#1361 Kenny DeGiglio on The Best Way To Get A Crypto Job

Kenny DeGiglio is the Co-Founder of Dream Startup Job and Crypto Academy. In this conversation, we discuss tips and tricks for landing a job in crypto, remote work vs in-office, US-based vs. international firms, compensation, bear vs. bull market, Dream Startup Job, an overview of Crypto Academy, and the benefits of going through the training program. ======================= Apply for my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/ View 12k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================= Meanwhile is the world’s first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Protect your loved ones with sound money built to manage life’s uncertainty and a broken financial system. Their BTC-denominated Whole Life Insurance policies allow HODLers to pass more BTC on to their loved ones and a tax-advantaged way to access BTC for liquidity during their lifetime. Visit their website at ⁠⁠https://meanwhile.bm/⁠⁠ to join the waitlist for a policy and to learn more. ======================= Get the freshest price feeds free for 12 months. Join Supra’s early integration program for zero-cost access to the fastest oracles and dVRF across 50+ blockchains: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://supra.com/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Earn $1,500 by referring Web3 projects to use Supra services. The projects get the fastest services for free, and you earn $1,500 for every referral. Learn more at the link above. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is with Kenny DeGiglio. He is the co-founder of Dream Startup Job and Crypto Academy. In this conversation, we discuss the tips and tricks for landing a new job in Bitcoin and crypto, what the difference between remote work and in offices in the job market, how to think about US-based versus

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  international firms, how compensation can vary, what happens in bear versus bull markets, how many people get fired in the bad times, what exactly Dream Startup Job is, an overview of the Crypto Academy, and all the benefits of going through the training program. I really enjoyed this conversation with Kenny. You all can learn a ton from him. This is a masterclass in the job market for the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry. So if you or a friend wants to get a job in the industry, this episode is for you. Here is my conversation with Kenny DeGiglio.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Meanwhile. Meanwhile is the world's first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Operating on the Bitcoin standard, they do everything in Bitcoin. You pay in Bitcoin. They pay claims to your family in Bitcoin. You take out policy loans entirely in Bitcoin when you need liquidity. Meanwhile, Bitcoin life insurance has redefined what it means to hodl. Protect your family from life's uncertainty in a broken financial system. Build intergenerational Bitcoin wealth while the cost of living skyrockets in dollar terms. Get all the tax and legal benefits of life insurance now in Bitcoin. They are actively binding policies today. Whether you are a long-term Bitcoiner or are just considering it for the first time, a Bitcoin whole life policy could make sense for your wealth plan.

• 2:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Visit their website, meanwhile dot BM, to join the waitlist and to learn more about the world's first Bitcoin life insurer. Again, that's meanwhile dot BM. Go check them out today.

• 2:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Supra. They just launched a brand new million dollar Bitcoin DeFi accelerator dedicated to Bitcoin L2 ecosystem dApps. Bitcoin builders, you can integrate with Supra's price feeds into your dApps and apply for the accelerator at supra.com slash pomp dash BTC. Again, that's supra.com slash pomp dash BTC. It's open for a limited time, so get moving ASAP. By the way, the program includes free access to Supra's price feeds with 600 to 900 millisecond data refreshness and next gen accuracy, as well as low latency verifiable randomness, both serving over 55 blockchains, including Bitcoin L2s. With these powerful services and the million dollar Bitcoin DeFi accelerator, Supra is

• 3:19Anthony Pompliano?

  going all in on the Bitcoin ecosystem. Here's something extra. If you're not a builder, you can earn $1,500 by referring Bitcoin L2 projects to apply to the million dollar Bitcoin DeFi accelerator. Their projects can get financial support and you bag $1,500 for every referral. Join Supra affiliates and spread the word. You can go to supra.com slash pomp dash BTC to learn more. That's S U P R A dot com slash P O M P hyphen BTC. Go check them out today. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Kenny here with me. Kenny and I have been working for the last three years or so. We've helped over 3,000 people get a job in the Bitcoin crypto industry.

• 4:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Kenny is here to give us a masterclass overview of how do you get a job in the industry? How many jobs are available? How much money can you get paid? Where can you go? If you are looking to create some sort of better economic situation for yourself, if you want to spend majority of your time working on Bitcoin and crypto and kind of the things that you're interested in, then this episode is going to be for you. So Kenny, maybe where we could start is when people think about getting a job in the industry, one of the things I hear people say is like, oh, I'm not a developer. And so how many of the jobs are kind of technical in nature? How many of them are non-technical? How do we think about like, what are the skills you need in order to be able to transition into the industry?

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is, I have conversations with a bunch of people who are making the transition. This is the number one question we get is like, hey, I'm not a software developer. My assumption is that all of the roles or close to all of the roles in the industry like require a technical background. What do I do? I want to contribute, but I don't know how. And so like this was true, if you look back to like 2015, 2016, even 2017, where companies were focused on the product. You need to have developers in order to build a product. Now we're in 2024, the industry is very mature. And so even some of these last functions that get built out within an organization like HR and recruiting, these are all taken in-house now. And so the best way to think about it is if you want to transition into the industry,

• 5:21Speaker 02

  you have to be very specific about identifying your skill set. And for some people, this is really straightforward. You know, I've spent 15 years in corporate accounting. Well, what are you going to do in the Bitcoin and crypto industry? You're going to be a corporate accountant, right? There are other people who they come to us and they're like, I stink, I'm down on myself, I have no skills. You know, I went to college, but then something happened and I've been in the restaurant industry and then I took some time off. It's like, okay, well, you still have skills, you're good at sales, you're good at customer support. And so you focus your energy there. And so to give you all an idea of like what types of roles are available, technical roles still do dominate. So if you think of, you know, technical roles as like engineering, IT, that area, about 30% of the roles that are open across the industry fall into this category. So that's the most.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Leading that or kind of following that, though, we have finance, operations and accounting type roles. These are about 10 to 15% that fall into each of these categories. And then right now, which is a really interesting stat, only about 5% of the roles that are available across the industry fall under sales and customer support. My guess is if kind of this time around looks anything like last time, this is set to explode and probably double or triple over the next, I don't know, six to 12 months.

• 6:36Anthony Pompliano?

  So when we think about this and give people some context, right? There's basically three different efforts Kenny, myself and the team have been working on. One is we have a job board. Companies come in, they list open roles. We tell people, go to the job board and they're able to go and apply there. We'll put a link in the description so they can check that out. And that's completely free for people to use and you know, literally hundreds, if not thousands of people have gotten a job just by going and applying. And the recruiters at those companies seeing their resume and calling them up. The second thing is we have a headhunting firm or kind of a recruiting firm. That recruiting firm, again, companies hire them to go and find talent. So they'll say, hey, look, we're trying to hire someone in this specific role with these characteristics. Go find them for us.

• 7:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you're successful, we'll pay you to do that. So it's completely free for the candidates. If you're interested, again, we've got links there. You can go click and upload your resume and a recruiter will get in touch with you. Then the third one is we've got a training program because a bunch of people said, hey, look, I went on the job board. I talked to the recruiters. I don't have the skills or the knowledge yet of crypto. I'm good at accounting, but I don't know anything about Bitcoin or crypto. So I need to get educated on that. And so that training program, we've put a ton of people through there. I think we've done 20 something different cohorts at this point and had a lot of success. So when we look at that, maybe one of the areas Kenny that people could really learn from is when we see geography. Like there's one thing that's technical, non-technical. How many of these are based in the US versus outside the US?

• 8:02Anthony Pompliano?

  How many of them are, you know, work in person versus remote work? How do we think through what is the expectation that these companies have for individuals?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I kind of split this up into two buckets. I think of it as remote versus in office. And then I think of it as the company based in the US or are they based outside the US? Remote first is dominant. It's 80 to 90% of the roles that we see are remote first. There's only, I think, 2.5% was the number based on our survey. And this lined up with some other numbers I looked at. 2%, 2.5% of the companies in the industry actually require people to come in the office. There's about 10% or so where it's hybrid, but there's very few companies that are like, hey, you have to be in the office. And so kind of throughout the industry. Bitcoin focused companies, media businesses, kind of like longer tail crypto companies. They say, we want to hire the best people. And so who's the best person?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  That's the person that we're going to have fill the role. And so kind of what I tell people is your base case when looking for a role should be, it's going to be remote first. And you can kind of make your assumptions based on that. There may be an exception, but it's going to be like very rare that that you have to be in an office. And so that's how I think about remote, uh, remote versus in the office. Uh, when you look at companies that are based inside the U S versus internationally, there is a pay gap there. Uh, and so companies, uh, that are, that are headquartered in the U S pay on average, like 20% more than their international counterparts. Um, and so obviously there are exceptions to this. And so if you're dealing with some of the really big international businesses, the compensation is more in line.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Um, and so that's kind of one piece of it. And the second piece of it is a stat that I found really interesting is there are very few people in the industry that actually get paid in crypto. It's like 95 plus percent of people receive their paychecks via fiat rails. Uh, so some companies kind of offer it as a novelty. So they'll say, hey, here's your annual bonus. Do you want it in Bitcoin? Most people still choose fiat. So I do think that's interesting. Uh, the kind of 5% exception that we see is folks who are based in the U S and they work for a company that's headquartered overseas. Uh, and in, in these instances, many times, uh, they'll be paid via stablecoin, something like USDC or USDT.

• 10:10Anthony Pompliano?

  So when people are looking at these opportunities, I think a lot of them are asking themselves, um, how many jobs are open? Really? How many jobs am I competing for? Uh, there's a couple hundred thousand people that work in the industry, but are we talking about a couple hundred jobs, tens of thousands of jobs? Like, how many are actually available?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this is a good question. It's hard to pin down an exact number just because there are so many firms and it's become a lot muddy over the past year or so. Because there are so many, let's call them trad five players, think Black Rocks, the Fidelities of the world, uh, and a lot of the law firms, accounting firms, right? That have crypto oriented roles, but they're certainly not crypto companies. And so on Dream Startup Job, which is our job marketplace, which is by no means an exhaustive list, but we have a lot of the top companies now in the crypto industry alongside a bunch of other like really innovative startups. We have like thirteen hundred open roles right now. My guess, and this is again kind of an educated guess. If you look at open roles in the US, I would say that the number is probably somewhere around twenty five hundred.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  If you look globally, I'd say it's double that. So it's probably around five thousand. And so the the number actually isn't that interesting to me right now, at least. What's interesting to me is the trends. And so I actually look back at our numbers from Dream Startup Job yesterday afternoon. We had, so we have thirteen hundred open roles right now. We had fewer than seven hundred. So it was like six hundred and thirty open Bitcoin and crypto roles six months ago. And so it's doubled in the past six months. And and the the growth seems like it's on like a forty five degree angle. And so my guess is that in six months, six months from now, if we have this conversation on Dream Startup Job alone, the number would be double. And so I think that's the interesting thing to pay attention to is

• 11:49Speaker 02

  kind of if you do like a vibe check and you talk to people across the industry, like hiring hasn't really started yet for many of these firms. And we can talk more about that, like firms know what their hiring plan is, but they haven't really executed on it fully yet. And so it's like we've doubled in the past six months. I don't know. If you look six months, twelve months out, I could see that tripling, quadrupling from here. And so I think that's the more interesting piece rather than just the number.

• 12:13Anthony Pompliano?

  What types of companies are these? Are these centralized companies? Are they like decentralized? You know, autonomous organizations? Are they companies that are like exchanges? Or are they other things? How do you think through what companies are hiring and like what categories they go in?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  It's it's so all over the map that there's like no great, great way to categorize it, especially like I said, over the past year. Now that like, okay, the funny thing about the Bitcoin and crypto industry is it's really like forty sub industries that we all like clung together. So if you tell someone, hey, I'm an investment banking associate. They basically know exactly what you do, right? If you are, you know, associate level and you go out working Bitcoin and crypto, it's like they really have no information, right? So you might work for a media business, you might work for an exchange, you might work for a lab that's developing like a layer two solution. There's probably like

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Like really forty like distinct verticals or sub industries and that's the place where you need to start is before you think about like what should my function be it's like where do I want to focus my attention on in the industry and so I'll kind of talk a little bit about like what types of roles are available but it's basically anything you can imagine is is really the easiest way to think about it. What we found is the most important thing so like this would be like advice for someone who's starting this process is it's really easy to get caught up on I want to make my resume perfect I need my cover letter to like really stand out my LinkedIn my portfolio. In a lot of ways, this is how many of us procrastinate, which is kind of counterintuitive, but you get so obsessed and those things in many cases end up not being all that important.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  The really hard work and the reason it's hard work is because it's not fun and it requires a lot of like deep thinking is what do I actually want to do? And so transitioning into the industry is very hard work. It requires a lot of time, energy, effort, sacrifices, etc. And so if you're going to basically for a lot of people kind of turn your whole life upside down, imagine you're someone with a very stable job and you want to go and work in the industry, it's a big leap. You've got to make sure that you you're focusing your efforts and your energy on an area of the industry that you're really passionate about and to be a little bit more precise. You're going and you're working in an area of the industry where say the company that you work for their mission aligns with your personal values. What do I mean by this? We had a guy, I think he'll be comfortable with, I'm not gonna say his name, but we had a guy.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Really, really, really skilled technical person, software developer. He went and works for a company and they told him that he was going to be working on Bitcoin Lightning on the Lightning Network and in his words, they stuck him on a shitcoin project. And he was miserable, like he would have rather been in a different industry because he just wasn't kind of working on the thing that was going to create the change that he wanted to see in the world. He ended up going and getting another job that's like perfectly aligned with his interest in his mission and he's as happy as can be. And so we've seen this time and time again where people are so eager to transition into the industry that they take something that isn't the perfect fit. So my advice would be like, think very deeply about like what do I want to focus my energy and my effort on and you're going to be way happier.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  And so hopefully that's helpful. I know I didn't answer the question directly, but the the the direct answer to your question is anything you can imagine, there's a company that's working on it.

• 15:24Anthony Pompliano?

  How much money can people make? Like, what is the compensation? Are there bands or like averages? Or a way to think about like, can I make more money going into the industry? Or is it just the same as what I make outside?

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So one of the cool things about, I mean, many industries like tech and even even traditional finance are doing this now where they're posting the compensation as part of the job description. And so the first thing I would say is where do you want to focus your energies and efforts? Do you want to focus on a Bitcoin only company? Are you more interested in F Ts? Do you want to work in kind of the media side of the business? And so that's the first piece. That's kind of what we were just talking about. From there, I would say, make a list of, it could be as short as three, five, 10 dream companies where you go like, I would absolutely love to go and work within this organization. Guess what? The, check out what their open roles are. There are going to be some roles that they'll need to hire for in the next six to 12 months that aren't up there yet. But for the open roles, just check out what the compensation is, and that'll give you an idea.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  But there are many companies that don't post their compensation. And so the way I think about it, and this is general, and then I'll get in a little bit more specific. In general, I would say compare to an equivalent function. And so if you're a software engineer, compare to software engineering roles. Like, it's not going to make sense to go look at the compensation for marketing roles. That's a completely different pay scale. Then make sure you're looking at the career equivalent. So you can do something as early career, mid-career, or late career. You know where you are, right? Are you a senior person? Are you someone that's just entering the workforce? This is actually big is look for a similar sized company. And so, as you know, the pay scale for a publicly traded company is much different than a seed stage company, especially for more senior roles. And then look in the same geography.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  So we kind of talked about the fact that US-based companies pay somewhere around 20% more on average. And so that's a generalization. And so make sure you're doing like an apples to apples comparison. If you're doing that, what you're going to see is that in terms of cash compensation, the jobs in the crypto industry are very similar to what roles are paying in kind of the traditional tech space for a company that's the same size, a similar stage in fundraising, in kind of a similar function at the same level. If anything, the compensation could be like five to 10% more, just in terms of cash compensation. And so I'm going to give you a couple of examples. I wrote them down because I think for people it helps to kind of get specific. The other thing I'll add, and we can come back to this, is

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Equity compensation is roughly in line with what you'd expect at a startup. And so like if you understand kind of how equity compensation works for early stage startups, you'll, that's kind of the same. The thing that's different is token compensation. And so it's somewhere around kind of our data is like 10% of the, the folks who have gotten jobs from the training program. Uh, there's some sort of token compensation. Other data like Pantera has some really good data on this. It shows more like 20 or 25%. Our experience is a bit lower, but uh, the token compensation thing is something that's unique. Um, and it can amount to a lot. So really quickly, let me give people just the medians because I think it'll be helpful. Legal is around 210K is the median. You go up as high as 500K, a little bit lower.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Uh, engineers, they're uh, outside of legal, uh, and, and most legal roles within these organizations are senior. So again, the data is a bit weird. Uh, kind of median salary for a software engineer is like 195K. Uh, product management's next at 170. Finance and accounting, business development, all the way down to operations. Uh, the median is 110K. Again, this is kind of a weird one because customer service people in this data count as operations. And then you, if you have like a head of strategy or a chief of staff, they fall into that bucket. Um, so that's kind of where, again, if, if someone goes, hey, I work in the tech industry, these numbers probably sound familiar. They're right in line with what you see in like broad tech.

• 19:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when we go and we take a look at um, the token stuff in particular, do we know in terms of like what that upside looks like? Is it like they're getting paid in tokens and it almost acts as uh, as the market cap goes up, their compensation is going up? Or is it like denominated in dollars? And then there's getting a certain number of tokens based on price divided by, you know, what the, the dollar amount is?

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so ton of variation, uh, which is the case with all of this stuff. And so the first thing to think, when you're thinking about this is you want to really kind of compare token comp to equity comp. And so it's structured in a very similar way. The majority is still a four-year vesting schedule. Two and three years have become more common. Um, and I'm, I'm personally not exactly sure what the reason is for that, but it has become more common over the past several years. Um, but it's a vesting schedule. And so when you're starting to think about token compensation, you should think of it like equity upside, which most people say like, I'm going to mark this down to zero. And like, hopefully things go really well and it'll kind of be a surprise. Uh, but the way that most of these are structured is. You have a set amount of tokens and the original amount is in dollar terms.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  And so I think the median is like 90K vested over four years. And so the amount that you're is allocated for you is in dollars. And then, of course, the token price is going to fluctuate. In some cases, it's going to go parabolic to the upside. Other cases, it's going to go to zero. And so like you have a set amount of tokens. And so it's like dollar price divided by the amount of tokens that you're allocated. And then that's how many tokens that you have. And then they're vested over some timeframe. The interesting thing is that founders that, you know, they basically decide what their token compensation is going to be. But for C level executives, these token packages can get high in dollar terms. Like 1 million and above is certainly not uncommon.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  And so I usually just tell people like, look, if it's your first time looking at this, make sure you read it carefully because it is a bit more complicated. But if you understand how equity comp works generally, that's kind of a good place to start with token comp.

• 21:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, I know that you've done a bunch of analysis on these market cycles. And so maybe we can talk about things that we've seen, you know, in kind of the bull cycles, but also in the bear cycles. A lot of people always say to me, oh, I don't want to go work in this industry because there's bear markets and in bear markets, everyone gets fired. Is that true or is it maybe misleading?

• 21:30Speaker 02

  It's true to an extent. It's nuanced. I feel like every answer is like, it's nuanced, but here we go. But all this stuff is really nuanced, right? And so, look, history doesn't rhyme, but it doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes is like a phrase that a lot of people use. And so many listeners are going to know, we kind of have these four year cycles in Bitcoins that are usually kind of kicked off by the halving. We're kind of, we just had the halving, so we're heading into one. If we look at kind of what happened, quote unquote, last time, we see some interesting data. And so basically what we see is that the longer a person is at an organization before the organization conducts layoffs, the more likely not only are they to stick around, they're actually more likely to get promoted.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  And so like an ideal scenario for people is they go and work for a company. It's growing like crazy. There are no layoffs. They actually get to hire a bunch of people on their team. Like, that's the ideal scenario.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  There were a ton of layoffs this time around. The interesting thing that I found is if you look at it on a percentage basis, layoffs within crypto were slightly higher than broad tech, but not that much higher. Like it was just a big layoff year all around. For anyone that wants to take a look themselves, I know, Pom, we've looked at this together before. It's it's levels dot F Y I is the domain, but they do a bunch of really good work on tech layoffs, compensation. And so for anyone who's trying to get like a base or kind of get their bearings, that's a really good spot. And so, yes, there were a lot of layoffs in crypto, but it actually on a percentage basis wasn't that much higher than broad tech. And so if I talk a little bit about timing, because I think this will be helpful to some people, the having last time around happened in May.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  The people who kind of started networking right around the having, many of them ended up getting jobs at the end of Q four of 2020 and then the first quarter of Q one of 2021. These people, almost none of them got laid off. I don't remember the exact number, but say we helped 100 people get jobs just from the training program, because this is where we have the really good data. I think two of those people got laid off. It was almost non-existent. And like I said, most of them got promoted. Why? Well, they got themselves in the organization. They basically took over a key piece within their function, or they took over an entire function, right? They were the director of sales or the growth marketing lead. And they basically embedded themselves within the business and they made it so that they were, you couldn't get rid of them, right?

• 23:54Speaker 02

  They did something that was key to the business producing revenue and profit. Many of them hired a team and they had a team under them. And so what actually happened is these people didn't get laid off, the team shrunk, and then they got promoted. And by they got promoted, their pay went up, but then instead of being responsible for their jobs, there was like really three separate roles that they're now responsible for. And then, of course, these, these businesses are going to grow again this time around. And so why is that information valuable? Well, that information is valuable because I'm guessing we're going to see something really similar this time around. And so if you're someone who's looking to transition in the industry, if you start looking at like the euphoric peak blow off top, so like the equivalent of November of 2021. Last time around, you're probably going to be, it's going to be way more of a risk that you get laid off.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  If you start the process now, you start getting to know people, you submit applications, you do all these things. You're going to have a much more secure position because you're just going to have time to basically prove yourself within the organization. So is that helpful?

• 24:53Anthony Pompliano?

  That that makes a ton of sense. What do you think in terms of people who end up getting fired versus people who don't? Like, are there certain things that folks can do, either in the interview process as they're operating inside of the company, to kind of cement themselves as having more resilience and not be on the first, you know, kind of cut?

• 25:11Speaker 02

  What I will say is that it's just like all this stuff. It's like the people are like, um, you know, I'm fresh out of college and all the roles I'm applying for, they want five years of experience. Think how the hell am I going to have that? It's very similar with Bitcoin and crypto. Once you've worked in the industry, it becomes way easier to continue working in the industry. And so like, for a lot of folks, there was no difference. Like, they just got hired at a really bad time. The company either, you know, went bankrupt or they went through a really difficult time and they just laid a bunch of people off. And so in many cases, it wasn't actually anything that the individual did. And so they were laid off. Those people had, you know, it was almost twice as easy for them or half as difficult to go ahead and get another job. Many of those people did stay in the industry.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  I think it's like, um, we actually didn't have all that many people from the training program that got laid off. But out of those who did, I think it was like 60 or 65% of those people stayed in the industry, so a majority. And so in many cases, it's just like a timing thing. It's the individual didn't do anything wrong, but the people who did do a really good job, it's like, they're really competent. That's always the top thing is like with any of this stuff, you need to be really damn good at what you do. And that's going to, you can get away with a lot of other stuff if you're just amazing and you do something, you provide value that nobody else can. But outside of that, it is just, everyone really likes them, right? Within the business, if you talk to their colleagues and coworkers, everyone has nice things to say.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  And then they've developed relationships outside of the organization. So that's that. And I mean, you know this better than anyone else. Like, this is one of the things that I've kind of learned a lot from you is like, I've seen, I mean, I've seen you take calls and like, why are you talking to that person? You go, I don't know, just because they might have something valuable to teach me. And so doing a lot of this really helps because on the business development side and the marketing side, just knowing people and having good rapport with them, it really goes a long way.

• 27:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's talk about people who apply via cold, you know, kind of like going on a career page, going on a job board or just sending a resume versus getting a warm introduction, meeting an employee. Like, what is the difference there? Or how to think about, is one better than the other, kind of from a numbers basis?

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I might piss some people off, but I'm okay with that because when I start going through this numbers, people who haven't initiated the process yet, they're like, nah, no way. This can't be true. So what I will say is you should do absolutely everything that you can do to either go in the side door or the back door. That's the kind of terminology that we use. You have to do some of it, but you shouldn't count on submitting a resume through a company's career page and then just like magically getting a job. We have a career coach Hannah, who you just had on the podcast recently. She's legit world-class. Like, as far as people who kind of do what she does, she's just brilliant. Her and her husband Ryan. They have data from the program that they run, Degree Free, and she says that our data lines up with this pretty

• 28:05Speaker 02

  well, that it takes 100 applications to get one response. In my experience, like being, kind of knowing a lot of people who've gone through the process, I would say it's probably closer to 50, but I trust Hannah's data. Like, it's definitely good data. And so a response, in many cases, is, hey, the ATS automated thing looked at your resume and we determined you're not a good fit. Like, that counts as a response. And so when you start to do the math on this, you're like, okay, let's say it takes 30 to 60 minutes to customize your resume, customize your cover letter, which you should do. I could, what, I could submit three cold applications a day? And so that means it's going to take you a month just to get one response.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  And so it's just very ineffective. The weird thing about it is, is you feel like you're doing something. So much of the other stuff that we'll talk about, there's like not a direct correlation between the effort you put in and like, it's very obvious that you're making progress. Here, you can check it off. You, like, I applied to three companies today. And so it's this kind of false sense of making progress for a lot of people. And so I think that's maybe where I'll piss people off, is like, it's really, really difficult. Difficult to just go through the front door within these organizations. The good news is it's so much higher leverage, like orders of magnitude, probably two orders of magnitude more effective to go through a warm referral. One last thing that I want to add on the point of how difficult it is to go through this front door.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  We recently had an alumni who works at a Bitcoin startup. It's probably about fifty to hundred employees, I won't say which. And he posted four roles that were open and he said like, hey, check these out if you want to maybe work with us. I didn't see it until the next afternoon and so like twenty four hours had gone by. I click in and one of the roles, it's an HR role. So now I'm not like, there aren't many people that are like, HR is my passion, right? Unlike some of these other roles. It was an HR role. It was up for less than twenty four hours. When I clicked on it, it was already down. And so I reached out to him and I said, yo, what happened? Like, is something glitching? If so, I want to let you know. He goes, dude, we had three hundred and seventy six applications in twenty four hours for that HR general referral.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  It's like, come on, like, what are you gonna do? That's a lot. And then another little anecdote is I spoke with one of our recruiting contacts at one of the bigger companies in the space, a company that everyone would know. And they gave me two key pieces of information. They said, we know what we're gonna need to do for hiring. We just actually haven't started doing it yet. Like, we're kind of waiting a little bit. They don't want to jump the gun, basically. And then what they also said is for every role that we're hiring for, we will need to put it up on the ATS. I'm guessing maybe there's like a legal reason, whatever. But they go like, to be completely honest with you, like, most of these applications are gonna go on scene because we're gonna get completely flooded.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  For most of the key roles, we have anywhere between ten and fifty, like, very warm referrals. Meaning that someone who's well respected within the organization, pass it along and they're like, take my word for it. I vouch for this person. And so like if someone that is well respected within this business is doing that, chances are the person's pretty qualified. And so it's just like, even though there's going to be, you know, probably a couple thousand people applying for each of these roles, like they're not even going to get looked at. And so it's not like you stink, your resume is no good. It's just like, that's how the process is working. And so I say all this to basically be like, it's a reality that especially for roles that are like a perfect fit for you. You should submit your, uh, your application through the company's careers page. It is worthwhile.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  But the way that you're actually going to get a job 80% of the time is through networking and just really forming relationships across the industry.

• 31:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about the training program. That seems to be like the thing that most people, uh, use to really transition. Obviously they can go apply on the job board, they can use the recruiters, but the training program specifically, like how does it work? Why would people use it? And what will they get out of it?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, um, I mean, we talk about this all the time because we work on it together, but this is, uh, from my like selfish perspective, like my passion is the thing that I really care deeply about. Uh, and the reason is, is because like, we've now had hundreds of people who have gotten jobs from the training program alone. Uh, and we've been at this for three and a half years. And so like helping people kind of change the trajectory of their lives is awesome. But what's really fulfilling is we're starting to see the network effects kick in. And so what we're starting to see a lot of is, you know, people who met two or two and a half years ago in the program. They've become friends over that period of time. Now they're starting, uh, VC back business together. Or they're starting the side project, uh, that they've been talking about for a long time.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Um, and so what we also see a lot of is people who got jobs kind of leading up, kind of in the lead up to the euphoric blow off top in November 2021. They weathered the layoffs and they've really made a name for themselves within the organization. They've been promoted to the point where as things can start to heat up now, they're going to be responsible for building out a team. The first place they're going is to their friends and they're going like, yo, like you want to come work with me? Um, and so that is the thing why I love this is because like a lot of stuff that we thought would happen is really starting. To kind of come to fruition now and it's incredibly rewarding. And so as you can kind of imagine with my answer, it's like, why should someone go through this training program?

• 33:29Speaker 02

  The primary reason is the way that people get jobs in this industry, this is true of every industry, but it's especially true about Bitcoin and crypto is through network. But not like bullshit, like networking as you would think of it, like this kind of like a quid pro quo, like you do this for me, I do this for you. The way I use networking is developing really strong relationships and friendships over a long period of time. And so like this stuff takes a while to get going. And so, uh, really what we've doubled and tripled down on with this training program is we kind of think of it as we're doing our job well if we're creating a space for people to kind of lay the foundation for the relationships that they're going to have over the next five years, over the next decade.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  The way that we do this is through a lot of discussion groups, a lot of social events and something that we call deep dives, where people are an active part of the learning process and they actually have the chance to express themselves instead of only just consuming information. Uh, and so I think if there's one reason why people should, uh, kind of think about going through the program or at least take a closer look at it is if you feel like you know a ton about Bitcoin and crypto, you know, it's where you want to spend your time, but you kind of feel stuck. Our job is to turbocharge the process and like, if we send people out of the program with a ton of momentum, we kind of think of it as forward center of mass. We've done our jobs correctly. So I'm happy to talk about the specifics, but just like philosophically, that's kind of how we think about this thing.

• 34:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And then in terms of people going through, uh, maybe talk a little bit about the career day and like the, uh, companies coming in and pitching a little bit more.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, uh, really the three reasons that people go through this thing in order of, uh, you know, most, most important to least is they want to transition into the industry. About 55% of people go through, who go through, say, that's my primary goal. And like the people go through for all three of these. And so with the way we ask the question is important. We say like, we know you went through for multiple reasons, but like, if you only had to pick one, what would it be? Career, uh, is 55%. The second is something that you and I have talked a lot about and we call them the the my wife is going to divorce me people if I don't shut the hell up without Bitcoin. So this has gone up every single cohort. We're at like 30 plus percent of people who go through.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  They go, the reason I want to go through is I'm obsessed with this stuff, but I have nobody to discuss these ideas with. And so if I come away from this with just a space and I meet some people that I can discuss Bitcoin and Austrian economics and sovereignty and freedom with, like I'm happy. Yeah, if career opportunities come, that would be amazing. But like a lot of people like that's really what they're looking to do. And then there's a there's, you know, 10 or 15% of people go, I want to learn a bunch. And so these are usually people who are on the beginner end of the spectrum, or people who I think this happens to a lot of us where they're just stuck, right? They're kind of at the advanced side of the intermediate area and they need they need to have a step function increase. And so we help we help people with that a lot. And so what was it? What was the I was going somewhere with this. What was the

• 36:29Speaker 02

  original question you asked me? Do you remember?

• 36:30Anthony Pompliano?

  In terms of the companies coming in?

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, the companies coming in. So we spend a lot of time on the career side of things. We have an entire career track. Hannah is our career coach. Like I said, she's incredible. We give people tons of, you know, templates and sample cover letters and ways to organize your job search. We have this thing called the Pay It Forward spreadsheet, which I like this idea. It's a bunch of alumni who now work in the industry. They basically got jobs through the training program who are open to helping other people out. And so it's like the most efficient way ever to network with people. It's like, hey, I see that you're a sales manager at Coinbase. That's what I want to do. Can you spend 30 minutes chatting with me? And then kind of the culmination of all this is Career Day. And so Pom hosts the first five workshops.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  I host what we call discussion groups, which much to my wife's dismay, usually go three or three and a half hours into the night. We have a team of coaches who host deep dives. And then the culmination of everything is Career Day. So it's the sixth and final workshop. With Career Day, kind of what we've done is we've taken kind of a traditional career fair and we've completely flipped it upside down on its head. And so instead of like the Attendees of the career day who are looking for a job going booth to booth like hello, I'm so and so. We tell the companies, hey, you come and pitch the attendees. You tell them why you'd be such an interesting place to work. Talk about the roles that you have open and then give these people some sort of unique information about

• 37:58Speaker 02

  how they can increase their chances of getting a job in the industry. And so we totally flip it on its head. And if you think about like the, you know, the companies that come and present, it's an amazing deal for them. We don't really ask much besides, hey, you know, answer our emails when we reach out, pick up our phone calls. And they're going to find like super talented people and, you know, they can get interviews with them right away. And so usually we shoot to have one or two like brand new startups, like seed stage companies. The coolest thing ever is when we have a company present where it's an alumni who actually started it. We've done that a bunch. We usually have two or three midsize companies. So think like, you know, 50 to 100 people. And then we have one or two of the, the big boys, so you know, Coinbase type company, et cetera.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  And people get the chance to see like, what are these recruiters thinking about? What is their advice? Maybe some, some advice that the presenter will offer that they haven't heard. But our goal with it is the only thing that we ask of the companies that present is give some unique information. So don't come and nail it in and just, you know, give these people advice they've heard a million times. And then the important thing is if people reach out to you, just make sure they get an answer, right? For many, in many cases, like they're just not going to be a good fit, right? You're hiring a marketing person and their experiences in sales. Like just say, hey, your skill set isn't a good fit. We've kept your info on file. But if they are a good fit, make sure that they get an interview. Do whatever you need to do. Print their resume out, go jump on your boss's desk, whatever. And so that's, that's a big piece of it.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  And man, I mean, there's, there's a bunch of roles that have not only been hired through career day. The person gets, you know, a job in the organization and then they say, hey, you should, you should be hiring from here. And it kind of perpetuates onto itself.

• 39:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people if they want to figure out whether the training program is good for them, or if they want to set up a call with you?

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, well, I don't think, I know, the best place to go by far is the cryptoacademy.io. And so I'm guessing we can have the guys put that in the description so people can click, easy. What I do a ton of, where I've been spending a lot of my time lately, and the payoff is super high leverage for us, is I've just been having calls with people. And so when someone submits an application, there'll be a link of, hey, if you kind of want to talk through if someone from our team, is this thing a good fit, hop on a call with Kenny. And so I would say, there's a bunch more information about the program, I would say, check that out first. If you find it interesting, submit an application. Pom and I both watch that inbox like hawks, because we always love the new applications. And so it's like, we'll

• 40:28Speaker 02

  accept you, set up a call with me. And I'll, I've done enough of these where I go like, hey, either you're just not a good fit, you're looking for something that we don't offer, trading, get rich quick stuff. You probably should do something else. So we have a number of folks who go like, hey, I want to become a solidity developer. That's just not what we do. But there's a program like DAP Cam, which pre-decass already runs, which is amazing for that. Or I'll be like, this is perfect. You know, kind of here's what you'll get out of it. And we can just kind of spend some time chatting through it. So yeah, the cryptoacademy.io. If you're interested, submit an application. Once you're accepted, we can hop on a call. We are, we start the next cohort officially on June 10. But we are in full motion. Pom stopped by,

• 41:10Speaker 02

  I think at least one of them, a couple of them are social events. We've been meeting up every week. We're doing the next one sometime soon here. We've been meeting up, getting to know each other. There's a bunch of resources, all this stuff. So if kind of any of the things that I said today resonate with you, just think of the training program as this times a million forever. And that's kind of what we try to offer.

• 41:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Kenny, thank you so much. I always learn something and I talk with you. More importantly, we've helped a lot of people get a job. I think that is probably one of the things I'm most proud of over the last couple of years is literally thousands of people getting a job. I'm sure that many of them will watch this and be like, oh yeah, those guys, they were, they're pretty helpful. So hopefully we can continue to do that. If anyone wants to check out the job board, the recruiting services, or if they want to go check out the training program, we'll put links in the description for all of that, both on audio and video. And we'll definitely do this again in the future.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Cool. This was a lot of fun. I hope the folks listening found it valuable and I look forward to talking to some of you and thank you, Pomp, as always. Appreciate it.