SotN #40: Get a Job In Crypto: Rob Paone (Crypto Bobby) of Proof of Talent

Transcript

[Music] [Music] hey bankless nation welcome to another episode of state of the nation david hoffman and i are really excited to bring you this special episode we are talking about the crypto economy and more specifically the question that's on all of your minds which is how do you get a job in the crypto economy we've got an expert here to talk all about that david how are you doing today absolutely fantastic ryan another great week to be in the world of crypto we've been beating this drum on the bankless program for a while there's a new world

out there in crypto and we need to build this world therefore there needs to be people searching for jobs uh and so that's something that i believe in and our guest rob uh has dedicated his whole career to building this out and so i'm excited to talk to rob today and and to talk about how we can get people to enter the world of crypto in a professional capacity yeah guys if this is your first state of the nation we talk about what's happening in the world of crypto we try to relate it to big picture stuff and then we try to drop some insight and action items for you so i think the topic here is super relevant which is the economy the crypto economy how do you get a job in the crypto economy and we'll have some takeaways about how to brush up your crypto resume

what sort of opportunities you can look for and uh and the how of that um this comes at you every tuesday we live streaming on youtube we also broadcast it on the bank list podcast on wednesdays um david we should talk about a few things that are new in the bankless nation first up our episode with hazu just simply titled eip1559 no special title because that's all it needs eip1559 yeah we went through every single thing that makes eip 1559 eip1559 it's not just the thing that burns eth that people know it to be but it also is a slack mechanism it's also a better ux system it's also a gas

management system it's also a mev mitigator uh there's a lot of different things that make up eip1559 and hazu's particularly has been really spearheading this effort getting eip1559 integrated into the ethereum protocol so we brought him on to just go through to do a complete canonical episode as what is this thing and then we finish up with the conversation i think will get everyone really excited which is how does eip1559 impact the monetary policy of ether the asset in the security of ethereum uh and so it is a uh you can go from zero to a hundred about eip1559 with that episode i think everyone in crypto if you're investing in crypto you owe it to yourself to understand what eip1559 is if you know about the happening the

bitcoin happening you should also know about eip 1559 absolutely so check out that episode just came out wednesday uh just came out monday we're also tomorrow david we're recording with hayden adams hayden adams of uniswap this is a long awaited episode about a year in the making we got mark cuban on before we got hayden adams but now we're getting hayden adams on david what are we going to ask him oh every single possible question we ask are we asked for extra time with hayden and so we were going to record with him last friday but we kicked it out to this wednesday so we could get just some extra minutes with him we're going through the complete history of unit swap all the way from before unit swap was unit swap to where we are today with unit swap v3 and what's coming down the

pipeline with optimism really excited to have that conversation uh if i can edit this video as fast as possible then perhaps that video goes on the bankless youtube wednesday evening question maybe maybe maybe maybe stay tuned putting some pressure on himself yeah i like that tape i'm saying maybe yeah all right so you heard it maybe maybe definitely the evening of wednesday um david this this whole conversation is going to be about jobs in the crypto economy speaking of jobs the bankless nation is hiring what what are we looking for what kind of talent we looking for so much so much we need a website first off we need a like the home page of bank list there's so many different streams uh we have bankless youtube bank bankless podcasts the newsletter articles apparel

uh we need a place for that to live and so if you think that you can design the coolest ever bankless homepage we are looking for designers and we're also looking for graphic artists who can make dope uh images just icons whatever for for to put on t-shirts you know apparel stuff of this nature but then also for uh digital art because we are trying to grow the world of bankless culture and cryptoculture and so if you think that you can fit those bills comment drop us a line at applications at banklesshq.com that's applications at banklesshq.com if you can help us out with that and please help us out because i designed the original like bankless hq home page and it is terrible we don't talk at least

we don't talk about it very often because it's so bad um david speaking of which i'm going to ask you the question that i always ask you the question at the start of these episodes which is what is the state of the nation today sir yeah the state of the nation is hiring as an ecosystem we are hiring which is why we've brought on the our guest rob who is again leading the charge to helping match make between candidates and employers right there is this employment world this world of crypto labor and crypto is very different from the legacy world there's a ton of capital and not a lot of labor uh which means that like good candidates are extremely scarce and that means that that's beneficial for you if you are

trying to find a job in crypto like perhaps that perhaps the advantage is on your side due to how much capital there is out there uh these are questions that we're going to ask rob um and then also as well like we said the bank list nation is actually literally hiring we are we are literally hiring people uh and so uh in all respects there is cap there's money out there to be found by people that can contribute labor to this ecosystem and so we're trying to figure out a ways to get this world employed let's let's get this done absolutely crypto economy it has the capital at this point in time definitely has the need to build infrastructure and all it needs is the labor are you going to be part of that labors the question and how do you plug into that is going to be the topic of today's

conversation we're going to come back with rob paone in just a minute but before we get to the episode we want to tell you about the fantastic sponsors that made this possible gemini is the world's most trusted cryptocurrency exchange i've been a customer of gemiini since i first got into crypto in 2017 and it's been my main exchange of choice to make my crypto buys and sells gemini is available in all 50 states and in over 50 countries worldwide and on gemini there are markets for over 30 various different crypto assets including many of the hot tokens and it's one of the few exchanges when i was working they were going to gemini just launched their earn program where you can earn a 7.4 interest on 26 various crypto assets if you're tired of paying fees

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with rob payone who was once known as crypto bobby and ran a very successful youtube channel in the height of the 2017-2018 crypto mania uh and i i appreciated crypto bobby because it was a very sober and well informed and highly entertaining uh youtube channel uh and in the the sea of that was just 2017 uh it was a nice little oasis to to escape to so crypto crypto bobby i appreciated that but you are no longer crypto bobby uh your brand yeah complete rebrand uh and so something pulled crypto bobby away from the world of crypto content produ uh production to turn him into rob paone and that opportunity was recruiting and

matchmaking for hiring companies and candidates in the crypto space so rob now that you have proof of talent which has become one of the most successful crypto matchmaking firms in the entire space so rob tell us about this decision to move away from crypto content production and into the world of uh you know recruiting and matchmaking yeah so i guess you know at a high level like my first job at a college was in recruiting i did that for a few years and ended up working in software sales for a while and i've towards the tail end of my time i was selling erp software which is like business management accounting software to fintech firms at oracle um and i was doing that and i had a

literally a spare blue yeti mic that i had purchased and i just threw out a video on youtube like in august of 2017 and the whole thing just snowballed it was like really lucky timing and i was still i was working from home for my my software sales job and the youtube challenge just kind of blew up and got like really popular really quick and i had honestly no idea what i was doing half the time i was just kind of having fun with it and just talking through what was happening what was going on and got somewhat lucky and i think this is also kind of indicative of of crypto jobs and taught me a lot as far as that process went uh but ended up getting a job at uh air swap so i i worked in growth in bizdav at airswap uh and it was really

helpful to understand kind of like what was happening within the industry and build a lot of connections and through that time and airswap towards the towards the kind of tail end it was uh i think may of just really had the idea to start a recruiting firm in the blockchain and crypto space kind of thought it was a good marriage of my experience previously in recruiting the knowledge and connections i had in the blockchain of cryptocurrency space and then my my sales background kind of thought like if i put the three together i might actually have something and before i left my role at airswap i kind of networked with a few different people in the space uh that were running their own companies was kind of asking around like what's the biggest challenge in almost every single person even back in 2019 was saying like hiring is really really

difficult it's impossible for us i was like if i started this would you maybe you know want to be a customer of mine and a few people said yes and it kind of snowballed from there so that makes me uh that reminds me of just uh you know kind of building out my my two side gigs before um before i really went full time into crypto like pov crypto my first podcast was my side gig while i was going down like the healthcare route and i didn't really leave that traditional world until i knew that you know this the whole crypto thing could actually support me if i did jump into that so before you actually you know dedicate your time to proof of talent full-time did you feel that security or did it feel kind of like a risk like how what

assurances did you have that this was actually going to work out there were no insurances uh i would say that i mean it was it was definitely a risk i had a little bit of savings ready to go but it was it was definitely a nerve-wracking time because from the time i graduated college i graduated in 2012. um so i had a job lined up and i started working two weeks after i graduated up until the time i left air swap in june of 2019 i've always had a full-time salaried position throughout that like throughout that period i've always been like kind of entrepreneurial like i started the youtube channel i had done some things before then where i was always trying to make like a side hustle but i've never been to a point where i was

fully like i guess unemployed or self-employed and so that was it that was a big like risk for me but i kind of felt like you know if there's a time worth doing it it's it's right now and and i would have regretted it if i didn't do it so the way that i've i've positioned this in my head is like we have this this legacy world where most most of the businesses that could be made have have already been made uh and that's just kind of just the nature of this legacy world it's already existed for so long and crypto's the opposite where there's so much to be made we actually really just don't know what the limitations are on what can be built therefore my mind goes to well there's going to be a need for a lot of labor to come build this whole new space

uh which means that the the opportunity job market opportunity is perhaps massive is that how you kind of see things as well yeah that was that's definitely how i see things now and also kind of how i looked at things back then too when i was when i was starting it like i looked around and i think the the industry as a as as a whole now is obviously massive and 2019 was still like really large but uh there were a number of different i think like you know service providers for the space and nobody that really kind of came to a front of mind when you think about recruiting or of looking for a new job in in crypto and that was kind of the thought process that i had when starting it like if you think about like legal the legal profession in crypto like you'll think

about a number of different lawyers in this space like jake travinsky steven paley like folks like that there are all these little different niches i think that do an incredible job of like supporting or working in the space and it built really strong brands and when i thought about that like there are so many people that are going to work in this industry and there's nobody right now that really comes front of mind to actually help people find jobs in the space and that was kind of the the point of proof of talent i feel like your story rob is like sort of a microcosm of advice we give so often on bank list when people ask us like how do we get into the space how do we get a job and we we often say things like this like if you want to work for a

protocol give a protocol what it wants you find out what a protocol wants or you find out in your case what crypto wants and what crypto really wanted was this niche of of of talent right they didn't have a good way to get it so you went and you you filled that niche um it's kind of a microcosm of what everyone needs to do if they're starting something in crypto and getting involved in cryptos to figure out what the holes are what the crypto industry wants and go fill it you were talking as well uh rob about sort of the the opportunity size like the the size of the economy and what i love is you started this in 2019 right during like still it was a a bear like market right people needed talent but it was a lot smaller than it

is now can you give us some sense of the size and the magnitude of the economic opportunity here i don't even know how you'd measure this in terms of like number of new jobs uh per year that this industry is spitting out i don't even know what how you'd measure it but give us a sense of the size of this thing yeah i think overall it's it's definitely like you know a large and impressive industry to be working in um i think you can break it down too in a couple different ways and a couple kind of different like sub sectors like i i really when i like think about the industry overall i do think about almost these like little sub sectors or niches within the industry like the largest employer of the space uh is and are like centralized exchanges

and like the the financial firms behind it so like the coin bases of the world have you know a thousand plus employees you have the dcgs and kind of all these companies that are building like traditional financial infrastructure on top of the kind of the the like crypto um like the crypto economic layer so like all those companies kind of have to adhere to the traditional regulations and because of that like the block wise of the world like fuckfi grew from 15 employees to like 500 plus um in two years it's crazy um and it's it's incredible so i think you have you know companies like that you have i think a really like interesting kind of impact now with with these d5 organizations where uh i i don't know how many people

are on the core like uniswap team i know you mentioned hayden adams is coming on tomorrow like the the amount of of weight that something like uniswap punches for like the amount of volume they do they might have what 15 people on their core team which is incredible in comparison to something like a coin base um so there's definitely a number of like growing areas off the top my head i don't know the exact numbers of it but it's definitely i would say in like probably the 30 plus thousand range probably probably more than that um but then i think you also have to consider there's full-time employees there's there's core contributors there's there's open source developers there's there's all sorts of people that are involved in this industry in one way or another be it

full-time or in a part-time capacity yeah can you give us a sense too of another way to measure this which is and you kind of hinted at this by talking about block five's growth it's like what is the growth of this space it's it just seems like it's absolutely massive is is you know are we growing at a thou you know a hundred percent a thousand percent per year and how does that ebb and flow with the market cycles yeah so i i do think that hiring in the space is definitely cyclical um you know with the hiring where it was in 2019 when i started the business it was it was nowhere near where where we were right now um and i think a lot of that is due to the kind of effect that the price of bitcoin and the price of ethereum do

have on the actual hiring both for centralized companies and on the on the flip side for more of these like d5 focused or kind of decentralization focused companies because if you look at it in two ways on the side of the the larger companies like i mentioned the exchanges most of those companies are making money on uh trading volume as well as maybe like deposits withdrawals things of that nature and trading volume is through the roof in comparison to where it was previously so their revenue is way up their customers uh the the new accounts those are way up so they're hiring more in terms of legal compliance customer service like across the board they're hiring and then on the flip side you have a lot of smaller companies and we

kind of started noticing this last summer but you have a lot of these smaller organizations that are just starting up um be it kind of small d5 projects or whatnot but they're raising you know seed rounds to kind of help to start their their development and things like that so maybe they raised a two million dollar three million five million dollar seed round and you're seeing a lot of hiring demand both on the kind of smaller end of the spectrum and then on the larger end of the spectrum too but when you see the the market pullback i think on on both ends of the spectrum if it does you know at some point in time who knows um you're gonna see you know maybe less of a demand in the client support less of a demand also in terms of venture capitalists deploying capital

into these smaller projects so they're not going to be hiring as much maybe for the time being as well so rob proof of talent has been around for almost two years now which uh congratulations um and uh to me the whole entire crypto industry changed in march of 2021 when like the asset prices just like plummeted then coveted hit and it really seems to be there's been this pivot point since then so my question to you and you answered a little bit and so maybe you've already covered a decent amount but just to top it off how has the market the job market changed be as a result of this mo the recent developments of covid government stimulus money printer go bur how has that changed and then also um the other question i want to get to is

like are when when uh firms come to you to fill a position are they coming to feel like one position or are they trying to like recruit an army or a whole division like what's been the representation around that yeah so that the hiring in the space has has picked up pretty substantially it's been i mean it's been incredible to to watch and kind of be uh our a participant in some of the companies i mean we work with really a full range in spectrum we work with about 40 plus different companies right now or projects and it's everything from two or three person d5 startups that just raised their first seed round up to the probably a few largest exchanges and and trading shops that are a thousand plus employees and kind of on the ipo path or or already

public uh so it definitely runs a full gamut as far as the types and size of of organizations that um you know we kind of work with i would say one of the things that was kind of helpful for us and especially in the crypto world in the post coveted error is i think crypto companies were able to very quickly pivot um some and actually good amount of firms were already or like were mostly let's say in physical locations but they had the capability to very quickly and easily go remote and i think that was something that the traditional financial world and a lot of traditional companies did not have the luxury of because when you think about all these companies in the

crypto space like the oldest most established companies that have been around for the longest were probably found in 2012 or 2013 they have like brand new fresh tech infrastructure they're just very modern organizations and then you maybe compare and contrast that with something like you know jpmorgan chase and them of having their traders work from home that is a much more different kind of tougher experience to move those people home than it is to have let's say a large exchange like coinbase just go kind of like fully distributed in the matter of a week like it's it's a very it was a very easy process i think for pretty much every company we worked with and kind of pushed those individuals into going distributed which was a great thing to see and i think

also representative of like what the industry is trying to be in terms of like a distributed global industry it almost it almost helped to kind of accelerate that process for us so rob as as we switch kind of from the the macro to maybe the more the personal for the listener who's who's wondering like okay what about me right what about me in this the first question i want to get to is um i think there's a lot of people in the bankless community who they have a full-time job and they're in crypto as a hobby and sometimes that turns into an all-consuming hobby as we all know uh we call that falling down the crypt of rabbit hole obviously right um but i think a big question in in

people's minds is how do they know if they're ready to take that leap into crypto i i want to talk about that like what advice would you give right somebody who they love crypto they eat and breathe it they're they're bored at their regular job you know crypto brings sort of the the light back into their eyes and but but there's some risk there and like maybe that risk is compounded by the fact that they own so much crypto right a significant portion of their net worth is in crypto and they're attracted to this industry but they're also worried about having an income source also reliant on it in addition to a significant portion of their net worth help us through the

filtering process what advice do you give for somebody who's who's thinking about taking the plunge yeah i i am personally and this is not even necessarily like proof of talent related but this is even kind of going back to my experience at airswap um and for me it was not easy to find like a job in crypto i was a software sales account executive that was selling accounting software to fintech companies in manhattan that is not something that like most crypto companies or projects needed and i kind of had to like hustle my way literally the way i found the job at airswap was somebody tweeted about a youtube interview and then somebody tagged me in it and i had a conversation with one of the founders kind of prior to the

youtube uh the the the interview and i and he was asking like what my what my end game was and i was like i really want to work in this industry and i quit my job tomorrow and like two weeks later i quit my job after going and interviewing with him a bunch um but i i really believe that if you work full-time in the industry you receive some significant benefits that outweigh the potential risks of like the i guess the perceived the perceived risks of being in the crypto industry um i think that you're able to build connections uh with other individuals with other organizations much easier than you are on like the quote unquote outside of the industry i think that's hugely valuable um not only for just like having good like

information but i think also like um once you're able to have that kind of connection and the different like layers of working within the industry you're able to over time maybe maybe the first job you take in crypto isn't the best thing in the world but you build 20 great connections and then you meet somebody and you end up kind of working at the you know the next place i think that's one of the biggest things and one of the best things possible and it's a lot easier once you're within the industry to to make those moves than it is when you're kind of on the outside of it uh so i'm i'm definitely like a big proponent of of trying to um you know make your way into the industry i think you should still

obviously be selective and not just kind of go for the first thing just to get into it but i do think it's highly advantageous and kind of worth the risk reward of maybe being a little bit nervous about an industry that fluctuates uh you know according to the price of the assets let me just say rob i i totally agree and that's that's my story too but what i found was like i had to decide my time horizon for this industry right i was like i'm going to join this industry not with a one year two year time horizon not with a market cycle time horizon but like i'm going to spend the next 10 years in this industry right and i made that decision before coming into the industry like i i knew that which is committing to bear markets it's committing to bear markets right

because i want you to also illustrate the flip side because i totally agree with the the net benefit case that you just made right now i would make the same case i think david would do and it's our stories but sometimes i scratch my head and i wonder oh how much of this is survivorship bias right like because talk about the pain of a bear market because you've been through them and the pain of a bear market when you see kind of any net worth you had in crypto go down by 90 right but then you also because you're in the industry you feel the impact to your business and everything like tightens up and there's this sense of doom can you describe that because i want people who decide to commit to this to be ready for those kind of markets

too yeah no i i definitely agree with you and i think part of it too is just like self-understanding and it's like looking within yourself and thinking like do i really really love this industry am i really passionate about it or am i just enjoying right now looking at blockfolio and watching number go up and enjoying that because there's nothing wrong with that like it is addictive and it's an incredible dopamine hit but like you should really understand like if this goes down are you going to stick around are you really passionate or is it you know again like are you just kind of addicted to the dopamine head of number go up um because i think like you said i've kind of been in both scenarios i started i basically joined airswap at the top in 2018 and worked there for a year and a

half during the bear market and then started proof of talent somewhat in the bear market and like i hired my first employee colton uh shout out to colton who's wonderful um i hired him a week before covid started and so that was that was a fun time having my first first employee and like the first salary that i'm ever ever responsible for in my life start like when the world ended so that was like you you know you really have to be dedicated to it you have to be passionate about it and i do think that there were a ton of people in 2018 that joined the industry and didn't have that conviction and ended up leaving uh whether they stayed for six months whether they stayed for a year there were a lot of people that kind of came in they were migrants and

i mean you can like i this is a kind of silly story but like i was cleaning out my car it was a few months ago and i found business cards from a conference i went to in dubai um for cryptocurrency and i think there were eight business cards and i went i was just like curious i was like are any of these companies still in business i think like six six out of eight didn't have websites that worked so like there is there are definitely a lot of migrants that come during a during a bull market and i think you just have to recognize that and kind of just have that self self reflection of of knowing like what you are and who you are in that process great advice from rob here are you a

tourist or a settler i think that's the question you have to answer before you enter this space rob we're going to come back uh we're going to do some advice for candidates how to prepare a crypto resume we're going to be back with all of that information for you but first we want to tell you about the sponsors that made this episode possible if you are looking for a product that connects your fiat bank account with d5 tokens and products you need to download the dharma mobile app dharma is a non-custodial smart contract wallet and comes with a bridge that connects you right into your bank account drama is the fastest and most efficient wallet between your fiat and your bank account and any token on uniswap or even any vault in urine with dharma you can get

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this new exciting sphere now let's get to some of the practical advice here rob so advice for candidates let's say someone listening here is curious about how to get a job in crypto what it's like to work in crypto how would you kind of break it down for them and what practical advice would you give them yeah so i i think like when i break down getting a job in crypto i think you kind of have to break it down for two different audiences and one is technical and one is non-technical and to be pretty frank the the opportunity or the ease of a technical individual so a software engineer someone along those lines uh to for for those individuals to find

employment uh there is a severe imbalance between supply and demand on the engineering side of the house and it is easier for a software engineer to find employment in the crypto space than somebody who is non-technical to to be a let's say a you know operations biz dev marketing um legal there are more individuals i think the supply and demand on is maybe flipped to where there's kind of a little bit maybe more supply than there is demand from the company side so you kind of have to do your best to stick out as a non-technical individual from a hiring standpoint um but i think on both ends of the spectrum it really comes down to kind of proving your your interest and being able to

stand out amongst the crowd and i think both of those do come down to just contributions in the space because it is very easy for a relatively discerning individual on an interview to determine if you are really passionate about the the crypto space or if you kind of like going back to the the previous conversation like a little bit more of a tourist um like there's a lot of times when when when i'll have a conversation with somebody um and they are incredibly knowledgeable about the industry it seems like they know everything and then there's other times in which you talk to somebody and they say yeah you know i i bought a bought a token in 2017 held it you know kind of have looked at things here or there and

and that's about it and like when you have those conversations especially if you're on the hiring side as a company um i think those people are are less appealing to those firms um so it's it's kind of doing what you can to have a really strong knowledge base and i'm sure by an individual listening to you know podcasts like bankless things like that like that's one of the things just off the top that you can do that's really easy and then on the flip side as a technical individual open source contributions are like the most uh dead simple way to build your experience credibility uh and and just kind of you know push your way into an opportunity within a job rob just a quick question on that so i'm curious it sounds like when you talk to someone for the first

time you go through you have a conversation with them right one of the things you're trying to do is separate the tourists from the settlers right as we talked about earlier what kind of questions do you ask i'm curious to do that do you have any like the the key question that's going to tell you about this individual yeah i mean i even use this on internal interviews for when we're hiring for our team at proof of talent and i just kind of ask hey you know like what's most interesting to you in this in like the blockchain space right now and if somebody says like hey you know blockchain is is overall really interesting like they're like i'll sometimes get answers like that where you know blockchain is really interesting i think it's tight and yeah it's it's dope it's sweet man that's that's not super informative if

somebody tells me something like i'm super interested in a defy space i'm really interested in some certain element of of kind of like peer-to-peer cross-border payments if somebody says that they're super interested in the lightning network and can kind of go like if they're if if they show that they've really done any level of interest that's beyond surface level and can dive into that i don't necessarily care as much like what they're interested in as long as they just like show that true interest i think that's like what what i'm kind of looking for do you ever ask rob if they watch bank list or not that's got to be i have but i do think i do think podcasts are i mean obviously like one of the one of the best ways to to kind of stay abreast

with what is going on in the industry and for an industry that moves so fast um you know consuming content is a really good way you know whether it's newsletters podcasts youtube videos um i mean that's all a helpful way to stay involved with what's happening now clubhouse is i guess a big thing too um so there's there's there's a variety of ways to just kind of stay up to date with what's going on yeah that's wow that's really really good advice and advice that i definitely resonate with because the only the way that i broke into crypto back in 2017 and 2018 is i just slammed my head into content that i didn't understand until i finally understood it and then all of a sudden i was the one teaching and that's the things just snowballed from there um

so so rob you said that you know engineers and developers they have a pretty easy time getting a job uh the less technical they don't they don't have that same sort of like tailwinds behind them but they can make up for that just by being super passionate but what about characteristics or features of candidates or just dispositions that are shared universally and i i think one of those answers was you know content consumption and being passionate but is there anything else that we can talk about that just is a universal positive for candidates yeah so i i think having something that proves you are passionate that is like like rock solid and concrete and what i mean by that is you know even in just conversation like you can maybe blow

somebody away on the phone but maybe your resume doesn't really stand out but if you have a a medium page where you've written a couple it can be like i feel like there are literally people in the industry who have started in kickstarter careers with like one well-crafted medium post um so it can be a a few blogs on medium that are incredibly well written or it can be contributions on github um there are a number of different ways in which you can kind of kick start your way into into really participating but i think having that just concrete evidence is really what you want um and so if you're non-technical i think some of that comes down to writing or just building networks you've even seen i think there

have been people i want to say i was recently i think he worked in the industry previously but like when i i think is nick chong got hired at parify capital and they had mentioned in the announcement post that every time that they were in a discord he was already in the discord um and like he was he was just always ahead of the game like something like that as simple as i think people notice that and people are hiring they notice when people are passionate they notice when they're kind of going you know above and beyond in terms of like due diligence or their research or whatnot so um i think it's it's going to kind of have that that level of evidence that you've kind of put the time and the effort in so that when somebody asks you you can kind of just say hey here you know like

i'm not even just saying this like here i i can prove it right now that goes back to like what a crypto resume might look like these days right so like you know maybe the traditional world your resume is this like you two sheet document that that you put out it's a pdf or like your linkedin profile or something like that um i get the sense that in crypto your resume looks a little different we actually put out a post not too long ago and this is a little probably into the future uh but the the thesis was hey your etherdress is also a resume like what d5 protocols have you used what dowels are you a part of right like what have you deployed in terms of smart contracts from your ether dress i'm not sure that we're quite there yet fully but there are other

artifacts that have to make up a resume it's not just a document what is a good crypto resume well to that point i think this is this is funny this has just kind of started to happen a little bit recently but um i guess two different things uh come to mind so number one i thought this was really interesting uh when larry cermak at the block put out a quiz in telegram that was basically how well you knew the industry was 75 questions and that's kind of how they i believe found their intern uh or interns and it also kind of had a viral element because everybody was sharing their score um so i thought that was that was like an ingenious way and and i don't know if the virality of

that was intended or even expected but it was it was really cool to see and then in addition to that you saw i think it was was it atomic blue with the d5 djent score where you just hooked up your you hooked up your ether dress and you got a score based upon how much of a degenerate you were basically yield farming and getting rugged and all that um and we've had people that have submitted their resumes and send us messages and be like hey my djen scores this and oh yeah no that abs absolutely and i think that is that is something where you know you're really seeing like the the kind of like proliferation of some of like the more um it's it's not like i i don't think let's say for like example if you wanted to go work at a centralized exchange

they're not going to care that much about your g5 djent score we do have crypto funds that we work with that are very much native crypto funds that are super deep in the weeds on defy and kind of you know participating in yield farming and kind of all these on-chain activities they very much care about that and it's pretty pretty funny to see that take place and just like the third kind of last last piece um i tweeted about this last week but we got our first resume ever and it was somebody that that had a crypto punk on the top of their resume and it's just like it cracked me up so much that they had their crypto punk like icon listed on the top of of the resume next their name uh that's kind of a flex that's kind of stupid

rob yeah that that's not you know that's like flashing your rolex these days yeah well it's probably worth about 10 times the rolex at this point rob what about um social media and linkedin because i've personally i've never been a big fan of linkedin never really resonated me and i've actually personally found much more uh alignment with twitter and i kind of say like well twitter is my linkedin but i do understand that a lot of people also pay attention to linkedin how do how do twitter linkedin and other social media platforms play in the role of getting a job yeah i think they're both uh helpful uh for i mean for me personally i have much greater effect with twitter i have a larger i guess following i i

speak to a lot more people on on twitter i think it depends upon kind of like who you're going for the audience we still recruit a lot of people we pay linkedin a ton of money on an annual basis for their corporate recruiting product and we find a lot of people through linkedin so we use that to create a fact add proof of talent but i think it also depends upon like who you're looking for and kind of who you're who you're hiring and even to that effect like travis kling who runs uh ikigai um if i'm even pronouncing that right probably not i always mess up i always mess up the pronunciation of it but he he posted uh something about you know having people from traditional finance come into the to the crypto space and there's a huge need for it and then he listed my email address and the

post on on linkedin and i got like 100 linkedin connections and like 50 emails from from travis doing that so i think like you know for something like traditional finance or people in traditional industries linkedin is still probably incredibly effective and it is still effective for us in recruiting but a lot of people hate linkedin and they just want to be on twitter all day and i think you know whatever you like to use use can we talk about where the talent beds are then rob for for a minute because i think this is interesting um i've been actually surprised over the years about how how few technical talent comes from places like silicon valley which like traditionally that has been like no doubt there there

are many developers who come from that area but um they've been reticent to to kind of join it's it's sort of like we see this innovation in areas outside of traditional tech sectors but there is a bed of talent there so if you're speaking to an engineer coming from like facebook or google these are some of the top engineers in the world is is there sort of a sales job you have to do on on on why to join crypto and i guess also the same question for people in traditional finance like wall street might be the the hub of talent for this industry are they starting to flock into crypto or is it still sort of a to get the top-tier google engineers and the top-tier wall street quant trade finance

people it's still we stopped to kind of sell them on why crypto i think you i think there's definitely a sales process and i think for you know in certain scenarios if somebody is working at a google or a facebook and is coming to the crypto industry they're depending upon the size of the company like if you're going to work at coinbase right now from facebook or google coinbase is about to ipo they very much have product market fit they are very established company they're not going anywhere um if and if you're at facebook or google you're probably like as an engineer i don't want to say you're like not doing all that much but i do think that there's this interesting perception now where i've even seen people talking

about it on twitter in kind of the silicon valley space where like 10 years ago i would have wanted an engineer from google now i don't want an engineer from google because that person isn't is like too risk-averse in comparison to what we're looking for so i think that is that is like an overall interesting dynamic i think most of the time a a startup would love to have somebody from google but when you also think about the compensation the the compensation packages for a lot of these engineers i mean in crypto it's very competitive but like facebook and google are are paying out the nose for these engineers when it comes to the base salary to you know to rsu's all that type of stuff um i do think within you know the wall street world there's definitely a lot of

interest from traditional financial talent i think maybe even more so than some of the technologists in silicon valley depending upon where you know depending upon kind of the um the types of roles or the types of companies but we see a ton of interest from traditional finance and it's interesting too because i think you'll see in some cases some some older folks in the traditional finance world maybe kind of uh and not older isn't in your 40s or 50s but you know people that have been in the in the space for you know 15 20 25 years kind of looking at the opportunity within crypto and thinking like hey this is kind of you know a a part two a second chapter of my career and i think a lot of individuals

kind of in that in that space are really excited after they feel like you know they've kind of done all that they can within the you know within the traditional wall street realm rob are people also coming here for the mission right there's obviously massive opportunity but how many people are like screw the banks like we want to disrupt traditional finance we want to decentralize web 2. this crypto thing this is about more than opportunity and money this is a movement for me are there many people joining due to that yeah i definitely think so i think that honestly when that's one of the things that i like to find out when i talk to a job candidate is is what are you interested in one of the questions i ask because some people are super interested and passionate in

ethereum and they are very much in kind of the you know the decentralized uh you know in the kind of decentralization camp they want to work in a d5 project whatever have you um some people we talk to are very much like hardcore bitcoiners and they want to work for bitcoin only startups some people only want to work for established companies that are profitable have clear product market fit and they know are not going to disappear when they can't you know raise their next round of funding during the bear market so i think there are a variety of like types of individuals when it comes down to their risk tolerance their interests and that's one of the things that like we as a recruiting company have to do is figure out like what makes you as an individual tick and and what companies

would be the best kind of match for that because there are a lot of places that you know you can find employment within the space where you can be very much mission focused maybe it's a little bit more of a risk in terms of your career because maybe that company is not profitable maybe that company um you know is kind of dependent upon the next round of funding or there could be a variety of things there but if that's what you're passionate about then then you should go for that you know rob i want to turn the conversation to specifically about hiring in the ethereum and d5 ecosystem because i think the game has really been changed in ethereum as a result of defy summer where a lot of dows protocols teams realize that there are new viable ways to issue tokens that

generate treasuries and now all of a sudden there's these multi-sigs of like seven people that have hundreds of millions of dollars and they're looking for contributions in the space uh so with with regards to uh teams and applications that are using proof of talent to hire out for specifically defy stuff and ethereum stuff how does that process how is that process unique and different from you know the crypto banks or or the bitcoin only bros or or stuff like this how is define ethereum hiring different from the rest of the ecosystem yeah it's been it's been a really interesting trend because um like you said it is very different when you have some of these i don't want to call them com i don't know if you call

them companies projects dows whatever you want to call them um but they have you know very much like community-led governance perhaps they might have to have some type of governance proposal before they can actually bring somebody on board to pay them a salary out of the treasury so it is a it's something that i kind of noticed like you said maybe in the summer and kind of following that once a lot of that money was raised where i started seeing that i was like hey like i don't know if we're gonna have to adjust how we do business or just kind of adapt that model but we've been able to work with some of those uh you know with some of those projects with some of those dows um and and kind of start to do that and just accept whatever you know if it's usdc or

something along those lines kind of have the same model on our end but understanding that like this company probably doesn't have a legal entity or you know might not have a legal entity in the u.s and they're only going to be able to pay in crypto and i think just overall it's still kind of a similar process in terms of the the hiring where there's usually some type of product lead internally who's helping to make decisions who's helping to kind of figure out who the best uh people to to kind of bring on to the core team would be but it is a really uh i think fascinating trend because you you i don't think it's going to overtake like centralized companies but it's definitely going to be there in addition to and it will probably grow in popularity as as things kind of continue

on this way what advice do you have for dows that have managed to successfully go and find a candidate to work for them versus others because you know dow is a very very like loose term some dolls are organized differently than others uh what have you seen has worked for daos who are looking for labor um how do they delegate responsibility how do they ever overcome all of these like hurdles yeah it's it's an interesting question i think kind of going back to the to the question around or like that the subject around personal preference of whether somebody wants to kind of like you know get you know basically have replaced the banks and kind of is a mission-driven person i do think that there are kind of two different types of candidates when

it comes to this where you have some folks that are let's say you know married individuals with with kids and they have a mortgage and they have a number of responsibilities and if they were to accept a job with a dow in which they were paid a certain number of usdc via a sadly or contract you know once a month their spouse would look at them and probably slap them across the face um there are other people who are a little bit more risk-averse or actually uh or they're a little bit more open to kind of that type of risk and say you know what hey i'm i'm fine working with this dow i'm incredibly passionate about this project i don't need the health benefits from this like you're probably you're probably not if you're working for a dow you're probably not

getting health benefits you're probably not getting a 401k you're probably not getting the traditional trimmings that come with a standard company and some people don't care they're they're they're happy to work with an organization or a dow or whatever it might be that they're passionate about and can contribute to if they're you know paid a fair amount uh and i think that's that's kind of the the interesting thing because again i think some people sounds may be great in theory but they'd have no interest in doing it and other people would take that jump in a second what about from specifically the dow side like say a dow like yam or urine or somebody came to you guys and be like yo we need this role filled how can daos help make your job easier to make their job of finding the good candidate easier

yeah so i think part of it is is the the project itself it's it's a lot easier to sell somebody on you know it's easier to sell a developer or to sell somebody else on i guess employment within the dollar participation within the dow if you're kind of a full-time or contract employee if there is some element of traction if there is a pro product there already um and you can kind of be able to match that i think the earlier it is there's there's kind of an interesting um and you know i think it makes sense but with a lot of these smaller like let's say d5 projects or dowels or things like that a lot of it is started by people that are friends or they have kind of you know loose connections and they they have mutual passions and the difficulty and usually

like where proof of talent comes in with those smaller companies is when they've tapped out their personal network and all the engineers that they know they've already spoken to maybe they brought a few on board and they're like once they've gotten to the point where they've kind of outgrown the personal network it's like all right where do we go next and that's a lot of the times where we come in and i think you know if you get if you get to that point and you do have traction that is one of the the better places so whether that's tvl participation um you know a certain size of the token market cap i don't know just anything to point to and say like hey candidate this is something that is actually legit and this isn't just like you're coming to you know quit a job and work for a white

paper or something like that rob well i'm it's been very very fun watching the growth at proof of talent and thank you for coming on and sharing us what what you've learned here with the bankless nation i want to ask this final question this very broad question say a listener has they've just got into bank list last couple like six months or so six months or less brand new to crypto trying to get their head wrapped around it and maybe they've already decided that like this industry is their industry they just don't know what they can contribute yet say say you're one of these individuals uh can someone who wants to get a job in crypto get a job in crypto by the end of this market cycle if this market cycle goes and for roughly the same amount of time like the

last market cycle did yes i i think so i think that uh you know you really want to not take no for an answer i think that there are a lot of people that say they want a job in the space maybe they you know put out a couple applications but network hustle follow up with people have conversations provide value to other individuals without any expectation of getting value back like if you go out and you put in a lot of effort and you really truly are trying to make things happen like i do have confidence that the vast majority of people would be able to have success doing that and i think a lot i've seen a ton of people do that where they just go out they hustle they hustle and you know you're going to get rejected and it's

going to happen but if you just kind of continue on in that process and learn every single time and get better whatever your skill set is whether it's engineering sales biz dev marketing operations legal like doesn't really matter just kind of continue on in that process and learn from every rejection and eventually it's going to happen for you um and so i i think yeah overall you can you can really make it happen if you don't take no for an answer rob paone formerly crypto bobby it's been a pleasure to have you sir you you heard the man decide first if you were a tourist or a settler once you've made that decision hustle hustle hustle join communities give protocols what they want that's how you establish a career in this exciting industry i know i speak

for david myself we wouldn't be anywhere else this is the most fun i've ever had like doing anything it is a great industry crypto culture but it's not without its challenge yeah cryptoculture is awesome um you know what i'm ra i'm i'm gonna ask this question of uh crypto bobby not rob paone actually so let's go you were here in 2017 crypto bobby what uh what is this bull market cycle going to look like are we gonna repeat 2017 is this going to be different give it to us crypto bobby style this is the bonus content i i have no idea i i really don't i i am so i guess for context real quick like i in 2013 i bought bitcoin and i

lost interest because i bought the top at eight hundred dollars a thousand dollars it drew down 75 and when 2017 came around i kind of got back into it but like when that bear market happened in 2017 i looked back at the number of opportunities i missed between 2014 and 2017 because i lost interest and i kind of looked at that and i was like you know what i'm never gonna i'm never gonna exit this again i'm never gonna lose interest in it again i'm always gonna keep my eye on the ball and i think because of that outlook between 2017 and 2021 where we're at now i've been able to to be successful um you know in the in i guess in the crypto space and i would just advise like anybody that just continue to keep your eye on the ball

and you're like good things will happen good opportunities will happen like all you have to do is use uniswap to get like to basically get a new car or use tornado cash or like like just the number of things that you receive and opportunities that that happen in the crypto space just by using these products keeping your eye on the ball good things will come to you the bull market seems to be when people that suffered through the bear markets finally cash out on all of their stress and blood and sweat and tears that they toiled to get through it so i can definitely resonate with that rob thank you so much for coming on at the bankless state of the nation and sharing some of your experiences with us thanks

a lot for having me i appreciate it guys i feel like we got a dual interview there one with rob the last question for crypto bobby of course risk and disclaimers bankless nation crypto is risky bitcoin is east is defy is risky you could lose what you put in but we are headed west maybe you can get a job out west this is the frontier it's not for everyone but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey thanks a lot hey we hope you enjoyed the video if you did head over to bankless hq right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence we recommend joining our daily newsletter podcast and community as a bankless premium subscriber to get

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