In this episode of The Blockchain Startup Show, I had the pleasure of speaking with Kristina Kuleshova, Head of People and Culture at Magic Square.

Kristina shares her perspective on cultural and generational differences in Web3 teams, and how startups can best adapt to an inter-generational, inter-cultural workforce that’s radically different from anything that came before.

From cross-cultural management to generational insights, this episode is packed with actionable advice for founders looking to scale their teams effectively.

Episode Outline and Highlights:

[00:02] Introduction to Kristina Kuleshova and Magic Square

• Kristina's Web3 origin story
• Her role as Head of People and Culture at Magic Square
• Initial encounters with blockchain and its transformative potential

[10:06] Generational Differences in Web3

• Challenges in hiring and organizational culture within Web3
• The generational divide in crypto workplaces
• Strategies for creating inclusive environments

[18:09] Evolving Workforce Trends

• Contrasts in work attitudes between Gen Z and other generations
• The impact of digital age information access on productivity
• Cultural expectations and the pursuit of meaningful work

[30:53] The New Model of Team Building

• Balancing professional duties with personal passions in crypto
• The importance of adaptability and rapid decision-making
• The value of flexibility and changing perceptions of job-hopping

[45:19] Attracting Experienced Talent

• Transitioning from established companies to startups
• The role of mutual selection in recruitment
• Benefits of tenure and experience in Web3 teams

[51:16] Non-Traditional Employment

• The rapid pace of change
• Differences in employment structures and their impact
• Attracting non-crypto native talent

[56:59] Crypto Work Culture

• The rise of remote work and digital nomadism
• Cultural attitudes towards remote work in different regions
• The fun and rewarding environment of the crypto industry

Building Stronger Teams in Web3

Kristina Kuleshova highlights the importance of bringing people together across different age groups and backgrounds in Web3. As the industry evolves, creating an environment where collaboration and fresh ideas thrive is key. Leaders can build strong teams that handle the volatility of the industry by encouraging diversity and making quick, thoughtful decisions.

The Value of Experience and Broader Perspectives

The crypto industry benefits from combining the energy of younger generations with the knowledge of more experienced professionals. By recognizing and addressing the unique needs of older candidates, startups can build balanced teams. This approach not only strengthens company culture but also helps drive lasting success.

00:02 - Speaker 1 (Announcement)

Welcome to the Blockchain Startup Show with Harrison Wright, a podcast dedicated to dauntless blockchain leaders building our new decentralized future. You'll hear stories, successes, trials and tribulations as we channel into the lives of high-performing leaders in crypto and Web3. Whether you're currently a Web3 founder or leader, or you one day aspire to be, you'll gain crucial knowledge and insights to the Blockchain Startup Show. This is Harrison Wright.

00:37 - Harrison (Host)

I'm very excited to welcome today's special guest, kristina Kuleshova. Kristina is currently Head of people and culture at Magic Square and also something really interesting that we might dive into later. She's also a startup mentor for ex-founders you're probably hearing more and more about lately. So, christina, very happy to have you here.

00:58 - Kristina (Guest)

Thank you very much for inviting.

00:59 - Harrison (Host)

I'm really happy to be here today with you and I'm looking forward for the exciting conversation we're going to have yeah, you know I always like uh just as a bit of context before we get anything like to hear a bit about you. But also you know the story of how you got into crypto.

01:17 - Kristina (Guest)

That that's always a fun one, indeed, it is, uh, and actually, well, it will be in the story anyway. I'm working with people for approximately seven years and what is interesting about that, almost from the beginning of my career, would be somehow connected to web3. I do believe that that was one of the most significant parts, uh, in my career in general. Why so? Um, when I just started, I've been a normal talent acquisition and recruiter. Back to a lot of years ago, I got one client who was quite innovative and he wants to work a lot with AI, iot and blockchain, and actually, at the time, no one knows very much about that.

01:57

02:08

So I had a chance to visit a bunch of the conference, like Blockchain Week, blockchain IoT conference in Berlin, barcelona, and a bit more out of there, and that's the moment I got really fascinated how it works. I was trying to ping the developers I knew to talk with them a little bit of what is that, how it works, where can I find people who know about that? And yeah, that's where my first step and I think I never kind of gave up on that. I didn't work much after this specific client with Web3 or blockchain, but it was a lot of personal interest, obviously, different coins and at least checking years being quite involved until sometime a couple of years ago when I decided I was in the process of a career change and I found that was a high time to the prime time to change and I was specifically focusing on searching for something within a Web3 startup and I never regret that. That's already like two and a half, almost three years of a very interesting story happening within the Web3.

03:20 - Harrison (Host)

And you survived those two and a half three years, which sometimes people don't. It can be a hard change.

03:26 - Kristina (Guest)

I survived and I excel and I think I'm working better when it's a lot of stress and complication. Probably that's why I'm so much fascinated about the battery. It's never stable. It's all the time. So much volatile that it's ups and downs every day. The emotional swings I'm a little bit addicted to that.

03:44 - Harrison (Host)

Now, as we recall, this is October again.

03:48 - Kristina (Guest)

Actually it was quite well. You know, I was meeting a bunch of people who were checking and talking how it's going on, and sometimes even strong believers and people who are very much into that they're having those down vibes and it's so important to still, you know, go through. Doesn't matter what's going on, because you know, ability of the of the industry is what make it beautiful. Uh, the volatility is something what's always going to be in there and this is something give you the adaptability and a lot of necessary qualities to to thrive you know, when you decided you wanted to get into crypto, was it mainly about the technology?

04:29 - Harrison (Host)

Did you have any idea that the industry would be like this before you joined it, or is it something you kind of learned to appreciate as we went?

04:38 - Kristina (Guest)

I think that's a good question. I never thought about that. I think I was always surrounded by people who were strong believers and they all were all the time saying to me that it's going to explode and you're going to be thankful to yourself that you're doing this right now. And even a small piece of knowledge to go through, a piece of educational format you're getting or I don't know any other NFT you're purchasing, or a bunch of coins you investigated, is something that's gonna be a very strong foundation for the future. And well, literally every single advice they gave me was very much true, because now, when I'm dealing with that on a daily basis, or whenever I just started the first month, I was like, oh my. When I'm dealing with that on a daily basis, or whenever I just started the first month, I was like, oh my God, I'm so thankful to myself, I was doing at least something. And well, I did believe it as well. The people around me was so enthusiastic and I was so fascinated and this is very exciting to be at this moment of another wave.

05:44

06:28 - Harrison (Host)

You know this is going to sound kind of random and out of left field, but how old was I? So I'm 38 now. This has got to be 20 years ago and I was doing temp jobs. It's definitely a big thing in England doing temp jobs when you're new to work I don't know if it is elsewhere actually but I had this temp job at GE finance and I went along and I can't even remember what it was some admin thing, some minimum wage kind of thing that you do when you're straight out of school. And they had this employee shuttle bus and you get on the shuttle bus. Everyone gets on there with their stupid little pack lunch and their gray suits, looking glum oh Monday, this is fun and then Shuttlebus takes you to this campus. That was absolutely amazing.

07:11

I was literally at this place for half a day and I still remember all of this. But there was this big fountain and everything was immaculate, but it had this kind of you know something that's too perfect. So it had this sort of dystopian feel to it, Like it was a very pretty prison, and I remember we go into the place and there's a vague memory of the actual work. But I do remember I was on this long desk that had probably 30 people on one side and 30 people on the other, all sitting at individual computers, and I saw them walking up and down staring at what everyone is doing, Like it was some kind of you know sweatshop. I don't know if that's the right word, but the whole thing felt entirely dystopian to me and it was just pointless busy work. That was. You know, you do the same thing every day forever. I think I made it about four hours there and they had an agency guy on site. So they're obviously big clients. I'm feeling really sick. I need to go home. I wasn't feeling sick, I was just I couldn't tolerate being there, and since then I've never worked for a company that had more than about 70 people in it, but I've worked at places that would run like big companies in good and bad ways.

08:16

I remember I worked for a firm one time that they were a C-level retained search firm. In theory they were great. They hadn't changed the way they do things in over 30 years. One of the founders actually said to me once marketing is just sales without the teeth. That's how outdated they were. They thought marketing was a waste of time. They didn't even specialize in an industry. Everyone was miserable, completely miserable. The atmosphere in the office was so depressing and the fascinating thing was people would stay there for 15 years. They would complain every single day. They'd go and, you know, get a beer at work and be miserable, but they'd never leave. I lasted there, I think, seven months and it was only because I really needed the money and I don't know what I was going to do next after that. But the thing I really appreciate about crypto is you don't have any of that. For all the ups and downs, it's exciting. When is it ever boring or depressing? It might be hard, challenging, but hey, I think I'm with you on that do you know what?

09:21 - Kristina (Guest)

um, you just pointed out very interesting topics, but before I circle back to that, I just realized that doesn't matter how we're trying, the bureaucracy and the corporate this bloody corporate work is still invasive as hell. I'm watching out a bunch of for now huge corporations Web3, all these exchanges, with thousands of people working there and, from all the experience I've heard from people who are working there the recruitment process, the way how it works within that that's not much of a difference, unfortunately, and this is actually scary a little bit even though they're. The recruitment process, the way how it works within that, that's not much of a difference. Unfortunately, and this is actually scary a little bit, even though they're trying to be very much decentralized, they're very much volatile as well and they do not have that much power as they would be having within the web too, the bloody corporation is still staying within them with all the strains, the bureaucracy, how it is, the way how they treat people, the way how they deal with people.

10:30

This is insane, and I would like to see that changing, with the industry evolving, and make it a little bit closer to how we imagine it to be more people-oriented, to be a little bit more focused on the people voices, to have this spreaded decision-making processes, to have all this spread responsibilities for the tasks we're doing, to have an opportunity to leave a piece of voice of yours and make sure that they somehow stay there and change something. It's not like that for now. I don't know. Have you ever talked?

11:11

to someone or met someone who worked in some big companies like Binance or Gates, but I mean very deep down from Gates probably. Yeah.

11:23 - Harrison (Host)

I have. I don't recruit for big companies. I think we might have had one or two clients that had a headcount over 50 ever. But spoken to many people, especially from Binance, I will tell you if you can survive a year at Binance especially Binance in Asia you can make it anywhere.

11:41 - Kristina (Guest)

I had a chance to talk quite deeply about that with a bunch of people from there, on very different levels, honestly speaking, and they were all saying the same. But it sounds so beautiful from outside, with the banquet packages, with the way the salary grows, with the opportunities, with the beautiful name in your CV, with all of that and at the end, well, yeah, you're right, it's not even about the bureaucracy.

12:08 - Harrison (Host)

Some of the things you see sometimes with technology as well. Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean that you should like. Um, I know in some big companies it's popular now they'll give you a company laptop and I'll literally monitor every single keystroke that you make. Are you looking at the camera or not? And I might be talking nonsense here because I've just seen vague things. I don't have anything substantive to back this up, but I'm sure I recall seeing that there's technology that people are starting to use in offices where they're plugging machine learning into the surveillance cameras at work so they can see who's talking to who, who's actually at their desk working, how many breaks is someone taking, and there's algorithms going on in the background to calculate someone's productivity and commitment. They even start to analyze your what's the word, your expressions, to see how much this person actually believe in the company. And I just I find all of that extremely dystopian. Even if you would theoretically improve productivity with it, I can't imagine ever wanting to install that technology.

13:07 - Kristina (Guest)

Well, I'm pretty sure there were a bunch of boomers trying to control people and can't deal with freedom people are getting in comparison to what they were having back in the 90s. That's actually another topic that was going through the generational differences which were facing an immersive level, specifically in Web3, because Web3 is a young industry ruled by very young people. For now the tendency is changing a little bit and a lot of people are trying to jump in. Like the tendency is changing a little bit and a lot of people trying to jump in. But you've probably noticed, the average age is quite young and whenever I'm hearing of this kind of technology you just mentioned or the structures we were talking earlier, I'm imagining the people who were so much controlled and people who were used to work in a specific environment and they're so hard to change and they hard, it's just hard for them to shift the mindset.

14:12

Um, like, apparently after 30 years of work, everything has changed and they do need to adapt and this is so complicated, uh, and no one is paying attention to that, unfortunately people mixing the teams and the companies. People are running companies, but I think it's a big problem which needs to be addressed now. It's a bunch of reels on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter talking about that, but I haven't yet seen people doing much about that. How Twitter are talking about that, but I haven't yet seen people doing much about that. How do you feel about that, about the cross-generational communication within the company, specifically in Web3, because I'm finding it's more important because of the industry itself?

14:59 - Harrison (Host)

I'm actually glad you brought that up because that was one of the key things I really wanted to talk to you about, especially having lived and worked in multiple countries dealing with people of different ages and so on. And it's interesting because in a lot of crypto companies you don't find many people that are older. Occasionally you do. If I really think about it, I could probably count on the fingers of both hands the number of candidates in their 50s or above that I've had since I started recruiting in crypto. But my first industry that I recruited in was industrial automation and literally in that industry the average age of someone working in it was 54. So I don't know what's happened to that industry now because probably most of those people are retiring. Where are the new people coming from? But you can see it even in things like it's immediately obvious to me. You can see it even in things like it's immediately obvious to me.

15:44

Certain things about how the industry works are reflective of the average age. Like industrial automation, there would be one conference every two years and it would last two days, and you better get everything you want to done on the first day, because on the second day they were all hung over and wanted to go home, and that was it. Then you look at a crypto conference like East Denver. Yeah, we're here for nine days and then another week, and then we have a party. I'm here for four. I'm done. I'm too old for that and I'm still in my 30s. I think if the average age was higher, that would not be the situation. I think it's a risk of rambling and I keep going on that topic, but I think it's interesting.

16:19 - Kristina (Guest)

16:59

But side parties are really hard parties. It's not just the business party, it's a normal party where you have a couple of minutes to discuss business and that would be going day after day after day, and he would be staying there like for a week or something and come back with a weekly hangover, literally, and barely can craft the feedback and probably request another week of holidays just to unwind a little bit. So, yeah, it is exciting, probably whenever I'm seeing the panels happening in the conferences, the speakers who are participating, the panelists who are talking and sharing their experience, and it makes me feel really proud, understand how young they are and how much they already have to share. I could not imagine myself in my 20s to be invited to any kind of IT conference and be a speaker over there, you know. But now I do see a bunch of people at 23 being very much invited to a bunch of conferences a huge one, international, speaking to a thousand people audience and isn think that's exciting.

18:08 - Harrison (Host)

You know, something that I've noticed is that everything is diverging in the last, say, 20 years. There's not much of a middle in anything, but there's a percentage of Gen Z that are way more accomplished and hardworking. And you know, some of the things people are accomplishing in their 20s now are way beyond what you would ever see in previous generations, and it's really noticeable.

18:30 - Kristina (Guest)

Unfortunately. Or if you talk to a bunch of people in their 30s, it would be all talking a lot about stability, about the way they want to have a security behind them. They want to be a security behind them. They want to be professional with something They've chosen.

18:50

Gen Z's understanding things we're still not catching up with. The world is changing. There is nothing, there is no profession which can thrive for 50 years anymore. Today, the profession of I don't know the content writer today is earning a bunch of money and we have a lot of job positions on the market, and tomorrow is going to be none. Just because the new AI is going to pop up and then finish, the job disappears. So they need to be so diverse. They need to be very chill and flexible so they can be adaptable that's a good word. They have to be adaptable that's a good word. They have to be adaptable. They have to understand how to be a part of where, it doesn't matter what, and we don't have this flexibility and for us, everyone who is not following the similar path might seem like they're wasting the time they are in the job environment.

19:44

A lot of leaders and managers are complaining about the way Gen Z is coming to the interviews or how fast they are quitting and they are pissed. The managers I mean managers are pissed that kids are coming. They do not respect me. They don't want to work. Of course they don't because they're choosing themselves. This is something we are not able to proceed with. We are working for the, for the people, are working for the companies. For many years. We're giving 120. Sometimes we're sacrificing something from our own lives and gen z is not the way for that. They're choosing themselves. They're choosing their mental health, mental abilities. They just want to be diverse. They health, mental abilities. They just want to be diverse. They want to be everywhere and nowhere. They want to be with the things which really matters for the only one important person themselves.

20:38 - Harrison (Host)

I think there's a lot of really interesting points that you make. Some of these things I'm wondering what's the cause and what's the effect? Is it the environment of the world that has shaped that, or are they shaping the environment of the world? But one thing I wonder is I know you, you disagree with my kind of conception of things, but I wonder there, like I'll give you an example. Uh, so nicole, who works here shout out, nicole, she's gonna edit the podcast, so she'll be happy to hear this, this. But she's in her mid-20s. She's amazing, up at 6 am every morning to go to the gym. She works full-time here. She does studying for a degree as well. She does other things. She's an artist, doesn't drink.

21:20

I didn't know anyone like that when I was 25. Couldn't think of a single person. Maybe you might see that when you get later 20s or 30s but the level of motivation and discipline some people have at a very young age now is far beyond anything that I saw when I was that age and I find that really interesting. And I wonder if it's because now we have such easy access to information, so now you can go on Twitter and you can learn anything you want from the smartest people on the planet that wouldn't be given a platform otherwise. And that can go in two ways, because you can also find a bunch of distractions and watch cat videos all day. But back 20 years ago nobody had that, so everyone had more. They were working off a very similar script for the most part, unless you happen to know the right people. But now you can learn anything you want, I wonder if that has something to do with it.

22:09 - Kristina (Guest)

You know I'm originally from belarus and the culture in there is a bit more tough. There are a lot of things you have to achieve by 30, so you have to be really persistent and really structured. I guess by 30 you have to have a degree, have a job, have a career, um, have a financial stability and better if you're already having a family and a kid and all these kind of things. It's still very strong. So for me it's uh, probably that's why I'm so fascinated with the genesis they are. They don't care, they don't care anymore. They just didn't think they like, not like, you know, bouncing all this uh stuff of okay, I'm going to, you know, I'm doing gymnastic, just because I have to stretch myself a little bit before I'm going to eight hour shift and then I have to study two more hours. Then I need to pick up my kids from the school, spend time with them, cook, sleep, repeat that's 10.

23:00 - Harrison (Host)

I do think that the one thing that is really positive about Gen Z is this I'm trying to think of a way to encapsulate it that you didn't already say but you know, people were put up with any indignity just to get a paycheck or get by, and I think you know, oh well, it's my duty to be miserable for 40 hours a week for the next 40 years so that when I'm old and dying, I can do what I want finally. Well, that doesn't make any sense, so I'm re. I'm really glad that most would not put up with that now, and I think people tend to look on shorter time horizons. Now, it's not. Maybe this is just the crypto bubble, but it's not. Hey, what am I going to do for the next 45 years? Then I'll retire. Okay, how can I? How can I? How can I get what I want in the next five years? I think it's much healthier.

23:49 - Kristina (Guest)

I was thinking of something. What was the last time you've heard someone from the early 20s for the crypto company?

24:00 - Harrison (Host)

Hired let me think Early 20s. Okay, you know, I'm actually not sure I ever have, because we normally get hired to recruit very senior roles, but there's probably been one case. Okay, I just can't think off the top of my head.

24:19 - Kristina (Guest)

Okay, that's lovely. The average people in meetings still in the interviews, even from the developers, I think there would be 24, maybe 24 plus up to 27, like 90% of the company before 27, before their 30s. And I have to create another podcast talking about the way I was having interviews and it was just jumping in my head, we're having the nice conversation. I remember I was discussing with a bunch of HRs the way I was having interviews. How much is that different? So once upon a time there was a guy calling me and he was smoking a vape and I was in the very beginning of my career, working with three, and for me it was like, oh, I know it's an online conversation, but well, I would be expecting something a little bit more serious from the point of attitude and I was extremely pissed.

25:13

Obviously, I rejected the guy and gave him a feedback and everything. And then it started to happen again, again and again. I was in different ways, like people were walking on the street calling me from the car smoking drinking. In different ways, like people were walking on the street calling me from the car, smoking drinking. A lot of things happened calling from the hospitals and, um, I was talking to different kind of recruiters and trying to find out if that's okay or not, and I really want to sorry for disturbing the way of the podcast.

25:42

I wanted to redirect this question to you. What do you find inappropriate? And if we're talking for Web3, what would make you out of the line?

25:53 - Harrison (Host)

Honestly, this might be a point we possibly disagree on, because I would find all of that inappropriate. Actually, I've never had that Drinking smoking what I have had. I have one guy come on a Zoom interview, sat on his balcony with a coffee. That's fine smoking a cigar and I love cigars. I would never show up to an interview smoking a cigar. But for me, the way I view this is maybe different. The way I see it as a recruiter. My job is to make matches for other people, so my opinion on these things is generally not my opinion that matters. It's the opinion of the people that are normally hiring them that I take into account. So I think I would have certain preferences around this if I was hiring for myself, but they might not be the same that we would deploy in a particular interview situation on someone else's behalf, because there are some people that I'm sure would say, hey, the guy wants to smoke weed on the interview. He's just our kind of people. That's fine, that's what I'm there for.

26:47 - Kristina (Guest)

Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I was asking that because I was applying to myself the model kind of limits. I just started to see that that's happening not just with me. That's not me attracting weird people all around and the work ethics started to change as well. And the work ethics started to change as well the way we dress, the way we come to the interview, the things which are appropriate and inappropriate again changing together with the new generation, and I like the idea that they are entitled to lose At some points. Okay, I'm still not tolerating naked people in the interviews. That's a little bit above my tolerance level.

27:30 - Harrison (Host)

28:03 - Kristina (Guest)

Just in case, just in case.

28:05 - Harrison (Host)

Just in case, there's an element where it was nice when people are dressed formally and things like that. But you know, practical level, I used to hate sitting in an office wearing a stupid suit when we weren't going to see any customers. It's just really uncomfortable to sit there all day on the phone in a suit and there was nothing better than getting home and getting rid of the suit. It's so nice not to have to deal with that anymore so happy.

28:26

Never had this experience you know, uh, this wasn't originally, you just brought to mind. Uh, maybe two years ago I first started having conversations with people in their early 20s who have literally never worked in an office. All of their work history has been working at home, so they've never had that experience at all, which I find quite fascinating.

28:51 - Kristina (Guest)

I'm starting to forget what that is. I've been working remote for a lot of years now.

28:58

I don't think I'm ready to get back. Some people feel okay doing hybrid, but that's interesting. Most of the people who would be asking me about that again, that would be after the 30s, so an older generation would be thinking of meeting actual people at work. Well, that's a good point. One more about the difference in generation. How does that work, the difference in generation? How does that work?

29:26

The people in their 30s they use work for the networking they are making friends in there. They do enjoy doing it. They want to go to the office because it helps them focus. They want to separate and that still is a kind of a social activity they like to do. The youngsters hate it. They don't want to have anything connected to you, to the job, outside of job. Team building is the word you're going to scare any any 20 years old guy joining your company. You just tell them and we're going to have some fun team building, they're going to get white, then they're going to get red and then they're going to read out of the company completely. They want to have real friends with the real things outside of work and they don't want to. These two lives connected. Have you thought about that how?

30:16 - Harrison (Host)

do you square that with? That's interesting, because, yeah, I think I've probably seen that more broadly. Yeah, I think I've probably seen that more broadly. But crypto is such a community and network driven industry that it seems to me like people that work in crypto make friends. Actually, that's true for me. I'd say I have more friends that I've met through working in crypto, even if they don't live anywhere near me, than I do outside of crypto now. But do you find that's not typical?

30:44 - Kristina (Guest)

No.

30:45

I feel, that it's a very understandable line. The work is work. The networking outside the work is the other thing. People I'm working with are very passionate about crypto. People I work with are having their own I don't know Telegram channels with a bunch of followers. They have their own Twitters with a bunch of followers, tiktoks and stuff, but they're doing their thing outside of work. They come here, they do their due diligence, they work hard the necessary time, overtime if needed, and then they just close it and go do their thing for fun. They go and discuss new projects, discord because they want, not because they have to, and they prefer to keep separate the life of that life they're having at work and that life they're having at work and that life they're having within the community outside of work.

31:38

I do have a couple of people living in the same city. They never actually met and they're both very much into crypto, like you know. Like really swap three native, extremely young, visiting all the conferences, very well known, very network networked, and once I asked don't you want to get for a coffee? You're literally sitting two streets from one another and they both tell me if I quit, I would be happy to go for a coffee, but for now, work is work and I don't need any work outside of my working hours.

32:17 - Harrison (Host)

That's interesting, that distinction between the community, and I can see that.

32:23 - Kristina (Guest)

The commitment they are bringing and the way why they are doing it. It's very much different when you're working for someone to commit to the project you actually like and enjoy and blah, blah, blah, all of the things and you are getting paid for that. It's not the same when you're committing to something and it's also depend very much on the level of of dedication you're bringing to two different things work within the work frames and the. The three conversation within a range of your personal interest bring us to a different level of motivation they are pursuing. So the motivation inside the work, where they are communicating with one another, they're dedicating things to how they're doing. But then the community outside of that, when they're like I don't know, like true tone believers or very much into like dealing with Solana Foundation and finding out new project over there, they're doing that for fun and that's very much different.

33:24 - Harrison (Host)

I'd never specifically thought of it in those terms before, but when you put it that way it makes a ton of sense and I do see that dynamic as well. If we were to look at this in pragmatic terms, what does this mean for founders building teams? What should they take into account and how should they manage or construct teams, or anything broadly under that umbrella, taking into account generational differences?

33:50 - Kristina (Guest)

They need to be ready and they need to understand that specifically. Well, let's start from the beginning. There are two kind of founders. There are young founders who never had this kind of experience and they're just a genius minded who created something. And we do have a lot of web 2. Shifted business owners have been in the market of web 2, fintech or whatever else for many years and now they're trying to do something within the web3.

34:15

There's two very different categories of business making and business owing in the cultural building. Everything is very different, but most of them need to keep in mind that the, the motto of crypto and hiring and building team would be higher fast, fire fast, because everything is changing the way you're collecting the investments, the way your product market fit is actual or not. Very much within three months can change everything. The speed you will be building and the situation will be happening after the I don't know after the e-t-t-g happened, for example. Okay, you go up, you go down, you failed completely finish, and your needs as a company will be changing same fast, which bring us to the point that you cannot hire one person and keep it for five years because you maybe already will not be needing the same person in six months and you can't know that in the meantime, you can't really. Well, we all do have our roadmap and what less and where, but we do understand where we're going.

35:17

Unfortunately, or unfortunately, when someone is asking you okay, where do you see your company one year? That's not possible to answer. This is not the question you're asking in web three. You don't know where you're going to be in six months. You, you have an idea where you want to be, but you never know what exactly going to happen because of the market conditions, because everything is volatile. So we're keeping that in mind hire fast, fire fast, and then, when you are making decision, instead of, as it was happening in Web 2, for example, instead of waiting a month searching for the perfect candidate, you're taking the.

35:53

Well, okay, that's not the first one, we don't need to exaggerate, but you need to make a decision really fast. You don't have time to spend four weeks between the candidates choosing the perfect one. You just need to find a good one which fits your current needs, and then, as soon as the person is not matching your needs, you are separating with the person, or if you're trying to find out if the person can obtain the necessary skills and the timeframe you are able to dedicate to that, and this will help first, the founders to understand that this is okay, that process is going that way and, from the side of candidates and the changes specifically, they are okay with that, they are okay of changing, they are okay to jump in from the project to project, they are okay to obtain new skills and they are educating themselves. So now, having 10 projects within a couple of years already not a red flag in the CVs.

36:51

The opposite very much depends on the position you're having. Obviously, if you're a software developer and you cannot stay with a company longer than three months and they just jump in from one to another, it might be not an interesting thing. But if the company changes, people are changing and I'm a little bit exaggerated in terms of the numbers and examples, but it's just that you have an idea. How does that work? And this is what I'm discussing with the founders as well when we are having these conversations. We can't keep people for five years anymore. That's just not going to work.

37:29 - Harrison (Host)

Do you think there's utility in trying to stretch the amount of time that people are kept, even if it's not so, say, for example, if it's not so say, for example, if it's normally about a year, but you could do some things and get it to two years is there benefit to that?

37:43 - Kristina (Guest)

obviously, if the company is thriving and if the people are matching, uh, they can grow with the company as well. Uh, that's fine. Not everyone is living. But there are some positions which you need to change and just because the market turned the way, you was not expecting it. But if there is someone who is staying with you and it's matching the expectation and the market didn't tell you any other rules to bring up to the table with this specific specialist keep it. They won't stay a year or two, two and a half. They will be gone and you don't need them for more than that. Probably, if you will bring the fresh blocks, the fresh block will bring you fresh ideas, more dedicated, will work a little bit more.

38:28 - Harrison (Host)

Sounds horrible, right? No, you know, I think the things that I talk about relatively often is that I personally think that improving retention is actually a good thing and actually paramount importance compared to what people assign it. However, not all turnover is bad turnover, and sometimes, I think, a clear example just from a different industry, back when I used to recruit field sales reps, that was a classic case. Is field sales even a job anymore? Does anyone do that? Do they get in their car and drive from customer to customer? It was a big thing back in the day, but anyway, you would have a certain territory, and it's very different from crypto, bd, right Because what is the market for? There's kind of an infinite game there.

39:07

But in, say, industrial products, everyone has a finite territory. There's a certain amount of spend that goes around between four or five companies. They're just incrementally capturing more of it, and so you can have an amazing rep that's on this territory and I'll grow it, you know, five to ten percent a year if they're good, typically, and then it'll get to a kind of point and then they're just really caretaking it. So at that point they're usually going to get bored because there's not much more they can do so. They want to go and build something else, but then, from a company's point of view, they bring in a new rep. It's not even necessarily that a new rep is better. They just approach the territory in a different way and they have a different work style which uncovers customers and sources of revenue that the previous rep wouldn't find. They're generally keeping what the previous rep delivered as well more or less, so sometimes just a fresh perspective is needed.

39:51 - Kristina (Guest)

I agree Totally agree on that and Web3 is a little bit more exaggerated. But it's not only about the perspective. Perspective is well, we can have a different perspective and it's achieving easily from bringing different people from different cultures, for example. That's what brings different perspectives as well. So we can try to cover that part with hiring internationally.

40:15

Again, you never know if the startup gonna survive, how many rounds of investments is gonna collect and what point you need to reduce the cost of expenses you're having and anything else top of that. So let's all interconnect to one another. There's so many changes and if we're not having the changes from the people perspective, it's also not. That's all not. That's not helping. And I'm not saying that you need to fire people by the next moment. Just give them six months and change, change, change. You know they're not disposable dishes, that's. That's not what's going on. We need to be ready that the younger generation is going to. They're doing that by themselves.

40:53

Also. One of the reasons is that is the reasons is they knew that they have a year to get a raise or to get promoted. If none of this is happening, they're leaving because the next company, with the experience they obtained in this company, is going to offer them 20% more of the salary and they're going to choose themselves and go for a new job and you not always will be able to change a position or raise salary 20% after one year. And this is the ping pong game, when one side is sending to you the requirements needed to be completed and you are sending back the things you are able to give or not. Does that make sense what I'm going to say?

41:37 - Harrison (Host)

It makes perfect sense. Things you're able to give or not, Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense and I think you kind of indirectly touched on something that I think one of the biggest shifts has been in the industrial or the information age that information age model of work is it used to be.

41:52

Your professional identity was tied to your job. So what do you do? Well, I am the head of sales at ibm, or whatever it is that you do, and you might be there for years. And you know, back in the when I started recruiting, it wasn't uncommon to meet people that had been in the same job for 25 years and people used to think you were a job hopper. If you stayed less than four or five, it would make it would make you less employable, which is fascinating, because four or five years quite a long time now. But the biggest thing was you had no presence outside of your job. So you would build up a reputation in that company and so on and so forth. And then maybe, if you switched firms, you'd start all over from scratch again, but the only time people would see you was when they got your resume. So that's the first thing they would generally know about you if they were going to hire you. Now I think your professional identity, which maybe ties in with what you were saying about you know work versus community buckets.

42:42

Your professional identity is not tied to your job. It exists independently as part of what you do? That's a conversation I'll often have with people. You know, sometimes people get in touch with me because, hey, I've been laid off, I want to get back into work, can you help? Touch with me because, hey, I've been laid off, I want to get back into work, can you help? And all the things that I advise them to do are things they should have been doing all along.

42:59

I am building a public presence, being on Twitter, being on LinkedIn, going on podcasts, webinars. You know and I think that is an ongoing professional responsibility now is to be a marketer of one, and that is completely distinct from the way that it used to be. I think a lot of people haven't caught on to that. It took me a long time to catch on and I run a company. I only started posting regularly maybe a year ago, a year and a half.

43:23

Honestly, I don't naturally like social media. I've had to learn to like it as a necessity, so I put that off for a long time, but it's paid absolute dividends, and one of the reasons I bring this up, bearing in mind the core audience here, is founders I think this is something that equally applies to founders running companies, not even just in a hiring or employment perspective. You know, if you look at a lot of the prominent crypto teams, I think Helios is a great example. Helios is MERT. You know the two things are not separable. Bearer chain is Smokey the bearer, you know the brand of the founder comes before the company. The company wouldn't be what it is without that and they could go and start up a new project and it will be because of who they are and what people know them for.

44:03 - Kristina (Guest)

Absolutely. Your greatest investment is lying down in the contribution you're doing to the community, and it works both ways for founders and for the job seekers. For the founders, the more you are well-known and the more you contribute to the community, the more people will be able to help you and invest into your project, the more people will be interested to work with you, the more people will be interested in you, the more people and the same on the other way around. And again for the founders, the job secret now is actually quite the opposite from what was mentioned about the people working 25 years in the industry and then you're a job hopper.

44:42

If you change Now, for me and for my founders would be for the people I'm working with. Advising to that would be more of a red flag to hire someone who was staying in a big company, in a big corporation, or spending 15 years or 10 years in one job. I'm most likely to reject this kind of person because I'm afraid that they're not adaptable enough and the founder doesn't want these kind of people to be together with them because they are pushing and telling them we need more structure, more organization, more things. So we don't want that anymore.

45:18 - Harrison (Host)

You know, since you brought that up. I don't know if you've seen the same pattern, but I've noticed this very reliably. It's not every person, but it happens a lot. Someone's been in a company for, say, more than seven years often 10, 15, 20. Then they leave and they go and join a startup or any other company. Actually, often what happens is they'll have a bunch of really short stints, so they'll have done 10 years at IBM or whatever and they'll be six months here, one year there and then eventually maybe they settle somewhere else and they stay there five years, as is their pattern. But it seems really hard for you know, you almost get institutionalized. After so long in a place, it's really hard to settle anywhere else 100%, 100% agree with that.

45:56 - Kristina (Guest)

You're just not able to deal with the changes. It's a very good example from someone from the development perspective. For example, I'm working very close with dev teams and I don't want a person anymore the one who was working in Yandex or Google or IBM because the first thing they do when they come, they just start to complain we don't have enough explanation, we don't have enough explanation, we don't have enough budget, we don't have enough organizational processes. Of course we don't. We're a startup. We're on the market two years. We don't have anything. That's why we need someone who knows how to do that. We do need a senior developer to build the code, not to give the lectures about how to deal with the organizational processes, and that's why they are running away from there, because they can't stand.

46:36

They used to have a very limited working hours, a lot of benefits and stuff, and they're jumping on somewhere where they're just shaking them all around like that's um, enormous over time, working on weekends sometimes, and a lot of people just don't feel that, because they're going to the place without feeling it, and I don't recommend that. And for again, going from the founders perspective, the best thing. One of my founders told me that was like I don't want anyone to be here more than five years apart the sea level. Five years we need to change. It's not more good, neither me or neither. Neither the company gives to you nor you give to the company. Five years is like a huge limit. And that was a founder from ThinkTech background, someone who used to work in a very different industry for multiple years, built several successful businesses, and he told me no, I don't need anyone in here more than five years in a row.

47:39 - Harrison (Host)

You know, I think something that doesn't get enough appreciation is what you're actually asking someone to do to come and work with you. If it's a permanent job, you're asking them to give up. The only thing they can never get back their time. And it's not the old 40 hours a week, go home and forget about work thing. It's all consuming. So I think there's a level of responsibility that comes with that and stewardship that should flow from it. That is often lacking, although it's definitely better than it was. Can you believe? When I started recruiting, one of the things that we will do is have a call with the client to prepare them for what should be reflected in the interview to ensure the person's going to be interested. Now I do that. People get it.

48:17

15 years ago when I used to do that, half the time people say, well, they should be lucky to have a job or be in the context of okay. So hypothetically, let's say, someone is really happy with what they're doing, they're not looking to leave their job, but they're kind of interested in what you have to say. Why would someone leave a job they're happy with to come and work for you? And yeah, the response I would often get to. That was the same. Well, they need a job. They should be lucky to have a job. I have a job for them. Come and beg for the job. That's not how this works.

48:59 - Kristina (Guest)

But that but that used to be a common mindset not so long ago. Yeah, um, we're lucky we're having it in a different way now. Uh, again, whenever I am hiring people, uh, I do admire people who are in a very passive search. Someone who is in an active search means that the person is ready to jump in really quick and he's probably going to take any opportunity you're going to give to him or her. Now, I prefer people in a passive search because I want them to choose me, to choose the company, to choose my founder, to choose my company, because they want to.

49:26

We all know web3 bring us because of, okay, obviously, financial aspect and everything, but still the battery is not giving that much benefits as the job in Google. Still, we don't have all these benefit packages, social packages, insurance for the entire family, cars and stuff. And the only thing which can actually drive the team forward and the only thing which can make the company successful and startup to thrive is the combination of the people who are there because they want to be there. They choose the company because they like what the company is doing. They've chosen the position because it's aligned with what they want to achieve and how they want to develop themselves and their professional skills. This is the main motivation, this is the main retention for the company and for the employees. That's the motivation for them to stay.

50:24 - Harrison (Host)

I think there's a lot of truth to that. I have a slightly related topic that I'm curious for your opinion on as well. We've talked a lot about how to attract Gen Z, but what if you have a as is the case with most crypto companies, you have a team of people in who are generally in their 30s or 20s? What if you have a need for someone who's a a wiser, experienced hand, who you know, maybe I think the the oldest person I ever placed was, I think, 62 at the time, um, and he was about 30 years older than pretty much everyone else and he was a machine. Actually he's a good friend of mine now, but we've met up a few times but he was an absolute machine. But that's kind of secondary to the point that. The question I have is what, on the reverse, can you do as a founder to make the environment attractive to people in that situation?

51:15 - Kristina (Guest)

to people in that situation. I think that in this situation, it's quite the opposite. I honestly I don't know about you you're going to share with me afterwards but I'm not seeing many older candidates. They just have no interest in us. They already have a bunch of experience, they want tons of money and they want three days working week. I'm exaggerating because that's kind of how it works.

51:37

I don't mind myself if I would meet someone any kind of age and they would tell me oh, I'm extremely fascinated about crypto. I just want to do that because I enjoy and I have 10 years of sales experience, or 30 years of sales experience, or I have, uh, 40 years of development. Now I want to do blockchain or now I want to sell a new protocol. The problem is they are looking for more stability and benefits and packages than the founders are able to afford. I'm seeing it that way, at least from the companies I was working with. It's not like we're cutting someone 50 years old and we don't want to see this kind of person. We go through the interviewing process, see this kind of person. We go through the interviewing process with almost all of them.

52:21

Normally what was happening is the person is either very stubborn in terms of they already created the flow of work and they're not really open to change it, to adapt to the new technology, to the new industry, because sales in crypto doesn't work the same way sales work in the other industry.

52:49

And if a person is saying me oh, but it's still like I'm selling better over the phone, and I'm saying to him, well, that's amazing, but we have like a thousand chat in telegram, we need someone to follow up every day with, they say no, no, the follow-up will not work, and then we are having this confrontation about the way how it's supposed to be. A person thinks that he has a lot of experience, and I do agree with that and I respect that. But if the person is not open to do a slight changes for something bigger, then this is the reason the founders and the companies are rejecting the person, not the opposite. Well, maybe, if the entire company is really, really young and they just don't, there's just a cultural idea that they don't want anyone older than 25 years old. We can't do anything with that, but I do find that the problem is on the opposite sides. Not the founders are closed, for the people is the older people are not ready to change themselves, to be adaptable to the industry that's interesting.

53:49 - Harrison (Host)

54:38

In Europe that's not so much of a big deal, necessarily, but in the US that means you have to buy your own health insurance, which is prohibitive for some people.

54:45

If you're 25, you normally don't care about that, but this guy he actually ended up turning down the offer because he was in his late 50s, he had a family of four. He needed health insurance. Health insurance in the us is very expensive when you're in your 50s if you buy it yourself, not so much when you're younger. So you know it just didn't make rational. He was really interested in the job and the work and everything else, but you know the responsibilities that he had and the risk he was going to incur. It didn't make rational sense for him to accept the offer. So I guess I'm looking at this from the angle of you know, if you have that kind of a situation, you know, to what extent does it make sense to set things up in such a way that you know people in their 50s, or whoever defines this uh, a viable career move for them? Is there an argument for that and if so, what sort of changes might those be?

55:30 - Kristina (Guest)

ship the company to europe or to a more affordable location.

55:35

This is what happens quite a lot, and I'm seeing that I've met a lot of founders who moved from the US specifically because of this very reason Because of the health insurance, because of the school for kids, because of the job they want to take.

55:56

And well, unfortunately, if the small startup is not able to pay the insurance for a person and there are no help from the government or the investors are not covering that in the meantime, I don't think I can offer any kind of solution on that, rather than try to rationalize the expenses and maybe relocate the company to the place where you can drug the people as well, because at some point it will be easier for you to relocate someone together with the company from the US and settle them down somewhere in Cyprus or in Malta or in Thailand or anywhere else, rather than pay health insurance.

56:27

And for a father of four and his 50s, because, rather than than that, like in the us in a very specific case and I honestly don't have much experience working with us companies yes, for me saying like in israel, for example, there are a lot of people in their 50s something or jumping in because just they're so fascinated with the technologies and there is nothing. They already have kids to grow up, they have grandkids, they just want to have fun at work. They are very happy to jump in something very weird.

56:59

I was having a date the other day with a guy moving around the world. He's around 55. He has a son, a grandson. I was like, oh my God, development crypto startup. Wow, give me two. I'm very open. Let's discuss the salary. No problem, negotiate. Need to relocate? I'm up to that. I'm grabbing my wife. We're moving Now. We're in Thailand. Need to go to Cyprus? I will be there in a week. I'm happy to hire you. We will pass the other interviews, please. I don't mind. How old are you?

57:31 - Harrison (Host)

Yeah, you know, it's cool that that's taken off so much. I mean, I used to live in both Malta and Cyprus, now Mexico but I remember there was a guy he's quite famous in recruiting. He's called Jordan Rayboy. I wonder, is that his real name or did he make that up as a pseudonym? I don't know. It's a very cool name if it's real. But he was famous because I don't know how long ago it was, but it's got to be 20 years, maybe more than 20 years ago now.

57:56

He started running his recruitment company out of his rv, his mobile home, and you know this is before we had any of the modern digital nomad kind of technology, you know. So I think he was using satellite internet and they had people working from home decades before it was normal for people to work from home and they just spent their life, him and his wife, traveling around the USA and Canada, living out of their RV and running their company from the RV, decades before any Back then, before, when we were all still working in an office that looks awesome. So now it's great to be able to do that and just yeah, it's freeing to have your source of income detached from any particular location. I want to go here now. Why not? I'm surprised actually more people don't take advantage of it than currently do.

58:43 - Kristina (Guest)

I think it's just not for everyone, you know Also, yeah, here I would like to touch a little bit on the cultural perspective. I used to work in Asia for a couple of years and due to the culture they're having the way how it used to be built throughout the generations, you won't find many of them working remote for travel. They are so collective you won't be seeing them that much. But at the same time there is someone from I don't know, with the other cultural background would be using it and abusing these kind of things that they would have an opportunity to. And if the employer, the founders, can provide through that, that's awesome.

59:40 - Harrison (Host)

Makes sense to me that was the other thing that we wanted to talk about was the sort of cross-cultural management I'm really curious for your perspective on. To me, it seems like if you were to conceptualize crypto work culture as a whole, it feels like it's an amalgamation of american and chinese business culture in various configurations, maybe some russian as well, depending on where you are well, probably, uh, but okay, so I Okay.

So I'm seeing the entire crypto industry in the vibe of more being Latino rather than combined.

That's interesting.

No, don't you think so. They're everywhere like a little bit of. There is a lot of gamifying, a lot of ways to have fun at the same time getting rewarded throughout. If you see from this perspective that the industry or also the decentralization being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, don't you feel that way?

Here's what I was thinking when I said American and Chinese Occasionally, when most of the time, people hire us to recruit people that are already in crypto. But if we have a search where we're hiring someone from outside crypto and if that search is in europe, the conversation, you know, if I have a candidate in germany or france, uk or something like that and they don't work in crypto already, the conversation I'll always have with them is look, you should be sure you want to do this. This is not your 40 hours a week, nine to five. You get august off to go hiking Alps. This doesn't work that way. It's this, this, this, this and this. You don't need to have that conversation with Americans because Americans already work like that and so do the Chinese.

But I always have that conversation with people in Europe and sometimes they'll come back and say you know what? Actually, I did some thinking about it. This isn't for me. I'm not willing to sacrifice these things to get that thing. Okay, great, so that's's. I think the work ethic is, in various degrees, american tribes, but the latino fun I can see that.

I think I agree with that as well can you see right now how different our perspective is? And well, we actually both was talking about exactly the same thing. I'm having exactly the same idea in the head when I was describing it as a Latino one, because the job is not a burden. The job is something you enjoy to do as soon as you're having fun. You're not feeling working 15 hours a day. If you're feeling something, if you see the goal, and then at the end it's a very sweet and huge financial bounty, and you understand that the amount of it will be solely depends on how much you work. And you're also surrounded by cool people from different cultures. They're working remotely and probably you know one step in the ocean. How couldn't it be fun, wouldn't it be?

fun.

The Chinese culture, work is more of. You're working throughout your last dress. You know there is a like, okay, very, very, very rough limits. You have everything very, very like over the. Everything is written, everything has rules. You have. You have a specific. You know, check-in, check-out with your fingerprints, uh, there is no, not much freedom of getting left or right. And you are working there because you have to, because the competition is very high, um, because everyone is sitting around you, but at the same time, you're taking more throughout the quantity, not the quality. The questions are also tough on the other generation. Doesn't make sense.

No, yeah, it does. I'd never thought of it in those terms, but I agree If we were to translate this into pragmatic steps. Let's say whether it's a founder that has a company mainly based in the US or in Europe and they're hiring internet. Are there specific things you'd recommend doing to make an environment more productive and welcoming and meaningful compelling for people from other cultures?

That's a very important thing. Well, we could recording the new podcast for that specifically. A lot to talk about in that direction. But I think that the first, I would be recommending to have this awareness in the hat, specifically for founders and for the managers, because all the priorities and all the cultural perspectives are going from the top to the bottom. So if the founders are having this kind of perspective, it should be transferred to the other managers at the same time.

So do you have awareness that's in your head are not in the same way in the head of the other person, specifically if you were born in different countries? And as soon as you have it in mind, whatever I'm saying and I think it's obvious is not obvious to the other person. And as soon as you have this memorized life very easy, because you're saying something to the person. And then you are double checking with yourself did I I try to make it simple Did I think that it's obvious or did I think that everyone should know that? Because no, not everyone. Even the person who might be living next country to you will be extremely different from how you are, and that's number one solution and things you need to keep in mind all the time, and then when people are joining from different countries, it's very good to speak. I call it like use your mouth, speak with the words through the mouth. Don't try to overthink or not think too much. You need to state clearly, word by word where exactly do you want, what are you expecting and why? Why are you doing this? If you are specifically, the environment is very multicultural. It's gonna be a lot of conflicts anyway, and that's okay. They're gonna happen anyway. But as soon as everyone within the team multicultural team will know how to communicate through their words and mouth, they will be feeling much better.

I used to work in a very international environment and I'm facing this literally every day. People are coming to me because the other person doesn't understand the person correctly. Someone got offended, someone got upset, a person gets a meltdown because of the manager behavior. Someone happens all the time. And what are we doing? Throughout any kind of meetings, we're having either a team meeting or just one-on-one or just my conversation with someone. I'm trying to talk about this Specifically. There is a major part of the team from Pacific Place and the others are more spread out. It's very important to tell it like okay, we're having a lot of um israelis here. They are very straightforward. They are saying things without sugar coating it. Don't take it personal. No one is trying to offend, this is just the way they speak, or? Yeah, we all know. Okay, slavic people does not smile much. That was actually a very funny story.

We have a manager and she's Russian and she was managing a Latin American team and they both were not happy with one another. The people from the team would be coming to me and tell okay, I feel she's a little bit aggressive. She never smiled. I'm every time feeling very much of anxiety. I don't know if I've done my job well or not. She's never saying a word about that and at the same time the manager would be saying they are too. They're disturbing each other very much. They're talking about the things which are not related. They're making a lot of mess and hassle around the things which are very simple. So we sit all together and we're talking a lot about the way how the cultures work and how different they are in terms of ABCD, and one conversation didn't change anything. We did a bunch of them. Now everyone is happy, in peace, understanding each other and forgiving the things which are not similar to them.

It's really interesting and it's a uniquely modern problem. You know the reason there are a hundred different English accents, or however many there are. You would literally go eight miles up the road and you would get a completely different accent. It's because it used to be the case that most people maybe they wouldn't even travel eight miles from home in their entire life. So until quite recently you'd go your entire life. You wouldn't even have to think about what a culture is. It's just something you're immersed with and you never go outside of it, Even within countries.

I remember when I first started getting into it in the US, having a business call with someone in New York City, very different to a business call with someone in maybe not Austin, because there's a lot of New York kind of people that migrated but parts of Texas that are not so urban. If you go to the New York meeting and you start, hey, let's talk about your day, how was it? Get out of my office, we're here to do stuff. But if you go to the company in Texas or Louisiana or something, right, let's get to the figures, but you're so rude and you have to have that awareness. But probably the best illustration I have of this, which you will appreciate because you used to live in Asia, is some years ago. We're going back about 10 years now and this is in a different industry entirely.

But I got asked to take on a search for a salesperson in Japan for a Chinese American company owned by Chinese people in the U S? Um, and I had no idea what I was walking into. I never hired in Japan before. I thought some, yeah, sure, We'll, we'll try this out. And to me, to, to, to Westerners it sounded like the perfect job, especially this is back before people work remotely. Hey, you're the first salesperson in Japan. You get to build the company in Japan from scratch, you work from home, you have autonomy. And the salesperson was like oh, we want to do a million dollars in the first year.

I was much younger and more naive then, so I kind of looked past the fact they'd had three people in the job before that had all failed. They'd had three people in the job before that had all failed. I'm not thinking, oh, that's because they don't know how to hire, not because they don't know what they're doing in terms of expectations. So I started approaching these people in Japan. It's the only country where I've had to change the way I approach people. It was very honorifics in the emails and so on. I've never done that anywhere else. But the first thing was they were all asking me to talk at what was basically 11.30 their time on a Friday night. This is the only time they had free the people that actually talked to me to begin with, but the more I got into it, the more I realized that this was never, ever going to work.

Number one this is the perception of self-respecting Japanese person would ever sell products manufactured in China, even if they did the things that sound really attractive. If you go to an American salesperson and say, hey, you'll be the first person in a company, You'll have autonomy. You'll build the territory from scratch. They'll say that sounds amazing. You say that to a Japanese person. Why would I want that? I want to be in the office with my peers. The thought of doing something completely alone is the opposite of what they want. And the sales figures, because this guy actually took the time to tell me about how things work. This is what they're wanting is absurd.

In Japan, the way you do sales is you show up at the guy's office for five years in a row, every day and you get to know him and you bring him things and eventually he might say okay, we can talk about business. Now they want to do a million dollars. No one's going to do business with the NEM one. That's not how it works, Because I think American business culture probably Chinese as well, although I'm less familiar with it you do the deal first and then maybe you develop a friendship on the back of it. In Japan it's completely the opposite way around. Maybe you can eventually talk about business once you've earned it. And they didn't get it at all. And the woman who was running this was a very aggressive sort of person as well. It was never, ever going to work. Uh, it was.

It was a very fascinating experience absolutely, uh, that's a good point, actually, uh, the good one because, uh, founders can keep it in mind specifically when they are searching for investments, searching back to ex-founders. We're talking about that, uh, quite a bit over there, because they were in a very precinct stage that time those season number one, and we were talking a lot about how to approach investors. At some point when we started to discuss that brought a lot of attention of most of the founders because they were not impressed. We all understand and respect the cultural differences we're having, but at the same time, we explain them the way to make business and specifically, as you said, at some countries, the first the friendship, then the business. And it's going to work like that.

If you are calling to your Argentinian colleague and you're not asking about how is his kid and child and his kids and the wife and the dog before asking a favor, you're failing. If you're not ready to spend hours and hours meeting again and again over tea with Arabic investor, that's no way someone's going to give you money. And, at the same time, if you're going to waste time with the American guy, he's probably never going to give you money again. And this is a very deep balance you need to keep in mind Even the way you give a presentation. Sometimes you need to use first the figures and then the way you approach them.

Sometimes, like in other countries, you are doing it the other way around. You are going first explaining how you're going to achieve the things and then you're going to explain what exactly you achieved. And that's all minor things which can significantly change the results of what you're looking for. And, specifically when it's something game-changing, you always need to double-check how exactly to approach the person. The colors, your dressing oh my God, going in white for some birthday party in China? Bury yourself. This is the funeral scholar. Don't do that. And any other. Giving even number of something in Russia? You failed completely at this specific moment.

I wonder if, as working remotely and over the internet becomes more, you might see a homogenization. It's a bit like how. Speaking of accents again, I don't know if it's the same in belarus, but you know all these different english accents, but they're much more pronounced in older people. But you know, when you have pirates on tv and they sound like me, hearties, the pirate accent. Never seen that maybe.

Okay, it's funny.

What a lot of people don't realize is that pirate accent that pirates have in cartoons, maybe, okay, okay, yes, let's, it's funny. What a lot of people don't realize is that pirate accent that pirates have in cartoons is actually a real English accent and I used to live in the place where that accent comes from. But you know, you meet someone who's sort of 70. If you're from another part of England you might not even be able to understand them. You need subtitles. Younger people rarely have that accent. I don't even know where my accent comes from. It's just a kind of generic English accent that's from nowhere in particular, and you've seen that a lot where the sort of standardize. So I wonder if you're going to get a kind of standard global business culture that emerges over the coming decades.

I think, um, the tendency goes over that. So I expect it to be a little bit easier in a couple of years and getting easier and easier over the next decade or something. For now it's still complicated. Even though people are traveling, they're starting to be a little bit more understandable in terms of differences. But within the work environment and within the building teams and working remotely, that's happening every day still, uh, and if it's not, if you're having an international team and it's not happening, you're just not aware of that. Finish.

This is the truth, unfortunately, if no one is complaining to you doesn't mean they are all very much aligned. Probably they either were on very different pages or just not keeping up with something. For now, I would be saying that every single company I talk to or deal with would be facing this at some point. Specifically, when the companies start to expand, as soon as they're getting more than 15 people, that's getting more cutting edge, because you're not able to stay in touch with everyone in the same pace as you would when you were 10 or 15 people in the company, and the bigger you grow, the more complicated it gets.

Yeah, I've seen that it's kind of semi-related, but another trend that I've just observed. So if you've got a company that's generally international, you'll see they have, say, they have 15 people, they have five in the us, they have two in germany, one in china and so on, you can probably be pretty confident as an employee. You're going to walk into that and work out fine. You're just in that context. If you see a company where they have 30 employees and they're all in Madrid, but now actually, hey, we're going to start hiring outside of Spain now because our hiring is getting really specialist and there's no one in Madrid that does this job and you live in India, you might want to be a little concerned about that because it's probably not going to gel unless they handle it really really well, because they're not set up to be international, they're set up to be spanish that would complicate the thing, uh, but you don't need to be romanticizing the.

The first option you describe yes, you're having five people in here, five people in there, but when they meet together, get together just to make things work, they're gonna end up in a conflict anyway, somehow, somehow, or if they do not, that's probably something between the chairs, but it's still happening. And the bad part of it not the bad part, but imagine if there are five people from the.

US, five people from France and five people from China. I swear to you, these five people in France are gossiping to one another about damn nice colleagues. Friends are gossiping to one another about them as colleagues. Um, and yeah, if someone is, uh obviously, if there are 30 people in madrid and they're starting to hire someone outside, uh, that's going to be complicated and the person who is getting the job need to try to be a little bit more open minded. I can't imagine why they would be doing that. Just hiring one person outside of that, probably they won't do. They either establishing or international and by the international team starting to hire in there, or they're just trying to outsource something. Because, rather than that, I would be not seeing the point of just bringing a random person to to the team if it's not located in the same place, not speaking the same language, just the only one.

This was an actual, real case that I had. We didn't end up working with them, but it was a prospective client and, yeah, they'd had everyone in Madrid they needed. I can't even remember what the skillset was, but it was a very specialized kind of engineering that they needed. There's basically no one in Spain that does that job, or, if there are, good luck hiring them because you can count the number of them on fingers. So they accept okay, we need to hire globally for this, okay, um, so I I'd be a lot if I was to canada. I'd be a lot more wary of walking into that situation than I would.

The company that was already international, not that couldn't work out, but I think I'd want to do my opinion, I would be advising that this kind of founder or the company just to to hire a consultant like that, that they won't be just bringing a person to the team, they will be hiring a consultant who will be doing a specific part of the job and being in touch with someone from the development team, for example, and that's it. And then it's not going to break up their team culture because otherwise this person from from the specifically uh like well, depends from where they hire.

but I think both sides gonna suffer that was my feeling as well you was right, would be saying you for sure it's a long time it was.

We're going back about three years now but I think that was one of the main reasons that we didn't take the search and they had Spanish salary expectations, but most of the people that could do the job were in the US Hard mode.

Well, yeah, there are a lot of hard points in there and I do imagine that the founders of the company who was trying to hire you did not ask your advice that would be smarter to do some other things, like trying to relocate someone if they really wanted someone to have the person in the team, or well, just think a little bit deeper in that. But anyway, sometimes there are good cases in that scenario, but probably the person is going just really quick because of the burnout and misunderstanding one another Extremely hard to explain if 30 people speak one language or one out of them not.

Exactly what if? I feel like we could go on forever, but I should probably not let the podcast go on forever. I think we've covered a ton of really, really, really useful things. If we were to summarize, what would you say? Your top three to five points that founders should keep in mind for accounting for generational and cultural differences as they build out their teams.

Okay, hire fast, fire fast. Stay aware about the difference. Remember that even the person from the next door can press up things in a different way rather than you do. We're all different people with all different backgrounds. I would be bringing there, keeping in mind that they do have to embrace conflict over and over again within the team, but the polite way, because if they don't do that facilitating, then it's going to be just firing up in different parts of the team anyway.

So if you have a facilitating conflict between the generations and between cultures, you can keep in mind that there are multiple solutions out of there, not solutions, multiple consequences you can bring out of there. First, people can hear each other out and see what the other person is thinking. They can embrace each other with additional ideas and even if you, as a founder, is not going to take none of those ideas or things people spoke out and they don't need to to gossip behind your back. They don't need to complain to you afterwards that they were not possible to to share things or to bring some ideas to the table or their voices not hearing out for the things. Give people the motivation and the idea to work. People need to work for the project. For the sake of the project, they need to be motivated from their authenticity. They need to be driven by passion, and it will work for both, for different generations and for different cultures, because this is the only all human beings are shared with one another. If something is passion and firing us up there where we going, this is the best thing you can do. So, instead of trying to collect a bunch of benefits, trying to accommodate everyone's needs, first of all, give people one goal and motivation to thrive throughout this goal and then, after you will be building the team, getting right people to it and there's some milestones, you will be thinking about additional perks and stuff to bring.

Bring up on the table the delegation thing whenever you're doing this was the good thing. Instead of giving people the tasks again, both young and older, the different cultures uh, in order to overcome the possible conflicts or misunderstanding or some gaps within the communication, instead of delegate to people tasks, delegate to people the responsibility. Yes, if you delegate the task, you would be expecting the person to bring you something you would be doing if you were that person. If you delegate the responsibility, you are saying, okay, we are responsible for growing our revenue 15. Go and do that check up with the person.

But instead of micromanaging, just make sure you are following up with how the revenue is growing and that's it, because if not, you will be trying to over control and micromanage and force a person to do the way you would like it to do. And you don't need to do that, because the way it works in your head may be not the same way it works in the head of the person from the other agent culture, and we want the tasks and the result of the tasks to be driven by the other person. Because of that, because of the culture and the agent the thing, because they know better and you are the leader, you are the founder. You need to make the team together, drive the company all together, keeping everyone accountable about where are we going. But the people need to tie their rope by themselves, don't, otherwise you're going to be broken.

Those would be my things it's a great set and I'm not going to turn this into another divergence, I promise.

But I just want to add you touched on something that's actually much wider and and broader than just cultural and generational difference.

I think that's a foundational leadership thing, and I pretty much everyone who's first been in a leadership position struggle with this. When you delegate people tasks, they are never going to do the task the same way you would do the task, or usually to the standard that you would do the task. And I think one of the foundational jumps every founder has to make if they're actually going to be successful is to let go of these things. Other people are not going to do the thing the same way you're going to do it, and that's another great reason why delegator responsibility not a task. You'll be forced, if you do that, to build a team that are capable of figuring things out on their own. Someone said to me once and I think it's a great analogy you know, being a founder is like being the chef You've got the ingredients, you've got the money, you've got the people, you've got the products. Your job as the chef is to build the recipe and assemble the pieces, but you actually should be delegating everything else to other people to actually execute it.

So I just wanted to pick up on that because I think it's a really important point in a much broader context as well one of the founders that was talking recently was saying me I'm in here to help people tell their stories, and I love that so much and I think this is the best way and the best explanation of the leadership which we ever can craft it Like. We are here, the leaders and the companies, the founders. They're here to help people tell their stories because the entire voice will make things. That I totally agree. You just need to trust people in terms of you trust that they're going to do the tasks with 100% of their capacity, not your capacity, not 100% of your expectation. They're going to do it in 100% of their capacity and bring the results you will be placing to them somewhere in the route.

And this is extremely important for the leaders to remember that Not the tasks, only the responsibility. And keep people accountable. You cannot just let it go Whatever, Just bring me. We check up in one year. There are a lot of things on the way you need to keep in mind, but initially, yes, you need to separate yourself from things, Otherwise you're just going to go gray hair, go bald and die from anxiety. That's not possible. Not possible to survive that.

Thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been really great having you here. We've covered some really unusual topics as well, which I think are really useful and people don't talk about very much. But it's so foundational to working in crypto that it's surprising they don't talk about it more. So I hope you've enjoyed being on the show as well.

That was a wonderful conversation, Harrison. Thank you very much. I do agree completely. We touched a lot of points and well, if at least one founder or at least one person within the industry will think about what we've talked today, that's regular success. So thank you very much for having me.

My pleasure. Thanks everyone for listening and we'll see you soon.