Thread by @cburniske

A reflection after getting to know a smorgasbord of crypto protocols & companies with the intent of leading product: medium.com/@kristenstone/… by @keighstone

"Based on my experience, two fundamental challenges appeared across the industry:

-Organizational: Lack of experience running an organization (leadership and processes)

-Strategic Direction: Uncertainty about what to build now that scaling feels solved"

-@keighstone

"Leadership: A founder’s vision and single-mindedness is the reason the product exists in the first place.

But vision held too tightly won’t be open to learning the market dynamics, and single-mindedness can mean fires outside their tunnel vision."

"Processes: As teams hit 30 employees, they begin to face growing pains. Protocols desire the ethos of decentralization, but face the reality of hierarchal efficiency.

If you see execution issues, the likely culprit is not having organizational-wide processes and structure."

"I experienced this issue first hand at Coinbase when we hit 50 employees, 70, 100, 300 up to 800. Companies need different methods at different stages, and it’s essential to take the time to identify the specific problem being faced."

-@keighstone

"Strategic Direction: The majority of protocols & companies are at a loss about what to build next (excluding the wildly visionary protocols).

If you look back, Ethereum rose out of Bitcoin’s failure to deliver a smart contract platform. As Ethereum faced scalability issues.."

"..entrepreneurs jumped in to solve the scalability problem.

Those that solved the apparent problem don’t have conviction for what to do next. Worse, the market became saturated with protocols offering scalability without any differentiation."

"Nearly every protocol I spoke to repeated the need for dev tools, use cases, DeFi, and NFTs." -@keighstone

"To truly address the issue, protocols need to determine their mission/vision from first principles, and then develop a strategy with conviction." -@keighstone