It has been just two weeks since I ended my career as a venture capitalist to embark on a startup journey by joining an early-stage crypto company. Reality hit me hard.
So, these are three lessons I learned from my transition from VC to Operator of the crypto company:
Lesson #1: Don’t tell people what to do. Give opinions but let them decide
As the first and only senior hire on the business side, my role is to defy the status quo and create strategies to help move the company towards ever-changing business goals. This involves working with cross-functional teams to execute new projects or revamp how things are done.
Having spent a month prior to joining thinking of a new marketing strategy, I had a picture in my head of what I wanted to see.
So when I met the team to share my vision and strategy, I slipped by saying I wanted to see XYZ happen and these are XYZ that we have to do together. That was an ignorant failure on my part. Little did I know that that approach to communication is a fatal flaw.
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By telling them what to do, I risk disempowering the team to think for themselves. I quickly gained awareness of the importance of every word I say, and learned to consciously share opinions but be open to perspective, to paint the vision and let the team suggest ‘the how’. Only then will the team feel empowered to initiate ideas and commit to the goals wholeheartedly.
Lesson #2: Product-market fit is not a constant, but a moving target
I love thinking about strategy and always thought I’m more of “a 1 to n than a 0 to 1” kind of person, so joining a post-product-market-fit crypto company was what I thought would suit me well.
I had a naive assumption that a post-product-market-fit company means there’ll be clear visibility on the goals and paths ahead. Little did I know that the so-called product-market fit is not a constant, but a moving target.
For a startup to continue growing, it needs to continuously find and hit new product-market-fit for a new product, new business line, and new geography. Rapid growth means continuously finding growth drivers from existing products or new products, existing business lines or new business lines, existing geography or new geography.
Growth is not a constant and so isn’t product-market-fit. The day you stop looking for product-market fit is the day you stop looking for growth.
Lesson #3: Being comfortable with being uncomfortable
As an operator of a crypto company, you need to be comfortable with moving targets and figuring out paths after paths, like a series of experiments, until you find the right target and the right path. At the end of the day, a startup is creating something from nothing.
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Little did I know that even for a post-product-market-fit company, the vision and the path may still seem unclear.
Not knowing what the end goal looks like can be demoralising as it may feel like you’re standing still or even running in circles. But, what keeps you going is your inkling of possibilities, an inkling that this may actually work, and you’re super excited about what could happen if it does work.
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