The Pomp Podcast - #1016 Ben Klein On Going From Public Defender To Working In Crypto

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Ben Klein is the Head of Community at Shipyard Software. In this conversation, we discuss how Ben was able to change the course of his career to get a job in Crypto, why Ben decided to go work in the Crypto industry, why he enjoys his new career so much, and how you can begin to change your career today.  ======================== BCB Group is the leading payment services partner for the digital assets industry. BCB Group provides payment services in 30+ currencies, FX, cryptocurrency liquidity, digital asset custody and BLINC, which is BCB’s free, instant settlements network for the BCB client ecosystem. Find out more by visiting bcbgroup.com/pomp ======================= Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 crypto browser. No extension required. Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support, and more.    Download the Brave privacy browser at brave.com/Pomp, and click the wallet icon to get started. =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Ben Klein is the head of community at Shipyard Software. In this episode, we talk about building a community, getting a job in crypto, how exactly you can begin to learn about various aspects of the industry, and what Ben's best advice is for somebody who's trying to transition from non-crypto into the Bitcoin and crypto industry. I really enjoyed this conversation with Ben, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well.

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This podcast is for informational purposes only. Ben, I'm very excited to talk to you, my friend. How are you? Hey, Pomp. Thanks. What a pleasure to be on the show. Thanks so much. Dude, I'm super excited because to me, you represent everything that is possible in Bitcoin and crypto. And I have to call out, I see you with your bear market armor on here. You've got the tie ready to defeat the 2022 bear market, my friend. I'm glad you start there. So I actually had, you know, I was a former lawyer. So I wore a suit and tie every single day. And then when I had my first day at the new job, I almost got made fun of. So only t-shirts from then on out. And then I was clicking the link because, you know, I sent it to all my family. My mom goes, you better look better than that guy in the sad pink t-shirt who you had on first. So I slapped on something a little more professional. Oh, this was like a live wardrobe change you just went through.

That's right. That's amazing. I think it was, was that Dylan? Dylan, yeah, Dylan. My mom made fun of him. Damn. All right, your mom was making fun of Dylan. I'll make sure he knows.

Talk to me about this transition that you went through. You were a public defender. You said you were a lawyer. You were a public defender, and now you work at Shipyard Software in the crypto space. How does that happen? Like, why are you as a public defender like, oh, maybe I should not do this anymore and I should go work in this industry? Yeah, thanks a lot. Well, truly, the same reason I went into crypto is the same reason I went into public defense. And that's that I was called to it when I got out of law school and there was really nothing else that I wanted to do except go protect those people who are accused of crimes.

And as you know, our criminal justice system is nonsense. And then, you know, I found myself in the December run up of 2020. outside of work and outside of my kids all I was doing was learning about bitcoin in the larger crypto world and after a while it seemed like you I had no choice but I needed to be in the space for the same reasons I was doing public defense you're fighting for the little people and it's nice to actually be speaking to my people here people believe in it because outside of this world you're the weird bitcoin crypto guy but I truly believe that this is our chance to have a radical redistribution of wealth and power. And I wanted to be at the forefront of that. So I decided I needed to get into the space. And I didn't really know how to do it because I had

touched my resume for eight years. And I was listening to your podcast and you shilled for Pomp's crypto course. And I applied and I got into cohort 10. Shout out to the best cohort there is. You should get the mayor of cohort 10 Tatum on your show. And I'm happy to talk about my journey. and have to talk about your course because I'm very grateful for it. And I especially want to talk about Shipyard because what an awesome landing place I'm at right now. All right.

So there's a lot here, right? We're going to run through this. When you said that you were a public defender, you want to get into the crypto industry, you end up going through the training program. Give folks like the two top takeaways in terms of what you got out of that. The 40,000 view,

the two things are one, the actual learning that you do. and then number two is the the job training application and resume skills and those are look let me get let me give you three too because then the third just as important is the networking so what I say is the teaching that y'all give and not just you because you talk to us twice a week I think a two-hour session but all the coaches Balazs, Caddy, Colton all of them if you remembered 20 percent of what they taught you you would definitely be within the top 20% of knowledgeable people industry, no question about it. But other than

just the learning about the substance, you know, I joined, so I got, I applied to the, to the program. It started January 10th and I get led into the Slack channel, January 6th, and I'm scrolling through the career sub channel. And I see a posting for shipyard software that literally looks like my dream position. And again, I think my resume is good because, you know, I got them good credentials. But what I learned, because I went to all of the resume workshops, all of the job interview workshops, all of the application workshops, shout out to Claire, your great coach. And I learned that the substance might have been there, but the presentation was like, you know, I'm sitting here thinking I got an A plus resume. It's like C minus at best.

But y'all got that turned up. So I found out about the job in Pomp's Crypto Slack channel, and I learn how to get the job from your coaches and the networking, you know, I'm still very friendly with my cohort and it has, the network has grown beyond the cohorts and I still stay in touch with the coaches and here I am on the best business show. So it's, you know, start at the bottom. Now we're here. I love it. All right. So now here's an interesting thing to me is you go through the program and you end up applying at Shipyard Software, but there's one issue, which is to my knowledge you're actually a bitcoin maximalist but you're working at a company that isn't a bitcoin only company so explain how kind of how does the circle and the square come together

here it's true and i was i would say i was a bitcoin maximalist and in terms of investment i would say the largest percentage of my portfolio that is aliquoted towards cryptocurrency is in Bitcoin. And I actually learned from your course that you guys made the distinction of Bitcoin is money, which I believe, and everything else that really tries to be money is not going to do it as well. But all the other stuff, Ethereum, EVM, whatever tokens that come out, that's technology. And what drew me to Shipyard was not only the mission, which I do want to talk about, But really the brains of the technology that's there. I mean, the CTO of Shipyard is the person who invented automated market makers.

Like we have that guy on our team. And we create decentralized exchanges. But going into the mission is the CEO and CTO and everyone in Shipyard, we're trying to bring free and fair markets to everyone. And that's something I can really get behind going back to radical redistribution of wealth and power. This is a way for little people to fight. And Shipyard backed that with their very first product, their very first decentralized exchange is built for retail. You actually had our CEO on back in December, Mark Laurie. But so Shipyard, you know, it's a place where retail doesn't subsidize whales. And we do that by locking our liquidity pool and having the best prices because we have the best brains writing the smart contract. We actually redeployed our smart contract for Ethereum mainnet about eight weeks ago.

and already eight weeks later we have over a billion dollars in volume like not that many people can say they swapped a billion and we're doing that and we're doing that with the best prices for small trade so it just feels good to be a part of it and so when you think about your role as head of community talk through a little bit as like what you do on a day-to-day basis in that role yeah so let me talk not only about head of community but also life as a startup because I think I was hired like number 12. So even though I'm a lawyer, I was not hired to do legal stuff.

And it becomes a part of my job because everyone has to wear a lot of hats. So I'm doing marketing, operations, finance, community management, and legal. But the role that they hired me for is head of community. And that's a somewhat nebulous title because it means that all I need to get my fingers in anything where the community is going to be involved.

And that could be internal community, company culture, talking about our mission and purpose and values, but that could go into hiring. But a big part of it is how we interact with our community, which becomes Clipper. So my job is to educate, entertain, and help them answer questions about kind of a wild, wild west new industry. Right. So when you start to think about some of those questions, like how do you stay on top of what is going on? How do you stay on top of the various questions that you field and like where do you go for answers? Is it internally, externally a combination like walk through somebody ask you a question, you know, the answer to what do you do?

Yeah, that's something we actually think a lot about in the community, because because it's such a new area where to go to find there isn't an infrastructure in place to find out where to learn. So we're trying to build that infrastructure, actually. And luckily, again, because I was a lawyer, I didn't know crypto, I came into it. My CEO hired Web3 tutors for me. So they sat down and gave me three hours a week of just Web3 training. It was kind of an extension of your course a little bit. but so that gave me the knowledge base and then from there we like to so our ceo does uh podcast interviews with leaders thought leaders in the industry and then we bring those people into our discord and do amas where anyone is open to ask questions we do something called the adventure that's my big project our last one just finished we had 23 000 people sign up for it And the purpose of that is to send people out and educate them about the space in an entertaining way. So there's not one answer. We're building lots of ways.

So it's bringing in thought leaders. It's publishing out fun quizzes. It's sending out our users out into the ecosphere. And we're still learning how to do it because it doesn't exist yet. And we want to be at the forefront of teaching people how to operate in this world safely. Got it. When you start to think about kind of working in the industry, what's been the biggest surprise for you so far? The surprise is a funny word. I mean, the nicest part is the quality of life, right? Here I am in a suit and tie, but I don't wear that.

I work from home. I get to spend so much more time with my kids. But the surprise, okay, I have an answer for you. I'm very like philosophically, idealistically high-minded, right? So you think about Bitcoin, fix the money, fix the world, and I'm all in. and the purpose of shipyard is bring free and fair markets to everyone and you know it's a really mission driven for the people so i'm all in on that and then you get into the space and you realize that not everyone is like that right a lot of people don't look at their community like

real people with lives and children but they're just a sponge a wallet to get it out of so you're surprised at how much vapor there is and i remember when i was interviewing the shipyard our cto came to me and said, like, just the fact that we, Shipyard, are a real company and actually have a product, that alone puts us at the top quartile in the industry. And then on top of that, I mean, the incredible team that's been hired behind them, like really intelligent, impressive people, got to be in the top 10%. So the surprise is there is real stuff here. I really believe in. I wouldn't leave a job that like lived it was my purpose was public defense keep people out of jail like I wouldn't have left that for something I didn't think was equally as important and there's a lot

of noise and there's a lot of scammy behavior and you got to learn to avoid it and there's a lot there's a messaging issue to get it out to the larger world I think I'd said earlier like I'm speaking to my people now who believe in it that's not the case out in the larger world you know my wife is wonderful and letting me invest and let me talk her ear off about Bitcoin. The rest of my family, they're tolerant and the rest of the world, they don't want to hear it because they hear Bitcoin, they hear crypto and they think one, it's going to zero and two, it's a scam. So, and they're not wrong about the second part a lot of the time. So you have to learn. People don't know how to separate the wheat from the chaff and I want to help them do that.

When you start to think about tips for somebody to get a job, like what are the things that you would say, hey, you know, after going through the process and literally going from something that wasn't even involved in technology, literally a public defender now to shipyard, what are some of the things that you think folks should either pay attention to or be aware of in order to make it more seamless? I'm going to be, I felt like such a shill here, but what I tell people is you don't want to reinvent the wheel. I did not know how to find a job and I knew I wanted to be in it and look the job hunt it stinks you got to sell yourself all the time it's hard to do you got to be ready to face like a lot of rejection you don't even know really where to look so i'll

tell people don't reinvent the wheel go to a place that's streamlined for you and pom's crypto academy did that i mean there's a slack channel with hashtag careers where they're like here's a posting or your job board the pom's crypto jobs whatever it is and then so you need to know what's out there first of all and then you need to learn you need to learn how to market yourself and that means you need to be able to talk about yourself intelligently and have a resume that's not just going to get kicked off the second they look at it that you want to hope that it's substance over flash but people need to be able to look at you you need to people need to believe that you can present well when it's time.

So get help. So once you've not reinvented the wheel and gone to Ponce Crypto Course, after that, just be ready to just shoot your shot a lot, really work hard on your resume and make sure that you tailor it towards the jobs that you want. Like don't just pepper out anything,

I'll work anything, anything, anything. I would really say, find yourself a focus, know what you want and then find that position in the industry because it's all there. This is a, it seems like this is an industry in search of talent. The jobs are there. They just need people to fill them. So don't settle, look for what you need and what makes sense for you. And that will shine through. Do you have any public defender friends who are thinking about

jumping over as well now after they saw you do it? Well, yes, a lot of them and half of me wants them to come, but the other half of me, I mean, I'm still dealing with the guilt of not being a bullet defender, because I love my new job. But I love it. There's no question about it. But the service of walking up to the tyranny of the government and saying, you want to throw that guy in jail, you got to go through me. That's an important service. And I can't have the best and brightest leaving my office and coming into crypto. I had to be the one that snaked out fastest and take the goods. But we can't have community collapsing on all lens. They got to hold it down there and I'll hold it. They'll hold it down in the criminal

justice world and I'll keep the world from collapsing in the crypto world. I know that you care a lot about this. So I figured maybe if you could just spend the last two minutes, how screwed up is the justice system? And like, as you did that job, like what should people know about the life of a public defender and the stuff that you deal with? I appreciate you giving me the time to talk about it. What I would tell people is that go to your court and watch. Go watch your fellow citizens, the people of your county, and see really who's coming in through the doors and see who's going out in the back in shackles. Just see what our government, our state, our police, our district attorneys are doing to our people. And of course, people hear public defender,

they hear defense, they're like, are you pro-crime? Of course not. The state has the power and the obligation to keep their community safe. But with the power to, to accuse comes the obligation to prove. And I can tell you, without question, 50% minimum of the cases that come through that door are total nonsense. And you know what, if you pick up a charge, it's great that you're innocent until proven guilty. But if you get cash bond put on you, you get thrown in jail, and you can't make it to your day job, so you lose your job. And then you can't pay rent, you get kicked out of your house, because of a nonsense charge that some police officer wants to put on you for whatever reason. It's hard, it's hard on those family members. And I'll tell you what, our criminal

justice system is pointed to those people that, you know, they're at the they're at the bottom of the economic well, if you will. So it's pointed, not at everyone, the people that have it the hardest get hit the hardest. So it feels good to be able to protect them. And things are tough and I don't necessarily know that it's getting better. I hope that it does, but look, it's hard out there. We got a lot of people locked up in jail for a lot of pretty nonsense reasons. Yeah. It, um, it's very sad, uh, you know, in terms of it, but I love your idea of go sit, literally go sit and watch see what uh uh see what happens and uh i'm assuming it's open to everyone and anyone can go sit in the courtroom and and just watch uh and see if you uh you think

it's a good situation or a bad situation it's pretty unique uh uh way of just saying don't don't trust me go watch for yourself and see what you think yeah yeah do your own research if you will yeah exactly um where where can we send people to learn uh more about shipyard or find you on the internet? So the best thing to do is go to Clipper underscore Dex. So as I said, Shipyard Software designs decentralized exchanges, tailored decentralized exchanges. Our first Dex is Clipper, which is marketed towards retail traders. And so go to our Discord. So if you go to Clipper.exchange, and then you go to the community tab, you can join the Discord. And that's where you'll be able to find me. And let me, if you'll just give me a second to brag about

Clipper, because, you know, in a down market, everything looks bad, but actually because in down markets, there's a renewed emphasis on quality. You know, Clipper's really starting to shine because bear markets spell the end of Ponzi yield farming with inflated tokens, but people care about fundamentals and Clipper shines. We're doing $11 million in annualized revenue for our liquidity providers. And that's only on 15 million liquidity, which is 70% APR. That's five times what Uniswap does. So we don't care about the vanity metrics like total value lock. We care about capital efficiency and working for our consumers. So come check out Clipper. We really do have the best prices. You won't be disappointed. And we got, I think, a pretty cool team behind it.

so check us out. I love it, man. Ben, thank you so much for coming on. This is fantastic. I love your energy. I love that you literally, from public defender to working in the industry, and just keep doing what you're doing. There's a lot of people who are enjoying it, and we'll definitely do it again sometime soon. I believe it. Thanks to your coaches. Thanks to your course. I really mean that, man. Yo, it got me a job, and I'm super happy, so thanks a lot. All right, sounds good, buddy. You're welcome. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.

I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to palmscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum

with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.