Relentless
01:18:46 · Brian Armstrong
[01:18:46] S0: those types of people? So part of it is just, like, in a normal recruiting function, you can have people that are aligned to what you want, and they can go and source a bunch of people, and they can bring... Filter and then bring the top people in. So that's like a normal hiring process. I think that you can also try to attract entrepreneurial energy into the company by doing the things I mentioned like next bets. And if someone leaves, well, Coinbase Ventures will maybe put a check-in. So cultivating a... A lot of the people that raise my energy the most are really entrepreneurial. Right? They're like high agency builders trying to create the future, like all the stuff that you're you know, putting out on this on this podcast and, like, teaching people how to be relentless. Right? It's like that is such a critical skill set. So it's attracting entrepreneurs into the company. Actually, I think, like, three or four of the executive team now are founders that got acquired in, and that's been, like, really fun to work with. I think the other way you can do it is, like, putting out the bat signal, right, which is, like, basically on social media or x or your blog or whatever... Your podcast, wherever you wanna... I think in any given time, you should be blasting out the things that you're most excited about in the world, and then the right people will sometimes pop up and find you. And you got to give them an opportunity to do it, though, by saying publicly what you're interested in. So that's probably the other way. These dinners... It it can turn into dinners. It can turn into, like, if you're just randomly in some city, like, go meet with these people, go give a talk somewhere, and make... Say something contrarian but right and, like, see who shows up, these these kind of things.
01:20:18 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[01:20:18] S1: I kind of wanna touch on this idea of proof of work. [01:20:21] S0: Yeah. Money is the ultimate proof of work, by the way. It's like, literally, you did a bunch of hard stuff and you got money, and then it's like... It's... Anyway, proof proof of work. [01:20:30] S1: So something that I've kind of recently come to the conclusion is the proof of work is just, like, one of the most valuable things in the world, and yet most people underprioritize it. [01:20:39] S0: Mhmm. [01:20:39] S1: And so proof of work is not only that you did... Like, not only take action and do things, but also share the thing that you did. And it's kind of funny how far you can get by literally just, like, the first interview that I ever did was over Zoom, and it looks horrible. And I didn't know at all what I was doing, and my computer battery overheated and shut off and all this stuff. And now we're, you know, recording this two and a half years later, two and a quarter years later. Yeah. And we've gotten almost to the best in the world on some metrics in all Yeah. And we'll keep on going. [01:21:08] S0: It's been amazing. The access, like, the people... Yeah. You're doing something right for sure. [01:21:12] S1: Thank you, Brian. Yeah. How do you kind of filter for that proof of work and make sure that not only are you, like, saying this is what we're going to go do as a company and this is what I care about, but also this is what we are doing, like, done? [01:21:25] S0: You know, in terms of hiring people or in terms of For example,
01:21:25 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
[01:21:25] S0: You know, in terms of hiring people or in terms of For example, [01:21:29] S1: Elon is like, we're gonna go to Mars, and we're gonna go build the Mars base. And the proof of having a Starship actually land back and get caught is like a massive just, oh my god. This is actually happening. They're able to do something that no one else... You've never seen it before. Yep. And it changes the way that you think.
01:21:46 · Brian Armstrong
[01:21:46] S0: Well, you're right. I think, like, all successful people, you you wanna sort of leave a trail of these remarkable moments, good work, basically, that people can see, and it's self evident. Right? It could be... It could show up in revenue numbers. It could show up in stories like that when I told about rebuilding our cold storage system in sixty days. Sometimes there's really iconic moments. Right? Like like Starship landing or getting caught in the, you know, the mecha arms or whatever. Right? In hardware, sometimes those are... It's a little easier to see, like like an Anduril drone, like, blowing something up or something. Right? Like, that's that's proof of work that's, like, nice and a really nice visual. Sometimes in software, you don't get quite like those killer moments, like, with hardware that you... So you have to show it in numbers. I think you can show it quantitatively, like this graph is going up. You can also show it anecdotally with, like, let's talk to this person who is able to, like, send money to a home to their family without, like, paying 10% fees, right? So you wanna touch both, like, the quantitative brains out there and the emotional brains and, like, get a message for everyone in that. And... Yeah. And I I... That's one way to think of it.
01:23:03 · Ty Morse
[01:23:03] S1: On that same kind of note, the idea of, like, emotion and touching people's... You know, touching people emotionally, making them feel things, how how do you actually do that? Like, what what is going through your head when you're saying this is the message or thing that I want someone to feel? Here's how do you go actually go about doing that?
01:23:21 · Brian Armstrong
[01:23:21] S0: Well, I think I'll give you an example, which is for us, our mission is increasing economic freedom in the world. We need to make that tangible to people and have them feel something about it. Right? So we often end up talking about how money is really freedom. Right? Like, if you want to be able to go where you want to go, create the companies you want, have freedom of transportation and congregation and movement, like, you need money to be able to do that, and money has been getting less free over time. Right? There's more intermediaries that can block transactions. The value of your currency might be getting eroded due to inflation. There's a lot of people in the world who have their assets, like, frozen or seized or, you know, their things get blocked for various reasons. And if you have a sense of, like, agency in the world and the ability to accomplish what you wanna do with your own hard earned money, like, freedom... Or I should say money is an important tool to have freedom on as well. So that's part of what we're doing at Coinbase is, like, giving people financial freedom and economic freedom with these tools and with crypto that's updating the financial system. And we try to do this through some of our brand advertising at times where we'll tell people stories about what it means to break free and live outside the matrix and not be an NPC and be able to actually have control of your own life and keep the upsides of your labor and try to create a better life for you and your family and your community. It's a luxury that we have in certain ways, but most people in the world don't have. And so those are... That's an example of, like, touching on the emotional aspect of what we're building, not just literally, you know, our transaction time went from one hundred and twenty milliseconds to twenty milliseconds. Like, that's selling the data. You also have to tell the story about what it's actually creating in the world.