The Life of a Crypto Founder

IN THIS EDITION:

• Why crypto startups need enterprise sales

• Going to market in Asia, with notes from Korea Blockchain Week

• Underrated ideas, following vs. deciding what’s interesting; from cultural deserts to finding what you’re looking for… on computers

THE ARGUMENT

Crypto startups need enterprise sales, here’s why — and why now

Jason Rosenthal

“The best products sell themselves” has been a long-lived fallacy in tech. Even the most viral products can only get so far on their own before they need a boost to expand further.

Large enterprises in particular are prone to roadblocks like internal organizational politics, existing tech to replace or integrate with, or trouble spreading beyond a few early adopter-types. The only way to break through and sell to large enterprises is to have a robust sales function that can navigate these organizations.

While some founders might miss the insiders-only dynamic of early crypto sales, the current market shift — where traditional institutions are interested in crypto industry products (beyond stablecoin adoption) — signals a larger opportunity. But this shift also means that crypto founders must embrace enterprise sales, and sooner than later. Here’s what you need to know.

THE INTERVIEW

5 questions on crypto and policy with Miles Jennings

from Politico

What’s one underrated big idea?

Really good regulation can unlock innovation. The crypto industry gets a lot of headlines that portray it as trying to fight all regulation, but in reality the industry has mostly been focused on fighting bad regulation…

What has surprised you the most this year?

How fast the tide has turned. Twelve months ago, entrepreneurs were regularly asking: How do we leave the United States? And now they’re asking the exact opposite question: How do we stay here, how do we return? That’s a product of a bunch of different pieces that are all coming together. At the state level, you have Wyoming’s legal entity structure that is providing a home for projects to deploy their technology, keep it in the United States. We’re seeing the SEC launch Project Crypto that is going to do an enormous amount to move our capital markets on chain. It just highlights the lack of a constructive approach that the SEC took during the last administration. All of these options were perfectly available to that administration.

What’s a technology you think is overhyped?

I would say the casino side of the industry — memecoins

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