Founder Interview: FOMO Creator Explains How They Added 30,000 Users in One Day and Became One of the Fastest-Growing Crypto Apps

Original Title: How FOMO Became Crypto's Fastest Growing App (Founder Tells All)
Original Source: Maurits
Original Translation: Golem, Odaily Planet Daily

Editor's Note: Recently, the social-driven meme trading platform FOMO has gained significant attention. As of the time of writing, according to Dune Analytics, FOMO's trading bot volume and market share have both ranked first in the market, significantly impacting the current meme trading platform landscape. On August 12, FOMO's co-founder Se Yong conducted an interview, revealing his early personal crypto experience, the most successful meme coin he has traded, and the product philosophy behind FOMO's betting on mobile trading and social trading.

In the interview, Se Yong mentioned that FOMO currently has 1.3 million users, with a daily addition of 30,000 users. However, FOMO's goal is not to become just another professional meme terminal. He believes that market competition is a good thing, but FOMO's core goal is to grow the "cake," focusing not only on the crypto Twitter circle and crypto user base. This viewpoint may also be seen as a response to last week's Pump.fun extravagant spending to poach top traders from the FOMO platform.

The Odaily Planet Daily has summarized the core content of the interview as follows. Enjoy~

Founder's Personal Crypto Experience: Making His First Fortune on Avalanche, Not Skilled in Meme P Farming

Early Crypto Journey

Se Yong: When I first got into cryptocurrency, it was also through trading. On the Avalanche platform in 2021, there was a leak of an RPC, and the leaker was an account named sad start; haven't seen him since. At that time, I didn't know what cross-chain was or what RPC was, but he explained these concepts to me in a very interesting way step by step. He said, "Ethereum is too expensive, there's another option here, which is EVM. Trade here, and you'll find more opportunities."

I followed his advice, and my investment quickly went from a few hundred dollars to five figures. I think this is a significant moment for everyone involved in crypto trading. Since then, I have been trading on all blockchains, from the Ethereum mainnet to BSC, then to Tron, Solana, and all layer-two networks, and projects like Sui, Injective, and Sei. I have tried almost all of them, and the experience on each chain is completely different.

However, I always wanted to develop something, and some ideas gradually formed in my mind.

About two years ago, my friends discovered a coin called Keeta on Base. They each bought about $10,000, and they all ended up making seven figures. At that time, I felt like I should also buy some, but I had no money on the Base chain.

Moreover, cross-chain was very troublesome. I had to set up a Rabby Wallet, then find a cross-chain bridge, and figure out where to make the transaction on which frontend. The amount of work was just too much for me. What originally should have taken only 45 seconds was so complicated. I thought, since I have this barrier, then others might have it too, and I needed to help others solve this problem.

Personal Trading Style: Not Good at Being an Early Adopter, Better Suited as a Diamond Hand

Se Yong: I have never been the typical Meme trader, such as using Telegram bots or web terminals, but I have tried spending 16 hours in front of the computer, carefully studying every Meme coin, trying to understand their narrative arc. But honestly, I'm not really good at it. I think this is also one of the reasons I founded Fomo because I believe not everyone will understand these narratives.

Some Meme gods can quickly understand the narrative of some Meme coins. But people like me, even in a bull market, only make about three trades a week. Some tokens fascinate me from a narrative perspective, so I buy in. For example, the GME token. When the Roaring Kitty documentary was released, I thought the token had a great narrative, and many people were discussing it, so I quickly bought in. Pandora is another example. It is an ERC-404 token that is both a token and an NFT. I thought it was cool, so I got in early. This may be one of the most successful trades I've ever made.

Overall, my entry and exit points are not the best. I belong to the type of Diamond Hands who will continue to hold, even in a downturn, still holding onto belief.

Who Are Your Top 5 Favorite Traders, and Would You Consider Inviting Them to Join Fomo?

Se Yong: The first is GCR. I think he is a very remarkable trader with a legendary experience. The second is Kobe, especially when he was young. The third is Flood. I think he is also definitely one of the top figures, having early foresight into HYPE. In the fourth spot is Ansem. Although he is occasionally criticized, all of his judgments over the past five years have been quite accurate, such as accurately predicting SOL and early spotting some Meme coins.

Some of them are now trading on FOMO, and I have also talked to several others, but they are not trading on-chain. As seasoned veterans, they also need to maintain their reputation. Most of them will fade from the public eye after achieving success, except for Ansem, who has always been active in the spotlight.

In fact, I hope that FOMO can support the new generation of traders. A generation that grows up in the open from start to finish, FOMO can record their entire journey. Users can clearly see where they started and where they ultimately end up. I believe that every social platform needs a place to nurture local heroes. We need those who started from scratch. Bringing those already famous traders onto the platform is not always beneficial; they often dilute or even occupy the stage of new traders.

Therefore, the fifth top trader I selected is change. He is currently the number one on the FOMO leaderboard and has been holding that position for quite some time.

What is the ultimate goal of FOMO for individuals?

Se Yong: I think the most important thing is influence. When we set out to build FOMO, many of the issues we considered revolved around how to create a product that can reach users and deliver it to those we trust and those who are eager to experience unprecedented things.

I think there are many excellent companies in the cryptocurrency and finance sectors that are striving to bridge this gap, but none have truly perfected it. So, what we are contemplating is how to make it easy for all 7.8 billion people worldwide to get started, which requires a seamless user experience, social interaction, and excitement. Therefore, FOMO is trying to integrate all these factors. People try to measure products with valuation, funding, fees, or other metrics, but users and influence are the fundamental driving forces of product development.

Total users reach 1.3 million, with 30,000 new users per day; FOMO aims to expand the "cake"

How did FOMO get through the early stages of entrepreneurship?

Se Yong: We currently have about 1.3 million users, with approximately 30,000 new users added daily recently. Many founders ask me, "How did you so easily reach 1,000 users, 100,000 users, or even more?"

The process is not as easy as everyone imagines. People often only see the final product and think it's all too easy, but in reality, at the beginning of our startup, we raised funds from 140 angel investors, but within a few months, we did not have 140 users.

We spent a long time building up our user base who came back to us every day, provided feedback, and tried out the platform. I am still very thankful to the early users from May 2025 to July 2025 who gave us daily feedback, pointed out issues, and told us how to improve.

Entrepreneurs really need to listen carefully to the feedback from the top 5000 users because once you build a great product for them, you can scale it for others. Many people overlook this because they are too focused on quickly reaching 1000, 10000, 100000 users, but that's not helpful.

Why Can fomo Attract So Many Users?

Se Yong: We founded fomo following two core principles: first, how to make it as easy as possible for the average user to use the platform, and second, how to build user trust.

The average user is not familiar with the differences between SOL, ETH, and BNB, so fomo simply tells them it's just a cash balance, making it very easy to use. Although we haven't fully achieved this yet, fomo will be the fastest way to transact.

Assuming a user holds balances on both an EVM chain and the SOL chain on a platform, when transacting on both chains, they have to switch back and forth between the two. This takes a lot of time for platform users, as they need to figure out how to set up the transaction system and manage wallet private keys, among other things.

Currently, fomo's cross-chain transactions take approximately 3 to 5 seconds, and in the future, we aim to increase the transaction speed to 1 second. We hope the transaction speed will be so fast that people completely forget about the concept of cross-chain and only need one account balance to transact anytime, anywhere.

The second point is that users want to accumulate social capital through their trading behavior. Some traders may have only 300 followers, but their individual account balance could be in the eight digits, while others with 100,000 followers may only have a six-digit balance in their account. Yet, the latter group receives more attention and may even feel superior. People need to achieve consensus on who is the best. If someone steps forward claiming to be the best, they usually are not.

Therefore, I believe establishing a public leaderboard makes sense. If someone believes they are the best, then they should prove it. Some may not care about rankings or proving themselves, and that's completely fine. Essentially, over time, money will fade, reputation will fade, everything will fade, but the legacy will not disappear, and someone will always step up. This is what fomo is currently recording.

What are the characteristics of fomo Platform users, and how do they view user growth?

Se Yong: We believe that ideally, as the platform develops, the median transaction should decrease, and the average transaction amount should increase. However, the reality is different. More and more long-tail users have joined, some of them may not even have $100, but they are still transacting and learning.

But what I want to say is, many of our focuses are not on Crypto Twitter (CT) or even within the crypto user community. I think referring to fomo as a crypto company now is not very appropriate. We want to be a platform where anything can be traded and become a social graph in the financial field. I think this goes far beyond the scope of cryptocurrency and CT.

Therefore, we have tried many things that many Web 3 companies have never tried, such as User-Generated Content (UGC) to platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and many more. Many crypto companies consider these things useless in terms of growth because their user base still hovers around 10,000 to 30,000. But we try many new things every day, and that's where the fun is.

Will you provide a more professional terminal for professional traders?

Se Yong: We will never become that kind of professional Meme terminal. However, at the same time, we are not stubborn; we will listen to users' opinions and understand what the best use cases are. To be honest, the functionality of the current Fomo web version is a bit poor; it is still at the level when we first launched and has not been improved much yet.

The traffic of the Fomo web version now accounts for nearly 25% of our total traffic. We are in a stage that requires iterative updates and should develop all the features that users need, such as token exploration, social exploration, and a more convenient way to purchase. All these features can be implemented on the web terminal, but we will not design it to be as complex as a spaceship. Our goal is to make it more advanced but also simple enough for users to easily get started,

What are the characteristics of the newly launched community feature (Clans)?

Se Yong: Fomo launched the community feature (Clans) on August 11, but currently, this feature is still very basic. Users can see everyone in the community, including the tokens they hold. Anyone can join a group and participate in leaderboard competitions. This kind of competition has always existed, there used to be Binance leaderboards, Kol leaderboards, and the like, but they were not as transparent as what Fomo has now.

Our goal is to make all information publicly transparent, including traders, prediction markets, spot markets, and even earnings. For example, if you are the top earner trader, we will highlight you. Community is a great way to achieve this goal because trading should be social and therefore should involve teamwork.

The community feature is currently in a very primitive version. In the future, users will be able to engage in internal chats, recruit new members, offer subscription services, establish a shared fund pool, and even set up a community public address for team airdrops. The reason could be: "You are a respected and well-known community, and you will always hold these tokens, so we will airdrop them to you."

The community also has many ways to generate profits, similar to monetizing influence. Previously, people have always been carrying out these activities in secret. We want to bring everything to light, even though it may cause some pain in the short term.

fomo Originally Inspired by Moonshot

Why fomo is Betting on Mobile and Social

Se Yong: The trend of trading on mobile is, in my opinion, quite obvious. Most services in the world are migrating to mobile. Most people, young or old, are using smartphones. This is a transformation the world has already gone through, and we are now in the mid-to-late stage of this transformation.

Secondly, social trading owes much of its current scale to the success of Moonshot in November 2024. At that time, many people were trading on Moonshot, and they developed what I believe was the first version of a mobile trading app.

At that time, I showed this app to all my friends, but only five of them ended up downloading it. They made a few hundred dollars on Moonshot. For an average person, earning $300 in a week is already a substantial amount. You can save money or even order takeout several times a week. My friends made money, and then I advised them to cash out quickly because it was just a trendy online token, and they should put the money in the bank. But none of them listened, and in the end, they lost all their money.

I tried to investigate the reasons and found that most people experienced initial trading success by stumbling upon some advantages. For example, you could have followed that viral hippo on TikTok. However, when they didn't know what the top traders were doing or couldn't communicate with anyone in a timely manner, they basically had no advantage.

So my co-founder Paul and I both believe that transactions must have a social element. Traders need to communicate with people, need to promptly see information about the market and tokens, rather than seek information in Telegram chat groups, Discord, and various other accounts. Users need to be informed in real-time about who is buying what, how the market is moving, and how sentiment is changing. Thus, fomo was born.

How long until the first person earns a six-figure profit on fomo?

Se Yong: We have been in a bear market, so it's hard to imagine what a bull market would look like. But I estimate that in six months, many people will be able to earn this figure, and the top 100 on the current leaderboard may be completely different from now. There will always be opportunities, and new things will always emerge.

How do you view market competition?

Se Yong: We created fomo to make the pie bigger and make this place better, so we believe competition is a good thing.

This includes two aspects. First, competition is good because ultimately people will choose the best product, so the product is the most important. If our product is the best, then that's great, but if it's not, then it means we are bound to fail.

Second, competition is something we all have to face sooner or later; no one can become a great company without going through competition. So our philosophy is, if we are destined to fail, then let's fail now, as failure will teach us many lessons. I'd rather accumulate these experiences of failure today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and every day of the company's lifecycle.

My board member Chetan once said, the biggest existential threat to a company is never having experienced a crisis. Therefore, for us, competition is a good thing; there always has to be someone who makes the pie bigger, so why can't it be us?

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