I joined Coinbase in June 2014 and have been fortunate to have watched it grow to make major strides towards its mission of creating an open financial system for the world as well as becoming the first cryptocurrency unicorn in the process. This week I will be leaving the company to start a crypto fund with Jordan Clifford and I’ve been taking some time to reflect on the past 3 years. Being part of Coinbase has been an eye opening experience and I am honored to have worked with some of the smartest people I have ever met to solve some of the most challenging and impactful problems I have ever encountered.
Here are some highlights that hopefully sheds light onto what it’s like to work at Coinbase. The company values are positive energy, continuous learning, clear communication, and efficient execution. All employees embody these values and I think my experiences at Coinbase can be broken down nicely into these sections too.
Positive Energy
When I initially joined Coinbase it was apparent everyone was passionate about cryptocurrencies and what it could do for the world. I even had coworkers who were getting paid solely in bitcoin. I loved bitcoin but this was next level dedication. You had this sense of everyone being part of this crazy journey together. Even during times when the bitcoin price dropped and stagnated for over a year, we all continued to develop Coinbase with excitement and optimism. We joined because we believed in the technology. At the lunch tables everyone constantly talked about digital currencies. It was intimidating at first but you quickly realize that everyone was willing to teach everyone else.
Continuous Learning
I started out on the compliance investigations team working with law enforcement and later switched to the product team working on internal tools. This was not an immediate switch as the company wanted to set me up for success as a new product manager over a period of a few months. They set me up with my mentor John Yi who was the PM for the platform team and is now the PM for the growth team. He is also one of the best advice givers I know. I shadowed him in meetings and he quickly empowered me to stand on my own to present the products and metrics to executives and make decisions which was an invaluable experience early on.
Since the company has grown we have continually maintained the spirit of learning and mentoring others. At Coinbase there is a Slack channel called “no stupid questions” where people can openly ask about the company, crypto, or anything else without judgement. A number of us at Coinbase have held weekly code school sessions, bi-weekly crypto office hours, and monthly educational lectures. It was through this experience where I was encouraged by my coworkers particularly Jane Chung to start writing beginner’s guide blog posts to share my knowledge of crypto with others. I was extremely nervous to put myself out there but I had supportive colleagues especially Jordan Clifford, Reuben Bramanathan and David Farmer who spent their time giving feedback on practically every blog post I wrote as well as support from Fred Ehrsam, Brian Armstrong, Jeremy Henrickson, and Dan Romero.
Clear Communication
There used to be weekly AMAs with the co-founders of Coinbase and as we grew we still do monthly AMAs with our CEO Brian. People ask all kinds of questions including those that can be challenging. The environment is always open, curious, and kind. Some of the toughest questions were about the scaling challenges we faced when the demand for crypto skyrocketed. This was a difficult time but Brian and the executive team united the entire company through communicating a shared goal of back to fundamentals in Q3. As a result this was reflected throughout each department’s roadmap.
We had Conscious Leadership Group trainings where we learned the best ways to discuss issues with our coworkers directly rather than gossip about others. In addition, we have manager coaching circles where we were able to practice active listening to help each manager walk through their own problems and solutions. I’ve become a far better communicator through these processes.
Efficient Execution
Like many other companies in tech it was apparent Coinbase needed to hire more diverse candidates and create a more inclusive culture. The company’s leadership tackled this by having many people internally participate in diversity initiatives from re-evaluating our hiring process, performance reviews, office space, speakers we bring in, and many more. I’ve appreciated Coinbase acknowledging we need to improve this and putting together actionable solutions along with accountable owners. As part of these efforts we had sessions on unconscious bias where I had a few male colleagues come up to me afterwards to say they had no idea about the unconscious bias that women encounter and wanted to help, even if it was just to listen.
Coinbase creates a sense of entrepreneurship and encourages people to work on their own projects as well. They allowed me to become an advisor for the Ethereum project 0x in my personal time. We recently had a week long internal hackathon where I saw extremely creative and impactful work. My coworkers also released Lionshare as an open source project which came out of an earlier hackathon.
Next Steps
I’m grateful for all of the amazing experiences and lifelong friends I’ve met at Coinbase. It’s been exciting to see a number of my former colleagues stay in the industry and make their own names. It’s time for me to head off to start something new too. If you’re interested in joining a rocket ship like Coinbase to create an open financial system for the world, please check out the careers page. To the moon!
Thank you to Will Warren, Reuben Bramanathan and David Farmer for reviewing this post.
