We’re Not Here to Play Nice: The Scrappy, Unstoppable Mission Behind TRUF.NETWORK

Day 61 of 100 Days of TRUF

In the latest Activated Scale podcast, Stefan Rust doesn’t give the polished founder story. He gives the truth.

No deck. No PR polish. Just raw stories from the trenches - getting ghosted by over a thousand investors, wiring Bitcoin to a developer in Guatemala, building in a windowless basement at 3 a.m., and pushing forward when every sane person would've quit.

“We’re not here to ask for permission,” he told host Prateek Mathur. “We build - and beg for forgiveness later.”

It’s the kind of conversation that reminds you what building actually looks like. The grind. The scrappiness. The conviction to keep going when nothing’s working—until suddenly, it is.

Build Something Real, and Everything Gets Harder

There was no grand plan to become the data backbone of a decentralized economy. It started simpler than that. Governments were telling people inflation was “transitory.” But Stefan had been around enough systems, in enough countries, to know when he was being lied to.

So he asked the obvious question: what would it take to measure real inflation in real time?

The answer was Truflation - an independent index pulling data directly from the real world. Numbers people could feel matched their real world experience.

It clicked. Users came. People started sharing the data. And that was the moment Stefan knew: this wasn’t just about inflation.

This was about truth. Economic truth. Market truth. Predictive truth.

And building around that truth would require a whole new kind of infrastructure.

When Everyone Ghosts You, Build Anyway

“1,500 pitches. That’s what it took,” Stefan said.

Not to 1,500 firms. But to analysts, associates, partners, committees - across the stack. Most said no. Many said nothing at all.

“The worst is when they ghost you,” he said. “If we’re putting in the effort to meet, answer, follow up - at least show the respect to respond. Just say no.”

But rejection didn’t break him. It became fuel. Every cold shoulder, every shrug, every “we’ll circle back” became a reason to keep going.

Today, Truflation has half a million monthly users. But that came after years of being misunderstood - by investors, by institutions, even by early supporters.

What kept it alive wasn’t capital. It was conviction.

You Don’t Build This With Mercenaries

Startups talk about culture. Stefan talks about chemistry. About people who run at the problem without needing permission. About being stuck in a basement with no light, no distractions, and a to-do list that doesn’t care about your mood.

“You’re not ready for mercenaries,” he said. “You need missionaries.”

That mentality shaped how Truflation grew. And later, how TRUF.NETWORK was born—not just as a product, but as a protocol that others could build on, contribute to, and trust.

The Infrastructure of Trust

TRUF.NETWORK wasn’t part of some master roadmap. It emerged from necessity.

Once Truflation proved that real-time, verifiable data was possible, the next step was obvious: make it accessible. Make it composable. Let others build with it.

And so the protocol was launched, open-source, decentralized, and powered by the TRUF token, which doesn’t just reward participation, it enforces integrity.

Markets need data they can act on.Developers need sources they don’t have to question.And financial systems need infrastructure that can’t be gamed.

That’s what TRUF.NETWORK is becoming.

From Predictions to Products

For Stefan, this isn’t just about building better dashboards. It’s about unlocking an entirely new kind of financial product, one where data itself becomes a building block.

Prediction markets are already proving it: if you can verify the signal, you can trade on it. Now imagine tokenized energy contracts based on real-time weather data. Or inflation-hedged savings instruments that update daily. Or freight hedges that track shipping lane costs in real-time.

That’s not science fiction. That’s what’s next.

“If you can predict it, you can build a future on it,” Stefan said. “We’re just giving people the truth - and the tools.”

Still Scrappy. Still Relentless.

Stefan’s not slowing down. He’s still waking up at 5:30 a.m., still grinding in the dark, still ignoring the wellness bros preaching balance after their exits.

Mental health? Sure. But the real therapy is getting it built.

Because when you’re creating something that’s never existed, something the old world doesn’t want to see succeed, you don’t coast. You drive through.

TRUF.NETWORK isn’t the final product. It’s the foundation. For flatcoins. For indexes. For prediction markets and data-backed protocols we haven’t even imagined yet.

And it’s live. Right now.

🎙️ Listen to the full conversation:Youtube: Growing Truflation with Stefan Rust

Want to build? Start here → TRUF.NETWORK