The Exchanges

Q I do want to ask, if we then project forward and say, we do want to hire that head of corp dev, and those answers have been, you know, provided, and we're very happy with them. When you think about putting yourself in the founder's shoes, How would you structure the process? What does the interview process look like? What questions do you ask? How would you structure it?

A I really like the interview process at Coinbase. We have our own way of doing things. We're a very fast-paced culture. There is no interview longer than 30 minutes. We have a panel of people. We generally try to keep that panel no more than five people who actually interview the candidate. For a senior role, we obviously make exceptions, and after they go through that panel, we Expose them, for example, to a board member or two who are relevant, or just pressure test that with other people that they might work with, or the teams that they may be inheriting to make sure that there's like a cultural and chemistry type of fit. We try to do a system where each of the different interviewers has a different topical area so that we can make sure we're not repeating the same questions. Or, for example, maybe you interview somebody and you got the spidey sense That there's an issue with the way that they want to do something that you think might not be a fit and you didn't get enough time. So then when you pass the baton to me to take on my interview with that person, you're going to say, Emily, can you just double check and dig in deeper on this specific area? So we try to be really thoughtful about how we do that. Finally, we actually have a presentation part of our interview process, and this is the hallmark of Coinbase. And I can tell you a lot of really amazing senior people kind o…

AI assessment note: “There is no interview longer than 30 minutes. We have a panel of people.”

Q Oh, that's very, very kind of you. I promise to pay you later, but I want to start today with a little on you, and how does one come to be head of corp dev for LinkedIn? What was your route?

A I'd always been into tech and digital media, and I was on the East Coast working in investment banking for more traditional industries. And I reached out to Yahoo about working in corp dev and strategy, and I got the role. And it was just an incredible time to learn the ropes at the time. Yahoo was the undisputed leader in a bunch of categories in consumer internet, and I got to work across all sorts of verticals from jobs to email to photos and on a number of cool deals from Flickr to the original Alibaba investment. Most importantly, some of the best and brightest minds worked at Yahoo at the time, so I built a really strong network from my time there, including with our current CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Wiener. So ever since that time, I've worked in a variety of corp dev and strategy roles, and I've now been at LinkedIn for seven years and have overseen all of our acquisitions and strategic investments.

AI assessment note: “I've now been at LinkedIn for seven years and have overseen all of our acquisitions”

Q Oh, that's very, very kind of you. I promise to pay you later, but I want to start today with a little on you, and how does one come to be head of corp dev for LinkedIn? What was your route?

A I'd always been into tech and digital media, and I was on the East Coast working in investment banking for more traditional industries. And I reached out to Yahoo about working in corp dev and strategy, and I got the role. And it was just an incredible time to learn the ropes at the time. Yahoo was the undisputed leader in a bunch of categories in consumer internet, and I got to work across all sorts of verticals from jobs to email to photos and on a number of cool deals from Flickr to the original Alibaba investment. Most importantly, some of the best and brightest minds worked at Yahoo at the time, so I built a really strong network from my time there, including with our current CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Wiener. So ever since that time, I've worked in a variety of corp dev and strategy roles, and I've now been at LinkedIn for seven years and have overseen all of our acquisitions and strategic investments.

AI assessment note: “built a really strong network from my time there, including with our current CEO”

Q Totally get you in terms of that shifting and the challenge in terms of just having so much that you can do. Can I ask, how do you personally approach prioritization? I mean, there is so much that you can do. How do you literally put on a more structured perspective and focus?

A It really comes down to that seventy-twenty-ten framework. And this was something that we modeled after Google. Ultimately, the core business is the business that funds the rest of the business. It's the thing that we are known for. It is the foundation of who we are. We have to make sure that our resources, our time, and our energy are focused on that core trading experience for consumers and for institutions. The 20% is strategic adjacent bets. So for example, we didn't have a custody offering some years ago, but we recognized that custody was incredibly important To enhancing the value prop of everything we do. Because crypto assets are digital. It's not a paper certificate that you own this asset. We have to protect and safeguard those assets. We recognize that that was very strategic to us. We started with nothing. We are now the largest crypto custodian in the world. That was a venture bet that became a strategic adjacency. That's 20% of our resources and our mind share. And then 10% venture bets. We believe that there are massive opportunities in the future. They may feel crazy. They may feel wallet was an example of this. And now we think wallet is Incredibly strategic to us. So that's the way that we do this. We make sure that we have a process where every quarter we have quarterly business reviews. We talk about those things. We make sure that we're ensuring that thes…

AI assessment note: “It really comes down to that seventy-twenty-ten framework.”

Q back of that? It's like, in a capital-rich environment like we're in today, when we think about the multiples that we're willing to pay, have we had to completely reshape our mind as a head of corp dev on the willingness to Pay up in the price elasticity that we have, given bluntly valuations being where they are, or actually Is it a more rigid mindset that persists through time?

A Mike Volpe, who was famously that head of Corp Dev at Cisco during the heyday of Cisco M&A, he once said something to me, which I never forget. He said, never get the right deal, get the right company. And I think that that really holds true today. We're seeing multiples that simply don't make sense. And so at the end of the day, you have to kind of Park that and say, okay, the market is frothy. Multiples are frothy, regardless of whether for M and a or just general trading. And if I want this company getting it now is probably the right thing. If I believe this company is going to have escape velocity, that's the right thing. If you look back at the acquisition of Instagram, for example, or the acquisition of YouTube, if you look at the press around that time, it's crazy, right? The press is like, how could they pay that for YouTube? How could they pay that? There's all this litigation. And what's there? They have Google Video or Instagram. One billion dollars for a company with no revenue? I mean, so you have to be able to take those bets, and that's what's really hard, I think, for people to get excited about during the time. But when you look back at those seminal M&A acquisitions of all time, they obviously paid for themselves many, many, many times over.

AI assessment note: “never get the right deal, get the right company. And I think that that really holds true today.”

Q Totally get you in terms of that shifting and the challenge in terms of just having so much that you can do. Can I ask, how do you personally approach prioritization? I mean, there is so much that you can do. How do you literally put on a more structured perspective and focus?

A It really comes down to that seventy-twenty-ten framework. And this was something that we modeled after Google. Ultimately, the core business is the business that funds the rest of the business. It's the thing that we are known for. It is the foundation of who we are. We have to make sure that our resources, our time, and our energy are focused on that core trading experience for consumers and for institutions. The 20% is strategic adjacent bets. So for example, we didn't have a custody offering some years ago, but we recognized that custody was incredibly important To enhancing the value prop of everything we do. Because crypto assets are digital. It's not a paper certificate that you own this asset. We have to protect and safeguard those assets. We recognize that that was very strategic to us. We started with nothing. We are now the largest crypto custodian in the world. That was a venture bet that became a strategic adjacency. That's 20% of our resources and our mind share. And then 10% venture bets. We believe that there are massive opportunities in the future. They may feel crazy. They may feel wallet was an example of this. And now we think wallet is Incredibly strategic to us. So that's the way that we do this. We make sure that we have a process where every quarter we have quarterly business reviews. We talk about those things. We make sure that we're ensuring that thes…

AI assessment note: “It really comes down to that seventy-twenty-ten framework.”

Q I do want to ask, you know, when we look at, you know, your decision-making, I'm always fascinated by kind of decision-making within leadership. When you look at yours today, how would you describe your decision-making process, and has it changed much?

A When you're growing really fast as a startup, you Quickly wreak havoc on the organization when you go from 10, 20, a hundred, a 1002 1005 thousand people. People who used to be able to go up to the CEO in the hallway and ask for a decision suddenly panic because they don't know how to get things done. In fact, it's probably the number one question I get from people who are interviewing with Coinbase. How does decision making get made? And the reason they're asking this is because they are so confused By the bureaucratic processes at their company that they so want to make sure that they're not joining another completely messed up company in that regard. This is where I come back to the rapids. You know, I'm sure people at our company are like, oh my God, stop talking about the rapids. The rapids are a great vehicle for us because it is very clear how a decision gets made. And we're not going to have any of this passive aggressive BS behavior where we're going to stew on a decision. We'll say, oh, we'll get back to you. And then we never get back to somebody on decision. It's very clear. We have the recommend, we have the agree, the perform, the input, the decide. We label whether or not this is going to be an existential decision, a la type one and type two decisions by Jeff Bezos. So is it something where it's irreversible once you make the decision, or is it something that's …

AI assessment note: “We have the recommend, we have the agree, the perform, the input, the decide.”

Q You mentioned that kind of what success looks like. Final question before you move into my favorite, the quickfire. I'd love to hear how you, from your perspective, would assess That's the measurement of success with potential acquisitions. What does that measurement look like?

A We work with both the target companies as well as the sponsoring teams at our companies to come up with those, call it, three or so goals of the integration. So, for example, with our Newsle acquisition, which is about people in the news, it was about making sure that there was a very short-term path to getting their functionality embedded into our consumer flagship Property, as well as our sales navigator app as quickly as possible. Then there's things like retention of the key employees. So which employees have we designated to be truly key for the longer term? And what is our benchmark retention rate going to be? And every company should have a different benchmark based on what the overall retention rate of their overall employee base is. And then typically there should be a medium to longer term goal of something like, how can we Through this acquisition spur this type of, whether it's growth, engagement, monetization level, whatever it is, what is that right benchmark? And then in what period of time do we want to hit that? So those are some of the things that we do with every acquisition. We just try to have a more of a custom approach to understanding that each acquisition is going to be different. And so there should be different targets for each acquisition in terms of what the success metrics should be.

AI assessment note: “three or so goals of the integration. So, for example, with our Newsle acquisition”

Q In terms of kind of putting down those final elements, I would love to hear just that pre-element for you internally of what does the internal conviction building process look like for you? Target identified, Initial meetings done. How do you look to really ingratiate the team to this opportunity, and what does that look like internally?

A Well, hopefully, based on what we were talking about before with respect to meeting early in the startup's life cycle, we've already ceded the fact that this is an interesting company to our exec team, hopefully, and that we have some metrics around that because we've been meeting with them and building that relationship over time. So, we at LinkedIn have implemented something called a rapid process. There is one usually executive level sponsor who will, on R&D usually, who will recommend this acquisition. The other R&D person, for example, the head of engineering for that particular group, would then have to agree with it because they have to make sure that they are comfortable with it. In addition, our CFO would have to agree with it, so that's the R and the A. Then there's teams that are involved in perform, which is the integrate part of it, and the input part of it. So perhaps there are teams that are Peripherally involved, and we'll need to set this up for success, and they want to weigh in on the pros and cons of it. And then the D is decide, which is usually Jeff, our CEO, saying, yes, I agree with this, and I decide that we can go forward with this. And it's really helped us just have a little bit more of a framework to make sure that we're all signed up, and if there is a responsibility to it, we know who's accountable for it, who is recommending it, and everybody who…

AI assessment note: “we at LinkedIn have implemented something called a rapid process.”

Q And speaking of the company mattering there and having that kind of long-term perspective, once we move past the acquisition itself, Matt Switzer at Hootsuite stated, the biggest risk is always integration risk. I'm intrigued. How do you think about integration risk? And are there any elements that can be enacted to minimize this risk and ensure for as smooth an integration as possible?

A I totally agree. I always say that everybody loves a deal. Everybody wants to weigh in on a deal. It's the sexy part of the transaction. For us, what we've learned over time is that it's much more important to focus on what we call a barbell approach, which is the strategy leading to the acquisition and then post acquisition that, that integration strategy, as opposed to over waiting on the middle part, which is the transactional part. And so what we do is we embed the integration strategy in the very beginning of the process. We talk In almost the first meeting with the founders about what we believe our thesis to be on how this could potentially be integrated. We've actually studied the history of all the best in class tech integrations for both consumer and enterprise. And what's really interesting on the consumer side, what really stands out from the most successful ones is that they were really left alone. The acquiring company typically provided them with a bunch of backend help and Legal and other GNA services, but they usually stepped up R&D spend and sales and marketing spend for those assets by 30 to 40% a year over the next several years and beyond that. And so what that means is that the products themselves didn't really change. They didn't have these heavy integrations with the acquiring company's services and products. They were simply allowed to focus almost excl…

AI assessment note: “what we do is we embed the integration strategy in the very beginning”

Q Can I ask you, I am going to touch on kind of the learnings from LinkedIn. In terms of the high highs and low lows, you know, You have them in lots of industries, but you really have them with you. What have been your lessons in terms of managing them and how you manage the high highs and low lows?

A It's a great question. First of all, I think Brian Armstrong, our founder, is the key to this because he is very kind of calm and even keeled and balanced regardless of how the market is. One of his pieces of advice to me was like, never get too excited when everybody's exuberant and everybody wants to get into Crypto. And never get too down when people are looking at you like you're insane for being in the space or at this company. Just keep an even kill. Look to the future, keep focusing on the mission, and just don't get distracted by all the noise. It's much harder to do than to actually say that, but I think once you've weathered like a crypto winter, you are ready for anything. And that's what I've been through here, and so it's been a great experience that way.

AI assessment note: “never get too excited when everybody's exuberant... And never get too down”

Q I love it. Can I ask other venture bets? Is that Coinbase Ventures? I'm intrigued. What was the decision-making process around that?

A The venture, 10% that I'm talking about is actually organic. In addition to that, we have Coinbase Ventures. And Coinbase Ventures, I think, is going to prove to be, I mean, obviously, I don't want to kind of sound overly exuberant here, but I think it's going to prove to be the kind of linchpins to the whole company and the whole crypto ecosystem over time. And I think it's going to be amazing from both a financial return perspective as well as an ecosystem perspective. When I joined three and a half years ago, I talked to Brian. I said, I think we should do Coinbase Ventures. And he was like, I totally agree. I've been thinking about this. I said, okay, so what do I do? And he's like, write a blog post. So I wrote a blog post. I sent it to him that day. He was like, I love it. And I was like, okay, now what? And he's like, what do you mean? He's like, ship it. Literally, that's how it happened. And we now have more than 200 investments. If you look at the portfolio of Coinbase Ventures investments, it's swoon worthy. It's like just some of the most amazing crypto companies in the ecosystem with some of the brightest, best founders of our time. And I think that the model that we have is so radically different from everything else there on the market. It is true to crypto in the sense that it is truly decentralized. We do not have a dedicated person on Coinbase Ventures. We hav…

AI assessment note: “I talked to Brian. I said, I think we should do Coinbase Ventures.”

Q Can I ask you, I am going to touch on kind of the learnings from LinkedIn. In terms of the high highs and low lows, you know, You have them in lots of industries, but you really have them with you. What have been your lessons in terms of managing them and how you manage the high highs and low lows?

A It's a great question. First of all, I think Brian Armstrong, our founder, is the key to this because he is very kind of calm and even keeled and balanced regardless of how the market is. One of his pieces of advice to me was like, never get too excited when everybody's exuberant and everybody wants to get into Crypto. And never get too down when people are looking at you like you're insane for being in the space or at this company. Just keep an even kill. Look to the future, keep focusing on the mission, and just don't get distracted by all the noise. It's much harder to do than to actually say that, but I think once you've weathered like a crypto winter, you are ready for anything. And that's what I've been through here, and so it's been a great experience that way.

AI assessment note: “never get too excited when everybody's exuberant... never get too down”

Q way, and discuss the learnings, and if we start with, say, the corp dev element, and the head of corp dev, you know, more and more pre-IPO companies today feel they need to hire a head of corp dev. First, like, why do you think that is, and is that just because they have this abundance of cash that they can now use? Why do they feel they need to?

A They feel the need to because they have FOMO, and they see corp dev happening. There's obviously, like, the market is really robust right now. They feel like they should be able to use their stock and Cash for M&A. However, I've seen this movie many times. The thing I would say is make sure you really want a head of corp dev, you know, at the pre IPO level. And I was very wary of this when I got reach outs from LinkedIn after, you know, when I was leaving, I pressure tested this with Brian. Cause I really wanted to make sure if I was going to come over to head up corp dev at Coinbase that Brian genuinely wanted to do M&A. What I found is that founders like the idea of M&A, but In many cases, what they'll do as they kind of unpack M&A and do due diligence is they'll say, you know what, actually we can build this ourselves. We don't necessarily need to buy it. And so I've just seen this too many times where they hire the head of corp dev, but the head of corp dev doesn't actually get to do any M&A. And so that's fine if you want kind of like a general athlete, strategic person to just work on anything strategic and kind of deploy themselves into projects, but you can have an unhappy combination if you're not Truly ready for M&A and you hire, you know, the big guns for it.

AI assessment note: “They feel the need to because they have FOMO, and they see corp dev happening.”

Q Can I ask the other thing that I also just think to you, and again, I'm so sorry for going off schedule, but this is so great. It's like, fundamentally, you hire the head of corp dev, and then what? Like, what does that onboarding process look like? And for you, if you, you know, join the new company, what's the best onboarding process for a head of corp dev?

A Yeah. So the most successful heads of corp dev are going to be self starters. By the way, this is true for anybody at Coinbase, and I hope at most startups, nobody's going to tell you what to do. I remember even at LinkedIn, when I came there and like, you know, Jeff obviously knew what a head of corp dev was, but most of the company didn't know at the time. You have to just be a self starter. You have to figure out where there are problems in the company and how you can help solve. And that might be related to corp dev, but it might not, right? It might be a strategy piece that you have to help with. It might be an area that the product Team needs to kind of investigate. You got to plug yourself in to wherever there's open opportunity. That's how you're going to succeed at any startup, right? That's the way they were. The head of corp dev, in addition to that, they should come in and they should start figuring out with the product and engineering teams, where are the areas where M&A are going to truly amplify and accelerate what we're doing? And how can I get you insights? Oh, did you know this company is now at this number of users? Did you know that they're doing this? Did you know that this is the program? The whole thing about corp dev is you're an external facing person. Who can get invaluable insights if you have amazing relationships with the whole ecosystem. You can he…

AI assessment note: “they should come in and they should start figuring out with the product and engineering”

Q In terms of kind of putting down those final elements, I would love to hear just that pre-element for you internally of what does the internal conviction building process look like for you? Target identified, Initial meetings done. How do you look to really ingratiate the team to this opportunity, and what does that look like internally?

A Well, hopefully, based on what we were talking about before with respect to meeting early in the startup's life cycle, we've already ceded the fact that this is an interesting company to our exec team, hopefully, and that we have some metrics around that because we've been meeting with them and building that relationship over time. So, we at LinkedIn have implemented something called a rapid process. There is one usually executive level sponsor who will, on R&D usually, who will recommend this acquisition. The other R&D person, for example, the head of engineering for that particular group, would then have to agree with it because they have to make sure that they are comfortable with it. In addition, our CFO would have to agree with it, so that's the R and the A. Then there's teams that are involved in perform, which is the integrate part of it, and the input part of it. So perhaps there are teams that are Peripherally involved, and we'll need to set this up for success, and they want to weigh in on the pros and cons of it. And then the D is decide, which is usually Jeff, our CEO, saying, yes, I agree with this, and I decide that we can go forward with this. And it's really helped us just have a little bit more of a framework to make sure that we're all signed up, and if there is a responsibility to it, we know who's accountable for it, who is recommending it, and everybody who…

AI assessment note: “we at LinkedIn have implemented something called a rapid process”

Q Can I ask within that process and kind of latching onto your seven years of experience with LinkedIn, are there kind of common stumbling blocks where often conversations break down?

A Well, typically a lot of the breakdown happens when there's issues with, for example, leveling. You have to remember that a lot of startups, they're smaller teams, and so these teams are not used to potentially being at larger companies where they're going to be one group, not just their own group. And so as they think about their roles and what they're going to be doing there, both sides need to make sure that they're going to be feeling like they have the impact they want to have to warrant the M&A. I think also there's just this, just in terms of deal negotiation and process, one of the things that I would recommend to founders is to be careful about putting false sense of timelines on a deal. So for example, it often happens that somebody will call and say, listen, we're going to get a term sheet from three other companies by the end of the week. If you want to enter this process, you've got to jump right in. And lo and behold, most of the time those deadlines pass and then the company loses some credibility. And that's That's fine. You have to balance a bunch of things, but I would just say, make sure not to create too much of a sense of false urgency to put it in line so that this doesn't go on forever, but you also need to make sure that you're allowing the acquirer to get the right amount of time and energy and resources on it to set it up for success.

AI assessment note: “typically a lot of the breakdown happens when there's issues with, for example, leveling.”

Q On the flip side, what one thing do you wish startups and startup founders knew more with regards to M&A?

A One, don't create too much of a sense of false urgency about timing. An acquirer is not when you end up getting the term sheet. These processes take longer than you will expect from most acquirers. And so if you create a false sense of urgency and it turns out that those deadlines pass, you end up losing credibility with the sponsoring company. The other thing I would say is selectively make sure that you leverage advice from your VCs or whatever advisors you truly trust, because you're inevitably going to go through things that you have not been through before. And somebody who brings along some expertise in this process and that you trust is going to be able to add a lot of value to you as you see things.

AI assessment note: “don't create too much of a sense of false urgency about timing.”

Q Can I ask within that process and kind of latching onto your seven years of experience with LinkedIn, are there kind of common stumbling blocks where often conversations break down?

A Well, typically a lot of the breakdown happens when there's issues with, for example, leveling. You have to remember that a lot of startups, they're smaller teams, and so these teams are not used to potentially being at larger companies where they're going to be one group, not just their own group. And so as they think about their roles and what they're going to be doing there, both sides need to make sure that they're going to be feeling like they have the impact they want to have to warrant the M&A. I think also there's just this, just in terms of deal negotiation and process, one of the things that I would recommend to founders is to be careful about putting false sense of timelines on a deal. So for example, it often happens that somebody will call and say, listen, we're going to get a term sheet from three other companies by the end of the week. If you want to enter this process, you've got to jump right in. And lo and behold, most of the time those deadlines pass and then the company loses some credibility. And that's That's fine. You have to balance a bunch of things, but I would just say, make sure not to create too much of a sense of false urgency to put it in line so that this doesn't go on forever, but you also need to make sure that you're allowing the acquirer to get the right amount of time and energy and resources on it to set it up for success.

AI assessment note: “typically a lot of the breakdown happens when there's issues with, for example, leveling.”

Q On the flip side, what one thing do you wish startups and startup founders knew more with regards to M&A?

A One, don't create too much of a sense of false urgency about timing. An acquirer is not when you end up getting the term sheet. These processes take longer than you will expect from most acquirers. And so if you create a false sense of urgency and it turns out that those deadlines pass, you end up losing credibility with the sponsoring company. The other thing I would say is selectively make sure that you leverage advice from your VCs or whatever advisors you truly trust, because you're inevitably going to go through things that you have not been through before. And somebody who brings along some expertise in this process and that you trust is going to be able to add a lot of value to you as you see things.

AI assessment note: “don't create too much of a sense of false urgency about timing”

Q What are the core signals then that the CEO does want it and is ready for it?

A So they've been talking about it. Have they been talking to their board about it? Is the board ready to make some big moves? Are they going to just do small acquihires, which is totally fine. Talent is a great way to do M&A, but in that case, you probably don't need like one dedicated senior head of corp dev. What would be examples of the targets that the founder would dream of? Are those top of mind for the founder? Are they top of mind for the product and engineering teams? And this is totally fine for most companies. Many companies just do this stuff, and then they go into it, and they're like, hey, wait, I could build this for much cheaper. In some cases they can, in some cases they can't, but they have to have that honest conversation before they hire that big role.

AI assessment note: “Have they been talking to their board about it? Is the board ready”

Q Can I ask what's been the most challenging element of creating that environment for you with Coinbase?

A Coinbase is a very complex company. It's very different from LinkedIn in that sense, or Coinbase has a portfolio of different products, and 70% of our resources are devoted to core, 20% are devoted to adjacencies, and 10% are devoted to venture bets, right? And we have a lot of products. There's a lot of companies who say, focus, focus, focus, focus, focus. We got to optimize, optimize, optimize. Coinbase is a completely different type of company. We're saying, we think that Crypto is going to take over the world. We think the total addressable market is massive. And so we are going to take major bets in the space because we're not going to play safe. We're going to take intelligent bets because we think that there's so much opportunity here. We are going to play in brokerage, in exchange, in custodian, in wallet, in commerce. We believe those are opportunities and we have a lot more opportunities. We have no dearth of opportunities. So then as the COO, when I'm thinking about how do we resource these things, how do we keep people safe? Who are working on these initiatives focused and shipping these great things. It's a lot to juggle. Have to be really good at multitasking, and you have to be really good at shifting context from meeting to meeting day to day.

AI assessment note: “It's a lot to juggle. Have to be really good at multitasking”

Q In terms of Paul's statement about startups only talking to corp dev when they're doing either really well or really badly, what are your thoughts on this and when the right time to have conversations with corp dev teams is?

A You know, I'm a big fan of Mark Souster's line about, it's about lines, not dots. In other words, it's about long-term relationship and a series of dots, not just one transactional conversation. So don't just come to us when there's a transaction going on. Knowing the corp dev team at a company is a great way to navigate the company and begin to form the right relationships. And it can start at any time. It could be super low touch, but it's useful. I think Reed was the one who said something about good entrepreneurs talk to anyone who might help them. And he said something like the classic mistake that entrepreneurs make is I'm not going to tell anybody because somebody else will go do something with it. There are a lot of ideas. The competitive edge is your emotion on it.

AI assessment note: “it's about long-term relationship... don't just come to us when there's a transaction”

Q So am I, but I do want to start today. I always love a bit of storytelling. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups and come to be president and CEO at Coinbase?

A So originally when I first kind of came to the Valley, it was because I loved technology. I just so wanted to be a Part of what was happening. And I always tell people that Yahoo at the time was the place to be in terms of everything interesting happening in the consumer internet. I think a lot of people find that hard to believe these days, sadly, but it was the epicenter of everything. And the cool thing about that was that it meant that the best and the brightest people were there. It meant that we were doing incredible work. For example, as a junior analyst, I got to work on that original Alibaba deal for Yahoo and the Flickr acquisition. To work with people like Jeff Wiener, and then to acquire people like Stuart Butterfield. So that was the beginning of my career in Silicon Valley. And I've been, you know, to several places, but that was the formative part of my career. At that point, I realized I need to do this thing, and I want to be around entrepreneurs and founders my whole career. That makes me happy.

AI assessment note: “So that was the beginning of my career in Silicon Valley.”

Q Can I ask the other thing that I also just think to you, and again, I'm so sorry for going off schedule, but this is so great. It's like, fundamentally, you hire the head of corp dev, and then what? Like, what does that onboarding process look like? And for you, if you, you know, join the new company, what's the best onboarding process for a head of corp dev?

A Yeah. So the most successful heads of corp dev are going to be self starters. By the way, this is true for anybody at Coinbase, and I hope at most startups, nobody's going to tell you what to do. I remember even at LinkedIn, when I came there and like, you know, Jeff obviously knew what a head of corp dev was, but most of the company didn't know at the time. You have to just be a self starter. You have to figure out where there are problems in the company and how you can help solve. And that might be related to corp dev, but it might not, right? It might be a strategy piece that you have to help with. It might be an area that the product Team needs to kind of investigate. You got to plug yourself in to wherever there's open opportunity. That's how you're going to succeed at any startup, right? That's the way they were. The head of corp dev, in addition to that, they should come in and they should start figuring out with the product and engineering teams, where are the areas where M&A are going to truly amplify and accelerate what we're doing? And how can I get you insights? Oh, did you know this company is now at this number of users? Did you know that they're doing this? Did you know that this is the program? The whole thing about corp dev is you're an external facing person. Who can get invaluable insights if you have amazing relationships with the whole ecosystem. You can he…

AI assessment note: “they should come in and they should start figuring out with the product and engineering”

Q If you have the doubt, Max Levchin said, when there's doubt, there's no doubt. Which I kind of oscillate on, obviously. Like, when it's hires, when it's investments, I don't know whether that's right or not. And I'm not saying Max is wrong. Obviously, he's much more than me. But like, do you think when there's doubt, there's no doubt?

A I think that that's Probably right. To be honest, I think that you kind of just know you're tricking yourself. Now, if you're not providing the right environment, if you're not providing the right tools, if you're not providing the right onboarding and manager to kind of help this person get up to speed and get successful, then that is on the company. But you have a doubt like this person is just probably not going to be right. And I made the wrong hiring decision. You can imagine it is so much better to just have that honest conversation with them sooner rather than later, right? They don't want to be the person that everybody feels like is going to be Set up for failure. The most compassionate thing to do. And so I think that this is kind of Netflixy in a sense. And I think that Netflix has done a really good job about making sure that it's a win-win for the person who has to depart and the company itself. There's this other thing that just, this is my pro tip for like people who are having a hard time being, delivering, you know, performance reviews and so on. Everybody hates a performance review. Everybody does. Right. You know, Stuart Butterfield, he was like, oh, I hate giving feedback. I hate performance reviews. There's a quote where he was like, horses smell fear. Okay. We all go into these performance reviews, right. As a manager. And we kind of were like, Harry, you …

AI assessment note: “I think that that's Probably right. To be honest, I think that you kind of just know”

Q as you said, kind of delegating decision-making and responsibility as you do, how do you prevent fear aversion in your team? Often it's It's easier to take the safe choice, but it's often not best. How do you provide an environment of safety where it's okay to fail, but also there's a responsibility, and it's not okay to fail always, if that makes sense. How do you create that balance?

A It's really hard, and I think that this is probably a topic that's under-discussed in the world right now, because you don't want to create a culture of complete risk mitigation all the time. You want people to take intelligent risks. I think that what the whole goal of the rapid is, is that When you start to see decision making patterns, and this is like a Ray Dalio concept, you're going to be able to kind of spot people who have good insights over time. Harry, you recommended that we do this a year ago on the rapid, and we actually decided against it, but you were right. We should have launched this product. You were totally right. I can start having a data track record and tracking the kind of insights of people who are on the team, who are the up and comers and the movers and shakers. And that allows me to then empower those People who turned out to be right more than not. That's how you do this, but you're not going to be able to start with that. You have to build that over time.

AI assessment note: “empower those People who turned out to be right more than not. That's how you do this”

Q Can I ask, if a friend asks you to interview me for a potential head of corp dev role, you are the master, and I want this job that your friend is offering, and you're going to interview me as the master, what could I do that would differentiate me as great from good? What could I do in my answers, in my actions, in how I present?

A For Coinbase, one of the most important things is going to be about clear communication. And, you know, it sounds so mundane. People ask me, what is your top value? I often say clear communication. The reason I think it's clear communication is because the hallmark of successful people at Coinbase is they are excellent presenters. They are excellent communicators. They are pithy. They're strong. They get their message across. The reason this is so important is because we have so many things we're doing. So you have to be able to cut through the noise and you need to be able to get your point across easily and quickly to be inspiring. And like another example of this, we do everything in Google Docs. If you and I have a conversation and make a decision about something, we document it in Google Docs because I don't want to say in a year from now that I misread you in the room and I remembered it this way. We can look back at the Google Docs and we say, Harry recommended this for this big decision. Oh, okay. Now I have it in Google Docs. Sorry, but back to your original question. I want to know that you've actually done M&A. I want to know that you've done the whole span of it from acquihires. How do you think about talent acquisition? How do you think about the multiples that you will pay for talent acquisition and how that impacts the existing team and what they're compensated? …

AI assessment note: “I want to know that you've actually done M&A.”

Q In terms of Paul's statement about startups only talking to corp dev when they're doing either really well or really badly, what are your thoughts on this and when the right time to have conversations with corp dev teams is?

A You know, I'm a big fan of Mark Souster's line about, it's about lines, not dots. In other words, it's about long-term relationship and a series of dots, not just one transactional conversation. So don't just come to us when there's a transaction going on. Knowing the corp dev team at a company is a great way to navigate the company and begin to form the right relationships. And it can start at any time. It could be super low touch, but it's useful. I think Reed was the one who said something about good entrepreneurs talk to anyone who might help them. And he said something like the classic mistake that entrepreneurs make is I'm not going to tell anybody because somebody else will go do something with it. There are a lot of ideas. The competitive edge is your emotion on it.

AI assessment note: “it's about long-term relationship and a series of dots, not just one transactional conversation.”

Q So am I, but I do want to start today. I always love a bit of storytelling. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups and come to be president and CEO at Coinbase?

A So originally when I first kind of came to the Valley, it was because I loved technology. I just so wanted to be a Part of what was happening. And I always tell people that Yahoo at the time was the place to be in terms of everything interesting happening in the consumer internet. I think a lot of people find that hard to believe these days, sadly, but it was the epicenter of everything. And the cool thing about that was that it meant that the best and the brightest people were there. It meant that we were doing incredible work. For example, as a junior analyst, I got to work on that original Alibaba deal for Yahoo and the Flickr acquisition. To work with people like Jeff Wiener, and then to acquire people like Stuart Butterfield. So that was the beginning of my career in Silicon Valley. And I've been, you know, to several places, but that was the formative part of my career. At that point, I realized I need to do this thing, and I want to be around entrepreneurs and founders my whole career. That makes me happy.

AI assessment note: “So that was the beginning of my career in Silicon Valley.”