Paradigm: How We Hire BD Candidates
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Paradigm: How We Hire BD Candidates
Don't change the founder-led sales model too early.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Nick Martitsch
Translation: TechFlow
In crypto, the job market for early growth leaders is fiercely competitive.
Given the lack of defensibility in open-source software, distribution becomes a key competitive factor for decentralized protocols and their platforms. Hiring the right BD lead at the right time can significantly influence a project's trajectory.
As part of Paradigm’s business development team, I’ve partnered with talent partner Dan McCarthy to help founders recruit top-tier growth leaders in the industry. Below are our recommendations for founders hiring their first BD lead.
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Don’t prematurely shift away from founder-led sales.
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Turn early scrappy tactics into scalable processes.
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Look for high autonomy and deep crypto understanding in candidates.
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Value execution over strategy.
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Evaluate performance using leading indicators.
1. Don’t prematurely shift away from founder-led sales
Founders are often the best salespeople for their own products. When acquiring early customers and developing an MVP, maintaining founder-led sales is critical for two main reasons:
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You’re more likely to close initial deals. For pre-product startups, buyers primarily bet on the founder’s ability to execute their vision—not on the product itself. Founders are best positioned to communicate technical details, product vision, and overall passion, which helps convince customers to be the first to adopt unproven solutions.
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It helps refine the product. In the early stages, sales and product development should happen in parallel. Founders should maintain tight feedback loops with early customers to shape the product roadmap. Introducing new hires too soon can create unnecessary friction and communication overhead.
Typically, you should consider hiring your first BD lead once you’ve validated demand within an initial user base and are ready to scale to a broader market. This process can begin earlier if your protocol requires building a broad external ecosystem before launch—but generally, it’s best to wait until you already have a base of loyal users.
2. Turn early scrappy tactics into scalable processes
The BD lead should transform the “scrappy tactics” founders used to acquire the first customers into scalable, repeatable sales processes that can drive broader customer acquisition. Here are some key responsibilities for the role in the early stages:
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Select a CRM system that can scale with the company (e.g., Excel, Salesforce, Copper) and populate it with data from the entire target market.
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Qualify inbound leads, send outbound messages to new prospects, and involve founders to help close the most important deals.
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Run weekly pipeline meetings to keep leadership informed about market penetration and bottlenecks in the sales process.
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Create sales collateral—such as case studies, product updates, and onboarding guides—and test which messaging points effectively convert prospects.
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Act as the internal voice of the customer in product roadmap discussions, guiding the product team to build essential features and capabilities.
In short, it’s crucial to find a BD lead who can both build sales infrastructure and manage end-to-end sales execution. Excelling at only one of these is not enough.
3. Look for high autonomy and deep crypto understanding
We’ve found that the best first-time BD leads are often former startup founders or early employees who built functions from scratch at previous companies. They inherently understand accountability and take strong ownership of achieving company goals.
Beyond basic communication and organizational skills, prioritize crypto-native experience as a core hiring criterion. Here are some soft skills that indicate whether a BD lead can endure across multiple market cycles:
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Adaptability—Early-stage sales in crypto differ greatly from enterprise sales roles at mature companies. In crypto, market conditions and narratives constantly shift. Growth leaders must be flexible, able to develop new strategies—what works in a bull market may fail in a bear market, and vice versa.
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Resilience—Due to the industry’s cyclical nature, candidates need strong conviction in crypto’s mission rather than being easily discouraged by delayed results. Successful BD strategies are typically discovered after repeated failures, learning, and iteration. Candidates motivated solely by short-term financial gains tend to drop out during market downturns.
While it’s difficult to find candidates who meet all criteria perfectly, having a highly autonomous, crypto-native BD lead lays the foundation for long-term success.
4. Value execution over strategy
Most crypto startups focus too much on strategy and too little on tactical execution. When I’ve investigated why certain apps succeeded over others, response speed often made the difference—how quickly they responded to inbound inquiries, followed up after calls, or resolved complex technical issues.
The compounding effect of strong tactical execution is key to long-term success. Therefore, it’s critical to prioritize candidates who can implement disciplined processes to ensure no lead falls through the cracks. Here are some interview questions to assess a candidate’s practical effectiveness in sales:
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How would you categorize inbound inquiries as low, medium, or high priority? How would your sales process differ for each?
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What questions would you ask during an initial call to determine if a prospect is a good fit?
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Do you think it’s appropriate to browse a presentation during a sales call? How do you typically run a sales call?
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How quickly would you follow up with a prospect after the first sales call? What kind of information would you typically send?
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If a prospect goes cold, what strategies would you use to re-engage them?
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If a prospect moves into implementation, how would you adjust your communication style, tone, and frequency?
A BD lead should still contribute to shaping the company’s distribution strategy—but if they can’t execute well on day-to-day details, that strategy will fail to materialize.
5. Evaluate performance using leading indicators
In emerging industries like crypto, many external factors can impact traditional growth metrics such as revenue, TVL, number of customers, or transaction volume. These outcomes are the result of BD efforts. While tracking them is important, it’s equally critical to measure the quality of the process that drives those results.
Founders should set clear goals for business development based on early market signals. They should also define a set of leading indicators to evaluate performance, helping insulate against unforeseen market shifts, regulatory changes, or macro events.
Here’s an example of how founders might structure goals for a BD role:
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Primary goal: Achieve $5M in annual recurring revenue by year-end
Outcome metrics:
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Number of new paying customers
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Average contract value per customer
Leading indicators:
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Number of deals entering evaluation stage
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Number of new leads added to the sales pipeline
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Number of introductory calls completed with prospects
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Volume of outbound messages sent to prospects
With this framework, you can mitigate some of the external volatility inherent in crypto and ensure the BD process remains effective and efficient.
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