Despite the bear dominance, global cryptocurrency adoption remains on the rise. This growth fuels the influx of new entrepreneurs coming to the crypto industry and looking for opportunities to launch their own innovative product. We asked those who already succeeded in the cryptocurrency-related businesses what newbies in the crypto market should keep in mind when starting their entrepreneurial path in this fast-evolving world.
Love on your product and focus your efforts
In technology, IT, and crypto, as in any other business, it’s essential to love what you do because it’s the only possibility to go all the way. Remember that the concept of digital money was created dozens of years before Bitcoin’s birth. However, only Bitcoin achieved public attention and adoption.
“What matters is to create a product you would use yourself and be proud to recommend it to your friends without hesitation. You have to believe in yourself — don’t be afraid or to pay attention to haters, the environment, the weather, or any other turmoil,” Co-founder of TTM Group Vladislav Utushkin believes. He recalls the history of Ethereum creation when everyone in the crypto entourage said it was complicated, even impossible to implement, and that the project would not take off. Today, Ether is the world’s second most important and capitalized cryptocurrency.
“Use a step-by-step strategy on your personal path, go forward in small steps, and in the end, you will surely reach your goal. It’s imperative to set a goal, most people usually have a problem with that — and just jump into the abyss. Remember Forest Gump? “Never, ever take your eye off the ball”! That’s, basically, all you need to know about ping-pong — excellent advice, in my opinion.”
Be open-minded
Even if an entrepreneur has experience in business, the crypto market is able to nullify everything that he knew before. Therefore, it is vital not to harden in your convictions, to be flexible, adaptive and ready to learn from someone else’s experience.
“Crypto is a very new market, where many business models are not seen in the traditional field. To a large extent, the successful experience of other industries is invalid for the crypto industry, so it is especially important to acquire knowledge and a large amount of information about the industry,” Founder and CEO of Star Consulting Jenny Yang underlines.
Jenny Yang, Founder and CEO of Star Consulting
Her advice is to do a lot of market research and communicate more with pioneers with rich industry experience and players who had a lot of successful projects, so they can get first-hand information about the industry.
“Thus, they would know where the market pain points are, what problems need to be solved, how to efficiently obtain financing, how to formulate a GMT strategy that is in line with the field, and so on. This can help you avoid many traps, save a lot of time and improve your chances of success.”
Build a strong team
The first and one of the biggest challenges an entrepreneur faces is recruiting a team. The goal of every leader is to create a friendly, professional and involved team that will work as a single organism.
If the founder and his deputies have different management approaches, they face problems when making decisions. In this case, all the team and the business processes suffer from an atmosphere of disagreement.
The first thing to start with is to hire professional department leaders with experience in certain areas. The second step is to find other employees with the help of the expertise of those department leaders.
“Challenge number one is to find an appropriate candidate. There are a lot of candidates on the market who think that they deserve huge salaries and enormous bonuses but they actually cannot deliver properly, so there are overexpectations on their own skills,” Max Kei, CEO Debifi, believes.
Pay more attention to regulatory landscape
It’s no secret that the crypto market is not yet as regulated as the financial or banking sector. But it is also no secret that global regulators are paying more and more attention to cryptocurrencies and their regulation. In the crypto industry, legislative initiatives appear almost every month. And companies associated with cryptocurrencies have to constantly keep their finger on the pulse and monitor the regulatory landscape. Otherwise, they run the risk of being overboard in a legal sense.
Michael Christine, Chief Executive Officer at MNNT
“The biggest piece of advice that I give every single company right now trying to break into the crypto space is to hire a lawyer early. I have seen so many companies in just the past two years launch projects that will likely find them in legal hot water in the future. Specifically, with the ever-changing financial regulatory laws being applied to the space. So, my advice to anyone trying to break into the crypto space is to do it right the first time so you’re not burning resources in the future to fix past mistakes,” Michael Christine, Chief Executive Officer at MNNT, recommends.
Money is not the goal
The ultimate goal of any corporation is to make money. But money should be considered as the main goal when launching the business.
Making money is a side bonus on a long way to success. It should not be the main goal.
“My main advice is “Do not fall for easy money” without proper understanding of what you should do. Always be humble, you need to always remember your main goal. If your goal is just to make easy money, then it means that you actually don’t care about your product, users. You just care about yourself,” Max Kei, CEO Debifi, believes.
Image: Vladislav Utushkin, Co-founder of TTM Group