Introducing Sachi from Polygon Ventures! Polygon Ventures is Polygon’s $100 million fund focused on supporting visionary teams in the Polygon and multi-chain ecosystem. In this month’s WiB Spotlight, we talk to Sachi about how she went from a career in tradfi to one in venture capital, as well as her process for scoping out and investing in promising projects.

WIB: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Sachi: I studied electrical engineering at CalTech. Initially I thought I’d do academia or research, but after doing some internships and research summers, I realized that wasn’t what I was passionate about. I decided I wanted to do something more in consulting or finance. That’s when I got an internship at Bank of America Merill Lynch on the sales and trading desk. That internship went really well, and I decided to take a full-time role there. I started off doing structured notes, which is a more complex version of a bond. I also traded bank bonds. That gave me a very fundamental understanding of how finance in general works. This definitely helped me out a lot once I transitioned into crypto.

WIB: How did you get into crypto? How did you end up at Polygon?

That was during the pandemic, so about three years ago. I met Sandeep back when Polygon wasn’t even Polygon yet, it was named Matic and they had also not listed on any exchanges yet. Everytime I met Sandeep, I felt like the company was reaching an inflection point in growth. The growth was becoming exponential. He was the one that converted me into crypto, he’d always make the analogy about how you can think of gold as Bitcoin and Ethereum as replacing all the centralized financial institutions including the Fed and the banks. That vision really spoke to me. At a certain point, I decided I want to go to crypto. Polygon felt like the perfect opportunity because it was also a company that was growing very rapidly at that point.

I joined without a specific role in mind, I had to carve it out myself.

I explored different things. At that time, Sandeep also announced that he was going to start an ecosystem fund. He decided to allocate $100 million to invest within the Polygon ecosystem. There was capital sitting there but nobody was really taking a lead to figure out how to invest that capital, or doing due diligence on projects. I decided that we should have a formal ecosystem fund set up. I became one of the first people on the Polygon ventures team.

Since then, we’ve grown the team from one person to eight people. We look at everything web3, whether it be gaming, DeFi, infrastructure. The mandate is pretty broad. We invest between $100–500,000 in projects, but we can provide additional support whether it be for business development, marketing, or technical support on top of Polygon.

It’s a great place to be, I feel like I picked the right ecosystem and also the right role. Polygon is one of the top three blockchains projects consider when they want to build on the blockchain. I see a lot of innovation on top of Polygon, there’s a lot of good investment opportunities within the Polygon ecosystem.

WIB: How do you scope out good projects to invest in? What’s your process? Are there specific factors you look for?

Sachi: The number one factor is the founder. You look at the founder and make sure that their background is relevant to whatever they’re building out. For example, if they’re looking to build a new ZK rollup, they should definitely have some background in ZK tech or a PhD in cryptography because ZK tech in general is very difficult to understand and implement.

Number two is the product. When I look at the product, I assess if this is a copy-paste of what already exists, is this a copy-paste with significant improvements, or is this something completely new that will change the paradigm for the market. Obviously we want to invest in projects that are either significant improvement to what is already existing, or something that is completely new that can significantly improve what already exists within the market.

Number three would be the valuation. Polygon Ventures typically only focuses on early-stage deals, so pre-seed or seed. We prefer projects that are under a few million in valuation. If a project has a $50 million valuation, there needs to be a compelling reason as to why we should invest.

WIB: Let’s say you pick a project to invest in. When you do that, even if they have a high valuation and have a great founder, I guess to some degree, Polygon is taking on some element of risk. So what happens if a project you invested in doesn’t do well?

Sachi: We’re a bit more hands-off just because we typically aren’t the lead investor. It’s usually the lead investor that takes on that responsibility, but obviously we do provide support for projects. If there’s a project that isn’t doing well because they don’t have enough funding, we can help them with introductions to other venture capitalists, or introductions to other projects.

It honestly comes down to the integrity of the founder and how well they execute. The best thing a founder can do if their project is struggling is to realize that maybe the project doesn’t work, stop it at that point, and return whatever capital they have raised. I think it can be very hard for a founder to come to terms with the idea that maybe their idea just doesn’t work or there’s no product market fit. But if they can go above that and halt operations, and return the money to the investors, that’s a really good signal to me because the founder understands when to stop or when to say no. I’m happy to back a founder in the future if they decide to start another company then, because I know I can trust this founder.

WIB: Just to switch gears a little bit, you said you joined Polygon when the team was still relatively small. What was it like to go from a small team to a huge team? Now everybody knows Polygon, it’s a giant, giant ecosystem. Have you seen differences in work culture or in general?

Sachi: Things progressed so fast, in the blink of an eye, that I didn’t even realize how big Polygon had become, especially when I first joined. When I first joined, the total size of the Polygon team was 200 people or so. Now the entire Polygon Labs team is about 400 people.

The workload increased exponentially, especially at the peak of the bull market. There were so many projects that were building on top of Polygon and it was difficult for the founders and employees to prioritize what projects to support. It was a difficult decision to make because we want to support all projects that are building on top of Polygon. But unfortunately the reality is that there is limited bandwidth. It’s difficult to scale, especially if you go from 100 projects to a 1000 building on top of Polygon. That was probably the hardest thing during the bull. But over time, we learned how to scale. Most projects are self-served. A lot of the documentation is online. Those projects can build on top of Polygon without necessarily needing support from Polygon itself.

A saying that kept me grounded was to always stay humble. This is something that Sandeep always said in the beginning, that it’s really important to stay humble and grounded even if you’re a very large protocol because it also reflects in your attitude when you’re talking to a project. A project wants to feel good about itself. If you think you’re better than everyone else, it reflects very poorly on the protocol. Sandeep is always pushing on us to stay humble and grounded, and this mentality has really worked well for the company as a whole.

WIB: Coming across so many new projects and promising founders, have you ever considered starting your own thing?

Yeah, I’ve definitely thought about starting a new company if the opportunity presents itself. To be honest, I haven’t really thought of a good idea yet, so unless I have really strong conviction, I don’t think I would take that leap. I’m definitely open to the idea, but I’m happy where I am right now.

WIB: Do you have any advice for people starting off in the industry, or people already in the industry searching for their next opportunity?

I have two pieces of advice. One, I think it’s very important to have a mentor or somebody that you look up to. I’ve been surrounded by many experienced people in the crypto space. It’s very difficult when you initially go into crypto because it’s not just about understanding the technology that is constantly changing, but you also have to understand the nuances of the industry, like understanding who are the people you want to work with versus who you want to avoid. Unfortunately in this industry there are a lot of scammers as well as people thinking only about short-term gains. A mentor can help you navigate this, guide you in terms of what ecosystems you should work for, what jobs are good, and make good decisions for your career long-term.

Two, within web3 the most important role is the community manager role. If you want to get started or dip your feet into web3, I’d suggest going into Discord and Telegram channels and interacting with the community. I think this is a great first role to work in if you’re new to the industry. I think tech matters in crypto, but community matters even more.

WIB: You talked about how a lot of projects in the space can be scammy and this is definitely something a lot of people experience. Just from your experience, what are some red and green flags in projects to look out for before joining their teams?

I think the first thing you should do is do your due diligence. it can be really difficult evaluating a project by yourself but if you ask around people within the industry about their opinions on projects x, y and z, they should give you candid feedback on what their reputations are and whether they are a reputable project or not.

It’s also worth looking at a project’s cap table. A project’s success doesn’t necessarily depend on its funding, but looking at this information definitely helps. If they have reputable investors, that’s a good signal that these VCs did the due diligence on these projects and they have confidence that these projects will succeed sometime in the future.

Lastly, I suggest that people talk to the team. If it’s a very small team you should definitely talk to the CEO and the people you will be working with and trust your gut feeling!

Follow Sachi on Twitter.

Introducing Nitya, founder of Capsule. Capsule is a toolkit for transacting on blockchains. Capsule’s SDKs make it easy to build safe and intuitive crypto experiences. In this month’s WiB Spotlight, we talk to Nitya about being a solo founder and curating a company work culture, why she built Capsule, and how she keeps herself motivated on a daily basis.

WiB: How did you get into crypto? Was there a specific moment that made you question our current financial systems?

Nitya: I had one such moment. I was working in lending and ironically enough, I applied for a credit card and got rejected. It was a very confusing moment of reflection, like how am I this very well-set up, financially stable person who literally works in lending, and didn’t get my application for this credit card accepted. That got me down this rabbithole of understanding the ways our financial system is not set up to serve consumers’ incentives, but rather the incentives of corporations and lenders entrenched in power. I realized that if you were able to make certain types of systems more open, that would increase people’s understanding of how these systems work and likely increase their access as well. I’d first learned about Bitcoin in 2014, but understanding what open, programmable systems and smart contracts could accomplish on a societal level got me to join the crypto space full time in 2017

**WiB: **Can you tell me a little bit about Capsule and the process of creating it? What is the big problem you’re trying to solve?

Nitya: I had spent the 2017 through 2022 crypto cycle building the Celo Protocol and saw the ways in which this cyclic nature of crypto brings about new innovation in waves. But I’ve also seen that the whole space tends to be very focused on building abstracted compute platforms like building new types of L1s, new mechanisms for scaling, etc. But I wasn’t seeing as many of the ways that people were going to actually be able to take advantage of all of this new compute that has finally become abundant. At every juncture, the focus has always been on “how do we create more space for transactions on chain” versus “how we actually find more ways that more people can put more transactions onto blockchains”. I realized we have a massive demand problem in crypto.

From my experiences actually building a mobile wallet (Valora) and doing GTM on the ground in emerging markets, I knew viscerally that nobody is able to do useful things onchain without key management. Crypto can only really be a toy until the places to store value are more intuitive, and the ways to actually write data to blockchains are easier. These were the foundational insights that led to Capsule.

WiB: What was the process like of putting together your team? What were some of the challenges you faced?

Nitya: I’m a solo founder. When I left my job, I took a little bit of time off and really wanted to validate a lot of my assumptions about the space by talking to other people. I spent quite a bit of time with other folks working on a lot of the main crypto projects, trying to understand how they viewed the space. I kept hearing the same things over and over again: that users aren’t coming to our products, that we’re seeing high dropoff. People will sign up for something if they think its speculative, but they won’t be retained.

Along the way, I’d thought a lot about co-founders and what that journey could look like, but realized I wanted to put together a really strong founding team instead. I tapped one of the engineers that I’d had a really amazing experience working with in the past, and also had an insanely talented friend from the crypto space express excitement about what we were building and come on board. Since then, it’s been a great journey building together.

WiB: You mentioned you’re a solo founder. What’s that like?

Nitya: For me, the decision of whether to start a company alone versus having a co-founder had a few factors. The first factor is, when you’re a solo founder, you take on ultimate accountability for everything at the company. In a lot of co-founding pairs where you might have a CEO and a CTO for example, you can divide and conquer some of these things, whereas as a CEO and solo founder, you do need to hire someone and delegate everything or do it yourself. You have to get comfortable receiving and tackling problems day-to-day. You also have to be much more intrinsically motivated, and balanced in optimism and realism because there isn’t a natural counterbalance.

WiB: How did you keep yourself motivated?

Nitya: All of us have many aspects to our lives. Every element will rarely be going well all the time. A company is no different. Building a company is very intensely personal and it’s expected that you will care a lot about it. Small things will go wrong, probably every day, definitely every week- same is true in the opposite direction. Life is kind of the same way, occasionally small things go wrong, sometimes big things go wrong. For me, cultivating resilience to that and focusing on why I’m doing everything I’m doing is really important. For me, the excitement behind Capsule and what it has the potential of becoming is what gets me out of bed every morning. When you do have that North Star that really, really matters, it’s a lot easier to justify bumps in the road towards it.

WiB: That’s very beautifully put, and a great segue into my next question, which is what it’s like to work in a small team and what work culture is like at Capsule.

Nitya: Before starting Capsule, I’d always gravitated towards smaller teams because the kind of difference in impact you can have being good versus being great versus outstanding- in startups is massive. There’s unlimited ability for having a differentiated path if you’re doing really well, both as a company and an individual. This can be quite compelling if you’re high-achieving and somewhat early in your career. There are no real ceilings, this is something I really appreciated about small company environments as an employee in the past. Of course, there are downsides that come with working at a startup too. For instance, sometimes your schedule is not always your own. There can be external deadlines that you don’t have as much control over and have to hit. When you join an early stage startup you need to be consciously opting into these tradeoffs.

For everyone who chooses to be here and commit, I want their experience at Capsule to be career-defining. Capsule offers a unique opportunity to be a part of something that will define the crypto space, and ideally define how we interact on the internet. That’s what has attracted our early team and something I look for when identifying fit- the desire to be part of (and do the work to build) something of significance.

We intentionally structured our early team as in-person around two major crypto talent hubs, SF and NYC. I wanted everyone to have an in-office experience and foster that culture, even if we’re not all in the same office. It’s important to me that the team feels a sense of high trust and mutual respect. This is easiest when everyone is fairly senior and there is high agency and a strong bottoms-up accountability culture.

WiB: From your perspective, what aspect of blockchain tech do you think is really misunderstood or underappreciated by people, whether they work in crypto or the world beyond?

Nitya: I would have to say the wallet, of course. In crypto, we started out with having wallets because on Bitcoin, you needed an interface to transfer assets. Now, it’s this vestigial remnant of an evolutionary process, where we have separate applications for seeing what we can do on the blockchain (read) and then another category of product to actually go and do it (write). People get very used to the experiences they have and then forget that there are ways in which they’re not intuitive.

This is controversial, but I think there are too many builders in crypto that say they are building the new thing and everyone has to learn to do things their way to be in the space, sort of like a “crypto-native cool kids club.” Then there’s this other camp which says self-custody and portability don’t matter, we need to build things in centralized, custodial ways, and we’ll call it an NFT because that will make people more excited. Almost nobody is thinking about the large middle ground, which is that you need to make experiences and the roles of different product categories as analogous as possible to people that have experience on the internet. This is the opportunity I see with Capsule.

If you think about it from web1 to web2 there wasn’t actually a shift in how people used things at all. It was a difference in functionality. Web3 is a similar capability shift, but we’ve gone and made these entirely different categories of products and these paradigms of user experience that have made it feel like a weird thing. If we let go of that notion, we’ll see a lot more innovation in the space, and a lot more people using web3 products.

Follow Nitya on Twitter.

Introducing Elena, product marketing manager at developer tools company Hiro! Elena has been working in the industry since 2018. In her role, she focuses on understanding the market for developer tooling for Bitcoin layers. Bitcoin layers extend the functionality of Bitcoin without changing the underlying core Bitcoin protocol, enabling Web3 use cases like DeFi, NFTs, collaborative ownership that are often associated with Ethereum and other ecosystems.. In this month’s WiB Spotlight, we talk to Elena about how she first got into crypto and her thoughts on the state of the industry.

WiB: How did you get into crypto? How long have you been in the industry?

Elena: I first got interested in blockchain and Bitcoin while I was getting an MBA from NYU. I took a digital currency class. In that class, I wrote a research paper on crypto adoption in Venezuela. My family is from South America, specifically Venezuela and Cuba. It was just a really fascinating lens through which to see the potential but also the drawbacks of this technology. That’s how I got started.

WiB: Have you always done product marketing?

Elena: I actually worked in non-profit administration before grad school. I was an executive assistant at this mid-size non-profit working in media. I loved that job as well, but I wanted to go to grad school to broaden my professional horizons. That’s how I shifted into product marketing. My first job in crypto was at a startup that was trying to use token-curated registries as a way of creating a more sustainable and beneficial business model for journalism. The internet and digital media completely changed the business model for journalism, not necessarily in a positive way. Journalism as an industry has been around since the 1800s, and generally pre-Internet, there were two business models that journalism relied on: subscription-based business models and advertising. These were called double-revenue streams.

With the internet, both of those changed with digital advertising. Digital advertising works really well if you’re tracking people and serving them content that they want to see, generally for e-commerce. It doesn’t align as well for long-form investigative journalism. Often the most popular content doesn’t meet a very high editorial standard. The subscription business model also suffered. A lot of media companies have had to change their operations. The startup I worked for was called Civil, it was built on Ethereum. It was kind of ahead of its time in 2018, trying to use digital currencies, and token-curated registries, which we would now think of as DAOs, to come up with a way of making quality content and journalism a viable business in the digital age. That was my first stop in my crypto web3 journey.

WiB: What was it like to work in crypto in 2018?

Elena: It felt like I was being put through a washing machine, exposed to so many different concepts and work cultures. I’d always worked at more traditional institutions, where I’d go into the office everyday. Web3 at the time was synonymous with the Ethereum ecosystem.

WiB: How do you think things have changed? Do you think the industry has gotten better or worse?

Elena: Ha! I guess what you can say anytime is, “it was the best of times, worst of times” to quote Dickens. I don’t think it’s fair to generalize. There were things in 2018 that I really appreciated and there were things that were just flat-out embarrassing. That’s been the case every single cycle that I’ve worked in crypto.

In 2018, there was a lot of ambition and experimentation, and honestly just unbridled enthusiasm for how to apply this technology. On the flipside, there were some predatory business models, some approaches that didn’t really reflect my values or why I got into the ecosystem. That’s no different than today.

The headlines for crypto can be sometimes pretty jarring. So many people lose their money in bridge hacks, or cryptocurrencies associated with unsavory activity, black market activity, or things that people might not feel that comfortable with — there’s a little bit of reputational risk with crypto. At the same time, there’s always a new innovation to learn about: that’s happening around zero knowledge proofs, rollups, MEV, and Bitcoin ordinals, it’s all super, super fascinating.

I guess my short answer to your question would be, I don’t know! There are certainly a lot of things that have changed, but I don’t feel competent enough saying it’s changed for the good or better, it’s just continued to evolve. To use a metaphor, we can think of any other industry. If you think of something like medicine, medicine today is arguably way more advanced than medicine 200 years ago. Yet, there are things about the way communities preserved health 200 years ago that we might learn from still. That might be a little too existential.

WiB: I feel like it’s really hard not to feel that way, to not think about the existential aspects of all of this stuff. Every cycle brings good and bad, but with every cycle, more and more people are paying attention and that’s why everything that happens feels even more intense. More people are tuned in.

Elena: I think as more people tune in, you have the opportunity to have a bigger impact, but there are also bigger consequences. As more people get onboarded onto different digital forms of tools, and digital currencies are a part of that, then there are much bigger consequences.

WiB: That all being said, would you say it’s still a good time to get into crypto?

Elena: Oh, yeah! When I am talking to people and they’re expressing interest about getting into this industry, the main thing I tell them is to be aware of what you’re trying to get out of it, as well as to be honest about your tolerance for chaos. This is a very chaotic industry so I think people who are intellectually curious, scrappy and patient to a certain degree — this is an amazing time and will be an amazing time for a long time because this industry isn’t going away.

WiB: An appetite for risk and chaos is definitely essential to surviving in this industry.

Elena: Yeah, and your comfort level with the unknown, as well. I don’t have an engineering background. I studied political science and liberal arts in undergrad and then business in grad school. I work at a place where I help better communicate the values of APIs and SDKs and a lot of technical developer tools. That didn’t happen overnight and it requires a lot of comfort with discomfort. You’re not the dumbest person in the room, but you’ll often feel that way. As long as people know that and don’t get discouraged by that, then I think it’s always a good time to get involved in the industry.

WiB: I have one last question. You were involved with WiB’s compensation project, could you tell us a little bit about that?

Elena: This was an initiative that started as part of Women in Blockchain. Women working in web3 do a really good job of creating different communities and connecting with one another at different levels. I’ve personally benefited from these efforts and am so grateful for them. In the spirit of that, the idea was, if we could work together to create more transparency around our compensation or any trends around compensation, that would ultimately help women working in web3 overall.

The challenges in that type of reporting is that you really have strength in numbers. The more people are willing to share their compensation data, as well as validating that data — there’s a lot of things to consider on how to construct this kind of project so you get clean data. If many people contribute, it’s easier for even more people to add in their data (You can still contribute to the compensation project).

WiB: Do you have any tips for anyone that’s joining a company now or feels like they’re getting paid less than they deserve or compared to their male counterparts?

The biggest thing is finding people you can talk to, either in your company or in your industry. If you’re working in a very small company and you’re new or you don’t have high trust relationships with your coworkers, compensation conversations can be uncomfortable and hard to have. That doesn’t mean you’re working at a horrible place, but trust takes time to build. The more you can find people to talk to, that’s the best place to start.

Once you have people you can talk to, understand what you want to talk about. Compensation is one of things where, if you ask the right questions, you can get really great answers. If you don’t ask the right questions, you might not have very productive conversations. You can ask questions like what is the compensation philosophy at this company, what are the sources you use to determine competitive market rate, and if you have found other sources that show different numbers, you can have a more productive, less personal conversation. Another way of thinking about it is beyond your salary, what’s included in your compensation package? Is it tokens, intangible benefits, health insurance?

Contribute to the WiB compensation project.

Follow Elena on Twitter.

Meet Fezyla Mokrani-Zemour, the Chief of Staff at Hyperlane and a passionate advocate for blockchain technology. In this month’s WiB Spotlight, we talk to Fezyla about how her crypto journey, the challenges she’s faced along the way, and her advice for women looking to pursue a career in blockchain.

What do you do?

As the Chief of Staff at Hyperlane, an interoperability layer, I oversee the company’s day-to-day operations, including marketing, HR, and customer service. Hyperlane is an interoperability solution that can be permissonlessly deployed on any chain by anyone. You can learn more about what we are building on our website!

What first drew you to blockchain technology, and how did you get involved in the industry?

I first became interested in Bitcoin when a colleague kept talking about it at a startup in Germany. I invested a bit and then it crashed, but during the pandemic, I reinvested when it hit bottom and started digging deeper into what Bitcoin is and why it was created. I fell in love with the libertarian mindset and then became familiar with blockchain and the crypto world. I was convinced I needed to work in the space.

How do you think blockchain technology can help to empower women, both within the industry and beyond?

Blockchain technology can provide financial freedom and full ownership of wealth, particularly in underbanked countries. It enables payment transfer without an intermediary, which can be particularly empowering for women.

What challenges have you faced as a woman in the blockchain space, and how have you overcome them?

Understanding the technicality of blockchain can be intimidating at times. Simplifying the terminology and attending conferences to stay updated on the latest developments have helped me overcome this barrier.

In your opinion, what is the most promising aspect of blockchain technology for society as a whole?

Blockchain technology can provide financial freedom, especially in times of crisis, where traditional banks may fail. Blockchain has already been helpful to some Ukrainians during the invasion of Ukraine, where they were able to leave with their ledgers and access their funds.

How can we encourage more women to get involved in blockchain technology, and what steps can we take to make the industry more inclusive?

Simplifying the wording of blockchain technology and improving the usability of dapps can make the technology more understandable to newcomers. Interoperability between chains can also make it easier for end-users to use different blockchains. Hiring people without crypto knowledge for early-stage projects can also encourage more women to join the industry.

What advice would you give to other women who are interested in pursuing a career in blockchain?

Participating in conferences is a great way to connect with others in the industry. Don’t be afraid to work for early-stage projects that may be more willing to hire people without crypto knowledge. Learn from free tools like YouTube channels, such as Whiteboard Crypto, and start using applications to get familiar with the space.

Follow Fezyla on Twitter

Follow WiB on Twitter

We’re thrilled to launch our brand new website, one of many initiatives we are rolling out over the next few weeks.

Founded in 2017, Women in Blockchain is a grassroots non-profit organization that has been working to make web3 truly diverse and inclusive for women and non-binaries.

We’re excited to relaunch our online presence as the Women in Blockchain team continues to grow. Read about our recent features in CNBC, Fast Company, and Verge!

While navigating our website, be sure to check out our Initiatives page to explore our four ongoing initiatives in education, career development, research, and funding for female founders.

Go through our About page to meet the awesome team working behind the scenes, as well as learn more about how we started and our core focus areas.

Importantly, keep an eye on our Events page to stay in the loop on our upcoming meetups, in-person and online!

Additionally, join our Discord to engage with the awesome WiB community! We’ve started with a few channels to help jumpstart the conversation primarily around:

• Crypto education

• Educational events

• Job board and mentorship

• And any topic requiring a safe and confidential space

Send us feedback and requests on any initiatives you’d like to see, and give us a follow on Twitter to stay up to date on all things Women in Blockchain!

We’ve got many announcements coming up in the next few weeks as we continue to empower the next generation of diverse talent to lead and drive the web3 space forward.

We hope you’ll join us for the ride.

Check out our website

One of the biggest challenges of working in a relatively new industry like Web3 is figuring out how much you should be getting compensated for your work. Specific salaries and benefits for crypto companies are not something we can just easily Google (at least not yet!).

We know there isn’t enough reference data out there for compensation and benefits. We want to change that. Women in Blockchain and ValuesIndex invite everyone in Web3 to share salary, comp, and other relevant information to help each other know our worth!

Take the survey

Why we’re doing this

At Women in Blockchain, our mission is to enable a more inclusive web3. We’ve consistently heard from our community members that accurate and publicly available reference data for compensation and benefits are hard to come by.

At ValuesIndex, we’re on a mission to make web3 social and environmental data more accessible to everyone.

The gender pay gap is real and while there is progress worth celebrating, it’s hard to know how the Web3 industry compares against these trends. We looked at resources and job boards with general salary trends but we wanted an easier way to share and compare information.

We are particularly interested in uncovering trends across gender, race/ethnicity, geography, and company size. We applaud existing efforts to advance salary transparency in the industry. Our goal is to build on this work in three meaningful ways:

1. Leverage our collective network to gather a large salary database.

2. Collect statistics on additional benefits like equity/token grants, parental leave, etc.

3. Analyze the data to create an easy-to-read report with actionable insights.

What we want to achieve

Our goal is to collect 1,000+ responses across all roles and functions, with a variety of gender identities and backgrounds represented. We invite everyone to complete the survey in order to truly understand how compensation might vary between groups. No matter how you identify, we want to hear from you.

This is a volunteer-run, grass-roots initiative. We plan to publish a report of our findings but all responses will live on a publicly visible spreadsheet.

We’re just getting started! We have big dreams for this project. Both Women in Blockchain and ValuesIndex believe that data is a public good, and it’s only when we measure what matters that we can hope to improve it.

Ultimately, we would like to see this initiative grow into a sustainable, industry-wide practice with buy-in from companies, projects, and protocols in web3.

How to get involved

• Take the survey.

• Share the results.

• Invite your friends.

• Keep shining and thriving!

Psst - If you are in HR or People Ops and would like to get involved with this effort, we’d love to hear from you. Please send us an email with “Know Your Worth in Web3” in the subject line.

Thanks to all the contributors behind this project including Rebecca Mqamelo, Janice Ntc, Saniya More, Lauren Feld, Dulce Villarreal, Manasi Vora

Looking for jobs? Here are some resources to get you started.

https://wib.pallet.com/jobs

https://web3.career/

https://cryptojobslist.com/salaries

https://web-3.pallet.com/jobs

https://jobs.paradigm.xyz/jobs

https://jobs.blockchaincapital.com/jobs

https://shefi.pallet.com/jobs

Elena Giralt is the Product Marketing Manager at Hiro Systems and founder of Blockchain Latinx. Manasi Vora is the VP of Strategy and Operations at Skynet Labs and founder of Women in Blockchain.

Four years ago, both of us first fell down the crypto rabbit hole. We had fire in our bellies and experience on our resumes but no clear roadmap for building a career in this emerging industry. Fast-forward to today, we are both thriving at two successful crypto startups.

There’s a myth that the blockchain industry is only for technical folks and developers. In reality, there is a huge demand for talent across the spectrum. There are many opportunities to carve out a unique and fulfilling career where passion and dedication are valued over pedigree and past work experience. Here are a few actionable steps for landing your first job in crypto.

Get your hands dirty

The crypto industry moves at a breakneck speed with ever-evolving concepts and technological breakthroughs. It is natural to feel intimidated and overwhelmed. Our advice: figure out what aspect of the industry excites you and start there. Are you concerned about the surveillance state? Explore the privacy-focused projects. Is self-sovereign identity and data your jam? Dive into the infrastructure projects that are building Web 3.0. Do you have a background in economics? You might enjoy learning about game theory implementations and incentive mechanisms. Do you love art? Try minting your first NFT. With roots in emerging countries like India and Venezuela, we were immediately fascinated by alternate forms of monetary systems and economic empowerment.

Learn by doing. Download a wallet, make transactions, test out decentralized apps and ask plenty of questions along the way. Join your favorite project’s discord, dig through educational resources and beginner-friendly guides, perform tasks and earn crypto through programs like 1729, Earn, or Rabbithole.

Find your friends

No one is an expert in crypto. Approach this industry with genuine curiosity and commitment and you will find more than enough people willing to engage and support you. Your crypto buddies will help you navigate everything from seed phrases to gas prices. They’ll also be there to engage in deep conversations about money, power, and how technology reshapes society. When you’re ready to start applying, your crypto friends might also help you with references, connections, and background on the teams you’re hoping to join. That’s not to say you won’t find toxic trolls and hostile behavior, but if you know where to look, you will be surprised at the diversity of people attracted to and building in this space.

Build a network. Attend conferences, meetups, and hackathons. Join communities that share your values. Connect with industry players on common topics of interest. Here are a few of our favorite events and groups to get you started: she256, Women in Blockchain, Blockchain Latinx, CryptoSprings, Blockchain Education Network.

Build a personal brand

The best way to learn is to explain it to others. The benefits are multifold. You get to make connections, enhance your understanding of the subject, and in the process build your personal brand and portfolio which you can leverage while applying for jobs. Do not try to imitate, bring your authentic self to the content you create and contributions you make.

Create content. Choose the medium that makes the most sense for you; be it through bite-sized threads on social media, long-form writing through blogs, audio, or video content. Host an event or interview an expert, write ELI5 guides or share your personal learning journey. And don’t be afraid to engage with industry leaders on “Crypto Twitter”.

You are ready to apply!

Using the technology will help you understand what gaps exist in the crypto landscape and where you can add value. Building a network will give you a group of colleagues who can open doors and make introductions. Creating a personal brand will help you stand out from other applicants. Now you are ready to land your first job in crypto.

Go get that dream job. Let people know you are looking. Groups like she256 and Blockchain Association have job boards for their member companies. Digital Currency Group, Polychain Capital, and Paradigm Fund have job boards for their portfolio companies. Apply to jobs even if you meet only 70% of the requirements.

Reach out, respectfully. Once you’ve identified your target roles, reach out to people you know at the company or people in your network. You might be surprised who replies back to a DM on Twitter (that’s how Elena landed an interview at Hiro) or is willing to make an intro (that’s how Manasi landed an interview at Skynet).

Be prepared. When you apply, consider tailoring your resume to showcase the original content you have created related to your favorite projects or tools. If you get an interview, do your homework and read the last three blog posts from the company or team. Don’t be discouraged at the first sign of rejection.

Down the rabbit hole

The crypto industry will benefit from diverse voices and perspectives. If you are passionate, curious, and humble, you will add value. The past few years have been a wild ride but also some of the most fulfilling moments of our careers. The best time to jump down the rabbit hole is right now. What are you waiting for?

Feel free to reach out to us! Manasi and Elena

Learn more about WiB by visiting our website Follow us on twitter Support us by donating @ wib.eth

Today, she256, Women in Blockchain (WiB), Kinjal Shah, and allies are excited to announce Komorebi Collective, a fund focused on investing in exceptional female and non-binary crypto founders.

Fundamentally, we believe that blockchain will shape our future financial and governance structures, and it’s crucial that those building these systems represent the global, diverse population that the industry aims to serve.

*Komorebi is a poetic, almost untranslatable, Japanese expression that describes sunlight filtering through trees. These rays of light illuminate *the forest undergrowth which is otherwise difficult to see. Inspired by this sentiment, the Komorebi Collective aims to illuminate and elevate a group of otherwise underestimated visionary founders building in crypto.

Why now?

Investing in women and non-binary folks isn’t just a necessity,** it’s financially sound**. Teams with at least one female founder exit faster (6.9 years compared to 7.4 years for all-male teams). According to First Round, companies with a female founder performed 63% better than their investments with all-male founding teams.

And yet, last year, **women-led startups received only 2.3% of venture funding. **In addition, 65% of venture funds still have NO female checkwriters. These two stats are very much related; female VCs are 2x more likely to fund a female founder than male VCs.

Komorebi plans on addressing both of these issues head-on. We refuse to let broader tech and venture’s shortcomings trickle into crypto. With crypto growing faster than ever, a recent research survey of women around the world by Women in Blockchain highlighted that 36% of respondents were interested in the underlying technology, 14% saw crypto as a means to improving their financial independence and a resounding 80% prefer to be paid in crypto. We now have the unique opportunity to set the course of the space — we aim to redefine funding and founding in web3.

Our Collective

We’ve been participating in the crypto ecosystem as builders, investors, and community shepherds. We’re proud to take the next step in ensuring a more diverse future of crypto builders and beneficiaries around the world.

Our core team consists of members from she256, a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to increasing diversity and breaking down barriers to entry in the blockchain space, as well as Women in Blockchain, an organization focused on increasing diversity through education and community building.

Structurally, Komorebi runs as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) on the Syndicate Protocol.

Meet the Komorebi Members

Core:

• Eva Wu, she256, Mechanism Capital

• Kristie Huang, she256, Pantera Capital

• Medha Kothari, she256, Celo

• Manasi Vora, Women in Blockchain, Skynet

• Kinjal Shah, Blockchain Capital

Members:

• Kleiner Perkins

• Mechanism Capital

• Dragonfly Capital

• IDEO CoLab Ventures

• Stacks Accelerator

• Dovey Wan, Founding Partner at Primitive Ventures

• Justine Humenansky, Investor at Playground Global

• Maria Shen, Investor at Electric Capital

• Vanessa Slavich, Partner at Celo Foundation

• Tess Rinearson, VP Engineering at Interchain GmbH, Tendermint

• Isabelle Wei, Engineer at Valora

• Mimi Idada, Head of Open Web Collective, Mentorship Lead at she256

• Joyce Yang, Investor at Globalcoin Ventures

• Leigh Cuen, Journalist

• Alexis Gauba, Co-founder of Opyn, Co-Founder of she256

• Amy Jung, Head of Community at MakerDAO

• Maggie Love, Founder of W3bcloud, Founder of SheFi

• Andrea Lo, Sr Director of Investments at Stellar Development Foundation

• Fulvia Morales, Product at 0x, Investor at FreeCompany

• Stani Kulechov, Founder of Aave

• Robert Leshner, Co-founder of Compound

• Ian Lee, MD at IDEO CoLab Ventures, Co-founder of Syndicate

• Jesse Pollak, Head of Engineering for Consumer Products at Coinbase

• Daryl Lau, Principal at Mechanism Capital

• Vivek Singh, Co-founder of Gitcoin

• Hamdi Allam, Engineer at Twitter, Co-founder of FourthState

• Marc Weinstein, Portfolio Development at Mechanism Capital

• Connor McEwen, Engineering Lead at Celo Labs

• Benjamin Simon, Research at Mechanism Capital

• David Vorick, Founder of Skynet Labs

• Jesse Walden, Founder of Variant Fund

Starting a Crypto Company?

If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out! We’re excited to talk to female and non-binary founders about how we can best support them.

Here’s where you can find us: Email | Twitter | Syndicate page

Special thanks to Ian Lee, Will Papper, and the rest of the Syndicate Protocol team for making this happen, as well as she256 & Women in Blockchain for providing operational support.

Learn more about WiB by visiting our website Follow us on twitter Support us by donating @ wib.eth

The number one question we receive from people new to blockchain technology is “Where do I start?”.

Blockchain encompasses wide-ranging disciplines including economics, computer science, law, finance, and mathematics. For a technology that has far-reaching implications for our financial systems and other aspects of society, the learning curve is often steep. Even people already working in the industry struggle to keep up with the fast-paced and ever-evolving crypto landscape. With the wealth of resources out there, it can often be overwhelming to figure out where to begin.

Today, after months of iterations, Women in Blockchain (WiB) and she256 are excited to launch our `Beginner’s Guide to Blockchain’. You can find the guide here or here.

People new to the blockchain space usually get overwhelmed with the wealth of information and contrasting narratives that are part of the crypto ecosystem. With this Beginner’s Guide, we aim to help bridge this gap and onboards individuals who are curious about the space but not sure where to get started. This guide is a consolidation of curated beginner-friendly resources that we think will help a beginner dip their feet into the blockchain space,

We hope this guide demystifies the blockchain space and makes it accessible to those who are curious. Please share it with anyone you think will benefit from it. We plan to keep the guide updated and will release newer versions when appropriate. Lastly, we would like to thank all the authors of the resources in this guide.

If you would like to request an edit or provide feedback, please DM us on twitter or leave a comment below.

— Manasi Vora and Medha Kothari

Women in Blockchain is an initiative to increase diversity in the blockchain space. WiB was founded in 2018 to empower women to learn, grow and excel in crypto careers. We invite all women and allies to drive this technology forward. Connect with us on Twitter, Meetup, and Email.

she256 is a 501c3 non-profit that aims to increase diversity and break down barriers to entry in the blockchain space. Connect with us on Twitter, Medium, Instagram, Facebook, and Email.

Learn more about WiB by visiting our website Follow us on twitter Support us by donating @ wib.eth

I come from a traditional finance background where we have seen the consequences of lack of diversity. Wealth accumulated by a privileged few, gender pay gap, systems with inherent biases, and the list goes on. The fact that we are in the early stages of blockchain technology gives us an opportunity to set the right precedent and avoid making archaic mistakes.

This technology has the potential to redefine the dynamics of our society and disrupt our financial systems. It is imperative that such an enabling technology be built and represented by the diverse population it serves to benefit. Homogeneous teams run the risk creating solutions that fail to account for the needs of global users. We must do away with the “shrinking and pinking it” approach! (Bic ‘pens’ for Her, anyone?).

Women constitute 50% of the world population but their participation in the tech revolution is nowhere close to 50%. A lot has been said about the gender gap and the need to increase women’s participation in the blockchain space; however awareness alone will not bring about change. On the contrary, we are running the risk of normalizing this deficiency and accepting it as the status quo. We need to take concrete steps to break down barriers, to mentor, educate, and foster an appealing environment for women in the workplace. Several organizations are championing these efforts, and I have compiled a list of these initiatives across US. (Let me know if I missed any — I certainly hope there are even more!)

When I first became interested in blockchain, I attended meetups and events to learn more about the technology and meet like-minded people. My experience then can be very well summed up by what Linda Xie shared in this article. Though I encourage you to read the whole thing, to summarize: While no one was openly malicious at industry events, she often felt ignored (“Men would just introduce themselves to each other right in front of me”), underestimated (“People were surprised when I said anything intelligent”) and belittled (“They usually thought I was someone’s plus one”).

These experiences are not merely anecdotal but have been expressed repeatedly by women across the spectrum. I felt the need for a platform where women wouldn’t feel out of place and, rather, would be encouraged to explore this technology. I founded Women in Blockchain (WiB) in 2018 to build a community for women to get together and establish a collaborative space for learning. In our first year we have highlighted the incredible work done by women leaders to empower others to get involved.

Inspire by example

There are so many amazing women making significant contributions to revolutionary projects, and we’ve done a poor job of highlighting their work. Instead, the focus is on their gender, rather than their accomplishments. The question asked in most panels and conferences — ‘What’s it like being a woman in blockchain?’ is irrelevant and undermines their contributions to the field. As Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark aptly tweeted:

https://twitter.com/starkness/status/968307972597272576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E968307972597272576%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.embedly.com%2Fwidgets%2Fmedia.html%3Ftype%3Dtext2Fhtmlkey%3Da19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07schema%3Dtwitterurl%3Dhttps3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fstarkness%2Fstatus%2F968307972597272576image%3Dhttps3A%2F%2Fi.embed.ly%2F1%2Fimage3Furl3Dhttps253A252F252Fpbs.twimg.com252Fprofile_images252F1974819036252Fstark.4_400x400.jpg26key3Da19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07

At WiB we focus on the significance of their groundbreaking innovations. Our hope is that these incredible panelists and speakers will serve as role models for younger and newer enthusiasts and motivate them to get involved. We have been lucky to host truly inspiring innovators, including:

1. Sharon Goldberg — CEO/Co-Founder of Arwen, a Boston-based startup that is developing a non-custodial trading solution for centralized exchanges. She is also an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Boston University, where she researches securing the protocols that provide many of the global internet’s core functions.

2. Sandra Ro — Managing Partner & COO, UWINCorp Ltd: Unleashing Wealth in Nations. Sandra is working on an asset registry services and trading marketplace project focusing on physical commodity markets. She is the former Executive Director, Head of Digitization at CME Group. Sandra founded and was responsible for the CME’s digital assets and blockchain initiatives, including bitcoin futures and index pricing prices.

3. Primavera De Filippi — Researcher at Harvard University (Berkman-Klein Center) and at National Center of Scientific Research in Paris, and author of Blockchain and the Law. She is also a member of the Global Future Council on Blockchain Technologies at the World Economic Forum. Her fields of interest are the legal challenges raised by decentralized technologies, particularly blockchain.

4. Paige Peterson — User Education & Community Team Lead at Zcash. Paige has been immersed within the peer-to-peer technology world since 2011. Prior roles included mesh networking and p2p storage startups. She enjoys exploring ways to simplify explanations of complex topics, hosting crypto events and is a proud participant in the Free State Project.

5. Ryan Rugg — Global Head of Insurance at R3; including research, development, and commercialization across the ecosystem of blockchain innovation. In 2017, she launched the Center of Excellence for Insurers and Reinsurers at R3 which is redefining the foundations of insurance by harnessing the power of collaborative networks, through the deployment of DLT within the financial services industry.

To read about other such amazing contributors, read Meltem Demirors’ Leader Series.

Empower through education

Our group aims to empower women and increase their participation in the blockchain space by fueling their education. Through our monthly meetups, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of the industry, and debate current developments offering promising solutions. WiB lowers the barrier to entry by facilitating connections to thought leaders and creating a platform for women to learn from one another. Our members collaborate and inspire each other to drive this technology forward.

Disrupting the traditional industry and replacing it with a decentralized one is not enough if we carry our arcane biases into the new economy. But the fact that we are having these conversations early on makes me hopeful. Let’s do better this time around!

Update: WiB has since conducted over 100 educational sessions & workshops, released a beginner’s guide to blockchain and expanded beyond education to undertake research, career development, community and funding initiatives. You can find more info on our website.

Learn more by visiting our website Follow us on twitter Support us by donating @ wib.eth