept sounds straightforward — some might compare it to frameworks like LangChain — but building a toy is easy; creating a production-grade application is incredibly tough. Our Agent search, for example, achieves latency under 10 seconds across multiple data sources, and with optimizations, we’re hitting user-client-level feedback in just a few seconds. No other crypto application currently matches this performance.

Looking ahead, supporting hundreds of thousands or even millions of daily active users (DAUs) is our goal. Even the best open-source frameworks designed by big techs won't match our demands.

Beyond ultra-low latency, we face the challenge of designing an efficient Agent organization structure. Each generative UI on the frontend is supported by an Agent — how does it quickly find answers and present them in a personalized way? This involves a host of complex technical problems. Our core team, which has experience building production-grade architecture for Southeast Asia’s largest e-commerce and media platforms, planned for scalability from day one. Achieving sub-second response times required building our own framework and stack from scratch. This is an area many teams, no matter in crypto or other tech spaces, didn't pay enough attention to. But we’ve proactively made breakthroughs.

TechFlow: While TrueNorth runs its alpha test, what positive or negative feedbacks have you received? Would you share some of it? Also, what new features can we expect in future updates?

Willy：

Throughout this process, we have observed significant differences among users. For instance, the reactions of crypto veterans and newcomers to the same signal are diverse, and they have completely different expectations for our app. The user cycle varies as beginners focus more on exploration and discovery, while the OGs prioritize rapid iteration to keep pace with market shifts. We have yielded some insights via user research, though certain aspects remain unresolved. We aim to address these diverse needs through generative UI/UX to adapt to individual preferences.

Another challenge is building user trust in AI. TrueNorth not just provides data, but insights. Waiting for users to trust these AI insights could be a hurdle. We believe that by offering personalized services through generative UI/UX and reinforcing our insights with credible external validation, we can gradually build confidence in our outputs.

Alex：

Looking at our future product roadmap, we’re focusing on several key areas:

The first is to keep building the dynamic personalization. We hope TrueNorth can offer unique experiences for everyone at each stage and collaborate to build their own investing strategy and crypto understanding.

The second is to expand asset dimensions. We’re moving beyond single-token focus to aggregating multiple events. This involves topic capturing over timing and cycle such as the US-China confrontation, and asset categories such as non-minerstream assets, lower market cap projects, on-chain products, RWA assets, etc., to provide users with more choices and discoveries.

A defining feature of TrueNorth is our commitment to deeply understanding user intent and proactively delivering signals. For example, when users ask, “Should I buy Bitcoin?” many agents might simply say “no” and end the conversation. But TrueNorth digs deeper, recognizing that the real question is often: “When is the right time to buy BTC?” Our agents are designed to uncover the real intent behind questions and provide answers at the most relevant moments, ensuring every query receives a thoughtful response, even days later. This proactive, intent-driven functionality is a cornerstone of our platform.

These features will always be prioritized and we will be committed to improving TrueNorth experience.

Crypto AI Singularity: Infinitely-approached User Intent

TechFlow: The AI sector in crypto is heating up again after the last AI meme frenzy. What do you think would be the next big trend driving the crypto AI sector?

Willy：

I see two trends emerging.

First is products like TrueNorth. Unlike other chatbox products that simply custody users' assets, which is too straightforward and immature as I think; products like TrueNorth will better perform what "AI-powered" means while suit users' demands more naturally.

Second if how to define agent or agency. It's a question faced by both fintech and crypto. I believe agents must be multi-step and autonomous to handle complex user demands. Still, this field needs time to mature. Only when technology and ecosystems are ready will we see the true Agentic Economy take shape, which is TrueNorth’s ultimate goal.

Alex：

Our view of the market is reflected in TrueNorth’s mission, which can be summed up in one phrase:

Output should be infinitely approaching user's intent.

This is an evolving process: Google provides links, GPT offers answers, but Agents push the boundary further, moving from discovery to execution — and ideally, to the best possible output. This shift expands AI’s role from finding information to delivering results.

Building this vision involves onboarding new users, but our goal remains steadfast. In the future, as delivery systems evolve, humans will play a smaller role, while Agent-to-Agent collaboration will become critical for achieving optimal outputs. This is inevitable.

The current challenge is user trust — educating they believe the content Agents discover is accurate, and eventually, trusting Agents to execute those outputs effectively.

This trust-building is gradual, but AI technology is advancing rapidly. In crypto, the gap between user intent and desired outputs is relatively narrow, as most users aim for wealth creation or better asset management. This focus accelerates the development cycle for crypto AI, creating a fast path to real-world impact.

That’s why, in designing TrueNorth, we’ve integrated the Agentic Economy into our product stack from the start. We anticipate others will offer strong capabilities, but our role as a core platform is to drive a complete loop from user intent to output, fostering better services at the distribution layer. This is the direction we see for the future.

TechFlow: One more thing: Macroeconomic factors like policies, regulatory bills, and tariffs are fostering closer ties between finance and crypto, paving the way for a more vibrant on-chain financial ecosystem. Do you see this as a significant boost for TrueNorth’s growth?

Willy：

I think it’s definitely positive.

During my time at WOO, I worked extensively on license strategy. Comparing the regulatory landscape from two years ago to today, it’s clear that the environment for crypto has become relatively more permissive, particularly in the United States. Regulatory agencies like the SEC, CFTC, and DOJ have shown reduced enforcement intensity in recent cases, and Europe’s MiCA framework, while implemented, hasn’t led to significant enforcement actions. This relaxed regulatory climate is highly favorable for crypto’s development over the next three to four years.

However, a lenient regulatory environment can also attract bad actors who exploit gaps for malicious activities. I believe this permissiveness is temporary, and future issues may prompt tighter oversight. So, while the current conditions are advantageous, we need to remain cautious and avoid overly aggressive or reckless moves.