TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #442: Launching Flex with Bitcoin Talent Co

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Marty sits down again with Michael Tanguma and Andy Thompson from Bitcoin Talent Co to talk about launching Flex. Michael on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MTanguma Andy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theandytee/ Flex landing page: https://www.bitcointalent.co/flex 5:30 - Welcome back, Bitcoin Talent Co. 8:37 - Flex supply side market 13:39 - Interest on both sides 20:50 - Hiring missteps 25:01 - Hi Trevor! 25:58 - Further mistakes 31:23 - Misallocation of resources 34:56 - Acting with urgency 36:50 - Opportunity for efficiency increasing 41:55 - Talent competition at global level 43:29 - Expanding and iterating 51:02 - Plugs and wrap up Shoutout to our sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠River⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠CrowdHealth⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bitcoin Talent Co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TFTC Merch is Available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shop Now⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the TFTC Movement: Main ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Clips ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Marty Bent: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠

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they'll understand your needs uh what you are looking for what your company does against a recruiting firm by bitcoiners so they understand the difference between multi-sig mining lightning they actually understand bitcoin so you're not just spraying praying with a random recruiter to hope that they can actually understand what you need bitcoin talent co will understand already does understand likewise if you are talent stranded in big tech big banking big finance you're a bitcoiner looking to get in the space set up a profile on bit with bitcoin talent co go to bitcointalent.co to do all this tell them the tftc sent you and enjoy this rip You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.

When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Pod three of the day, Michael. It's been a good day.

It's been a great day. Pod one for you, Andy. Pod one. The endurance is, yeah, I commend you guys. The first two pods were fun, and I'm actually really looking forward to this conversation, too. We did the last trade at Roland's Rabbit Hole Recap. A blending of those two shows.

Matt joined us late on the last trade, and then we just rolled the whole crew. You would think we'd get tired of talking about this stuff. we did this all day yesterday the night before with parker dinner well i don't want to toot my own horn but i think we have a lot of range across the shows that we do you know this is tftc rabbit hole recap we talked about binance last trade we talked about value investing we're here today to catch up with the bitcoin talent code team and i guess to co-announce the new product that you guys are launching with Flex

and talk about something really interesting. Not only the product, but the nature of the company construction and how business owners, CEOs, should be thinking about building teams in this interesting macro environment. To say the least. So before we dive into Flex, I guess,

last time we spoke was during the Bitcoin takeover in March when you guys originally launched. So we're, uh, what, five months, six months later, how's the, uh, the first half year been? Yeah, it's, uh, man, I can't believe it's been only five months ago. It's feel, it feels like a whole, whole lifetime since then. But, um, yeah, a lot's actually been happening. I'm, I'm really excited to say that we, as a team ourselves have been growing, we've

hired another recruiter to come in and kind of fill some of the capacity that, that we need at this point. Um, and actually accomplishing a lot of what we set out to do, you know, making pretty key critical hires for a number of companies across the landscape right now. So we've worked with Unchained, actually, here in the office right now. A really close partner of ours made a couple key executive hires for them. We've worked with Paul over at Stackwork. A number of companies at this point where we're averaging, I guess I'd say,

maybe two placements a month right now. In this condition right now, this bear market that we're still in from a hiring standpoint, I think it's a great cadence. But what excites me is actually seeing that continue to tick up. So coming into the back half of this year, I expect that volume to at least double, if not more. And that's just for the core service. So as you mentioned, you know, we're, we're in a world right now where that core service is still

very valuable, still very in need. But as we've had conversations over the past, again, five, six months with, with clients, there's becoming more and more of an apparent opportunity to augment the classic full-time hiring model, right? And so that's where we're coming in trying to offer something different at this point. And so with Flex, you know, the program that we're offering and officially launching, I guess, today, it really is focused on what do you want to call contractors, advisors, fractional exec type work, but again, a flexible talent model that again, will augment your full-time hiring strategy. It's not to say that one is more important than the other, but I think the best companies, most successful companies, you know, from today,

moving forward will be the ones that use a good mix of the two and how you, how you blend it, how you mix it. Obviously that's part of what we can do and, you know, consult with our clients and talk through that. But, but yeah, I think using both is going to be the right strategy moving forward. Yeah. And so we, before we dive into like how people can use this, let's talk about like the flex marketplace, um, on like the supply side of talent, how you guys building that out. So on the supply side, it's, uh, I think in Bitcoin, we're actually pretty lucky that there are so many talented and passionate, you know, folks trying to contribute to the space right now. So, yeah, we've seen broadly the, uh, the solopreneur entrepreneurship, you know, flex

gig work, whatever you want to call it. Right. That's been kind of a growing trend for some time now. But again, I think it's an even stronger component in the Bitcoin community where there's folks who, you know, proof of work, just coming in and contributing, doing great stuff and kind of building a little bit of a reputation of brand for themselves without ever having had a full-time role. Right. So we're able to capitalize on that folks who have done things we can point to had really successful endeavors with a number of Bitcoin companies. And now they're kind of populating this bench, if you will, that we have where we can offer those services for even more clients at this point. So we're in a way where that's kind of the offering, I guess we have to

the supply side it's like you've you've already set out to offer this on your own we can help crowdsource a bit more of that demand you know bring more opportunities from the client side to you while allowing you the opportunity to continue like empowering yourself taking on as many roles as many contracting opportunities as possible yeah i think there's an important component of our skill sets and expertise and background in company building and being at former companies to be able to understand what is the right talent that we would want for our own flexible needs or at the talent co or you know we've used this personally for for our own businesses that we run separate um that you look at you know a need and you're looking at the the candidate side

and recognizing that they have a certain skill set and that's where you know part of the bitcoin talent code it's like the disparate expertise in the former kind of like traditional finance tech whatever it may be legal compliance uh but then the other side and just being looking at the bitcoin space for so long and that mirrors where you know we provide value on the full-time placement but then also an understanding who are the right flexible people versus going to a market like an upwork and you're just kind of like bidding and there's no like uh standardization or understanding it's not to say we fit the complete person but we we know the right types to then say okay here's this two like individuals that you might be interested in for sure and to

expand on that to be clear about what's even offered on the on the the service itself it's It's not so much of a talent matching platform, matching you with available part-time workers, whatever. It's actually a list of vetted Bitcoiners that we've talked to already. So there is a bit of a, how do I say? There's a bit of a control over that supply side that we have actually in terms of the quality,

in terms of like the legitimate work that's been done in the past, the resume, if you will, that we can point to and provide. So yeah, everyone that we would be offering to our clients within the Flex service offering our folks that we have talked to and built a relationship with, and we know that they can come in and execute can do the job you're looking for yeah i'm personally excited about this because one we've

used this at honorant but i also think about just from like a bitcoin fundamentals like we're all here to like further a mission and help and empower whether it's entrepreneurs or individuals and building businesses and the reality is like we're in a bear market and we've been in a bear market and burn um needs to be intentional it needs to be think about how do you extend runway and businesses still have in a bear market need to be built but then there's like do you need a full-time employee do you need support in um we got kaylee on the mic in the background we've got the happy hour starting soon perks of the commons happy hour uh the block boom but but to that main point it's that really excited because i think this actually helps bitcoin businesses move further

instead of like thinking through um you know the example i always reference but there's no shortage of them is um like open enrollment via an hr period where normally you have to make this decision it's open and there's additional uh influx of things that the the traditional person somebody has to take on whether it's a ceo if it's a smaller firm or a coo or it's a whole role and that person um at a 50 to 80 person company is now like under the water because she has all her other or he has all those other things that he needs to you know take care of and then open enrollment takes more than now you have to make a decision do you hire somebody do you not but you can actually bring somebody like that on and that goes across any kind of like vertical to be able

to help, you know, basically execute and build while not having that upside or that overhead cost of bringing on a full-time employer. Yeah. I mean, that's just one discipline to your point, like whether it's a, an engineering sprint, right? You need capacity. It would normally be 10 engineers to get this done in the next three, four or five months, but you don't need 10 engineers in perpetuity. You don't need them for the next three years. So thinking from a budgeting standpoint, if nothing else, how are you, how are you being efficient and intelligent with your labor costs, looking at labor as a line item on your P&L, right? How are you, how are you optimizing and investing in the right way to get the exact work done that you need.

I'll also say, I mean, Michael, you and I both come from worlds where we've seen in traditional tech and investing landscape, the ingrained ideal of, oh, I've raised money, now go spend it all on hiring. Headcount is actually, oddly enough, sometimes a more important metric for folks than revenue or profitability even, right? And that's just the world we've been living in for the past decade plus. I mean, that's crazy. That needs to change. And so we're helping to reframe that. Yeah. No, and I think this is probably the most important topic we should dig into during this discussion michael you and i talk about this a lot with this interest rate environment that we're living in with the state of venture capital and

the unmasking of zombie companies that are getting materially impacted by this rate environment and really beginning to dig into their cost particularly when it comes to labor and head count. And I think this flex programs really exciting because I think more and more, like you mentioned, Andy, people are beginning to realize that maybe head count as a metric to pitch VCs isn't, isn't the wisest metric to go after. And so creating a calculated plan to build a team in a way that blends full-time employees with flex employees to actually get what you need built, done. Yeah, and I'll say this too.

I mean, the really interesting thing, the beneficial thing for us as we launch a program like this is the increase of interest on both supply and demand sides for something like this. So to be clear, what I mean by that is, yes, we're talking to our clients.

They're more curious about leveraging flexible work. They see it as a way to be more efficient with their capital. Like that's all positive. But the truth is that supply side is increasing too, right? And so there's more and more folks who are wanting to take on that individual responsibility, empower themselves to have two, three engagements at any given time.

There are folks who living in any corner of the globe who want to get paid in sats, right? This is obviously a perfect model for that, right? And so we're, we're seeing this, that the market is growing because both sides of the marketplace are actually growing exponentially right now. And so we just want to kind of help build some of the framework, help build some of the services to like connect the two, right? But we're just, we're kind of riding a wave right now in terms of trends that we're seeing right now. Yeah. And I think there's two sides of where this ultimately, like i think provides value for us and in the marketplace um and there's a side on you know for lack of better words like the monkey's paw like there's real value to be delivered from

a firm and it's not me uh it's it's when i think of like you you mentioned alex alex rockstar came over from kraken he's worked with the unchained team directly and really helped uh in finding the key roles to to build that business and that is really valuable and and when you think about that this area of the market he's targeting where you need somebody that comes from you know traditional finance or whatever the job rec is but then also understanding bitcoin but there's a natural apprehension from andy knows this from general like tech to like do you pay like what's the model like i need to i can figure this out myself so there's a natural apprehension and then we all know bitcoiners we're we want to do things independently we want to you know be tight on the

on the capital and rightfully so and so there's this natural apprehension it's like well maybe we can do it can you do it good and it's like so we have to figure out how do we like solve for that and there's different ways we can explain it we can work on the fee structure but then one of the other ways that we've seen and i think will continue is that people will do like limit the downside for if you will like in saying well let us help you with this smaller position like let's help you with this thing that is less so it's not as permanent it could be permanent it could find the right person which is nice right you just de-risk it from like what is an actual hire it's not just 100 150k it's really like whatever 250 whatever the number is when you think about

benefits, healthcare, change, you know, onboarding. And so I think it's a nice way to start to show the value that we know we can deliver. But then there's the other side, which we've seen getting on calls is that like, we do have really unique experience. Like we, we talk about this stuff. It's that we were sitting here, we're building other companies. We've been, we've been part of large organizations. We've seen operational expertise and best practices that somebody the opposite you've seen you've seen the yeah you've seen the one yeah just it's actually just as important the things not to do why you don't like hire and that's the reality of what's happened it's like it's all just this pattern recognition that's actually inherently false and biased when

somebody gives somebody money and then expects them to go hire a suite like this team that's not true for every business like they can rethink about how that works and that that's changing because of um remote work the the dynamic of like 40 hour working like what was that where did it stem from was an industrial you know revolution like from that side um industrial uh industrialization and so point being is that you take like this unique thing that we've seen as a like macro trend but generally in most things bitcoiners are ahead of it so they they start saying oh well this is an interesting way to like really be prudent and efficient with capital but then they're also coming and saying oh well like you've seen some of this so like how do you think about it like how

are you doing and it lets us provide this like advisory guidance even in a roundabout way whether they're seeking or not like they may intentionally seek it or it's just part of like it's like we care about a long-term relationship that's how you build you know business so you have to give them the right uh way to think of like do you really need this person or do you or maybe you do this person for full time and how to how that works so i think it's a two it's two sides it helps us on the like core part of the business in the hiring and starting a relationship with companies but then on the other side for a company that's just starting thinking do you really need that full-time person, maybe we have the right person for you for this next six months and where

you need to get to before you go raise that capital. And you can de-risk that, which I don't think is done right now. And I think it's important. That's part of where it came from too. The, I don't want to say the idea for this, we're not reinventing the wheel, I'd say, but really packaging up in a, in a pretty novel way, right? Where in having these conversations, doing due diligence with clients, you know, not just forcing them into signing an engagement to work on a role with us. We actually want to provide that advisory service to say, well, do you really need this? If you don't need this you don't need to work with us at all like maybe that's the case but maybe there's this middle ground where what you actually need what i'm hearing you say is you need a

fractional cto to help you know get you through the next six months from there you'll decide what your team looks like your leadership team etc but there's this middle ground right so that's where again you know the offering comes from yeah and i mean and you can this even gets meta too because when you talk about hiring for companies particularly earlier stage companies like do they actually need a recruiter in-house do they need like a people person in-house or could you guys fill that role exceptionally meta but yes we we will provide ourselves on the flex platform to some degree but but no it's a great use case because uh yes you three four person founding team maybe you've hired another engineer another designer right like the really small core of

individuals and you need to scale from that point but is your first hire a a do-it-all hr leader recruiter perhaps not especially when there's a service like this who understands your space understands the market and all its nuances can help provide you from you know growing from 5 to 10 to 15 in a way that you know saves money in the long term on on like salaries for recruiting teams right because we talk about the sprint type work to get you from a to z or whatever it may be right a an hr leader like it's probably not going to have the same hiring cadence always forever like there will be ebbs and flows there will be sprints there will be growth periods there'll be times of scaling back appropriately so responsibly so when you're trying to conserve capital so yeah

use us to to be that arm right of your recruiting services your outsource recruiting services till you get to a point where you don't need it yeah for another however much time yeah i mean we touched on it a little bit but i think what have you guys seen people doing wrong in terms of their hiring practices without obviously naming names i think the overhiring is a big thing like when you get the money and you assume um because i think what we're talking about ultimately and i'm just speaking from experience from what we're doing at onramp it's like you just have to rethink i guess the ultimate thing is like the cost of capital and how do you efficiently do everything because a bitcoin spent today is basically our cost we talked about on one of

the last pods i don't know which one but about like what's the cost of capital it's like we don't actually know like so if you're going to lend it to somebody but we know our own personal cost of capital it's basically a btc or opportunity yeah opportunity cost and so if you think about it from that lens and this gets the ultimate like the in my mind the ultimate meta it's like well if everybody's thinking like this now you start to read uh and we know everybody will think like this because this is what money does when you have a sound form of money and so this is where the puck will go no matter what if we're right about money is that we like got away from it so of course everybody just created you know crazy hires and there's the whole headcount term about

like you always want more multiple people or a size of a company and it's a badge of honor in reality it's the least it's like how efficient you know how much revenue you can generate with the least amount of people should have been the badge because all those stats are going to you and we think about even like again in honor of like like producing flow of capital is so foreign to people like because like oh well if you're producing then you're not reinvesting well you can do both like you can actually have a sustainable business and go through but then when you think about in that way you're also thinking about well then how much is like what is my burn and do i need these full-time individuals and some you do part of a company and some maybe they can flex

into a full-time role and then some are just inherently like naturally not necessary like i think about design and design is a good example for multiple reasons because i think where this ultimately trends is the designer ends up being a partner if he's full-time i.e he ended with a real skin and equity like 10 of a firm or if not why would he be tied to one company he can go make three acts that amount if he's good and go sit on a beach in tulum or whatever he wants to do and have all the flexibility or be six months out of the year with his family and then the other six may not be tied to it if if if that's what he wants to do and the old world didn't allow that it wants you in the office nine to five now they want you tied in they have the tracking of the

software and all of it but the reality is like why would you do that um if you are good at what you do like is that necessary and if it is necessary and that's what you want to do you're gonna be like well i'm a partial owner in this firm like because i'm contributing all of it i want the upside through the dividends and not just the salary so where this all ends is very interesting once like the money gets fixed because it's just like rethinking of like how businesses are actually built and then what's your relationship with it and you're either basically like and they talk about this in the sovereign individual like you're basically doing your task and you get paid or you're gonna like have real skin in the game and i think we see like the flatter companies as well

where you don't need you're not going to see the craziness of like with google i mean you touched again on the on the dynamic of the supply side increasing right more and more people are seeing this as a very viable way to work, a very viable way to earn, spreading it out across multiple engagements, right? So yeah, I mean, this is continuing to happen. We're seeing tailwinds on both fronts, both supply and demand side, right? Where this type of platform just makes more and more sense over time. And we haven't, I'll say this, we haven't framed it in this exact way, but something you said made me think, the truth is when companies try to burn that capital so fast, it's like they're operating in a fiat mindset. They're operating in a hyperinflationary

mindset right when you look at these if you're in argentina you get your dollars you're you're spending them immediately because dinner will be more expensive than breakfast right just on on a on a cost basis standpoint right that's how fast things can happen and so without realizing that's what they were doing like vc-backed companies would do that you know raise funds and burn it like it's like it's losing its value overnight and so again we're at least in this industry already understanding that that's not the right way to operate we're operating on a more of a of a, of a, you know, sound footing. Right. And so being more mindful of how to make those investments, understanding that, especially if you're operating in, you know, your revenue is

coming in a Bitcoin, you're holding Bitcoin on your balance sheet. Like that actually will be truly more meaningful next year than this year. Right. So why spend the money on something you don't need today? If you could be a little bit more conservative and then hire your team next year, if it gets to that point. Yeah. I mean, and this hits really close to home for me with TFTC, particularly as I'm going through this right now. Um, I leveraged flex for, um, our intern Trevor shout out Trevor I'm sure maybe you can clip this um he's running social and doing our clips um and I'm going through a redesign of the website right now and I need a designer and a developer but I only need them for six weeks and like so I'm actually experiencing this right now

we're bootstrapped company like we I can only pay so much like we get the ad revenue the sats flows and I have to really look at the balance sheet and make tough decisions like how do I allocate capital it's me logan and the intern and then i do want to make the business better and so i found a situation where i can tap into a designer and a developer for six weeks to do a sprint for our website and it's perfect i don't have to hire a full-time cto or designer glad to hear you're happy customer yeah yeah and i think the thing is like um get away from like constraints breed creativity like you ultimately want to have that especially if you want to own your business because you could go raise money you could probably go raise money you know plenty of people

they say like hey i want to build a business but then like if you hire all of it and then it doesn't necessarily work out exactly as planned well now you just gave away 10 to figure that out was it really necessary and to your point um it's like the growth at all costs is the fiat mindset because it's and it's we're starting to feel this because now there's a cost of capital with um fiat that's higher than it historically has been the past 20 you know roughly 20 years but is uh it's the top line revenue that's the focus not the bottom line so that's how all these people got in trouble i remember it like specifically i've never talked about this out loud but i mean you may know this is like at we were did we work uber and we worked and we worked it was like

insane they would give away the desk like the desk was the metric so like the number of desks that were sold and so you do big like multi-million dollar enterprise deals and you're selling you know 200 desks in a building maybe it's 250 i don't know but um you give away the desk like half off or six months free because you got the desk sold like this was part of it so this is how like from you're able to put that in your metric you put it in the metric because then you're growing the top line and then you go and you go back to softbank and you're like okay well now we just we're month over month year over year getting the growth and this is you know i don't know how there we can probably round about say this has led to the downfall but it exactly led

to the downfall of blockfi because the dirty secret in its public is that blockfi was all about growing that top line revenue and so they needed to before they would um to raise more capital to basically keep the ponzi alive and it's funny because if you see a lot of these firms before they bail they fall out i know block fine there was another one almost raised at like crazy valuations wouldn't be able to fill the hole but then little things happen so block fire right before they you know went down they were about to raise it like a 10 million dollar valuation i think ftx too right they were they were in the market and um what happens is the market you know they were doing these loans but they needed the the balance sheet they needed the loans extended

the top line revenue of it was like hundreds of millions of dollars in top line year over year revenue and they didn't close the positions on the loans because it would have meant they would have to take them off the books and so they didn't so they when they got margin called or when they personal emergency call they they were i guess got told this is documented somewhere i don't remember where but it's like public that they didn't um close out the positions and so that's how you end up in the hole because if you think about risk management like once you're you know in a certain position you close it out you cut it and you're doubling down yeah you're doubling down because you didn't want to close out from like you needed to go raise the money so it's

like it really is when we talk about darwinistic a lot it's like you really need to think through these things um because if you know company like money is the blood and you need it to be running And if you run out of blood, you're not, you're not alive anymore. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned Uber, shout out to Uber. First quarter ever recording a profit. When did the, when was Uber found? Like 12 years ago?

2009. Yeah. I joined in 2014. Yeah. Travis would have been a user of this, not Dara. Yeah. That's a whole nother pod. Yeah.

But we're like, what are, what are some of the, like the hiring mistakes that led to like crazy burn, literally taking them 14 years to get to profitability? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's not just hiring practices. that you know took them away from profitability it was the business model itself and how it operated but there were definitely uh mistakes on on the hiring front i mean it was it was very much that mindset of we raised i mean goodness like probably more funding than any company had ever raised billions several billion dollars in total funding like what are we going to spend it on

hire more teams and over the over the long term it turned into not just like over hiring for each discipline it turned into hiring like orgs functions all together that were probably not as needed i mean this is probably the case across a lot of tech today right but um that's a whole another story. Right. So I think it just opened my eyes in the time that I was there, the four years that I was there. Right. I saw a lot of unnecessary activity. I saw a lot of like even in the day to day recruiter activity. Right. When you find yourselves not having work to do, you're pivoting to do, we would call it foundational type work. Let's, you know, let's rework our interview playbooks. Like, again, maybe important work, but it was an excuse

because we didn't actually have hiring to do. Right. In that time, thankfully, you know, for for me and you know my career like i still had a job through that but we've seen more recently you know as things as conditions have gotten worse those recruiters in those situations no longer pivot to foundational work they just get cut right and so we haven't touched on this much yet but the whole you know deluge of of layoffs the several rounds of day loss of layoffs throughout the past couple years like that's that's kind of been a an unfortunate learning lesson for a lot of companies too like we've had to feel that pain to now be like oh shit maybe i shouldn't have hired so much right and so i don't want to say that i'm glad this has happened i'm definitely

not i still have tons of friends and colleagues who've gone through this and you know some some are still looking right it's very very painful out there right but it's it's been the eye-opener that a lot of companies need to finally realize like maybe i should have been a little more conservative right maybe i should have been a little more thoughtful around not just my hiring plans but just how i allocate capital across the the organization broadly yeah no i think the launch of flex is you guys should get a lot of credit for being pragmatic and like seeing what the market's telling you because i remember we wanted to talk about this chart on the last trade last week but I'm not sure if we were able to bring it up, but you showed, you had that chart of like the job openings at like all the big companies and they cratered year on year.

Yeah, it's insane. I mean, I don't know. I was thinking about this, like, I don't know exactly. There's multiple things happening. Like at the very highest level, the companies like Google, specifically like a Google, Facebook, they're more of like aggregators for simple, like competitive reasons. like they just hire people just because they don't want you to take them off the market yeah take them off the market and then there's this next level that hired people either because they thought they needed to um and they they ultimately like when the market kind of falls in in like the

you know if they're publicly traded then they're looking at the bottom line and you're concerned okay like well what you know now you're getting pressure so now that's layoffs and we saw like twitter is a good example of like 75 was it 80 8 it was 80 80 percent yeah i would mean so what made me think it's insane but what was everybody doing what made me think about this is um there i think it was in the bitcoin standard and there's somewhere else that was talked about but like that when you the misallocation of resources right you send the negative um the interest rate it sends a false signal you go build the things they never get completed and i remember during this and we were reading the bitcoin standard while we were doing it and there's all these buildings

that never got completed because the money was out there but then the demand never fills and um so you have people out there working and doing construction jobs and all these things but like this is another example here in austin facebook backed out yeah the buildings but then also the companies because these people went and got jobs and i remember this it was very transformative when i moved to new york and i was working at we work and i was like this is insane like there was a disconnect from the person that was producing value because there now you start hiring because when the money starts in the head count now you're not really hiring like the people to get the job and increase the bottom line it just turns into this whole like

you know you know it's like amalgamation of like you're just pulling people in because you like them or whatever and now you're sitting there and then it's just like it kills a company's culture because now you're looking at it and there's like this nepotism or this like angle versus the standard of like value that somebody's coming in but all these people are sitting at these companies and you talk about the tiktok shows of like the girl that's in the product manager in their heads they believe they're like very valid doing great work they're doing great work and they sent this like false signal to so many people that are employed at these companies that they're like very special they're really producing and then they get out in the free

market and it's gonna be fucking crazy because you're just like i gotta go work at starbucks producer i don't eat like it's it's and every's gonna have to get like they're it's gonna be a weird change like it's gonna be psychologically you have to either in a weird way this retrain what this means for flex though it's like there is going to be a lot of uh again it's just going to hurt like people who are not as employable anymore the uh tick talking product managers like they're what what value are they producing right but when people finally see the solopreneurship you know even like we have like agencies that are on the flex platform too like so people have already kind of taken that step to to create like a solopreneurship shop or even like your two or

three folks together um but again our our ability to like crowdsource more demand for them is is why they want to work with us right so we're already seeing like people move that direction and the point to make is that you know the the cream will rise to the top in terms of like the the really talented folks who are they finally see this is the right way to go how they want to contribute how they want to like offer their skill set to companies um and the best ones will be the ones that get the job opportunities right so we're curating that list i think of like the best the best contributors to the bitcoin landscape you can say over the past several years that reminds me i have an email intro for you that we talked about earlier this week on the agency side

of things oh yeah yeah um no it is it's weird because this is a very tumultuous time a lot of stress out there a lot of pressure but pressure does tend to create diamonds and while it may be stressful and a bit unnerving for many people like i do think this is a very important lesson for humanity like we have been living in clown world for some time like it's not the way the world's supposed to work gary from last week's last trade episode awesome guy um he had this comment because we get on these like tracks it was on archer that we got on one of these and just like maybe a little like negative or you know but he was at the very end and this guy's he's like this has all happened before and there's a way to play it and you can benefit or you can't benefit

and and there's money to be made and there's money to be lost and which side are you on and so when i think about like something like this and to your point about pressure it's like you look at the market market needs this the market businesses have to grow they're going to be more thoughtful about it there's going to be a cost now and in the future with bitcoin's money and then on the other side of it for them it's like well that's going to be could be the difference if you need that five people that pay two hundred thousand dollars a year do you need to pay two people for a hundred thousand or whatever the number is and then two other people at twenty five thousand to handle your accounting versus having a cfo or fractional

whatever it looks like um so yeah i mean i think it's the opportunities there on both sides to provide services and like we talked about what's going on in the macro environment but the other side of it's like that just there's still money there's still things being produced it's just who's who's there going to pick it up yeah yeah it'll be very important for companies to realize this shift is happening they should realize it's happening if they don't already and then act quickly to recalibrate to, like you said, they need to continue building their businesses and they just need to be smarter about it.

And so it's acting with a sense of urgency. I think so. Yeah, and I think none of this is revolutionary, but what happens is the times change. So the point that we're in right now is different in the sense that now somebody that ultimately would have had one job now is on the market, can you do three? Like that, I fundamentally believe it.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, I think it depends on the circumstances. I think it depends on the circumstance because the design is a good example. So designers, at least, and maybe I'm way off base, but for what I've seen, and Mark is like,

I don't know how many companies actually need a full-time designer, depending on what they need, where if somebody's really good, and this actually goes across, forget about design, it's actually like an employee standpoint. I've always seen it,

and this is at companies, it's more Pareto distributed in the sense that there's 20% of people doing all the work and there's 80% of people that are just kind of there filling the void. and if the person decides that they want to make more money by going out to the market and

providing services and they can expand their their like range of it they don't need a nine to five like you know this you're probably a good example of this that you could do a bunch of stuff for a bunch of different people and get it done that somebody would have been a full-time job in that thing i mean right on ramp last trade perfect example yeah i mean so but like that example exists in that it just changes the dynamic of like now you have good people out there they can make the money they can provide the service for the firm

that would have ordinarily had to hire the full time they can benefit the other person can benefit but that wouldn't have existed if you had to be at a desk full time and you didn't have the internet and you didn't have mobile and you didn't have like people thinking this way on the opportunity cost so that's why it's so interesting or fun to talk about because I think

this changes how businesses are built how people work and it's not that where like it's just happy it's like investing when you invest you're looking at it and you're looking at different variables and one of the variables is like what changes now what was what is the trend or what is the thing why this would have worked now and it didn't work before and that this is why this is so interesting because like this unique exact point moment is the moment it's needed and would work well to this point too and to your point andy about the fine line because that was a big trend during covid lockdowns was the engineers who were taking on like three to

five roles and uh they were doing that because some of them were actually like producing for each company but others were just like taking advantage of the free money flow that was creating these job openings that really didn't need to exist yeah so what i would say is that people can and will be doing multiple engagements multiple clients right but it's all there needs to be a little more transparency a little more like you know it's just you got to be a good person right you're not going to take full-time engagements and have three full-time ones right Where the work itself is in conflict with one another. There's no conflict of interest, right?

In terms of the types of products you're building, like that would always be part of it, right? But for the most part, we talk about, you know, some of the best individuals who want to get into solopreneurship. It's also because they're incredibly efficient with their work. And so that will be seen, right?

Where, you know, you should be paying for the output, not for hours, right? And so that's how we would package this up too. It's a project, it's a fixed engagement based on the deliverable, the product. If John can do it in 20 hours, but Sally can do it in 10, like great sally will get this job but then she'll fill those other 10 hours with something else you know yeah i think there's a it's an important distinction that will be part of a process and

it's nuance of understanding um if there's ever a conflict but there's the other side of somebody being able to do you know think of taxes or something if they can help 10 people or three like what difference does it make to me if if they can do it as long as it's there you know it's there's discretion and all the things that you would want um because that person efficiently can do that and if you benefit because your cost is lower and that guy benefits because his over bottom line is increased because of the output and instead of working at a company where he just gets basically you know yeah i mean joe woods here from satoshi pacchioli he's my accountant that's another thing too like i out like logan's a full-time employee trevor is full-time only two

full-time employees outside of myself and then outsource the design and development of the site relaunch and then i have a bookkeeper i pay a nominal fee um an hourly fee for his services which aren't uh which aren't expensive at all and then i use joe for the accounting services and for my small company i run a small business is is a small operation but like that's how i've gotten creative to ensure that i don't have like a crazy burn rate sure we can go back to one of the very first examples for us internally before we even thought about flex was our our designer right we've been uh going back if you remember the the twitter contest we did we launched a kind of crowdsourced our our brand uh book or design guidelines all of that right right back

when we first started um individual david from kaduna nigeria won that contest and so we paid him in stats for that project alone like that was you know that was that but because of the great work he did on that design or sorry logo design effort we've continued to work with him for website efforts for ongoing design collateral marketing collateral things like that and so he essentially has been a flex uh candidate for us and we've been using it ourselves right and i guarantee you know we'd love to offer him for for others just because of how valuable he's been for us so yeah we kind of saw the need internally without even realizing it too well that actually brings up a good point like what does this do for pricing for talent if you open the flex up to like

a global supply side of of talent yeah more opportunities for global talent to compete right obviously they can definitely compete on price my my one thing i'll always push back on like yeah the the price equilibrium if you will should never succumb all the way to the lowest you know denominator at this point should pay people well it should bring yeah it should bring people and and you know other markets you know the global south i hate that term but same i do too we debate about i grew up in the american south i'm like why is that always like a derogatory thing like there's like a there's like a hierarchical connotation i don't like it yeah but it's i think we won the global south thing because matt i heard him i don't know recently

it was a it was emerging emerging market right let's go back to emerging markets that works it's a yeah pretty pc right um but yeah folks in those regions will you know like david and many others like him it's super talented there's there's no difference between the output between the quality of the work right and so i'm actually very passionate about unlocking that opportunity for folks yes there's a cost saving for businesses but it's more just about spreading what we're trying to do globally right yeah bitcoin and obviously like bitcoin opens us up because you a borderless form of money but then we were talking about it you know talked about the last episode of zap right it's like a great example to use uh zap right to funnel a lot of the stuff

too on invoicing and managing all that and letting you how you want to get paid some people want maybe want bitcoin maybe others want to pay in bitcoin maybe others want to offer discounts or get paid you know via stripe invoice um so ideally we can figure out a way to partner or just use zap right uh yeah help help our friends over there too definitely and i'll say this too so as in in launching this today the the service offering is there we're able to to work with companies to offer this flexible talent but but this is just step one this phase one if you will there there is a world we continue to to really platformize if you will productize this type of service offering to include invoicing billing uh payments over bitcoin over lightning etc things like that

so there's there's a there's a lot of really interesting um you know kind of developments we can make from this point moving forward but step one is just you know letting the market know that the service is available to start right and we can start doing that more on a kind of ad hoc basis yeah that's one thing i've been extremely impressed with the two of you and the team that you've built is bitcoin talent co recruiting firm first iterating with flex but you guys have much bigger aspirations for what you're doing and i think you're applying a lot of the principles that we're talking about today like correctly to your business like hey let's just go at the pace we need to get our client base and then iterate from there and add value added services

on top of that and along the way finding out what people actually need from us like we'll we'll offer something. We, and when we started, we thought we, we thought recruiting services would be valuable. We were right. Right. But it was still just like our first stab out there. And now, now that we've got these relationships, we're continuing to build the trust and the brand and things like that. We do so by listening to our customers. Right. Yeah. What do you listen for?

Pain points, problems, statements that are actually hidden questions. Right. And there's a lot of things. I mean, yeah, we can pull out a ton of them. This is a great example of that though, where it's like, do I need to hire this? Do I want to hire that? And they see it through the lens of like, do I want to pay recruiting fees for this role? It's like, no, let's, let's reframe that. Right. Maybe you don't. I will be the first to tell you like, yes, we would make money if you said yes to this, but that's actually not what you need. That's not, that's not, what's going to allow us to build a long-term relationship with you too. So how else can we get you the talent you need

for the exact output you're looking for? And then go from there. Yeah. Long-term let's go five years down the road what do you think it's pump it's pump the bitcoin talent co vision what do you think like you guys could help unlock for this industry like do you think you could accelerate the build out of these critical companies and services and tools certainly right but but how do we do that right and so i think yeah that the overarching like loose five year goal at this point it is to be the entire like talent operating system if you will for the bitcoin ecosystem um and then you know we can kind of say that the meme as every company becomes a bitcoin company like we truly have visions of this being a service and a platform and a product

that'll be used more broadly right everyone will start to adopt bitcoin principles everyone will start to adopt the bitcoin itself right as as companies uh outside of our ecosystem today um and given what we've been able to do from here to then you know building the expertise the specialties building a platform and a product that has been so valuable to this one uh ecosystem it'll then go more broad than that right yeah there's a lot of different ways you can kind of go and how um in the support of a firm like you think about when you start and you raise capital and then you hire folks and then you have to manage um you know there's no shortage of these like products there's like what is it gusto rippling you know you need to onboard and figure

out how do you like actually do you know social security and all the things for your employee and payroll and um the uh medical like just all the things associated and then you have to figure that out if you're a brand new employee what if somebody can do that out of the box as you can trust and understand your size and then that gets interesting because it's like well then if you're if you're starting that early well then like how much of that is needed to be full-time versus fractional maybe you flex into something like that but then ultimately thinking through a partner of like how do you build a company then what what do you actually need when you like if you think about it if we're repaving like who what is a full-time and not us but just the market will

ultimately like converge on this because i think it it ends up just being the most efficient way to build a firm is that and you like start thinking well what are the people i need early to be full-time what are the people i need part-time how does it increase the amount of revenue how does it increase the amount of like equity i get to keep because i don't need to bring on that money which ultimately is going to be where people get back to because that equity in the dividend cash flow is who they own the business and so that whole like thing then you start it actually matters these offerings and it's like and then it's like you're looking at it from the moat or the angle is how do you actually you know how to build a business like from an agnostic

perspective like forget about if it's like an oil and gas or whatever the company is like you know just like that that you start having individual expertise of like the hiring but then the certain areas of the market and then if you actually get even more specialized and can know certain pieces of their market so you can do like an oil and gas traditional financial services and you can even get more specific and then to andy's point about like the matching people it's like right now you're doing it we're doing it like this you know real time but then as you calibrate that then you can start understanding well what does the person need and then what is how do you match that and i honestly think that like we are very bad um as individuals at knowing what we should

be doing like in employment like we have an idea but then because the world told you but then it's completely different i'm an example of this like when parker and me you know got knowing and i left and joined on chain it was like it was it ended up being the perfect role for me but i had no idea he had no idea we just took it but it was like because i wasn't from traditional finance and you can't have somebody from traditional finance like doing this stuff because you're just thinking about it in the old way and in the same way a company doesn't know what they need because they haven't like you know there's two lenses well that's one thing i struggle with at tftc is i don't know how to interview people i don't like i know what i need built i don't know exactly what

i need like i need help with that stuff like and i mean that's the harder to scale but that's part of obviously the advisory the coaching that we can we can bring to companies right it's uh something as simple as like let's first of all just align on a on a single rubric every candidate should go through the same questions they should go through the same grading so to speak right i mean it sounds simple when i say it out loud but but there is that coaching that's required to make sure that we're running an efficient process yeah my wife has seen me interview people on zoom in our kitchen and we hang up the call she's like that's the worst interview you don't know how to interview people well what you got to do is you i just like producing like i just like going

like i don't know like yeah but it comes down like strategy of like what do i need to ask these people how do i find and sort of eke out like if i can understand that this person can produce what i need yeah it's hard yeah that's why we have jobs you made the comment earlier talking about some of the HR tech platforms, like, listen, it's, it may sound silly to sit here and say, like, we're, you know, five years from now, what we're doing, we're going to be the next Gusto, the next deal, the next Rippling, whatever. Yeah. Sounds, sounds very lofty, but I think there is something to be said for, for the small fact that of all those HR tech platforms, they all entered the space in different ways. Like Gusto was payroll first, Rippling was

HRIS broadly, you know, deal was employee of record, right? They all had their starting point that have all kind of expanded. We're, we're really one of the first ones with our product ideas, at least to be starting from a recruiting like talent standpoint, right? ATSs, as we know today, have always stayed as ATSs. We haven't seen that like expansion. So there's that point that's interesting to think about our future. And then the second one, we're the only one doing it on a Bitcoin standard today, right? So I think that the way we're building this business and the unique types of services and offerings we're offering to just our small community today, but as we expect will be adopted more broadly, I think that'll give us some muscle and give us

some expertise that other players won't have as we continue to expand into a product offering. And so Flex is out there. She's in the wild. What should companies do if they want to learn more about it, get involved? We do have a landing page within our website now, but bitcointalent.co forward slash Flex, F-L-E-X. You'll find information there.

If a company is looking to leverage these services, there's a questionnaire there you can reach out to us. But yeah, find us there. this is a this is a happy hour that you guys are co-sponsoring so i feel like we should get out there um michael do you have any last parting thoughts before i'll throw it to both of you any parting thoughts no i think um andy hit it you know reach out uh happy to have conversations it's been fun we i think we've probably talked to every almost every bitcoin company um and heard feedback and where they're at um and so it's it's nice to share like our learnings

and whether it's working with you know a firm now in the future knowing where they're what they're looking for and being able to even like the amount of people that we have in the rolodex whether it's because of our network or that have come inbound like even if it doesn't we don't have an engagement it's just this is part of just being a bitcoin and doing the right thing it's like there there's a guy that's interesting for this position you should talk to him because ultimately if we're all in this together like we're gonna end up doing business together because when the market comes back people have to hire still even all the things we just said they still need to fill the roles to build the businesses and that's the idea is that like i was sharing

with Andy it's like this is the hardest actual time for this business will ever be because of where we're at and if we can if you can produce cash flow which we are and be profitable everything else is gonna be great because the market's gonna come back the capital's gonna come back the things need to be built and then there's nobody doing this or understands both sides of the market of like traditional tech and then bitcoin so yeah yeah I mean I'll echo all that and then just say yeah the looking back on this journey of a short journey five months you know from from then to now just how fortunate I feel, how we feel as a team for some of the early partnerships we've built with some great companies in the space. Like Michael said, we've already been doing the work

we set out to do. We are generating revenue. We are profitable. It's a hard thing in this market, right? But it is all due to our clients who have trusted us and allowed us to continue to work on their roles for them. I'm excited with another service offering to be able to continue to expand on that and provide even more value, help support companies who maybe didn't even need to use the service originally but we'll now find value in this so yeah it's uh yeah the second of what will be many i think offerings under the bitcoin talent co umbrella oh yeah before we wrap up um so when you're when are you moving to texas like share a little bit about your experience so far since you came got off your flight and what happened yesterday yeah you guys gotta flash the boots

the camera can't see your boots oh man you guys know i love this city i've been here a couple times now um over the years starting with my my bachelor party actually in 2015 was my first trip to austin but um yeah we've got deep roots on the west coast there's a lot of things keeping us there right now yeah you really put them on the spot here yeah well you know i was just a lot of people gonna listen to this well so the the reason why i asked was because when andy came in he was referencing that there was these beautiful boots at the covas they were just fantastic lizard black There were tuxedo boots, I call them. You know, I've heard a lot of reasons why somebody should leave California

and they've had problems in these states. Well, so if we're going to list, the reason you're referring to is lizard cannot be shipped to California, but that's probably reason 37, 38, I would say. If my state didn't allow cowboy boots to be shipped in, I'd have to leave immediately. Really, it's all about supporting the native Californian lizards and the boots they can make. I heard Texas has better lizards than California. Can't ship lizard boots to California, apparently.

We learned that today. Michael's been putting the hard press on. It'll continue. Well, maybe two or three more podcasts later. And just avoid Parker out there if you're looking to avoid the hard press. Gentlemen, you guys are crushing it. I feel very fortunate to be an advisor for what you guys are doing and have like some insight.

And I think it's extremely valuable. And I think as you said, you're already driving value to companies and that's only going to increase from here. So keep crushing it. Like I think the way you're approaching this is extremely smart and will be beneficial for everybody involved, not just the companies as well.

Yeah. Appreciate it. Appreciate seeing the vision from early on and supporting. Yeah. All right. Let's go enjoy the happy hour. you guys are co-sponsoring let's go

peace and love tiki