(#41) Web3 Business Development
The people who understand and foster relationships in Web3 win
Face what you feel when you feel it, or face it later when it comes back unexpectedly with more complexity and density. Frank says it well here.
The best BD people have the following traits:
Smart, creative, and think well on their feet.A good communicator. Need to communicate well with both internal teams (engineers, PMs, lawyers, execs) as well as the customer or partner (which may include their legal, engineering, and deal people).Not afraid to ask or push the envelope on what is possible and are willing to make a crazy ask from the partner or client. You never know what someone will give away until you ask.A self-starter. Figure out a lot through creative ideas and finding the right people to help you move things forward.Structured / can run a deal process. You want someone who is great at shepherding all internal and external stakeholders through the various phases of a deal (ideation, pitching, negotiating, structuring, closing, and implementing). You want people mining a list of prospects, aggressively framing a negotiation, and setting up internal prep meetings before calling external parties. Unstructured deals create churn internally due to a lack of consensus on external factors or a lack of planning for a negotiation.Detail-oriented. This allows you to catch all sorts of gotchas that are otherwise buried in unexpected ways and to think through the implications of what the contract says.Work well with cross-functional teams.Understand partner and market needs. Understand what the partner really wants (versus claims they want), as well as trends in the marketplace that may impact both their company's and the partner's leverage and needs.Have endurance. Deals can take a long time and a lot of back and forth. Bad deal people give up towards the very end to "just close the deal" and may leak enormous amounts of value that they didn't need to give up.Relentless. Sometimes you need to keep knocking at a door over and over until someone finally answers.
The people who understand and foster relationships in Web3 win. Web3 is an industry in which social connections are important like no other industry.
👁️🗨️ Shower thoughts:
I rarely meet anyone today who hasn’t met their partner through an app or dating site.Everyone loves progress. No one loves change.What the f**k is good shawtyYou don't have to take crazy risks. Just try a lot of things. Some will work, some wont. Either way, you''ll be richer for the experience.
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