Story
Shaan's investor talked him out of a Bitcoin exchange in 2013
At Monkey Inferno, Sam's team started building a Coinbase competitor in 2013 after an engineer mined Bitcoin on company servers. Billionaire investor Michael Birch came to lunch and shut it down over legal risk; Sam admits he lacked the conviction to push back and missed it.
“I didn't have enough knowledge or conviction at that time to stand up and be like, no, we need to be in this game. This is real.”
Steal thisIf you believe in a contrarian bet, build the conviction and knowledge to defend it before the room talks you out of it.
Tactic
Do the work before you get the job
When interviewing at Monkey Inferno, Hoover didn't just pitch ideas for the product case—he went and talked to more of the company's actual users than the in-house team had. Shaan's takeaway: put your hands on the product and show initiative instead of relying on a resume.
“You took the product, you not only had your own ideas of what you could do to make it better, but you went and talked to a bunch of users of our product. And you talked to more users of our product than the guys who were building it in our lab had talked to at the time.”
Steal thisApplying for a job? Talk to the company's users and bring real insights instead of sending a resume.