IVP's Hyper-Growth Podcast: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on building a mission-driven open financial system for the world

In IVP's Hyper-Growth Podcast series, IVP investors talk with CEOs from the fastest growing companies to understand the ins and outs of company building in the hyper-growth environment.

Coinbase co-founder and CEO, Brian Armstrong, is on a mission to create an open financial system for the world. In our eighth hyper-growth podcast episode, IVP's Tom Loverro talks with Brian about bringing this to life, what it means to build a mission-driven company and how to evolve company culture during hypergrowth both in crypto and beyond. Coinbase, the digital currency wallet service that allows traders to buy and sell crypto was founded in 2012, has over 700 employees with more than $220 billion in assets from over 30 million customers. IVP had the privilege of leading Coinbase's Series D in August of 2017, with IVP's Tom Loverro currently serving on the company's board.

Key Tips and Quotes from Brian:

STAY TRUE TO YOUR MISSION We decided to play a long-term game, which I think was more in line with the mission.

BUILD YOUR OWN COMPANY CULTURE Let's actually articulate the culture and write it down, integrate that and repeat it a bunch of times.

COMMUNICATION IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE Clear communication is something that I personally just value. But I also think it helps the company be a lot more effective.

ON BEING AN OVERNIGHT SUCCESS I always joke, we're going to be a ten-year overnight success.

TEAMWORK DURING HYPERGROWTH Teams have got to go through some challenges together and they've got to develop a personal relationship with each other and get to know each other.

THE TRUTH ABOUT HYPERGROWTH If you're at 200 [employees] and you go to 600 in a year, a lot of things are gonna break.

More from the full conversation in the transcript is below.

To hear more, listen on iTunes or SoundCloud.

TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Welcome to IVP's Hyper-Growth Podcast. In this series, we talk with CEOs of the fastest-growing companies and discuss the ins-and-outs of company building in the hyper-growth environment. If you like what you hear, consider following us on SoundCloud or subscribing to our podcast on iTunes. Thanks, and enjoy the show.

Tom: Welcome, everyone. I'm Tom Loverro, an investor at IVP. On today's podcast, we are joined by Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase. Brian, welcome and thanks for joining us.

Brian: Thanks for having me, Tom.

Tom: Thanks for hosting us in your new headquarters. Brian is a graduate of Rice University and started his professional career as a developer and a consultant before joining Airbnb in 2011, that was a pretty smart move. He left Airbnb, though, to found Coinbase in 2012. Coinbase has played a major part in mainstream awareness and adoption of cryptocurrency. Since its founding, Coinbase has grown to over 700 employees, has traded more than $220 billion in assets by over 30 million customers across more than 100 countries. Brian has led the company through over $525 million in funding from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, USV, DFJ, and of course, IVP. IVP had the privilege of leading Coinbase's Series D in August of 2017 and I'm an observer on Coinbase's board. On today's episode, Brian and I will be discussing primarily three things. First, what it means to be a mission-driven company. Second, building Coinbase's culture and third, managing true hypergrowth. Thank you again, Brian.

Brian: Thank you, Tom.

Tom: So let's start off on a topic I know is really important to you Coinbase's mission. You've really begun to open up publicly about what Coinbase's mission is. There's been some video out there on the Internet of that. What is Coinbase's mission today? And if you could tell us where we are on that journey from where you want the company to be in the long run?

Brian: Well, our mission as a company is to create an open financial system for the world. And for us, what that means is, an open financial system is one that's going to create more economic freedom for people and businesses all over the world using cryptocurrency. We feel like that's a secret that Coinbase is founded on, is this idea that cryptocurrency got invented, you know, smartphones are proliferating all over the world, even to the poorest people, and that is a rare moment in history to actually inject economic freedom into these countries all over the world. Sometimes people aren't familiar with that term, economic freedom, and what I tell them is that this is a measurement that a lot of different organizations, they try to measure every different country out there. And they look at things like, you know, are property rights enforced? How much corruption is there? Is it really easy to start a business or work at the business that you want to work at, a bunch of different metrics like that. So people think of it as a way, it's a measurement of how quickly the economy is growing and all these things, but it actually has positive correlations with all kinds of things you may not expect, like people's self-reported happiness or less war, less corruption, higher, you know, literacy, and things like that. So economic freedom is this really powerful idea in our mission as a company is to take cryptocurrency and use that to build an open financial system for the world.

Tom: That's a big mission. And companies need big missions, but where are we today and how do you get from where we are to that end state?

Brian: So I agree, this is going to be, you know, 10 plus year journey and Coinbase has been around almost eight years. And so I always joke with people, you know, we're going to be a 10-year overnight success. I tell that to a lot of entrepreneurs, actually. I think it's better to have a big, big, ambitious mission and a

LINK:	https://www.ivp.com/news/podcast/coinbase-ceo-brian-armstrong-on-build...
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