A Team of Preppers

To: All Hands
Subject: A Team of Preppers

Team,

I’d like to share an update on the macro environment; our strategic positioning, roadmap, and customer health; and our vision and culture.

This is a message I’d prefer to deliver in person, especially since my conviction re our path forward has never been higher. In person is not an option right now, so this note will have to suffice as our zoom calls can sometimes fall flat, get spotty, or drop outright. Consider this a starting point for a broader discussion during Monday’s all hands.

Macro / Financial Concerns
As you know from my post Sunday, I expect this to be a dark year for our country. Last night reaffirmed my wariness.

We may be entering a deep, prolonged, global recession; the social fabric of our country could be tested significantly in the coming months; and our focus should be on the health and well-being of our families and friends. I hope you have heeded my advice and prepared for changes in your personal lives.

With respect to Messari, though, we are ahead of this thing.

Our unorthodox moves the past several weeks (WFH dry run + Oculus stock up) proved prescient, and helped us get a jump start on rewiring some of our internal operating norms. We'll continue to iterate on that front in order to preserve the culture we’ve invested in to date.

We’re in good shape financially. Messari has $[x]mm in cash on hand as of last Friday and we sold our limited crypto holdings early last week to reduce our risk asset exposure. We have a monthly burn of around $[x]k, which gives us runway conservatively through June 2021. Our plan now should be to accelerate our growth and hit profitability by year end, though we should expect some customers to face headwinds; projects, exchanges, crypto funds, etc may struggle as markets seize up.

We do not need to make staffing cuts, and we have no near-term financial concerns if we: Ship. Sell. Measure. Repeat.

And FOCUS.

Strategic Positioning, Roadmap, and Customer Health
We are also in good shape reputationally. My early coverage on the virus have led to a flood of DMs, emails, texts, etc. expressing support for Messari and personal thanks for raising the alarm. Our business is about trust, and people associate our brand with integrity, a priceless asset in a panicked market. That has only been enhanced this past month. While my attention has been split this past month planning around a macro black swan event, you've done a phenomenal job executing against our existing strategic roadmap.

In the coming days, we'll tweak that medium-term roadmap slightly - consistent with our 2020 vision document, but with one meaningful near-term addition - as we announce plans to host a large virtual event series called “The Mainnet”.

The landing page will be live at mainnet.events today thanks to quick work by Dan (and Marcie on the design!) We’ll release more details soon as we firm up plans, and I'll follow-up via a separate email on the goals and go-to-market strategy. Right now, I have 75+ speaker commitments in under a week from many of the industry’s top CEOs, investors, and protocol teams (90% yes rate given my background producing the Consensus series), and several leads for sponsorship.

I believe this could be a significant revenue opportunity for us, and an important tool for community development. It will also fill a communications vacuum at a time when people will be starved for interaction. Moreover, we’ll donate 50% of profits from this year’s event to third parties, so we can be a catalyst for part of a much needed solution to the coming storm.

This addition to our priorities is consistent with our overarching mission "to organize and contextualize all crypto information at a global scale." We now have a market opening to organize and contextualize the crypto conversation via live events. The virtual communications medium - together with our quarterly analyst calls, VR meet ups, and more in-app social tools - could become Messari’s version of Bloomberg IB, providing the customer connective tissue which is the real reason traders *need* terminal subscriptions even after all these years.

With respect to customer health, although we are down bigly in the crypto markets today (not unexpected), I still believe in crypto as a net winner in the coronavirus fall-out in the medium-term, and think crypto will have its mainstream moment this year by necessity.

There are three reasons for this:

1) We'll likely see MMT in action at scale as governments run up massive deficits. When fear cripples global economic activity, there will need to be an emphasis on fiscal stimulus, and once the virus subsides and larger economies come back online, investors will look to hedge against inflationary exposure. "Bitcoin as an inflation hedge" will rally after "bitcoin as a risk asset” hits its local bottom. (This is how I’m positioning my portfolio by the way - S&P puts, cash, bitcoin, so I have skin in the game here.)

2) The Web 3 thesis is suddenly much more real. If the virus shifts the global balance of power to more authoritarian structures, we’ll need to build and support solutions that curb long-term encroachment of personal liberties. Censor-resistant financial products, communications platforms, decentralized exchange, and private transactions--whether they are ready for primetime or not--must gain adoption in times of trouble by those with real pain points. Balaji has called this the “decentralized response to the virus”, and it’s a theme we’ll build part of our event around.

3) We’re witnessing a wholesale breakdown of Western institutions in real time: democratic rule, the media, the healthcare and higher ed industrial complexes, etc. are faltering. The winning governance models in this crisis have not been authoritarian vs democratic, but technocratic vs. idiocratic. That bodes well for (often derided) technocratic crypto communities. As traditional democratic institutions falter, many may see crypto networks as the most viable alternative to the panopticon. I recommend this excellent post for additional clarity on that mental model.

The above does not change the fact that many of our customers and partners may be feeling extreme short-term pain during this time.

It should go without saying, but while gallows humor at a macro level is one thing, there should be zero snark directed towards struggling projects. As I outlined in our culture doc in January, we are "Long shitcoins!" What’s bad for one project is bad for most of our customer base in this environment, and that is bad for budding experiments. Whether they prove successful or not.

Vision & Culture
The coronavirus may prove to be a positive demand shock for crypto protocols, even if it’s a short term negative demand shock for crypto assets. Our vision to this end remains unchanged.

"We believe crypto is the technology of free people, free thinking, and free markets.

Crypto networks can provide a defense against the institutions responsible for widespread surveillance, censorship, and economic exploitation. These new technologies can spawn applications that allow bold, creative individuals to take full ownership of their identities, finances, and data, and participate in a more open, inclusive global market. Crypto’s disruption of the powers that be could be a peaceful, once-in-a-generation revolution.

But the paradox of crypto is that the industry will only thrive if trustless networks are proven more reliable, secure, and reputable than trusted institutions. How is that even possible?

Well, we need two things.

First, we need incentive systems that reward pioneers for building transparent, ethical, antifragile systems that help individuals fully understand and coordinate their activities in peer-to-peer markets. Second, we need investments in education that help billions of users understand how crypto can solve actual problems. The former is a compliance and system design problem, the latter an education and analytical tools problem.

At their cores, both are information problems. Global crypto adoption hinges on solutions that provide high-quality, globally accessible, reliable information. We provide that information.”

We must provide tools that help accelerate user understanding and adoption of actually useful crypto assets and protocols this year. And we must redouble our commitment to our core company values.

I’ve already reiterated why we need to stay crypto obsessed (“Believe in crypto”), why we should support the long-tail of crypto projects in a stressful time (“Long shitcoins"), and why we need to be maniacally focused on profitable growth ("Ship. Sell. Measure. Repeat."). But I also want to re-emphasize our other four, equally important values.

Test Limits & Lever Up. This needs to be the most productive year of each of our careers. Our survival depends on it. Mediocrity may merely keep us in business, but not set us up for future hyper-growth (my definition of survival). Where can we outsource work or cut fat? What priorities can we postpone or strike entirely? Work smarter, and get creative.

Take Radical Ownership. Everyone - including me - must own their shit and grind. I’ve fallen behind on some day-to-day items in the midst of this event exploration and crisis planning. I’ll be back on track and caught up by Monday.

Communicate Clearly & Drop Fucking Knowledge. Responsiveness is a priority as we transition to fully remote work. We all need to work on this, and invest in the VR hangouts, slack messaging, and meeting documentation improvements. I need to be better, too, and you can help me.

*Please* slack me, text me, or call me whenever you are blocked and need a 30 second answer...permission to harass me is granted. That said, I need your help to reduce my cognitive load via the type of issues I’m weighing in on, and the best way to do that is by presenting yes/no or multiple choice questions wherever possible. Come with proposals and details, and my ability to respond quickly will skyrocket. This approach should help everyone organization wide, not just me.

With respect to external content/research, let’s continue to push the pace on throughput with high-quality *brief* analyses and charts/screeners that tie back to our Pro product. Don't feed the trolls, block ass holes, nitpickers, and people who won’t stand behind things they tweeted mere days ago, and embrace debate, but ruthlessly eliminate distractors.

Follow the Samurai. Last, but not least, this is a time for courage. For stoicism and grit. We’re a team of preppers, so we’re ready for the challenges ahead. We will dig deep and overcome adversity in an unprecedented adversarial environment. I'm proud of this team and believe in our collective samurai abilities. Let's show those off to the rest of the industry and lead by example.

We will pull through this together, and not only survive, but thrive. Despite, or maybe because, of the extreme obstacles ahead.

Let’s fucking go.

-Ryan