The Pomp Podcast - #943 Colton Sakamoto On How To Get A Job In The Crypto Industry

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Colton Sakamoto Is The CEO of Inflection Points Inc. In this conversation, we talk about getting a job in the Bitcoin and Crypto Industry. Some of the topics include industry trends, where people are applying, how much they are getting paid, and all the methods you can use to help you get a new job in this fast growing industry. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/Pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK. ======================= The world's 2nd largest crypto exchange, OKEx, has dropped the "E" to become OKX, reflecting its evolution from a traditional crypto exchange to a comprehensive, cross-platform crypto services provider. With OKX's decentralized platform and Web3 wallet, MetaX, you have full custody over your crypto. Explore DeFi, NFTs and play-to-earning gaming with the world's most powerful crypto exchange. Visit OKX.com to learn more. =======================

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. Colton Sakamoto is the CEO of Inflection Points, Inc. In this conversation, we talk about how to get a job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, including what number of the industry trends are, where people are applying, how much they get paid, and exactly what you at home can do if you're looking for a job. I really enjoyed this conversation with Colton, and I hope that you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. First up is LMAX Digital, the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer

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has since expanded its scope alongside the wider industry, adding features from all corners of crypto. If EX is about exchange, X is about intersections. Cross-chain, cross-functional, cross-platform, an interoperable future that's not siloed into isolated platforms and blockchains. The name change and the new look and feel represent OKEx's ongoing move towards decentralized finance. With OKEx's decentralized platform and Web3 wallet, MetaX, you have full custody over your crypto. Connect MetaX in your browser or within the OKEx app to explore DeFi, NFTs, and play to earning gaming, the world's most powerful crypto exchange. Whether you're just learning about crypto, you're a seasoned DeFi degen, an NFT enthusiast, or a pro trader,

you're all invited to a better future. Go check it out today and let me know what you think. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Got Colton here. How are you? Good, man. How are you?

I'm doing fantastic. Let's start first with everyone wants to know how to get a job in crypto. How big is the market? When you think about people trying to get a job, are there tons and tons of open roles or just there's a lot of demand but not a lot of supply? Yeah, there's a lot of demand. There's a lot of supply. I think if you do a LinkedIn search, hold me to this, but I believe there's over 100,000 people working in the Bitcoin and crypto industry right now. Coinbase, they employ 5,000 plus people. They're hiring a bunch of people this year. And even as some of these fintech companies are starting to lay off people, it seems like Coinbase and some of these others are really absorbing the talent.

Yeah. And so when you think about the types of roles of people coming over, obviously, we've got the job marketplace, right? We've got the training programs, a bunch of stuff that we've built ourselves. But talk to me about this idea of like, who's actually transitioning? Is this just a software developer at Facebook is the one that ends up getting a job? Or is it people from all walks of life? Yeah, we've seen people from all walks of life. I think top talent is leaving fintech and legacy finance to join the industry, lawyers, accountants, etc. But then all the way down to customer service. I think some of the most interesting stories, we know someone pretty well who's in his mid-50s. He was a former funeral director and now he's working at social media in the crypto industry. another guy's a college dropout he was selling insurance for state farm now works for bitcoin inc and then you hear stories of people like the 13 year old kid that's like a salon of dev

he might need to pick it up a little bit based on recent developments but uh there's there's a spot for everyone in the industry so there's literally people who were a funeral director and selling insurance like the whole gamut people are end up transitioning is that because uh they're just really kind of high quality people who are self-starters like what makes those individuals who you wouldn't think of as having tech jobs already, so successful in transitioning. Yeah, I think they're self-starters. There's a lot of talent,

but I think these people are just super passionate about the industry. And when you wake up every day excited to go to work, I think you do a good job. You know, you do your own research, you come prepared to the interviews and really just kind of leads to success all the way across.

Yeah. As you guys have worked with, I don't know, at this point over a thousand people, I think have gotten a job. Yeah. What are some of like the tips or tricks that you tell folks in terms of like, they can increase the probability of success in transitioning.

Yeah, there's a number of things. One is just find out what you're passionate about. You know, if you're Bitcoin only, then go look for a Bitcoin only company. So number one is just kind of do your research beforehand. Identify what kind of role you're looking for. If you're someone who's only worked in customer experience, like don't go looking for a software developer job. Your chances of success there are next to zero.

And the other thing is don't apply to a bunch of different roles at companies. I sit and laugh because I'm 25 I recently graduated college when I graduated I had no clue what I wanted to do so I literally just go on LinkedIn and like look at companies that were interesting you know Nike Under Armour whatever and go apply to like 10 different roles at the companies turns out that's a pretty ineffective strategy so kind of narrow down what you're looking for and kind of have it align with your skill set if your skill set isn't suited towards what you want to do then take the initiative on your own and go you know do a bootcamp, go build up some experience, build up a portfolio that you can kind of showcase to these

companies. And that's like the most interesting thing. So the advice I always give job seekers is like, do the job before you get the job, right? Which is if you want to be a salesperson, if you show up to the interview and you're like, Hey, I have these three leads that I found for you guys. They want to talk to someone here at the company. Who should I introduce them to? If you're the person hiring, you're like, Oh, I think you're going to be pretty good at this. Like, you know, we should, we should find a role for you. But also there's other things where, uh, in some way it used to be like resumes mattered. So what school did you go to? What was your degree? Did you, what was your GPA? Like all that type of stuff. Now, if somebody shows up

and they're like, I got 50,000 followers on Twitter and I talk only about, I don't know, customer service, uh, you know, uh, best practices, a customer service, uh, role, you're likely to be pretty good at it, right? Like you've shown the proficiency in it or the knowledge base. Like what have you seen people do there? That's pretty cool. Yeah. What I think it comes down to is like de-risking the hire. So when you come with a portfolio or you come with leads, you know, the hiring manager wants to see that you can do the job. And so I've been on both sides. I've applied and then I've hired and the people that really show the initiative to write the cover letter, to show genuine interest in the company and then come prepared and, you know,

to the interview, here's my portfolio, here are some leads. It really, you know, lets the hiring manager know that the person can do the job well. Yeah. When you start to think about things people can do to learn more? Like, where do you know my send folks from like a learning just I need to get my experience and my knowledge base up before I actually start to apply? Yeah, if you want to work in the industry, I think you have to be on Twitter. I think that's step number one. And then from there, start with the free resources, you know, follow people like you follow people like sailor, follow the people that are pushing out, you know, quality content, you know, go down the YouTube rabbit hole, watch different podcasts, sign up for newsletters, just kind of absorb as much free

content as you can first. And then once you kind of have that baseline level understanding, that's when I think you can go, you know, take the next step, continue to network. We have our training program that's really good for networking and getting right in front of the right people at companies, the cryptoacademy.io. And we have a career day where these companies literally come in, they pitch students on why they should come work for them. They literally tell them, hey, here's what we look for in applicants. Here's what you should and shouldn't do in the application process and just really puts you kind of ahead of the curve in comparison to other applicants. And so when you see people be successful, how long does this take? Is this a one week process?

It does take a whole year. Like what would you say the average transition time is? Yeah, it really just depends. We've seen people go through our program specifically and then land a job within a couple of days. And there's some people that, you know, they couldn't leave their job you know for a couple months to even potentially a couple years um one guy comes to mind he works now at cross river he was formerly at usaa uh he was in like our third cohort which is basically was a year ago and um he wasn't able to leave his job he wanted to stay there for whatever reasons he couldn't relocate etc and then only recently he accepted a sweet job at cross river and so somebody like that once they get there um what are they doing on a day-to-day

basis? Like how different is the crypto industry? If you're in, let's say, I don't know, operations or marketing or accounting versus if I go work at a regular tech company or even a small business, like how different is it? Yeah, I think it really just depends, but the industry moves so fast. I think you have to be someone who is a self-starter who's comfortable wearing a bunch of different hats. A lot of the companies are pretty early stage, you know, with exception to, you know, a company like Coinbase, but it's wearing a lot of different hats. It's enjoying the process of of things moving quickly. Um, the industry changes so quick. So I think kind of having that adaptability is, is super key. And one of the things I know you and I have talked about,

uh, which I find fascinating, it's like Twitter has almost become LinkedIn to some degree. Uh, what are you see people do there successfully in terms of using that platform? Yeah. I hate to toot my own horn, but, uh, I have a great story there, but I think just being yourself on Twitter, um, you know, if you're a meme guy, create memes. If you're a content guy, put out quality threads and things like that. But the thing that's unique about Twitter is it allows you to essentially kind of be in the same virtual room as super successful people that you wouldn't otherwise be in rooms with. So you can DM people, you can app people, and it's really just the ultimate networking tool, in my opinion. And in crypto specifically, people are a lot more

receptive to responding to stuff as opposed to LinkedIn. Myself included, if someone adds me on LinkedIn. They send me a message. I'm terrible at responding to it, but I'm much better at responding to Twitter DMs for whatever reason. Yeah. I'm the exact same way. I think that most people who are active on Twitter, that is one of their main communication channels. You run the employment and training business that we started. Do you want to tell everyone how we met as an example of how Twitter DM networking can be effective? Yeah. It was a little over a year ago. I was sitting on my couch watching football and Pom tweeted out that he wanted to hire a chief meme officer uh i made a meme of him holding peter shift like a baby he tweeted it out um peter

responded it was this whole thing on twitter pomp and i exchanged dms for a little bit hopped on a call and then fast forward and here we are today it uh uh i remember specifically you kept sending me memes and i was like you have way too much time on your hands like what else like what's going on in your life right uh when you start to think about uh age that's a question that i get all the time is like, is this only for young people? Are there older folks? Like what do you see there in terms of who has success, who doesn't, does age matter at all? Yeah, no, I don't think age matters at all. We have, that's a pretty common question that people ask is like, Hey, I'm in my forties, fifties, sixties. I'm super interested in this. I realized Bitcoin is the future. How do

I get involved? Um, and the thing I tell them is one kind of the anecdotes or stories that I kind of shared earlier. Um, but two is like, start producing some content. You don't necessarily have to have a job in the space to contribute to the industry. And oftentimes contributing to the industry, you know, via newsletter, podcasts, et cetera, leads to more opportunities too. So I always tell those people, look, it's never too late to get started, but just start, you know, putting content out there, start absorbing as much information as you can, and then start applying. What about geographic location? Like everyone talks about this whole, like move to remote work is most of the roles remote are some of them in office. Like,

what are you seeing there? And then also like, what do you see from the candidates so far? Yeah, there's this new concept that like latitudes matter more than anything. And it's basically time zones, right? So it's more location agnostic, and more so, you know, can you fit into the certain times on that the job requires you to, but oftentimes, these companies are just looking for top talent, kind of regardless of where they are. So what people are saying is, look, I don't care if you live in, let's say, New York City or in San Francisco, what I care is can be plus or minus, you know, two or three hours from a specific time zone. So if you're on the West Coast, and we're an East Coast company, it's three hours, perfect, or vice versa. But it may be harder if let's say it's a company based in Singapore, and you're in the United States where there's, you know, much more significant time, kind of conflict, if you will. Yeah, correct. Uber. No, sorry. Airbnb is a good example where I think they recently just opened up and said, hey, you guys can work from wherever we just want, you know, the best talent. So Coinbase, they don't have a headquarters and there's a number of other companies in the industry that are pretty much location agnostic and they just want talent. Yeah. What about pay? Like, are these jobs paying more than, let's say, their counterparts at other tech companies? Are they paying more than like working at like a small business? What do you see there? They're paying enough to lure away the top talent from a lot of the top companies. But I think a lot of the job seekers, you know, realize the upside, you know, in potential equity and things like that. And it's just much more exciting than wearing a suit and tie every day and, you know, dreading work.

It's actually more fun, more engaging. You're working in an industry that you believe in and you're passionate about. So to answer your question, yes, the pay is good across the board. But also there's the added benefit of equity and also just enjoying work in general. Yeah, it does seem like people are maybe happier, right? And they don't feel like it's as much of a job as like, hey, this is fun. The pay, as you mentioned, probably is higher. Is that what's leading to a lot of like the brain drain on Wall Street, if you will, as well, where basically people are saying, hey, I'm super interested in finance in general, this is a new form of finance or new kind of corner of finance. I can't do this stuff at my existing job. So why not go get paid to do it, you know, full time? Yeah, I think the the metric that's exciting to a lot of people is that overlay of like Where we are with bitcoin adoption in comparison to where we were with the internet adoption And people are kind of realizing maybe they should skate where the puck is going and not where the puck has been

Um, so I think people are just you know waking up to you know This is the future and everyone's trying to get involved one way or the other got it And when you start to think about uh, kind of the types of companies how many of these are like dows and uh nfts and and what i would consider more of like the nuanced or experimental stuff in crypto versus these are large uh infrastructure type businesses with equity and and uh they'd be like a coinbase or a block by something like that yeah there's a lot of both obviously um i think coinbase is kind of the quintessential example of like the bigger more established company that sort of structurally is like a lot of you know apples and things like that that are publicly

traded um but there's everything all the way down to joining a dow where the barriers to entry are significantly lower. And that's, again, another way to get involved is like, we know this kid who went through our program, whose, his goal is basically work at as many DAOs as possible. He was pretty much fresh out of college and didn't have the experience to directly pivot into kind of a bigger company. And then he was just super passionate about working at DAOs. So the barriers to entry are kind of vary with the companies. But yeah, to answer your question, we're seeing, you know, exchanges, we're seeing infrastructure, all the way down to, you know, DAOs and things like that as well. Yeah. And then how should people think about

compensation? Is this just compensation in fiat? Are they getting compensated in Bitcoin or ether or something like that? Or are they getting compensated with like all sorts of like long tail weird assets that they never heard of before? Like how much of it's like, quote, unquote, real assets versus like super risky stuff? Yeah, to be honest, I'm not sure what goes on with the DAOs. Okay. But like the companies like Coinbase and stuff, they pay in fiat. And then you know with companies like strike they allow it for if you are paid in fiat you can exchange that for bitcoin and things like that so there's a lot of infrastructure in place to even if the companies don't pay in crypto you can get paid in crypto yeah um and then what about like

the community in general i think one of the other key pieces to this is like i get approached all the time by people say hey look i don't feel like i know enough yet to transition into the crypto industry. Uh, but I do have an aspiration to do that over the next six, 12 months. Uh, how have you seen people kind of enter into maybe like the conversation online, uh, or the community and start to build those relationships that they may then leverage six or 12 months later when they actually go start looking for a job? Yeah. For the most part, it's a super welcoming community. Um, everyone jokes that like the GM, like the good morning is like the, um, you know, welcoming sign to people, people in the industry and people, uh, outside of it. Um, Bitcoin maxis kind of have to

tread a little more lightly with them, but overall it's a really welcoming community. And I think even the maxi would kind of point you in the right direction. Um, in terms of entering the industry, like I've seen all kinds of different things work. I think it was FTX where someone airdropped them, uh, their resume. And then they like immediately hired the guy just because it was so creative. But I think what it comes down to is like, how can you get creative with your resume so that you can one kind of showcase yourself and then to showcase that you're interested in the industry and you know you have a personality and you kind of have some feel the other thing I've seen that I think worked too I don't think it was in crypto though but the starting

salary was like 50k for this company and that person found the hiring manager on Venmo and requested 50k first year salary on Venmo and it turned out I think working for him so I think the underlying message is just like get creative and showcase your skills as best as you can there's a guy who continuously venmo requests me for 500 and he just keeps writing shooter shoot and he's been doing it for like a year and he just pay him no never why not listen because i kind of want to see how long it's going to take him to give up uh but he's like for a year now yeah shooters are definitely shooting in my venmo uh uh inbox we got a couple of questions from the audience. The first is what is the pay range for non-technical jobs? Obviously there's a wide

disparity, but like, where do you think that that generally sits? Oh yeah, that's a really good question. And it really just depends on the type of role, but I mean, we've seen, I don't know, 50 to upwards of, you know, like mid six figures. It really just depends on the role. And, um, you know, if there's things like commission included and you know what the equity component looks like, but, um, generally, you know, really competitive pay. Uh, somebody else asked, what about if I am a structural engineer, would they take me seriously? And I think that the spirit of this question we get actually a lot, which is like, hey, what if I don't actually do the job that maybe I want to do or that there's not an easy crossover? Like I one time I had a chef,

like an actual trained chef say like, hey, do they need chefs? And he was like, I don't even necessarily want to be a chef anymore. I may want to transition to a different role. How do you see that? Yeah, it's definitely a little bit tougher, but it can be done, right? I don't want to kind of blow smoke and say, yes, absolutely, you can get a job. But I think you have to put in the work, you have to come prepared with, you know, baseline level of Bitcoin and crypto knowledge, and then you have to find where you fit in. And I think that's often the toughest question for people to answer. Structural engineering, I'm not sure if there's kind of an overlap with like, you know, the crypto and Bitcoin mining, but that might be something where this specific guy can kind of get

started. Zach asked, are there enough people actually openly hiring and where should people look? Yeah, great question. There's hundreds, if not thousands of open roles. There's hundreds of open roles listed on our job platform, pompcryptojobs.com. So I always recommend people start there, sign up for job alerts, plenty of other places to go on LinkedIn, create job alerts there and just, you know, find what you're passionate about and continue to look at these sides got it and then when you think about uh the training tell people where they can go there if they feel like hey i want a job but i don't actually have the skill set yet uh and i need to uh not like it's not enough for me just to get the free resources because i think your point about

like go get the free resources first listen to the podcast go follow on twitter read the newsletters there's so much content out there but if people say hey i just need somebody to guide me or i need somebody to uh to help me do this where can we send them yeah thecryptoacademy.io um one quick little story there we have one guy he was in an early iteration one of the earlier cohorts and he told us he literally applied for hundreds of roles in the crypto industry um i don't recommend this but he never wrote any cover letters and he was just shooting shots just getting shots on goal and he kept hearing no um he enrolled in the training program a company that presented at the career day he's from canada actually um was super interesting to him and then he got hired

pretty quickly after so it's for the type of person that you know maybe you've applied a couple of times. You don't know exactly where you fit in. You don't know exactly how to network and how to tailor your resume. We cover that as well as all the Bitcoin and crypto basics. So one of the things that I think people don't understand or don't take seriously is we've been doing this now for what, a year and maybe two months or so. There's been nearly a thousand people, I think, that have been hired through the job marketplace itself. So this is where companies are coming they're listing all the rules there's hundreds of open jobs there uh you just go and you apply yourself and it's just hey i put my resume i put an application in and they'll call me

or email me if if they're interested but also the training program uh i mean how many people at this point it's got to be over a hundred easily it's over a hundred yeah right and these people are getting hired at gemini coinbase blockfi kraken btc inc anchorage like all the top companies in the industry and part of it ends up being that uh what they're looking for is just high quality talented individuals who have a passion for the industry. And then they kind of feel like even if you're not perfect, but you're a self starter, you have kind of all the qualities that make a person who can contribute value to the organization, they'll help you get up to speed once once you get in the role. Yeah, totally. I mean, like you said,

all the top companies, and for the most part, it was non technical roles to there's this common misconception that you have to be a shadowy super coder to work in the industry. We disproved that with our program. There's, I don't know, the first probably 80 hires were non-technical. We've had a few now that have gone through and now they're software engineers at Coinbase and stuff. But in my opinion, it's the best out there for networking. If you're non-technical and you don't know where you fit in, you know, we can help you identify some roles. We can help you clean up your resume and, you know, tell you what to do during the interview process. And then we've seen people, you know, go work contract roles at mining companies. We've had people start companies

with people they met in the program. We've had people start newsletters and podcasts. So I think the kind of broader message is there's tons of different entry points into this industry. It's basically just a matter of how committed you want to be. I think that's a great way to look at it.

Where can we send people to find you on the internet? If they want to bother you. I'm at CJSakamoto15 on Twitter. I'm mostly pretty good at responding to DMs. I don't have a ton of followers like our boy over here, but I post a lot of memes. so if you like memes give me a follow last uh last question i have for you is everyone always asks me 100 success rate is that his real last name it's my real last name and and they always

like you're telling me somebody's name in the crypto industry is sakamoto yeah i like yeah that's his real last name like are you sure i'm like well i'm pretty damn sure that's what my great grandma's maiden name was nakamoto fun fact really really are you satoshi i'm not satoshi but get this my grandma on my other side grew up in the same town as mr hal finney really yeah kalinga california what i don't know any of this yet like what other data you gotta drop on us that's all i got okay yeah well i was like uh nine ten eleven when bitcoin was created so it wasn't me all right i don't think maybe you're a genius definitely not a genius all right anybody wants to go check it out go uh go to pom crypto jobs.com there's hundreds of open roles there

uh at the top companies in the industry and then you can go to the crypto academy.io and you can join the three-week intensive training program there uh we spend uh quite a bit of time there's over 50 events in three weeks so it's very fast paced very intense uh but it works people get uh get jobs at all the uh the top companies in the industry so go check out either one of those uh colton i appreciate taking the time to come on here and help people get some jobs thanks for having me all right buddy sounds good see you later