Poolside Accelerator Stories: The Success of Portals

Welcome Portals - a yield and protocol aggregator for transaction bundling, any-to-any swaps, and real-time data. 

Portals simplifies DeFi to make it accessible to everyone, allowing users to combine multiple complex operations into one unified action, without a worry about chains and protocols in between. A one-click DeFi. And with their newly launched API aggregation solution, Pyxis, the world of unified API management has never been so widely available.

In this article, you’ll learn more about the success story of Portals, a DeFi infrastructure project, highlighting how Poolside’s tailored support and shared vision for a better DeFi space become reality.

Acceleration Journey: Portals at the Poolside Program

Joining the program in March 2023, Portals.fi was selected for Poolside Accelerator based on the strong team foundation and a product ready to go to market, above others. 

With a working product and a great engineering team, Portals leveraged our support, resources, and network for a steadfast drive ahead, closing a seed funding round and launching two major updates since entering the program.

Early Stages of Portals:

Portals was founded in 2022 and since the early days, the project has been deeply rooted in the vision and experience of its founders, Suhail Gangji and Nabi Ozberkman. 

Suhail, with his prior success co-founding Zapper, a true pioneer of DeFi “zap technology”, brought a proven track record of fast product development and delivery in DeFi. Nabi, with his extensive experience at OlympusDAO, contributed a deep understanding of DeFi intricacies. 

Together, Suhail and Nabi founded Portals with a mission to simplify DeFi, making it accessible to a wider audience and bridging the gap between complex financial protocols and everyday users. 

This period was marked by a focus on offering comprehensive swaps between exotic tokens, addressing a then vital need in the DeFi market. Founders’ combined expertise set Portals on a path to be an instrumental tool in the DeFi ecosystem as it geared up for broader adoption​.

“We were immediately drawn to Portals for its simplicity and vision of making DeFi more accessible to everyone. Their commitment to simplifying complex DeFi operations, coupled with a strong product already in motion, perfectly aligned with our ethos at Poolside of nurturing innovative and impactful projects in the Web3 ecosystem.” - João Leite, Managing Partner @ Poolside

As Poolside, we helped Portals on multiple levels: from marketing to BD, and fundraising to hiring.  

Fostering Growth: Poolside Elevates' Portals

At the Poolside Accelerator, we utilize a customized approach to assisting the innovative projects from the program. The work we did with Portals exemplifies that approach, fostering a relationship based on mutual trust and aligned ambitions, ensuring our joint efforts lead to substantial growth and success.

Marketing

To improve Portals’ marketing, we worked hand-in-hand in preparing the assets and content for Portals campaigns. That included campaign content drafts, strategic advisory, social media support, video assets creation, and more. Poolside was also active in finding the best talent for Portals’ Head of Marketing position.

Milky Way Campaign - Content Strategy and Drafts

As part of the Milky Way campaign (Portals v2), Poolside supplied strategic guidance and support to the Portals team in relation to content and social media.  The collaboration was a learning experience for both sides, ultimately contributing to a campaign that resonated well within the DeFi community.

Demo Day - video coverage and outreach to VCs and partners

The Demo Day on July 13, 2023, was a pivotal event, showcasing the remarkable progress of all four projects in the Poolside Acceleration Program, including Portals. Our team meticulously prepared a professional video pitch and demo, offering an in-depth look at Portals' journey, their future roadmap, and featuring keynote insights from renowned experts in the industry niche. 

This event played a key role in elevating Portals' visibility and connecting them with key investors and partners in the industry.

"Working with Portals has been a remarkable journey. Our collaboration helped them close a crucial fundraising round, and we played a key role in enhancing their marketing strategies, including the successful recruitment of their Head of Marketing. The Milky Way launch campaign was a standout success, as was their next fundraising round, thanks in part to our efforts in facilitating connections with key VCs. Watching Portals grow and thrive, both in terms of technology and user engagement, has been a testament to the dedication and talent of their team." - Edward Ward, Accelerator Manager @ Poolside

Funding

Portals received$100k of initial funding directly from Poolside. In May 2023, Portals announced the successful closure of a $2M seed funding round, led by Lightshift Capital, with participation from Poolside, Basement Labs, LongHash Ventures, Daedalus Angels, Mechanism Capital, leading angels 0xMaki, Mathieu Baril, Owl. eth, Emile Dubie, Rudy Kadoch, David Dias, and others.

The seed round was followed by a seed extension round, where Portals raised an additional $500,000, announced on September 13, 2023. The follow-on round was instrumental in helping Portals establish itself as a comprehensive DeFi aggregator, thereby marking the beginning of their era in "One-Click DeFi"​​​​​​​​​. Poolside actively participated in the follow-on fundraising by providing connections with key VCs.

Utilizing the connections with VCs from the 200+ strong global partner network, Poolside accelerated the closing of the funding rounds, totalling $2.5M during the time of acceleration.

Portals in numbers so far in 2023

💻 10X increase in API calls from 1M to 10M 
👥 6X increase of Discord & Twitter users
💰 $500K extension round secured
🧑‍🏫 New hires: Head of Marketing & Head of BD
⬆️ 2 product launches, Milky Way and Pyxis
👥 14 verified B2B introductions

Portals formally finished the acceleration in July 2023, but our teams stay in ongoing collaboration. 

"Our time at Poolside Accelerator has been transformative. The support we received in areas like fundraising, marketing, and strategic networking has been invaluable. We're particularly grateful for the guidance in launching our Milky Way campaign, which marked a significant milestone for us, and the Demo Day feature. The Poolside team's hands-on approach and commitment to our growth have been exceptional. As we look forward to further collaboration, our focus is now on expanding our product offering, with our latest innovation, the Pyxis API suite, set to further revolutionize the DeFi space." - Saheil Gangji, co-founder & CEO of Portals

Portals Today and the Road Ahead: Launching the Pyxis API Suite

After Milky Way, it’s time for round two! 

Enter Pyxis - API management tool. From devs, for devs. Pyxis is making DeFi more accessible and integratable. It’s more than just an API integration product; it's a suite of meticulously crafted tools, all designed with developers in mind.

Empowering Web3 Projects

Pyxis is designed as a plug-and-play solution for web3 and DeFi projects, offering a unified API for data, swaps, and zaps. It enables projects to simplify complex DeFi transactions into a single API request, dramatically enhancing user experience and operational efficiency.With just a few lines of code, projects gain immediate access to Volume and Liquidity Data, Asset Prices, APYs, Contract and Pool Addresses, Account Balances, and more, all indexed from over 150 protocols across 9 networks, and updated with every block.

Pyxis has already begun powering prominent DeFi applications, including XDEFI Wallet, Yearn, Stake | DAO, MeanFinance, PoolTogether, and hundreds of anonymous builders taking advantage of the API’s user-friendly integration.

Advanced Features and User Experience

One of the key highlights of Pyxis is its support for Intent-driven transactions through Account Abstraction, allowing for more flexible and efficient transaction pathways. Moreover, the recent update has expanded Pyxis’ capabilities, offering a broader range of metrics like usage metrics, fees, and historical data. This expansion not only enhances its utility but also simplifies complex technical analytics.

A Comprehensive Data Source

Pyxis stands out by covering over 35,000 tokens, surpassing even the likes of DefiLlama and Coingecko! This comprehensive coverage ensures that developers have a one-stop solution for all their data needs.

The Future of Pyxis: A Vision for Simplified Integration

Looking ahead, Portals is set to launch a comprehensive dashboard for Pyxis, further improving the user experience for developers. This dashboard will provide a simple and intuitive interface for creating apps, monitoring usage, and tracking revenue, embodying the vision of making integration of extensive web3 data just a click away.

Poolside is eagerly anticipating the opportunity to experience, utilize, and contribute to the exceptional products under Portals’ development.

📚 Read more about Pyxis in Portals’ blog article

🎧 Listen to the Poolside x Portals AMA

👷 Start building with Portals: build.portals.fi

Ongoing Collaboration and Support

Poolside’s journey with Portals didn't conclude with the end of the formal acceleration program. The ongoing support and collaboration, a key part of the Poolside approach, continues to play a crucial role in Portals' evolving story. We remain committed to supporting their ambitions and celebrating each new success.

Stay tuned for the latest advancements from Portals and other exciting projects nurtured by Poolside Accelerator. Follow us on X and LinkedIn for real-time updates and insights into the cutting-edge innovations shaping the future of web3. Be part of the journey as we continue to foster innovative projects and turn visionary ideas into reality.

About Portals
Portals is a DeFi platform offering a comprehensive solution for transaction bundling, any-to-any swaps, and real-time data analytics. It simplifies decentralized finance by providing a unified platform that combines multiple complex DeFi operations into a single, user-friendly interface. With Pyxis, an advanced API aggregation tool, Portals is enhancing accessibility and efficiency across the DeFi ecosystem, ensuring web3 developers have all the data they need to build in one place. 
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About Poolside
Poolside is an ecosystem designed exclusively for web3 builders. With its suite of services and expert resources, Poolside helps web3 projects make a splash in the rapidly evolving world of web3. In addition to being a physical hub at the heart of the web3 district in Lisbon, Poolside also hosts a remote accelerator program that takes selected projects from ideation to market launch, while providing initial funding of up to $100,000. The Poolside ecosystem is rapidly expanding with key partners and a growing community of web3 builders, mentors, and investors.
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