Adapting and thinking differently is crucial when building and growing in the crypto industry.
Active community engagement and building trust are essential for the success of a decentralized protocol.
Having a diverse and collaborative team, clear principles, and open-source development protocols are key to scaling in the crypto industry.
Deep dives
Transitioning to Crypto: Challenging Mental Models
Mary Catherine (MC), Chief Operating Officer at Uniswap, discusses the mental models that needed to be challenged when transitioning from traditional finance to crypto. She shares the surprise of realizing that partnerships with larger companies had limited use in the crypto space. She also highlights the importance of taking a first-principles approach to go-to-market strategies, as traditional tactics may not apply in the decentralized environment. Additionally, MC emphasizes the significance of liquidity as a key defensibility factor in DeFi and the potential for interoperability to enhance the protocol's adoption. Overall, she emphasizes the need to adapt and think differently when building and growing in the crypto industry.
The Role of Community and Building Trust
MC discusses the role of community in Uniswap's strategy and the importance of being a steward of the community. She shares how the company prioritizes community engagement through active participation on platforms like Discord and Reddit, fostering trust and loyalty among users. While acknowledging the value of partnerships and events, MC emphasizes the need to prioritize actions that have a higher return on investment and align with the company's mission. She also emphasizes the significance of building trust and understanding users' needs, which helps in making effective decisions for the long term. MC highlights the need for authenticity, being present, and active listening in fostering a strong community.
Navigating Operations and Scaling in the Crypto Industry
MC shares her experience overseeing various functions at Uniswap and navigating the challenges of scaling in the crypto industry. She highlights the importance of having a diverse and collaborative team with a mix of experience and open-mindedness. MC explains how at Uniswap, everyone is a player coach, playing multiple roles and contributing to shared infrastructure. She also emphasizes the need for clear principles and open-source development protocols, enabling effective collaboration among teams with different mandates. Additionally, MC reflects on the challenges of hiring in the crypto industry and the importance of finding people who are passionate about the mission and have a long-term perspective. She encourages being humble about what one knows and actively seeking to learn and adapt in the ever-evolving crypto landscape.
The importance of understanding vulnerabilities in the financial system
The podcast episode discusses the recent stress and uncertainty in the financial system and how it has highlighted the need for better understanding of vulnerabilities. It emphasizes that the adoption of crypto has been driven by countries and places where the financial system is not secure. This situation has made more people aware of the lack of resilience in the traditional financial system and the need for more secure and interoperable solutions.
The power of demonstrating the benefits of crypto
The podcast episode highlights the importance of demonstrating the advantages of crypto to convince people to adopt it. It discusses the effectiveness of providing demos of crypto products like Uniswap's new wallet and OpenSea, which showcase the benefits of privacy, ownership of assets, and transparency. By showing people how these products work and solving their concerns about data ownership and privacy, it becomes easier to convince them to enter the crypto space.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Uniswap Labs COO Mary Catherine (aka MC) Lader discusses the challenges -- and opportunities -- of decentralized finance (DeFi); business strategy (& competition) in a world of open source; product vs. protocol innovation... as well as organizational structure & collaboration, hiring, metrics, community engagement, app store policies, decentralization, and much, much more.
The conversation -- based on an interview with host Sonal Chokshi and founder Q&A live from a16z crypto Startup School earlier this year -- also covers how to make decisions on what to innovate on or not; how to move from idea and vision to business; and the transition overall from traditional finance/ tradfi. Before joining Uniswap Labs (which contributes to Uniswap, a protocol for trading and automated liquidity provision on Ethereum) -- Lader was a managing director at BlackRock (and chief operating officer of the firm’s digital wealth business and head of its climate tech business); was formerly a fintech entrepreneur; and began her career as an investment analyst at Goldman Sachs.
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As a reminder: none of the following should be taken as investment, legal, business, or tax advice; please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information -- including a link to a list of our investments.
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