I saw a recent post by @intern on x.com
And I was reminded of a lesson learned while I worked at Circle.
After a restructuring of the Revenue Team, I had inherited a “sales team” that had been hired by two different managers. Some had been hired to sell Circle’s minting/redeeming API’s to corporates, some had been hired to sell Circle’s Yield product. I was given this team at the same time as I was put under a newly hired Vice President. So I had a new boss, and a new team.
To get things started we held a team meeting in NYC and as part of that we had a poker night. We used chips for the pot and at the end of the evening it was time to settle up so we netted some payments and determined who owed and who was getting paid.
I offered to pay my share in USDC and the three people I was to pay all stated they did not have a wallet on their phone. I then asked everyone (including my newly appointed boss) who had a USDC wallet on their phone. Only 2 of the 9 other attendees had an active USDC wallet. I was stunned and disappointed. And realized I had more work to do.
I instituted weekly “crypto” training and testing in addition to their responsibilities to sell and help with market validation projects we worked on; RWA & Margin Collateral. Within 3 months I had let go of 3 of the 8 on my team. The others stepped up and have all had great success inside or external to Circle.
The lesson reiterated to me, especially now in early 2025 when there are a flood of global bank VP’s looking to cash in on their connections to hedge funds and land high-paying roles with crypto projects…..to move this industry forward we need missionaries, not mercenaries. It becomes very clear when on a call with prospects, clients, partners, vendors…..there are those who deeply understand the use cases and ability of distributed ledgers to solve a challenge. And there are those who are filling a quota.
CONMODUM 