I sat down with Benjamin Rameau of Binance Labs this week. He kindly made time out of his insane schedule to be a speaker at Zeroth’s Expert Talks; a weekly Thursday session where Zeroth brings in the most experienced builders to help portfolio founders get to the next level.
The topic of the week: Survival
Benjamin gave a quick dose of reality. We are in a bear market. Founders who raised tens of millions in crypto earlier in the year and held on to crypto are having serious treasury management issues. They need to figure out ways to survive. To do more with less money. Even though Binance is a super profitable company, employees still fly economy and share hotel rooms. Being lean is ingrained in their corporate culture. That always starts at the top with the CEO. Amazing to hear how disciplined CZ (not giving crypto away)is at this stage.
In terms of growth, how do you actually do more with less money?
This is directly applicable to every single startup in the batch. No matter what stage you are at, you need to figure out ways to get more done and you need to do it fast. Binance achieved massive growth and did it organically. It’s hard to figure what will work specifically for your company. You need to understand your mission and how it can resonate with your community.
One thing that worked particularly well was their Angels program. People in cities all over the world volunteer to help and spread the mission of Binance. This doesn’t cost any money. Angels buy their own flight tickets, conference passes, etc. All because everyone is aligned to drive the mass adoption of crypto together. According to Dapp.com, the most popular crypto game CryptoKitties had only 298 active users today. We have a long way to go before crypto and blockchain become mainstream.
The Result is the King
It’s a clear signal to go heads down, get your hands dirty, and work work work. Companies going out there and driving real adoption will come out of this stronger and healthier than ever before. The amount of money raised has no correlation to success.
At the end of the day, it is about solving a real problem with an amazing product. Binance raised a moderate amount of money and has ~300 employees compared to competitors who raised more and employ 1,200+ people. In under 2 years, Binance grew to be the biggest crypto exchange in the world.
Thanks for sharing valuable lessons on surviving this week Ben!
Wanna find out which Zeroth companies in batch 4 will grow to be the biggest in their industry? Demo Day is coming March 2019. It will be something special. Drop an email to info@zeroth.ai to get the secret invite.
