Bankless · Monday, July 27, 2026
Vlad Novikovski, founder of Lighter, discussed his early academic achievements, including competing in the International Physics Olympiad and the International Olympiad of Informatics. He recalled meeting future industry leaders like the co-founders of Anthropic and the future CTO of Facebook at these events during his teenage years.
“And so who Vlad is, I think, is a pretty unique and interesting character. And I just really wanted to ask and answer the question, why do investors love Vlad?”
“Well, I started competing in, you know, academic competitions. Let's just call it that when I was around 12. And I guess some of the highlights of that were making the U.S. team to the International Physics Olympiad. Yeah.”
“And at the Infratix one, you know, the first CTO of Facebook was, I mean, they weren't, they didn't. The future CTO. Yeah, the future. Yeah. So some of the people who's also on the board of OpenAI now, right? So like, that's pretty interesting.”