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From Apple & Uber to Creating a Multi-Billion Dollar Wallet Industry | Magic Labs Documentary

Sean Li and Jaemin Jin founded Magic Labs. Today, they've onboarded 50M+ wallets and 200,000 developers, and raised $80M+ in funding from top-tier investors, including PayPal Ventures. This film captures the raw entrepreneurial journey—from Sean's early days selling his first startup KiteMatic to Docker, through the near-death experiences of Magic Labs, to their current mission of building Newton Protocol, the programmable trust layer to bring all assets on-chain, for agentic AI, stablecoins, RWAs and the $250T global asset market. Key Insights: 1. The Apple design philosophy that shaped Magic's "invisible technology" approach 2. Surviving the 2018 crypto winter when everyone called blockchain a scam 3. The controversial decision to simplify Web3 that got them attacked on Twitter 4. Building non-custodial solutions when VCs demanded centralization 5. The future of AI agents managing trillions in on-chain assets Timeline: 00:00 Intro 01:14 Founder & Magic Labs 02:17 From Jazz Dreamer to 50M Wallets 10:21 Apple’s Perfectionism vs. Startup Reality 16:52 One Month of Runway: Innovation Pulled from the Brink 24:03 Beyond the Numbers: What Makes Investors Truly Believe in Founders 27:39 Building the ‘Perfect’ User Experience Philosophy in the Age of AI 31:20 The Greatest Risk Is Not Taking Action About Magic Labs: Website: https://magic.link X: @magiclabs About Newton Protocol: Website: https://www.magicnewton.com/ X: @magicnewton EO creates in-depth documentaries and interviews with founders reshaping the global tech ecosystem. - For collaboration: partner@eoeoeo.net LinkedIn | @EO STUDIO X | @eostudi0

Jaemin JinguestSean Liguest
Sep 28, 202535mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Magic Labs’ founders: simplifying crypto onboarding, scaling wallets, enabling AI trust

  1. Sean Li and Jaemin Jin trace their paths from Waterloo and early careers (Docker, Uber, Apple) into Web3 after identifying onboarding as blockchain’s biggest adoption blocker.
  2. Magic Labs challenged early Web3 dogma by building familiar Web2-style logins while preserving non-custodial security via delegated key management, helping unlock mainstream-ready wallet UX.
  3. The company survived the 2018 crypto downturn and near-zero runway by doubling down on customer feedback, fundraising grit, and shipping iterations rather than perfectionism.
  4. Investor conviction is portrayed as a blend of market size, clear differentiation (security/UX/compliance), and founder “true believer” resilience during bear markets.
  5. Magic’s long-term vision evolves from invisible crypto UX for humans to policy-based guardrails (Newton) that let AI agents safely transact and manage assets on-chain autonomously.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Treat product UX as the adoption bottleneck, not an afterthought.

Magic’s core wedge was reframing blockchain from “powerful but inaccessible” to “familiar, seamless, and secure,” using logins people already understand to eliminate seed-phrase friction.

Perfectionism is a tool—apply it at the right phase.

Apple-style craftsmanship informed their standards, but they learned zero-to-one requires shipping fast, collecting feedback, and only then selectively “perfecting” what users consistently value.

Technical breakthroughs can be forced by market skepticism.

Developer and investor concerns about centralization pushed Magic to invent and patent delegated key management to achieve a Web2-like UX with Web3-like non-custodial guarantees.

Compliance can become a growth lever before you ‘need’ it.

Achieving SOC 2 Type 2 (and later ISO) early helped Magic credibly sell to enterprises, turning security posture into a differentiator rather than a late-stage checkbox.

Fundraising success depends on belief alignment as much as metrics.

They describe a split between investors who couldn’t buy the Web3 premise and those who shared the vision; winning capital required both traction (wallets/devs) and a compelling category narrative.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

I remember calling my mom. I was like, "Yo, I'm gonna do this. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I have to be in this space."

— Sean Li

When it came to zero to one, we focused on shipping fast, getting the product out so that, uh, we can get user feedback, and we focused on really leaning into their feedback, but also trusting our intuition of what the next stage of the product can be.

— Jaemin Jin

If Ethereum died, then my company dies too. So I just build as hard as I could.

— Sean Li

Payment, identity authentication, those things should be ambient. They should happen in the background without us having to intervene.

— Unknown

Progress is not linear .

— Sean Li

Waterloo roots and early startup lessons (KiteMatic → Docker Desktop)Apple craftsmanship vs. zero-to-one startup shipping speedEmbedded wallets and email/phone/social login for Web3 onboardingNon-custodial delegated key management and early controversyBear-market survival, one-month runway, and fundraising under pressureEnterprise readiness: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO, and compliance as a moatNewton protocol: policy/permission layer for agentic AI on-chain

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