Ashleigh Schap ~ Biz Dev & Crypto: Breaking Out of the Bubble MakerDAO

Well, our next speaker is Ashley Schapp from MakerDAO. A round of applause for her. Hello lads. Good morning. How are you all?

We have the early bird crowd here today, huh? Fantastic. Well, thanks for coming. It's great to be here at ETH Denver. It's been an interesting year for crypto, hasn't it?

Of course, but remember when ETH was worth around a thousand dollars each? It was pretty nice. Obviously, a lot has changed, but in many ways it's been a positive thing because it means a lot of the means a lot of the shady types have left the industry, focusing more on construction and everything else. And that was important. There have been a lot of weirdos and liars in the industry in recent years.

You may remember some of them. This guy, does anyone remember him? Craig Wright, Satoshi. And this is a little more painful, but Mark Karpeles, Mount Gox, 2014. But the crypto world has gotten a little better at exposing these people and, you know, seeing them coming.

But now we have new lies we tell ourselves, like this one from 2017. We all learned that one the hard way. It was tough. And you know, we still have some things that we tell ourselves that aren't necessarily true. Like this one.

You can go ahead and keep what you like and everything will be fine. So, that's actually not the worst lie in crypto. And I've been thinking about this next lie for a while. It's confusing because this lie I'm talking about isn't one that seems like a lie at first. It seems pretty harmless.

And that's what makes it dangerous. It's something we all say to each other and ourselves, but it's something that's really holding us back from taking this industry to the next level and truly delivering on the promise we've created here. And that big lie is this. If you build it, they will come. Has anyone heard that around here ?

Yes, it's confusing because it 's not the kind of lie someone tells to hurt or deceive someone. It's the kind of lie that at first glance almost seems true. But we know, due to the anemic use of DApps and low user adoption rates, that this isn't actually true. And, you know, it's not a problem unique to a single project. It's a kind of ethic that's widespread throughout the industry.

In fact, I'll tell you a funny anecdote. In 2017 I met a guy. I was an investor for a family office. So venture capital, private equity, that kind of thing. I met this guy and he tells me he just made a big investment in Maker.

He gets there and realizes, "Okay, the technology is great, the people are great, but there's no corporate structure." And when I say no structure, I mean no legal entities, nothing. So he starts doing business development, and, you know, I've been doing this for years, so we'd have lunch together every now and then so I could pass on some knowledge to him. Here's what you need to do. Here's how to get started.

These things here. But a couple of months later he calls me and says, "Hey, would you like to join our team?" And I said, “Yes, absolutely.” I spoke to the Maker executive team and they said, "Well, here's the situation. We don't think we need a business development person , but we'll give it a try."

I replied, "Okay." Luckily, I was so bored with my job in finance that I was willing to take a risk, and I think it worked out well. The point is that MakerDAO is a project that has been around for 4 years, had the same idea in mind and hadn't invested much time and energy in the commercial development process. Many projects here are similar, so today I wanted to talk about how, first, to start building a business development process , give practical tips for getting started, talk about growth strategies, how to identify what's important, what I should focus on, and—a crucial thing we're all very bad at—how to talk about your project in the real world without scaring them away, and finally, how to pursue partnerships and actually make them happen . So, with that said, let's get started .

So, with that said, let's get started . So, first step, some of these things are going to be a little basic, but I think some of them are probably things that some projects haven't thought about yet. So, what are we looking for in a business development candidate? It's a little tricky, because there aren't that many people who have sold crypto products, right? So sold crypto products, right?

So , a couple of things I'm looking for: Some kind of sales experience. This is actually more important than knowing cryptocurrencies. If they have the ability to manage a sales process, they are already halfway there . Determination: You don't need someone to always tell you what to do. It's a very autonomous type of business .

Quick learning, obviously, and interpersonal skills, just as obviously. So, once you have your BD team, a couple of other organizational issues. This is really important, but it is usually overlooked. Does anyone here have a CRM in their crypto project? Well.

Okay, that's something. There aren't as many as I'd like to see. So, I hope this inspires someone. A CRM is just a way to track all your contacts, projects, and deals. It can be used across teams, BD integrations, etc.

Fundamental. Next step: using CRM. I can't tell you how many projects take one and then don't use it at all. So, nobody knows what's going on. The beauty of ours is that if someone wants to know the status of a partnership we're working on, they can log in and check.

Then, develop a plan to move things forward in the pipeline. Depending on the type of product, this will mean different things. You will need to understand what the different phases are. Whether it's partnerships or sales, I'll show you an example of what we do. But, you also need to set achievable compensation goals for your BD team.

BD people love reward-related goals . Sorry, it's a little hard to see. But, essentially, you want to keep it simple. The way we organize it is basically a funnel. When someone has said yes and we are trying to figure out the situation, we have a tentative commitment.

When we are ready, we start at full speed. Marketing team integrations. This way, the integration and marketing team can access and participate in those deals online. The integration of collateral material is a separate integration, so that's it. And then, of course, the unqualified or lost ones.

I recommend keeping things simple I recommend keeping things simple , otherwise you risk having information that is too granular and ends up not being used. Okay. So, let's talk strategy now. Some of the projects we talk to like to do this thing where they tell us everything that could be done with their technology, and it's awesome. However, for your business development team, you want people who really focus on a specific area.

So, I advise every business developer to pick one or two focal points and set their goals accordingly. It's better to go, you know, personally, I don't like being a mile wide and an inch deep. It's better to be more involved in the industry, know it better, and you'll have a bigger impact that way. How are vertical sectors chosen? Try to optimize the usability of your products, the visibility of your products, and scalability.

So, this means don't try to convince someone to use your product if they don't really need it. It's not going to be a great use case. It could potentially generate negative feedback for you. As for visibility, obviously, if a big brand uses it, that's fantastic. You want to focus and create strategies around that, prioritize those types of projects.

And then scalability. Some projects will only be able to use part of your technology, or, you know part of your technology, or, you know , at a very limited level. Try to focus on projects that might be able to utilize a suite of your products or, in the case of Dai, for example, are able to create a lot of Dai liquidity. And then use a ranking system to help prioritize your goals. I'll also show you an example of how we do it.

Finally, adjust your goals and rating system based on the feedback your business development team receives from prospects. One reason the big lie of “build it, they will come” is so dangerous is that it prevents projects from creating a commercial development function. And the business development function is kind of like your first line of communication with the market. The kind of feedback they are receiving will help shape other types of strategies, from product to engineering, and so on. So, basically, listen to them.

Well. This is just a quick example of how we classify. This is a sort of simplified example of how we classify things to build a strategy in our business development. Can you see this clearly? Okay, great.

So, you see we're trying to target die users and warranty partners, right? So, a million- plus users, that's level one. 100,000 users, that's a level two. And everything else is level three. You can see that many Well, this obviously means that most crypto projects will end up being tier three.

This means you need to get out there and start talking to real companies about what you're doing. Doesn't that sound fun? It's uh, it's actually quite difficult. And one of the reasons it's so difficult is that we have a lot of funny jargon that we like to use. Here's the painful truth about crypto.

We talked about the big lie. Now we must talk about the painful truth we must talk about the painful truth . Nobody understands what you're talking about. It's tough out there, guys. I love talking about blockchain and, you know, distributed systems, and you know, Foxconn or UNICEF or Airbus look at me like, "What?

What are you talking about?" You need to talk to these people in a language they understand and not talk too much about your solution. I wanted to show a couple of examples of how projects speak to what they do. So, this is a good example of a quick explanation of what Golem does. Read it.

It's very succinct. It doesn't seem like...I mean, obviously, decentralized is maybe a little bit of a fancy word, but I think it's, you know, acceptable. Basically, it lets you use all your computing machines. Optimal.

Here's a negative example. VeChain, actually, isn't a terrible project. They have good partnerships and all sorts of things. It aims to connect blockchain technology to the real world by providing a comprehensive governance structure , a robust economic model, and advanced IoT integration. What?

I mean, that doesn't really explain what they do. If you can't explain to someone what you do in 30 seconds, then you need to work on your pitch then you need to work on your pitch . So, a short list of words and phrases you should never, ever use in a first call with a potential client. And again, I'm talking about real companies here, not other crypto projects. The double-spending problem, Byzantine fault tolerance, uh, bonding curves.

We love talking about bonding curves around here , guys. It's everyone's favorite meme . Uh, but just don't mention these things. If they need to know, you can tell them, but they need to know what you do before they know how you do it. Um, so, you're not allowed to talk about any of this stuff.

What should you talk about? Many people tend to think that when they are about to make a call with a potential client, this is what they have to do. Tell them what we do. Very exciting, right? Actually, that 's not quite right.

You are reversing the order. The first thing you want to focus on, instead of this, is finding out what they need. This is crucial, guys. It’s really fun to have a call with a large Fortune 500 company and tell them all the exciting things about your project. If you haven't learned anything about what their needs are or how you can help them, then you won't be able to tailor the conversation to what they need and it will fall a bit on deaf ears.

And they'll most likely pretend to understand what you're saying and nod, because they'll be too embarrassed to admit they have no idea, and you'll end up losing a potential partner because, you know, they'll be too embarrassed to admit they have no idea what you're talking about. So, how can we help you? Oh, damn. I forgot to put the animation here. But, in any case, your goal in the first interaction is to uncover a few key points.

What are they doing now? What does n't work and how could it be improved? What do they hope to achieve? And this is really important because you might have an idea of ​​what you think you're solving for them, but in reality it might not be that way at all. In one example, we were talking to a project that, you know, I came right in and said that I made this mistake too.

I came in right away and said, "We'll help you lower interest rates, blah blah blah, bring all your collateral to our platform." Well, if I had listened a little more carefully, I would have realized about 2 weeks earlier that what they are really interested in is having a transparent way to track the cash flow in their business. They're interested in the lending part, more or less, but they're much more interested in having, you know, a distributed monetary system. So, this is good information to know. And it helps you save time.

Okay . So, once you have these answers, then you can talk about your project. I know, it's funny. Once you start doing it, make yourself understood. Again, we've talked about this a bit already, but many crypto projects aren't very good at this step.

Practice describing your product to ordinary people. It means calling your mom and explaining what you're doing. If you don't understand, try again. Do it many times. Call your sister, call your college friend, call anyone.

Try it a million times, sign up Try it a million times, sign up . I assure you it sounds crazy, but the better you get at it, the more successful you will be at actually converting some of these things. Don't try to bite off more than you can chew. Focus on one or two key ideas about how to work together. Come on, it's a monetary system, right?

So, it could really work with any type of business in a lot of interesting ways. If I tried to go to FedEx and say, “Hey, we want to completely redo your entire financial program.” They would probably just say, "Okay, get out of my office." But if I go to them with an idea and say, "Okay, we can help you, for example, with payments for last-mile deliveries, as a project we can work on together." You can get your foot in the door, demonstrate success, and hopefully expand to other product lines.

If there is any doubt about whether they understood, reiterate. I cannot emphasize this point enough. As I said, sometimes people get embarrassed because they don't understand, or it seems like they understand, but then, you know, they forget part of the speech. So, don't be afraid to repeat yourself and find ways to confirm understanding, whether by asking probing questions or simply testing what they've understood. Uh, this.

This is also very important. Use their slang to describe what you do. For example, at Maker we use the term collateralization ratio. It simply means how much, you know, what percentage of ether you have to own to not get liquidated. In the banking world, they use loan-to-value or LTV.

So, essentially, you need to learn the technical terms of the industries you're trying to sell to. This will make the conversation flow much more smoothly. Okay. Now, make them think. When I talk about Maker, it's a kind of modular project, right?

There are many things you can do and build on top of it you can do and build on top of it . The best way to uncover the true possibilities of another project is to use real-world examples and analogies to help the prospect understand them for themselves. If they have this deep understanding of how your solution works, then hopefully that will happen. After the call, the prospect may get some ideas on how to use your products. This is where things get really interesting.

The only way to do that, though, is to be very, very clear and provide good examples that they can work from and extrapolate other ideas. Develop a plan. Don't be afraid to start small. So, choose a project to work on together, and build your relationship. You don't have to change an entire industry overnight .

This is...this is important. We've talked about this before, but as I said, it's worth repeating. Just have them open the door for you. We do a lot of pilot projects.

So, we'll try...we'll start with something small, see how we can collaborate, and try to move forward from there. This is a less intuitive point, and many people overlook it, but it is really important. Ask them to commit to something, whether it's a deadline, a portion of the partnership they'll be responsible for, or sharing development costs or sharing development costs . This helps…it helps you gauge how serious they are about what you're proposing.

It makes them more engaged in what you're working on together and also helps ensure better results, right? If they are involved in the process and have put in time or resources, whether financial or otherwise, then they will be more committed to the success of this project. And finally, this is, you know, just kind of an organizational thing, but I also find that a lot of people don't do that and it really helps. Draft a document that outlines the scope of the project, what you are working on, and what is expected of both parties. I also often include timelines to help everyone stay on track.

And, you know everyone stay on track. And, you know , have everyone sign the document. It doesn't have to be binding. It's just a...it's an agreement.

Okay, so we did all of this, right? And they agreed to collaborate. Hurray! What now? I love it...

I had a little now? I love it...I had a little too much fun with the animation. Excuse me. Um, okay, I'll start with the "don'ts" because some of these things are so bad that...

keep those points in mind. If there's one thing to remember, it's to not announce anything publicly until there's a working prototype or at least something concrete to announce. Preferably until it's ready and live on the mainnet. We see a lot of posts on Medium, guys, about projects that never materialized, things that don't exist at all. Actually, I have this personal theory: the number of Medium posts announcing partnerships is inversely correlated with the success of the project.

It's bad. It's bad. It's really bad. So, it also damages your brand. Even if it doesn't hurt your brand immediately, it might give you some hype, a couple of retweets you wouldn't have gotten otherwise, but let's say the project you're associated with turns out to be a failure.

It can make you look bad . Don't give in to the urge to announce something to the public until there is something concrete to announce. It helps strengthen your brand. It also improves the impact of everything you announce. I was recently told that Maker is great because, despite a lot of hype, it 's not overrated.

This is important. Don't assume they will keep their end of the bargain. You need to do a follow-up. It would be awesome if everyone agreed on something to do together, then everyone went and did it, and we came together for a big release. That's not how things go.

Has this ever happened to anyone? Okay, lucky him over there . But in general, that's not how these projects work, whether internal or external. Treat them the same. Project management is key.

And don't do this, and this is for Mike here, don't wait until the last minute to involve your technical or marketing teams. He doesn't like it and, you know, it's just bad corporate management. Okay. Do this. Here are some things to do.

Set a timeframe and stick to it as much as possible. It's pretty simple. Involve other team members to help when needed. Legal, marketing, whoever you want. Use other dApps to help build the solution.

This is quite interesting. Maker has a stablecoin and a lending protocol, but you know, we've integrated the Request Network button into some of our projects. We've integrated other dApps to help build a complete solution that goes beyond what our core products and services can do. Be organized. Back to CRM, guys.

I'll tell you. If you do this, your life will be much easier. Start laying the groundwork for deeper partnerships. So, as you get closer to completing the first phase of your collaboration, start asking for invitations or introductions from other people in the organization or other teams. Start leveraging the internal contacts you have built at that company to turn them into additional projects to turn them into additional projects .

And finally, once everything is ready and concluded, help them get as much attention as possible from the press, media, and Twitter. So, spend some time with your marketing team to develop a plan for this . Give it great resonance. You want it to be a victory for them too, not just for you. So, a quick case study.

I still have a few minutes left study. I still have a few minutes left . How am I doing with time? Okay. So, a quick case study: Vion Commodities.

I'll explain it to you briefly. This is a physical commodities company interested in using blockchain to streamline its business. We met them at a conference in Singapore, and they said, "Hey, we don't know much about this, but we're a company that buys metals, stores them, ships them, sells them, borrows on them, etc. How can we use this blockchain thing?" In the first call, we discussed their current business to identify their weaknesses.

I found out they have a paperwork problem. There are so many warehouse receipts and the like that need to be managed for any type of basic transaction. They then hope to use blockchain to improve liquidity and reduce some of that paperwork some of that paperwork . Then, but only after I've identified their problem, I proceed to explain at a high level what MakerDAO is, checking for understanding along the way. So we propose to pilot a project to tokenize a warehouse receipt for aluminum and get a loan.

The follow-up email included a graphic illustrating what this process would look like. I cannot stress enough how much potential clients love seeing graphs. It's really hard for them to conceptualize these things. So, to the extent that you have the ability to create something that visually shows how to proceed and what the outcome would be, that's a huge help. Second call: We discuss the technology in more detail and reiterate any points they didn't understand.

And just to mention it, this second call probably lasted an hour and 15 minutes. It was more detailed. They really wanted to understand how the liquidation mechanisms work, all this stuff. That's great. I had to repeat myself on five different things five times.

This is fine too. Be patient, don't give up. And then I suggested a pilot partnership to test its feasibility. Next step, I emailed them the memorandum of understanding, basically the draft partnership we discussed. This included the scope of work and timelines.

It also included $20,000 to share the costs of developing an aluminum token for them. I know it's a little scary to propose because you think, "Hey, I have this big company I want to work for. I don't want to do all this work for them." But as we said work for them." But as we said , getting some level of commitment from them will help move the project forward.

Third call, CDP demo to make sure they understand. Seeing a demonstration of how your product works really helps. And then we brought together the technical teams to create a development plan. The Memorandum of Understanding is currently operational. Development is underway and everything seems to be going well.

And we, like everyone in this room, are awaiting the launch of the multi-collateral Dai. So, we'll see what happens. It's not something you'll see on Twitter yet because it hasn't happened yet. There is no mainnet implementation. So, you know, keep your mouth shut, guys So, you know, keep your mouth shut, guys .

But basically, this gives you my process for how I deal with these things. Final thoughts. Don't be afraid to hunt whales. This means that there are a lot of big companies out there that are much more interested in this stuff than you might think. So, don't be afraid to call them, talk to their innovation team, their CTO, even their CEO.

Get them talking, come up with some ideas, and see what happens. Your success depends on your ability to listen, understand a problem, and propose a concise, coherent solution. Be educators, but for God's sake, cut out the jargon. They don't need to know all the fine details of how this stuff works. Finally, business development is at the forefront of the market.

So, whether you're a project founder, product team leader, or engineering lead, use your business development team to help you formulate strategies in other areas. What does the market say about you? What are those things that say, "Man, I wish you guys could do that." Whatever they are, your business development manager will probably be the first to hear them. So, talk to them.

Involve them in your conversations. We're usually pretty nice. And that's it. Follow me on Twitter. Turbo Geek Tuesdays, Stark's comments.

I try not to do too many tweet storms, but every now and then I have something I really want to put my foot down on. And yes, Ari, if we have a few more minutes, I can answer a question or two. Does anyone have any? Yes. The question was: in the coming year, what are the biggest opportunities in the sector and what are the biggest obstacles to overcome?

Hmm. Well, the biggest opportunities in the industry, I think, will be anything related to payments and finance. These are the things that intuitively make the most sense to people. They can be implemented in a relatively short time. And the interesting thing is that they allow us to do things that we can't do with our current system.

So when I think about whether a project is a good fit for blockchain, my first thought is: Is this something we can't do with the technology we have? That's where I would focus on what's going to be important. The biggest obstacles? Well, everyone thinks that “if you build it, they will come.” Don't go out of your way to find real users.

The use of DApps is worrying. So we need to increase it. And the only way to do that is to roll up your sleeves and get started. All right . So, aside from Maker's obvious product-market fit, what was the main thing you managed to accomplish that made you successful, which other projects didn't?

Hmm, that's a great question. The greatest thing we've ever accomplished. I think, obviously, Single Collateral DAI was pretty interesting. People liked it. But, on the partnership side , there have been so many, right?

It's UNICEF. UNICEF is now accepting donations in DAI, and we're working with them to uh organize a series of progressive hackathons, so that they can actually create technologies that can be used in war zones and um refugee camps and the like. They are really interesting. Um, but TradeShift is probably our most exciting partnership that we're working on right now from a technology standpoint. TradeShift is a global supply chain payments technology company and is working with us to enable their users to directly guarantee their invoices from small and medium-sized businesses, dramatically reducing their factoring rate and getting paid faster than in the real world.

So, these are just a few of the things, but to fully answer your question, what Maker is really good at is just moving forward in general just moving forward in general . These things are not These things are not easy. You know, I have a nice presentation that makes it look easy presentation that makes it look easy , but you have to persevere and keep moving forward. Um, so this is probably the biggest seg-secret to success, I would say. I think uh my time is up, guys, but thank you all so much for coming and uh hit me up later.