Recruiting in Web3

The economy has been volatile lately, but crypto has continued to surge forward. Whether it’s on the funding front, crypto marketing dominating our everyday lives, or smart people leaving their jobs to jump into the space, it’s hard to ignore.

Having recently left my full-time job to dive in myself, it’s been interesting to observe talent movement and what’s happening on the recruiting front.

Some companies are getting serious

And when I say ‘companies’, I’m not saying multi $B companies like Dapper Labs, Opensea, or Polygon. Of course they’d need recruiting teams and built out processes for recruiting.

I’m talking about projects like Cool Cats, the creators of this newsletter’s mascot!

Cool Cat #1038 Cool Cats NFT

Cool Cats is a collection of 9,999 randomly generated and stylistically curated NFTs that exist on the Ethereum Blockchain. Cool Cat holders can participate in exclusive events such as NFT claims, ra…

Created by CoolCatsContract View on OpenSea

(BTW, you can embed Opensea NFT links, wild!)

Last Friday, the following announcement was made:

Cool Cats @coolcatsnft

We’re on the hunt for a new CEO!! Chris Hassett has stepped down as CEO. We thank him and wish him the best moving forward. We’re working with a top tier firm to help find a world-class CEO. In the interim, the founders will lead and focus on the vision and direction of CC 🐱💙

7:34 PM ∙ Apr 29, 2022

2,240Likes272Retweets

For a TLDR on Chris Hassett: He seems like an accomplished entrepreneur and businessman. However, he was hired several months ago and has done…nothing. Quite literally. He spoke on one Twitter Spaces months ago and that was it.

What does this tell me about successfully running a company or brand in Web3?

Operating experience is important, but understanding Web3 and its culture is just as important.

I can speak to this from first-hand experience as well. This theme was clear from conversations with various recruiters and companies in the space looking for skilled marketers and growth operators for Web3 companies.

There is plenty of talent out there (many more qualified than myself), but few are qualified for the role and understand the Web3 culture deeply. It doesn’t mean that you can’t learn on the job and succeed. However, this isn’t as simple of employing the same marketing strategies and tactics when you jump from one industry to another in Web2. You can preach about ‘community first’ or all the buzzwords you want, but a few questions can weed out most of the BS.

If I were a recruiter for a company in the NFT space, I would ask a few simple questions that would snuff out 80% of candidates:

“Do you have any NFTs?” (do you practice what you preach?)
“Can you share with me your wallet address?” (this is the Web3 ‘resume’. Do you have the NFTs you say you have?)
“What’s your favorite project and why?” (how do you think about projects and what are your mental models?)

TPan WTF does this have to do with ‘some companies are going the traditional route’?

Oh ya, my bad :)

So along with that announcement the Cool Cats team casually mentioned that they have retained Heidrick & Struggles to lead their new CEO search. Haven’t heard of Heidrick & Struggles? Me neither, until now.

So what do they do?

Ah…that’s why I haven’t heard of them. They are executive recruiters, aka they help big (like Fortune 500 big) companies find their next C-Suite. They don’t care about TPan’s of the world.

What does this tell me? Cool Cats are serious about finding the right person to take the company and brand to the global level and they’re willing to pay for it.

But sometimes, the right person might already be in the community…

sighduck @sighduck

👋 So the Cool Cats team announced that the current CEO is stepping down and that they're searching for a new one. I wouldn't normally do this but believe that I'm probably one of the best candidates in the world for this role so consider this my public bid. Here's why..

8:33 PM ∙ Apr 29, 2022

2,766Likes324Retweets

On top of the business and leadership experience, Sighduck has been with the Cool Cats since the very early days and holds many of them, including the legendary Devil Cat which is his PFP. I hope the Cool Cats team at least gives Sighduck an interview. He might not be a Fortune 500 CEO, but he actually understands the space, product, and culture.

Either way I hope Cool Cats finds the right CEO. My cat is relying on it! 🙏

What’s Elon up to?

Oh boy, what now? This morning Elon tweeted this:

Elon Musk @elonmusk

I dunno … seems kinda fungible

11:03 AM ∙ May 4, 2022

297,991Likes22,819Retweets

Is he referring to…NFTs? And what’s this new PFP?

Oh boy…

This is a picture of the Sotheby’s 101 BAYC lot which was sold for $24.4 million in September 2021. So these aren’t his and he’s poking fun at how anyone can ‘right-click-save’ NFTs.