New Industry, Perfect Team
My playbook for job searches in a new industry, based on my experience with Web3.
After several years as a product manager at Meta, I was ready to jump into the world of “web3”, a new ecosystem of applications built on top of blockchains.
But navigating web3 is hard. There’s a ton of hype, FOMO and acronyms (DAOs, DeFi, NFTs) that made it challenging to find the perfect fit for me.
Today, I wanted to share the playbook I used to navigate my job search in web3.
While my situation is web3 specific, I think this playbook can be extended to almost any emerging industry. So read on even if you’re not sold on web3 yet.
The outcome of this playbook is to help you go from 100s of possible entry points into an industry to 3-5 amazing fits for you.
There are three steps in this process. Each helps you narrow the aperture of opportunities to the ones that best align with your goals:
What stage of company am I looking for?
What area do I have the highest conviction in?
Who are my ideal teammates?
So if you’re exploring your next play in Web3 or an emerging industry, try working through the three steps below.
Step 1: What stage of company am I looking for?
Companies are more similar across stages than across industries.
For example, working at an early stage music NFT project will be more similar to being at a Y Combinator backed e-commerce startup than working at OpenSea.
Nikhyl Singhal, a VP of Product at Meta, introduced me to this concept. In one of his great essays, he shares how the cultures, compensation, exit opportunities, manager quality and background of peers vary wildly by the stage of the company.
There are a few reasons for this:
People sort themselves by risk-appetite (amongst other factors)
The problems being solved require different approaches
Operational cultures vary by stage
For these reasons, he suggests starting at the right stage for you before even looking at companies.
Nikhyl divides traditional companies into four main stages: the drunken walk, product-fit, hypergrowth and scale.
Web3 and many emerging industries are a little different.
The entire industry is nascent meaning even the largest companies (e.g. Coinbase, Opensea, Consensys) have potential to grow even more.
Company metrics like funding rounds, employee count or valuation aren’t as widely used. For example, the Ethereum Foundation has no external funding, ~400 employees and a token market cap of ~$370 billion. What stage is that at?
But the principle remains the same: deciding which stage to jump into will drastically change your experience.
For this reason, I’d suggest choosing between one of three stages of Web3 Growth.
Here are the key considerations of each stage of team.
Early: Pre-Product Market Fit
Key question: Do you want to build the first iterations of a Web3 product?
Pros: creative, small teams, more potential upside, less process, less politics.
Cons: higher risk, unproven model, less need for a traditional product manager.
Growth: Post-Product Market Fit
Key question: Do you want to grow a Web3 product that has traction?
Pros: fast-paced, existing consumers/customers, more established team.
Cons: can be stressful, ambiguous, and lack structure.
Scale: Expanding to new markets
Key question: Do you want to work on Web3 products with the structure of an established team?
Pros: structure, strong mentorship, resources, brand recognition
Cons: slower moving, more process, upside may be already captured
The key metric here is Product-Market Fit — this means the team has released a product that has significant traction. Lenny Rachitsky has a great compilation of how the best experts define product-market fit.
Think about the right stage for you, regardless of the specific area or company.
Step 2: What area do I have the highest conviction in?
It’s now time to explore the landscape itself.
But in true PM fashion, define your decision-making criteria ahead of discovery to have better results.
The desired outcome of this step is to find the sector of Web3 that you have the most conviction in. Conviction is a combination of optimism for its mass adoption, signs of explosive growth and an understanding of the problems it solves.
To do this, create a table of all of the areas in Web3 that you want to explore. From here, I’d suggest looking at the following five-axes to assess your conviction.
Mass Adoption - how large can you see this getting?
Talent Inflows - can this space attract incredible talent?
Capital Inflows - can this space attract capital and customers?
Innovation - how much better is the web3 solution versus web2?
Your specialized knowledge - how many unique insights do I have about this space?
Measuring your conviction against axes makes it quantifiable, transparent and objective.
Use a table to assign scores across each axis for your areas of interest. My table looked like this, with a 10 point score for each axis.
From this exercise, you’ll have 1-2 areas that you have high conviction in.
Going one step further, turn that area into your own Web3 thesis. This is a statement that encapsulates your conviction and why you hold it.
Here’s a template:
I believe [area X] will solve [important problem Y] through [innovation Z]. This is based on my [experience/unique insight] and the [talent/capital inflows] this sector is attracting.
Here’s my thesis:
I believe DeFi will solve regional barriers in financial infrastructure through digitally native asset rails.
This is based on my experience building WhatsApp Payment for Brazil and the influx of incredible talent and partnerships that this sector is attracting.
Get creative with your thesis. The more unique it is to you, the more conviction you likely have.
(P.S. if you write a thesis, tweet it out, tag me and I’ll retweet it to help you find companies that are building against your thesis).
Step 3: Who are my ideal teammates?
One thing I love about Web3 is the diversity of backgrounds it attracts. This ranges from artists to community managers to game developers.
Defining your ideal teammates will help you whittle down a medium list of teams to a handful of excellent fits.
Move past the obvious filters — like smart peers, a good manager, leadership you respect etc. — and ask questions that can help you distinguish between companies.
Here are some of the questions you may want to ask yourself:
Experience Level: do I want to be with industry veterans or newcomers with no preconceptions?
Product Culture: do I want to be on a team with an established product culture or do I want to help build it?
Manager involvement: do I want an active manager or one who will give me significant independence
Cross-functions: do I want to primarily work with designers, business development, data scientists, community managers, marketers or engineers?
Assessing these will take time. LinkedIn is your best friend for the first pass, but beyond this, you’ll need to start speaking to people on these teams.
Twitter is the easiest place to reach out to web3 operators. They’re also very excited to speak with you — hiring great talent is at the top of everyone’s mind right now.
In my web3 job search, I reached out to my future manager with this simple message:
Hey XXX. I’m a PM at Facebook working on developer experiences. Before this, I worked as a PM on WhatsApp Payments.
I’m excited by crypto and am exploring the right next step. Paxos seems great and I’d love to learn about your team. Would you be open to a quick chat?
So once you’ve found the 3-5 teams that you want to explore more, reach out to some operators with this template.
Recap on the process
If you’re looking for your perfect role in Web3, try answering these three questions:
What stage of company am I looking for?
What area do I have the highest conviction in?
Who are my ideal teammates?
If your exploring non-web3 areas, try this approach anyways!
It will force you to narrow your focus, be objective and find the best fit for your career goals.
Good luck!
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