As crypto industry growth creates a huge demand for talent, crypto founders need to know how to find and recruit great people — both crypto natives and people with traditional tech experience. One of the biggest questions that come up, however, is whether you need to hire someone who has crypto-native experience, or someone that can learn the industry? It’s the source of endless internal debates.
The good news is that crypto is hardly the first industry to struggle with talent pipelines. That means there are well-established practices you can draw on to find the right people with the right skill sets. That’s what this guide is for: to help founders and recruiters determine where crypto experience is crucial, where other kinds of experience can have the biggest impact, and what challenges and considerations need to be addressed along the way.
To keep things simple, think of it like this: There are definitely ways that crypto companies differ from traditional tech firms. But when it comes to the processes and best practices of finding, hiring, and onboarding talent, you’re not building a crypto company per se — you’re just building a tech company. So be sure to apply those established best practices for finding the right people with the right skillsets.
You need both crypto-native and traditional skill sets
As a rule of thumb, crypto-native professionals have a crucial advantage: the ability to hit the ground running. High-stakes projects often operate under tight timelines, where every day counts. And sometimes, native crypto expertise can be indispensable. The roles where this is especially true involve foundational constructs of blockchain technology and its applications, where even the most skilled professionals may face a steep learning curve.
Smart-contract development is a prime example. These self-executing agreements, encoded directly on the blockchain, demand precision and an understanding of decentralized logic that’s different from traditional programming. A single vulnerability in a smart contract can be catastrophic and result in millions of dollars in losses, making this a high-stakes discipline where it’s important to know the rules of the road.
Onboarding talent into an industry with such a steep learning curve can be a challenge, as the candidate may require time to acclimate to the nuances of blockchain technology — decentralized vs. centralized, more open source, and so on — and the crypto “ethos,” which includes everything from different cultural lingo to mindsets. But there are many areas in which talent from non-crypto companies can fuel crypto’s growth, especially as a company begins to scale. For example, traditional professionals with backgrounds in software engineering or operations can bring versatility and a breadth of experience honed through their experiences at larger software companies. These professionals have often worn multiple hats and have had to manage vast amounts of internal bureaucracy and barriers to get things shipped. In crypto’s quickly growing multidisciplinary teams, this kind of operational flexibility becomes a powerful asset.
Experience at scale also plays an important role. Traditional candidates have often worked on products used by millions, and they’ve confronted (and solved) the challenges that come with such success: Ensuring systems stay up under extreme infrastructure load, optimizing performance at scale, and preparing for unpredictable spikes in demand. This expertise translates directly to web3 products as they move from niche, crypto-savvy audiences to more mainstream adoption.
Candidates that come from fintech firms, for example, may have significant relevant experience in payments technology or financial regulations that may be important in your world too. Building infra? A consumer app? Well there’s a world of talent that’s been doing this for years at scale.Consider what experience overlaps and where you can ramp them on crypto specific tech to build your unicorn team in house. More broadly, candidates who have experience in design, user experience, scalability, security, and leadership can also help accelerate crypto innovation, as these skills often have domain expertise that transfers well and may even work better than someone who doesn’t have this experience..
After you’ve identified the skills and people you need — including determining whether they really need to have crypto-native experience or not — the next step is to go out and recruit them.
Recruiting talent from any background
The biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity are flip sides of the same coin: You’re a crypto company.
For some candidates coming from established companies, crypto industry volatility, recent regulatory uncertainty, insider jargon, and decentralized products will be too new or unappealing or both. For others, that same unfamiliarity and occasional instability will be exciting — a feature rather than a bug. In recruiting conversations, drill into how the candidate thinks about the stability and comfort of a big company versus the opportunities and challenges of a rapidly growing company. Walk them through a challenge your team encountered in the last few weeks, explain how it was handled and highlight the onus on each team member given the size and stage of the company. Their reaction may tell you how they might have responded in a similar situation and at the very least, will let them know what’s expected of anyone at your company when the next situation arises.
A candidate might not know a ton about crypto when you first make contact, but natural curiosity and interest in the benefits of decentralization are key. A big signal over the recruitment process will be how much their knowledge and engagement deepens along the way: Are they researching things on their own? Are they asking more specific questions based on learning new things from you and others?… and so on.
To differentiate between the two types of candidates — the crypto-wary and the crypto-curious — and to avoid wasting your time and money, seek to understand people’s motivations as early as possible to make sure they and your company are moving in the same direction. This is recruiting 101, but it’s worth underlining because it’s so important, especially in the crypto industry.
Every pitch needs to be customized to each specific candidate: What drove them to their current job? What kept them in their past roles? Those same things are likely to be a critical part of their decision-making process this time around, too. Start learning the answers to those questions in your very first call with a candidate.
By the end of the recruiting process, you want to be hiring someone who is aligned with your company’s vision and excited about your product. And your team needs to be excited to work with the new hire, too; that will help you align whether the candidate fits your company or not regardless of degree of crypto experience. That’s always your north star.
Since you’re going after highly intellectually curious candidates, tailor your pitch accordingly to appeal to them. You might start by explaining the difference between the computer and the casino cultures of crypto (that the first sees blockchains as a way to build new networks powering a new computing movement, and the other is mainly interested in speculation, trading, and gambling). You could then share how the emergent industry offers them a unique chance to reshape the future of technology, not unlike the early days of the internet.
A useful thought experiment is to figure out how to talk about your product and company without talking about crypto. What problems does your company solve? What inspired you to build it? Why will the world be a better place because of it? This will allow you to sell the premise and promise regardless of the underlying technology without your audience getting tripped up in the details.
Another good starting point is simply to ask, “What do you know about crypto?” Even if you get skeptical answers — stories from the news, the casino-culture narrative — it will give you an opening, and allow you to listen for what they are really scared about: external factors (policy), intrinsic ones (tech complexity), personal ones (risk tolerance), and so on. You might share that many people in crypto agree with some of that skepticism, and bring the conversation around to the cool technical problems that your project is solving.
Not everyone’s primary motivation will be money, but be ready to highlight the financial rewards available, too. Historically, top talent has been reluctant to join early-stage companies for three reasons: (1) a grindfest culture, (2) bad work-life balance, and (3) lack of liquid compensation. Even if you solve for the first two, the third can eliminate a significant portion of your potential candidate pool.
Compensation innovation, such as token-based structures, can provide both financial upside and liquidity at early-stage companies — compared to the rare liquidity events like an IPO or acquisition that you see in web2. Be sure to use a vesting/token grant schedule that locks people into the long term to some extent. Compensation is a complicated topic and is obviously top of mind for candidates, so make sure you’re thoroughly prepared to talk about it.
If you do these steps well, you’ll have a solid chance of getting top talent from outside the industry interested in your company. Next, you’ll want to help them see exactly how they can contribute their best work in their day-to-day roles.
A note on onboarding
Integrating new talent into web3 companies is about educating your new hires to shorten their ramp-up time. You’ll know each person’s gaps because you identified them in the interview process. Use that knowledge to design onboarding experiences that specifically close those gaps, and as quickly as possible.
For example, new hires may need help to see beyond the technicalities of blockchain and decentralized systems, so they understand the real-world problems they’ll be solving and gain confidence in their roles.
Regular knowledge-sharing session between new hires and veteran employees with deeper crypto experience will foster collaboration and allow team members to learn from one another’s strengths. Mentorship programs can pair newcomers with experienced web3 professionals to provide invaluable hands-on learning. Even better, you can structure the program so that crypto “unicorn” talent (someone who has all the skills, knowledge, and background) is paired with newcomers who can develop over time into crypto unicorns of their own.
Upskilling and education are also essential, and will remain so as the industry keeps evolving. Resources like blockchain-focused blogs, podcasts, and education courses -– in things like how to use a smart wallet, how to stake, tokenomics, smart contract design, or basic concepts around how blockchains are being leveraged in different use cases– offer a strong starting point for continual learning. Mentorship roles with established crypto organizations can provide practical experience, while thought leaders in the industry can offer insights through reports (including our own State of Crypto report).
The key takeaway is, whatever your new hires need to excel, your job is to help them learn, find, or access it from day one.
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Regardless of whether you hire someone crypto-native or crypto-curious, your mantra should always be to: Hire smart people to build products that serve users.
The transition to crypto isn’t just about adopting new technology. It’s about cultivating a shared vision that blends the best of both worlds. Experienced professionals bring critical expertise in scaling, usability, and strategic leadership, while crypto-native talent offers specialized knowledge of blockchain systems and decentralized principles. Together, they form the ideal team to tackle the challenges of a rapidly evolving industry.
But this won’t all happen organically. To succeed, your organization must invest in thoughtful onboarding, collaborative team structures, and continuous education to set them up for that collaboration and success. This includes helping experienced talent see beyond the technicalities of crypto to understand the real-world problems they’ll help solve and the transformative potential of their work. By fostering shared purpose and bridging gaps in knowledge and culture, the industry can accelerate innovation and unlock the full promise of crypto for all.
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Ian Dutra is a Talent Partner for a16z crypto, advising portfolio companies on how to hire, retain, and develop talent. He’s focused on building talent programs from scratch and unblocking hiring funnels so teams can hire the right people just in time. Prior to joining a16z crypto, Ian developed talent programs for Twitter and CloudKitchens.
Craig Naylor is the Head of Talent for a16z crypto. His team partners closely with our portfolio companies on talent and people operations. Prior to joining a16z crypto, Craig was an early employee at CloudKitchens where he oversaw the technical recruiting function; he’s also worked at Facebook and Uber.
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