About a month ago, after working several years as a management consultant and mainly advising banks and another financial services firms, I left my stable job (to the surprise of many friends & colleagues) to start my own business.
Why would I quit my high paying six figures job only a few years after graduating university? Why would I take the hard route and start my own business? And most of all, why on earth would I start my business in the Crypto industry?
These are all questions that I heard countless times as a reaction to my decision and which you, dear reader, also might be wondering about. In this introductory article I try to explain my career move, why I believe in the future of Crypto, and how this could all be relevant to you.
Being a consultant, I analyzed several factors, thought long and hard, and went through several scenarios for the future in my head, before making the decision to start my own company. However, in the end it is always a gut decision to make the plunge into the unknown.
Below I summarized a list of the main points that could help you, if you think about entrepreneurship or if you consider moving into the crypto/blockchain space.
1. Inefficiencies of the corporate world
I often found the corporate world as highly inefficient. Wasting large parts of your day in unnecessary meetings without real outcomes, navigating the shark pond of corporate politics, working with incapable/unmotivated people that you would have never hired, and the general slowness of big companies are all big time wasters and lead to suboptimal outcomes. I always found it astonishing how wasteful humans spend their most precious resource — Time (yes, with a capital T)!
Looking at smaller and nimble startups, it became clear to me that if you really want to see a vision become reality and to make a dent into the world, the corporate world is not for me.
In a startup you can allocate your time in a meaningful way, hire people with the same mindset as you, fast decisions are required on a daily basis, and most of all you see results of the hard work you are doing. Exciting!
2. Self-development and learning opportunities
To be fair, depending on the company and position, the corporate world gives you sometimes great learning opportunities. Paid-for training, guidance and mentorship from more experienced colleagues, regular feedback sessions and others are often part of a company’s training program.
Nevertheless, the skills you learn are often prescribed by your company and are often not what really interests you or is best for your long-term career. The situation often goes like this: “You want to learn more about Blockchain but are staffed on a banking transformation project? Bad luck for you. Here.. do this training about the newest banking regulation instead…fun”
As your own boss, you can decide yourself which skills and what knowledge is relevant for your field. Most of all, startups are probably one of the best learning experiences you can get since you will learn new skills on the fly every day.
Founders are confronted with new challenges everyday and need to find solutions for them quickly. I believe the skills you will learn as an entrepreneur are invaluable for life and career, or as someone put it (slightly exaggerated): “You will learn as much as earning a new “PhD” every week”.
3. The future of work & decentralization
I strongly believe that the future of work and how humanity views “work” in itself will change in the next few decades. Innovations like AI, robotics, on-demand services, and other forms of automation have already started changing traditional employment relationships and pose a big challenge to today’s workforce. Reid Hoffman makes the point that we will see a shift in workplace trends from fixed position in a big companies toward more autonomous, project-based work.
Work will be more temporary, sporadic and informal and individuals should start thinking of themselves as their own “startup” / their own brand. It becomes more and more important to either become an entrepreneur yourself, or to build skills and a network that are valuable for you as your own brand.
This trend of decentralized personal mini-startups ties in nicely with the general trend towards decentralization, which is mainly driven through the blockchain technology. It is definitely advantageous to position yourself early for the workplace of the future, by challenging yourself and getting exposure to entrepreneurship.
4. Blockchain as the basis of the Web 3.0
The technological innovations of cryptocurrencies (or cryptoassets as I like to call them), foremost the invention of the blockchain, set the basis for the next generation of the web — the Web 3.0. Based on the ideas of decentralization and by using blockchain technology, the Web 3.0 can be described as a human-centered internet. Today we have central, privatized and monopolistic firms, such as Facebook, that control and dominate large parts of the internet. The user often has no control over their data and big corporations are susceptible to hacks and other cyber-attacks.
In contrast, the Web 3.0 is “about multiple profit centers sharing value across an open network” (This is based on Matteo Gianpietro Zago’s great article: https://medium.com/@matteozago/why-the-web-3-0-matters-and-you-should-know-about-it-a5851d63c949)). A blockchain-based decentralized web enables a variety of new services and dApps that come with major advantages to today’s Web 2.0:
No central point of control, user’s ownership of data, reduction in hacks and data breaches, uninterrupted services, permission less access etc. are just a few characteristics of the Web 3.0.
With the Web being one of the most important innovations of the last decades, and being one of the main sources for innovation, any technology or industry that is going to change the Web is highly interesting. If blockchain becomes the technological backbone of the Web 3.0, it is clear to me that a career shift into the Blockchain space only makes sense.
5. Crypto is growing & Inflow of talent
The blockchain space has seen a big Inflow of talent over the last one to two years. Some of the smartest people working at Tech companies like Google or at Wall Street switched into the Crypto space. Such an accumulation of talent is bound to come up with technological innovation, new products and services. While it is still early, the blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt many other industries such as transportation, energy, or medical research. Furthermore, tokenized assets and raising money through ICO’s completely revolutionized the way how companies can get funding and enabled the birth of a new asset class (Cryptoassets).
Looking past the speculative cycles of crypto prices, there is a whole world of opportunities enabled by the blockchain. New jobs, services, and products are opening up at highspeed, therefore I strongly believe that it makes sense to move in early and help build the blockchain revolution.
6. Regulation is maturing & legitimacy
Regulation must not be a bad thing. I am convinced that more regulation will help the Crypto space become more transparent and reduces uncertainty for startups and investors alike. Regulation is on its way as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is starting to catch up and has clarified its position on initial coin offerings (ICOs) as securities, and Bitcoin and Ether not being securities. Other regulators, such as the Swiss regulator FINMA, are already a step ahead and for example published clear guidelines on token characterizations. I think that regulation will help make the space more trustworthy and that it enables established institutions to move into the space. This in turn helps with legitimacy and enables more opportunities for partnerships and investments from institutional investors.
As someone moving into crypto, this is good news since we are getting rid of the shady prejudices that stem from the beginning of the industry, and more legitimacy only helps you with finding clients or investors.
7. Fun and meaningful work
Finally, founding a startup is a fun and exciting process. While I am only at the beginning of my journey, I find a lot of happiness and meaning in the work that I am doing. Life is short and I believe in taking risks while you are young. You will always find an excuse for why not to do something, that’s why sometimes (after putting in some thoughts) it make sense to listen to your gut and just do it.
I am very excited for the time ahead, since a booming industry like the blockchain space promises plenty of opportunities, facilitates the development of new skills, helps grow your network, and generally provides you with a lot of personal and monetary upside potential.
I hope you found this article helpful and inspiring, and that it helped you understand why I started my own company in the blockchain space.
I’ll soon post another article with more information to my startup. If you are interested, stay tuned. I also plan to keep this blog going with future articles around Crypto and to share my experiences/tips from entrepreneurship.
In the meantime, I would be happy if you share the article, follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/RKyburz9), or write me in the comments. Thank you!
Interesting and helpful article. Wishing you all the best for your startup!