A single subjective experience of Coinbase in the early days

Thanks to Matthew Werner for inspiring this post.

I joined Coinbase in September, 2014 when Bitcoin was fringe and my family thought I had lost my mind to move cross-country & for a 50 person start-up.

At Coinbase, I learned how differently each person’s life story unfolds. There is no ‘right’ way to live life(although I still try). I started as a data analyst and ended as a Technical Product Manager. A paper I worked on in 2016 brought me love 3 years later. People I who got in my way became my closest friends.

I want to share the storyline I lived over 4.5 years at the largest crypto company in the early days of this technology to provide context to those new to the space, open an opportunity for reflection for those who have been in the space, and allow conversations with each of us about our unique experiences.

What storyline have you lived in crypto?
If your time in this space had one theme, what would it be?

2013–2017: A Vision that lasts a marathon

The first big run-up in crypto was December 2013 when Bitcoin hit a high of $1,300. It felt like crypto was a sure thing when I joined Coinbase. We figured it wouldn’t be long until the whole world saw the value of Bitcoin. So young, so naive.

Where we actually were:

What was in front of us:

My first two years at Coinbase were spent on the business development team. As the company’s only data analyst I was tasked with, well, all the data. At 50 people it was time to determine our ‘North Star Metric’ a specific measurement that best captures the core value a product delivers to customers.

At the time we considered ourselves to be a bitcoin wallet so it made sense for us to measure ‘number of bitcoin sends & receives’. But when I pulled the data it was clear people found Coinbase’s largest value to be buying & selling, not sending & receiving. It forced us to reconsider our product, instead of a wallet, we became a “bridge to Bitcoin”.

A large part of our strategy at the time was merchant integrations. It was the “Overstock accepts Bitcoin” announcement that drove the price up in 2013, so it followed this was a good strategy. The business development team signed on 10 billion dollar merchants in 2014 (slightly before my time). Then partnerships slowed. We started to reconsider merchant payments: why would a customer in the US use Bitcoin when they could use a credit card and earn points? The whole time we were thinking about Bitcoin as a new type of “payment protocol” but we needed to pivot if we wanted to keep traction.

In January 2015, we launched “Coinbase Exchange” (now Coinbase Pro, formerly known as GDAX). Although it took time to find the right branding, the idea was correct: A professional exchange platform would help Bitcoin thrive. Merchant payments focused on Bitcoin as a payment protocol but that’s not what people wanted. They wanted to buy & sell.

I refer to 2015 & 2016 as the dark days. We left the gate in 2014 ready to run a 400m sprint only to find out we had signed up for a marathon. I’ll never forget Chris Dixon’s words when he came to the Coinbase office for a fireside chat: “it took us 14 years to build the internet. Don’t kid yourself, Crypto won’t happen overnight. But one day, you’ll look back and realize that some of the things you worked on had a profound impact.”

Coming into work those days was rough. A lot of people left. The business development team shrunk to three people. We thought we were on a rocketship to the moon but day in and day out felt more like we were sitting on the back of a bumpy wagon.

I started managing institutional sales for Coinbase Exchange and took the lead on strategic partnerships.

On the exchange side, it became evident that people no longer saw Bitcoin as a “payment protocol” instead they viewed it as a speculative asset. Some of our earliest traders were two-man-startups who had left firms like Goldman Sachs to chase the opportunity in crypto. The data showed this would be a phenomenon. We partnered with Ark Invest to get the word out and wrote the “Bitcoin: A new Asset Class” paper in May 2016.

Being a young female from outside finance managing institutional sales was hard. Hell, I think being anyone handling institutional sales is hard. I was corrected at every conference I went to. Nobody took me seriously. In March 2017, I spoke at an Asset Management Conference. I shared the opportunity of Bitcoin and how big coin offerings would be. More than a few people were kind enough to come up after and tell me crypto was a scam. Nine months later when Bitcoin hit $19,650, an email came in from one of the conference attendees: “you were right all along!” it was very justifying.

The strategic partnership side had less clear value prop. Companies from all sectors would reach out asking how we could work together. In most situations, you couldn’t draw a clear line from a traditional company to a blockchain. The industry was only 8 years old, we had just started scratching the surface of its value. These companies wanted easy integrations. They didn’t want the cost of upending their entire backend systems to use a blockchain. Fitting an old companies process’ into a new technology was like putting a square peg into a round hole.

Focusing on partnerships in the financial sector, provided a clearer alignment. I launched the Fidelity & USAA “view balance” integrations where you could see your Coinbase crypto balance on their platforms (March 2016 & August 2017 respectively).

Then came the “Forget Bitcoin, we want Blockchain” phase. R3 launched in May 2017 and garnered a significant amount of attention. Internally, we felt an identity crisis coming on. Should we pivot to a “Blockchain” Company? And what does “Blockchain” even mean? Consulting with companies to integrate decentralized immutable ledgers? Is this where the industry was going?

Leadership was critical at this time. Brian and Fred (or as I lovingly call them Fryin Bread), our co-founders, didn’t miss a beat. They made it clear: We are a Bitcoin company. Our motivation is not improving the backend systems of companies, it is utilizing technology to create financial systems available to anyone.

That frame created a vision for us, something to rally behind. No longer worried we were missing the boat, we forged ahead to bring Bitcoin further into the world. There was one major downside to our “Bitcoin not Blockchain” rally, it centered on Bitcoin. We stood by those words, even in the face of Ethereum.

One of my major lessons is that words create stories and those stories will box you in making you blind to all other possibilities. Saying “Bitcoin, not Blockchain” shut us off to the possibility of integrating new decentralized protocols. After much internal debate, we launched Ethereum in 2016.

Building Coinbase alongside Fryin Bread (Brian/Fred) will forever mark a highlight of my life. Their self-awareness inspired us all to join and ensured we grew beyond what we knew was possible.

After the Ethereum launch, we again felt unclear about our identity. What do we add? What do we not add? The many voices in the industry made this conversation even louder. During a team meeting, after our first engagement survey revealed employees didn’t feel like they had a clear direction, Brian & Fred acknowledged their mistake & vowed to change course. We launched our mission, vision, and values solidifying that we were here to build an open financial system for the world.