Bankless - SotN #40: Get a Job In Crypto: Rob Paone of Proof of Talent

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Rob Paone, aka Crypto Bobby, joins Bankless to tell you how to get a job in crypto. State of the Nation is live-streamed on Tuesdays at 11am PT ------ GO BANKLESS WITH THESE SPONSOR TOOLS: ⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave  🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMP https://bankless.cc/go-gemini  💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith  📱 DHARMA - MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFI https://bankless.cc/dharma  ------ SotN #40: Get a Job in Crypto Guest: Rob Paone (Crypto Bobby) In this week's State of the Nation, we discuss the emerging crypto economy. Rob Paone is the founder of Proof of Talent, a recruiting and search firm that places candidates in professional roles in the crypto space. Few people are more equipped to discuss the job market in the cryptocurrency industry. Rob is also known by his Youtube persona, Crypto Bobby. He has transitioned into the space's premier career recruiter and is taking advantage of crypto's huge growth potential. In the legacy world, most of the profitable ideas and services have already been capitalized. Crypto exists on the other end of the spectrum, where the market gaps are vast and ripe for opportunity. Rob's fundamental approach for candidates seeking employment is one of bootstrapping. The market is geared towards those with a technical background, but the key is finding what sets you apart and proving it. Passion and knowledge should naturally turn into finding like-minded communities and contributing. There is a premium on authenticity, commitment, and value. For those actively seeking a profession in crypto, there are ways to get involved and make yourself invaluable. Are you a tourist, or are you a settler? ------ RESOURCES: Proof of Talent: https://proofoftalent.co/  Rob on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crypto_bobby?s=20  ------ THIS WEEK ON BANKLESS: ⚒️ How to Stream Money (3/30): https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/how-to-stream-money  🎙️ EIP-1559 With Hasu (3/29): https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/-eip-1559-hasu  📈 Market Monday (3/29): https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/visa-is-going-to-pay-eth-holders  🧢 Weekly Action Recap (3/27): https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/fidelitys-bitcoin-etf-weekly-recap  🗞️ Weekly Rollup (3/26): https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/-rollup-uniswap-v3-fidelity-etf-btc  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to another episode of State of the Nation. David Hoffman and I are really excited to bring to 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. And so that's something that I believe in, and our guest, Rob, has dedicated his whole career to building this out. And so I'm excited to talk to Rob today 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 the how of that. This comes at you every Tuesday. We live stream it on YouTube. We also broadcast it on the bankless podcast on Wednesdays. David, we should take. talk about a few things that are new in the bankless nation. First, up, our episode with Hasu, just simply titled EIP 1559. No special title because that's all it needs. EIP 1559. Yeah, we went through every single thing that makes EIP 1559, EIP 1559. 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 U.S. system. It's also a gas management system. It's also a M.EV mitigator. There's a lot of different things that make up EIP-1559. And Hazis particularly has been really spearheading this effort getting EIP-1559 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 we'll get everyone really excited, which is how does EIP-159 impact the monetary policy of ether the asset in the security of Ethereum. And so it is a, you can go from zero to 100 about EIP-1559 with that episode. I think everyone in crypto, if you're investing in crypto,

you owe it to yourself to understand what EIP 1559 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, 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 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 Uniswap all the way from before Uniswap, was Uniswap to where we are today with Uniswap v3 and what's coming down the pipeline. with optimism. I'm really excited to have that conversation. If I can edit this video as fast as possible, then perhaps that video goes on the bankless YouTube Wednesday evening, question mark. Maybe. Maybe.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Stay tuned. David, David, is putting some pressure on himself. Yeah. I like that, Dave. I'm saying maybe. Yeah. All right. So you heard it. Maybe. Maybe definitely the evening of Wednesday. David, this whole conversation is going to be about jobs in the crypto economy. Speaking of jobs, the bankless nation is hiring. What are we looking for? What kind of talent are we looking for? So much, so much. We need a website, first off. We need the homepage of bankless. There's so many different streams. We have bankless YouTube, bankless podcast, the newsletter, articles, apparel. 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 images, just icons, whatever, to put on t-shirts, you know, apparel. stuff of this nature, but then also for digital art because we are trying to grow the world of bankless culture and crypto culture. And so if you think that you can fit those bills, come and 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 homepage and it is terrible. We don't talk about it. We don't talk about it very often because it's so bad. 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 our guest, Rob, who is, again, leading the charge to helping matchmaking between candidates and employers, right?

There is, and 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, 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. These are questions that we're going to ask Rob. And then also, as well, like we said, the Bankless Nation is actually literally hiring. We are literally hiring people.

And so in all respects, there is money out there to be found by people that can contribute labor to this ecosystem. And so we're trying to figure out a way is to get this world employed. 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 labor is the question? How do you plug into that is going to be the topic of today's conversation? We're going to come back with Rob Payone in just a minute. But before we get to the episode, we want to tell you about the fantastic sponsors that made this possible. Guys, we've entered a bull market. Now is the time to start building your crypto empire,

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AVE does all of this for you, all in one seamless transaction, so you don't have to repay loans in order to change the collateral you have backing them. Check out the power of AVE at AVE.com. That's AAAVE.com. All right, bankless nation. We are here with Rob Payone, who was once known as Cryptobobobby and ran a very successful YouTube channel in the height of the 2017-2018, Cryptomania. And I appreciated Cryptobobobby because it was a very sober and well-informed and highly

entertaining YouTube channel. And in the sea of shit that was just 2017, it was a nice little oasis to escape to. So Cryptobobobby, I appreciated that. But you are no longer Cryptobobobby. Rebrand. Yeah, complete rebrand. And so something pulled Cryptobobbobby away from the world of crypto content production to turn him into Rob Payone. 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, you know, recruiting and matchmaking. Yeah. So I guess, you know, at a high level, like my first job at a college is in recruiting. I did that for a few years and ended up working in software sales for a while. And towards the tail end of my time, I was selling ERP software, which is like business management accounting software to fintech firms at Oracle. 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 software sales job and the YouTube channel 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 going to 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 but ended up getting a job at air swap so I I kind of worked in growth and biz dev at air swap 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, an air swap towards the towards the kind of tail end. It was, I think May of 2019, just really had the idea to start a recruiting firm in the blockchain and crypto space. And I've thought it was a good marriage of my experience. Previously in recruiting, the knowledge and connections I had in the blockchain and 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 that were running their own companies, was kind of asking around, like, what's the biggest challenge? And almost every single person, even back in 2019 was saying, like, hiring is really, really difficult. It's impossible for

us. So it's 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, that reminds me of just, you know, kind of building out my two side gigs before, 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, dedicated to 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, uh, I would say that. I mean, it was definitely a risk. I had a little bit of savings ready to go, but it was definitely a nerve-wracking time because from the time I graduated college, I graduated in 2012. So I had a job lined up

and I started working two weeks after I graduated up until the time I left AirSwap in June of 2019. I've always had a full-time salaried position. 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 had never been to a point where I was fully like, I guess unemployed or self-employed. And so 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 right now and I would have regretted if I didn't do it. So the way that I've positioned this in my head is like we have this legacy world where most of the businesses that could be made have already been made.

and that's just kind of just the nature of this legacy world. It's already existed for so long. And crypto is 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, which means that the opportunity, the job market opportunity is perhaps massive. Is that how you kind of see things as well? Yeah, 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 a whole now is obviously massive in 2019 was still like really large but there were a number of different I think like service providers for the space and nobody that really kind of came to front of mind when you think about recruiting or of looking for a new job 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 Trevinsky, Stephen 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 in brands. And then 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 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 lists when people ask us like, how do we get into the space? How do we get a job? And we often say

things like this. 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 talent, right? They didn't have a good way to get it. So you went and you you filled that niche. 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, Rob, about sort of the opportunity size, like the size of the economy. And what I love is you started this in 2019, right? During like, still, it was a bare 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 per year that this industry is spitting out. I don't even know how you'd measure it, but give us a sense of the size of this thing. Yeah, I think overall it's definitely like a large and impressive industry to be working in. I think you can break it down to in a couple different ways and a couple kind of different like subsectors. Like 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 is and are like centralized exchanges and like the financial firms behind it. So like the coin basis 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 like crypto like the crypto economic. So like all those companies kind of have to adhere to the traditional regulations and because of that like the block vys of the world like block five grew from 15 employees to like 500 plus in two years. It's crazy. 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 defy organizations where 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, the, the, the, amount 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 coinbase um so there there's definitely a number of like growing areas off the top of 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 there's There's core contributors. There's open source developers. 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 blockfyes growth, is like, what is the growth of this space? It just seems like it's absolutely massive. Is, you know, are we growing at, you know, 100%, a thousand percent per year? and how does that ebb and flow with the market cycles? Yeah, so I do think that hiring in the space is definitely cyclical. With the hiring where it was in 2019, when I started the business, it was nowhere near where we were right now.

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 flip side for more of these like defy focused or kind of decentralization focused companies because if you look at it in two ways on the side of the larger companies like I mentioned the exchanges most of those companies are making money on 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 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 defy 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 large end of the spectrum too. But when you see the market pullback, I think, on both ends of the spectrum, if it does, you know, at some point in time, who knows, you're going to see, you know,

maybe less of a demand in the client support, less of a demand. Also, in terms of venture capitalist 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 congratulations. And to me, me, the whole entire crypto industry changed in March of 2021 when like the asset prices just like plummeted, then COVID 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

the recent developments of COVID, government stimulus, money printer go burr. How is that changed? And then also, the other question I want to get to is, like, when firms come to you to fill a position, are they coming to fill 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 the hiring in the space has has picked up pretty substantially. It's been, I mean, it's been incredible to watch and kind of be 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 defy startups that just raised their first seed round

up to the probably a few largest exchanges and trading shops that are 1,000 plus employees and kind of on the IPO path or already public. So it definitely runs a full gamut as far as the types and size of organizations that 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-COVID error, is in crypto companies were able to very quickly pivot. Some, and actually a 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 of 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, JP Morgan Chase and them of having their traders work from home. That is a much more different and have 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 a very, it was a very easy process, I think for pretty much every company we worked with and kind of push 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 helped to kind of accelerate that process for us. So Rob, as we switch kind of for 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 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. We call that falling down the crypto rabbit hole, obviously, right? But I think a big question in people's minds is how do they know if they're ready to take that leap into

crypto? 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 bored at their regular job. You know, crypto brings sort of the light back into their eyes. And 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 thinking about taking the plunge? Yeah, 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. 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, the, the, the, interview 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 in

and interviewing with him a bunch but 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 I think that you're able to build with other individuals, with other organizations, much easier than you are on the quote unquote outside of the industry. I think that's hugely valuable. Not only for just having good information, but I think also, like, once you're able to have that kind of connection

and the different layers of working within the industry, you're able to over time, 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 make those moves than it is when you're kind of on the outside of it. So I'm definitely like a big proponent of trying to, 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, you know, according to the price of the assets. Let me just say, Rob, I totally agree. And that's my story to you. But what I found was like, I had to decide my time horizon for this industry, right? I was like, I am 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 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 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 scratched my head and I wonder, oh, how much of this is survivorship bias, Yes, right? 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, 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 hit of number go up. 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. Shout out to Colton who is wonderful. I hired him a week before COVID started. And so that was that was a fun time having my first employee. and the first salary that I'm ever, ever responsible for in my life, start when the world ended. So that was like, 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. 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 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 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. 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

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Rob Payone from Proof of Talent. And we are talking about the crypto economy and how to get a job in the crypto economy. I think so far we talked about the massive opportunity that is ahead for this industry. And we also talked about how to self-select, make sure that you are ready to get a job in 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 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 opportunity or the ease of a technical individual, so a software engineer, someone along those lines, for those individuals to find employment. 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 a crypto space than somebody who is non-technical. To be a, let's say, operations, biz dev, marketing, legal, there are more individuals. I think the supply and demand 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. But I think on both ends of the

spectrum, it really comes down to kind of proving 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 like there's a lot of times when one when I'll have a conversation with somebody 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 bought a bought a token in 2017 held it you know kind of have looked at things here or there

and that's about it and like when you have those those conversations, especially if you're on the hiring side as a company, I think those people are are less appealing to those firms. So 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 dead simple way to build your experience. credibility 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? And 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 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 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, like, I'll sometimes get answers like that where, you know, blockchain is really interesting. I think it's cool. And yeah, 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 sort of, certain element 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 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 bankless or not? That's got to be tough. I have. I have not.

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, you know, consuming content is a really good way, you know, whether it's newsletters, podcasts, YouTube videos. I mean, that's all a helpful way to stay involved with what's happening. Now, Clubhouse is, I guess, a big thing, too. So there's, there's a variety of ways to just kind of stay up to date with what's going on. on. Yeah, that's, wow, that's really, really good advice and advice that I definitely resonate with because 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, things just snowballed from there. So, Rob, you said that, you know, engineers and developers, they have a pretty easy time getting a job. The less technical, they don't, they don't have that same sort of like tailwinds behind them. But they can, you 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 think one of those answers was, you know, content consumption and being passionate. Is there anything else that we can talk about that just is a universal positive for candidates?

Yeah, so 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 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 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 kickstart your way into really participating.

But I think having that just concrete evidence is really what you want. 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 it was recently, I think he worked in the industry previously, but like when I think it was 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.

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 I think 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 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 you put out to PDF or like your LinkedIn profile or something like that. 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. But the thesis was, hey, your ETH address is also a resume. Like what D5 protocols have you used? What DOWs 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 is just kind of started to happen a little bit recently. But I guess two different things come to mind. So number one, I thought this was really interesting. saying when Larry Sermak at the block put out a quiz in telegram that was basically how well you knew the industry. It was 75 questions. And that's kind of how they, I believe, found their intern or interns. And it also kind of had a viral element because everybody was sharing their score. So I thought that was, that was like an ingenious way. 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 defy DGEN score where you just hooked up your, you hooked up your eth address and you got a score based upon how much of a degenerate you were

basically yield farming and getting rugged and all that. And we've had people that have submitted their resumes and send us messages and be like, hey, my D5 DGN scores this. And, oh, way. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that is, that is something where, you know, you're really seeing like the kind of like proliferation of like the more um it's it's not like 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 defy dgen score we do 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 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 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 that's kind of a flex that's kind of a flex 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 to roll X at this point. Rob, what about 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 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 Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms play in the role of getting a job? Yeah, I think they're both helpful. for I mean for me personally I have much greater effect with Twitter I have a larger I guess following 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 great effect ad 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 we find a lot of people And even to that effect, like Travis Kling, who runs Ikejai, if I'm even pronouncing that right, probably not. Ikega. I always mess up the pronunciation of it. But he posted 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 in the post 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, you use. Can we talk about where the talent beds are then Rob for a minute? Because I think this is interesting. I've been actually surprised over the years about 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 they've been reticent to kind of join. It's sort of like we see this innovation in areas outside of traditional tech sectors, but there is a bet of talent there. So if you're speaking to an engineer coming from like Facebook or Google, and these are some of the top engineers in the world, is there sort of a sales job you have to do on why to join crypto. And I guess also the same question for people in traditional finance. So like Wall Street might be 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.

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 is like too risk averse in comparison to what we're looking for. So I think that is like an overall interesting dynamic. I think most of the time a startup would love to have somebody from Google. But when you also think about the compensation, the compensation packages for a lot of these engineers, I mean in crypto it's very competitive,

but like Facebook and Google are paying out the nose for these engineers when it comes to the base salary to, you know, to RSUs, all that type of stuff. 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 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 older folks in the traditional finance world, maybe kind of, and not older isn't in your 40s or 50s, but people that have been in the space for 15, 20, 25 years, kind of looking at the opportunity within crypto and thinking like, hey, this is kind of, you know, a part to a second chapter of my career. And I think a lot of individuals kind of 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, 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 decentralized, you know, in the kind of decentralization camp, they want to work in a D5 project, whatever have you. Some people we talk to you are very much like hardcore bit corners 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 raise their next round of funding during the bear market. So I think there are a variety of 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 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's not profitable. Maybe that company,

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 you should go for that, you know. Rob, I want to turn the conversation to specifically about hiring in the Ethereum and DeFi ecosystem because I think the game has really been changed in Ethereum as a result of defy summer where a lot of Dow's 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 this space so with regards to 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 the Bitcoin only bros or or stuff like this? How is defy and Ethereum hiring different from the rest of the ecosystem? Yeah, it's been, it's been a really interesting trend because, like you said, it is very different when you have some of these, I don't want to call them, I don't know if you call them companies, projects, Dow's, whatever you want to call them. 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 now as like, hey, like, I don't know if we're going to 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, you know, with some of those projects, some of those DAOs and kind of start to do that and just accept whatever, you know, if it's USC 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 US 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 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 people to kind of bring onto the core team would be. But it is a really, I think, fascinating trend because 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 things kind of continue on this way. What advice do you have for DAWs that have managed to successfully go and find a candidate to work for them versus others? because, you know, Dow's a very, very, like, loose term. Some Dow's are organized differently than others.

What have you seen has worked for DAOs who are looking for labor? How do they delegate responsibility? How do they overcome all of these, like, hurdles? Yeah, it's an interesting question, I think, kind of going back to the question around, or like the subject around personal preference of whether somebody wants to kind of, you know, basically, you know, replace 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, married individuals 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 Sablier contract, you know, once a month, their spouse would look at them and probably slap them across the face. There are other people who are a little bit more risk averse or not excuse me, or they're a little bit more open to kind of that type of risk and say, you know what, hey, 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 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 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,

paid a fair amount. And I think that's kind of the interesting thing because, again, I think some people sounds maybe 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 Yearn or somebody came to you guys and be like, yo, we need this role filled.

How can Dow's 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 project itself. 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 Dow or 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 product there already. And you can kind of be able to match that. I think the earlier it is, there's kind of an interesting, and I think it makes sense. but with a lot of these smaller, like, let's say, DFI projects or Dow's 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 have mutual passions. And the difficulty in 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've 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 a with a bankless nation i want to ask this final question this very broad question say a listener has they've just got into bankless 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 this 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-deaf, marketing, operations, legal, like, it 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.

And so I think, yeah, overall, you can really make it happen if you don't take no for an answer. Rob Payone, formerly, Crypto, Bobby. It's been a pleasure to have you, sir. 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 and 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 is tight. But it's not without its challenge. Yeah, crypto culture is awesome. You know what? I'm going to ask this question of Cryptobobobody, not Rob Payone, actually.

Let's go. You were here in 2017, Cryptobobobby. What is this bull market cycle going to look like? Are we going to repeat 2017? Is this going to be different? Give it to us Cryptobobody style. This is the bonus content. I have no idea.

I really don't. I am so I guess for context real quick. In 2013, I bought Bitcoin and I lost interest because I bought the top at $800,000, $1,000. 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 going to, I'm never going to exit this again. I'm never going to lose interest in again. I'm always going to keep my eye in the ball. And I think because of that outlook between 2017 and 2021, where we're at now, I've been able to be successful, you know, in the, I guess in the crypto space. And I would just advise like anybody that just continue to keep your eye on the ball.

And your like good things will happen. Good opportunities will happen. Like all you have to do was use uniswap to get, like to basically get a new car or or use tornado cash or 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 in 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 Pay on. The last question for Crypto, Bobby. Of course, risks and disclaimers, Bankless Nation. Crypto is risky. Bitcoin is, ETH is, DFI 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.