a16z on Hiring: Crypto-Native vs. Traditional Talent—Who’s Worth Betting On?
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a16z on Hiring: Crypto-Native vs. Traditional Talent—Who’s Worth Betting On?
People with cryptocurrency experience, or those with outstanding ability to learn quickly?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthors: Ian Dutra, Craig Naylor, a16z Crypto
Translated by: TechFlow
As the crypto industry grows, so does its demand for talent. Founders need to know how to find and recruit top talent—both native to crypto and those with traditional tech experience. Yet one of the biggest debates remains: Should you hire someone with crypto experience, or someone capable of learning it? This sparks endless internal discussions within companies.
The good news is that crypto isn't the first industry to face challenges in talent pipelines. That means you can draw from established best practices to identify the right people with the right skills. This guide aims to help founders and recruiters determine when crypto-native experience is critical, when other types of experience have the greatest impact, and what challenges and considerations arise during hiring.
To simplify, think of it this way: while crypto companies do differ in some ways from traditional tech companies, when it comes to finding, hiring, and onboarding talent—the processes and best practices—you're not building a "crypto company," you're building a tech company. Apply proven best practices and focus on finding people with the right skills.
You Need Both Crypto-Native and Traditional Skill Sets
The rule of thumb is that crypto-native professionals hold one key advantage: they can hit the ground running. High-stakes projects often operate under tight timelines, where every day counts. Sometimes, native crypto expertise is essential—particularly in roles involving blockchain technology and its foundational infrastructure, where even highly skilled professionals may face steep learning curves.
Smart contract development is a prime example. These self-executing agreements are coded directly onto blockchains and require precision and an understanding of decentralized logic, which differs significantly from traditional programming. A single vulnerability in a smart contract can lead to catastrophic outcomes—losses of millions of dollars—making this a high-risk domain where knowing the rules is crucial.
Bringing in talent from outside into such a steep learning curve can be challenging, as candidates may need time to adapt to the nuances of blockchain technology—decentralization vs. centralization, greater openness, etc.—as well as the cultural ethos of crypto, which spans everything from unique terminology to mindsets. However, non-crypto talent can drive significant progress across many areas, especially as companies begin to scale. For instance, traditional professionals with software engineering or operations backgrounds bring diverse skill sets and deep experience often honed at large software firms. These individuals are typically adept at juggling multiple responsibilities and navigating complex internal bureaucracies to get things done. In fast-growing, multidisciplinary teams common in crypto, this operational agility becomes a powerful asset.
Scaling experience is also vital. Traditional candidates often have experience building products used by millions of users and solving the challenges that come with success: ensuring systems remain reliable under extreme infrastructure loads, optimizing performance at scale, and handling unpredictable demand surges. This experience translates directly to Web3 products as they move from niche crypto audiences toward mainstream adoption.
For example, candidates from fintech firms may bring relevant expertise in payment technologies or financial regulations that could be valuable in your business. If you’re building infrastructure or consumer applications, there’s a broad pool of talent that has already accumulated years of scaling experience in these domains. Consider overlaps in their experience and assess how quickly they can grasp crypto-specific technologies to build your ideal team. More broadly, candidates with experience in design, user experience, scalability, security, and leadership can accelerate innovation in crypto, as these skills are often domain-agnostic—and may even be better suited than those without such experience.
Once you've identified the required skills and profiles—including whether crypto-native experience is truly necessary—the next step is to go out and recruit them.
Hiring Top Talent from Any Background
The biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity are two sides of the same coin: you're a crypto company.
For some candidates from traditional companies, the volatility of crypto, recent regulatory uncertainty, industry jargon, and decentralized products may feel too unfamiliar or unappealing—or both. But for others, that very unfamiliarity and occasional instability can be exciting—less a flaw and more a feature. During recruitment conversations, explore how candidates view stability and comfort at large corporations versus the opportunities and challenges of fast-moving startups. Share a real challenge your team faced in recent weeks, explain how it was addressed, and emphasize the level of responsibility expected from each team member given the company's size and stage. Their response may reveal how they'd react in similar situations—and at minimum, it signals what the company expects from everyone when the next crisis hits.
Candidates may not know much about crypto when you first reach out, but natural curiosity and interest in the benefits of decentralization are key. During the hiring process, watch for signs that their knowledge and engagement deepen over time: Are they doing independent research? Are they asking more specific questions after learning new concepts?
To distinguish between skeptics and genuinely interested candidates—and avoid wasting time and money—identify motivations early to ensure alignment with your company’s direction. This is a fundamental principle of hiring, but worth emphasizing because it’s especially critical in crypto.
Every hiring conversation should be tailored to the individual: What drives them in their current role? What kept them in past positions? These factors will likely play a major role in their decision this time. Start uncovering these answers from the very first call.
By the end of the hiring process, you want to bring on someone aligned with your vision and passionate about your product. At the same time, your team should be excited about the new hire; this helps assess cultural fit regardless of their crypto experience. This should always be your guiding compass.
Since you're targeting highly curious candidates, tailor your recruiting pitch accordingly. You might start by explaining the two cultures within crypto: one views blockchain as a tool to build new networks and power a new era of computing ("computer culture"), while the other focuses on speculation, trading, and gambling ("casino culture"). Then highlight how this emerging field offers candidates a unique chance to reshape the future of technology—much like the early days of the internet.
A useful mental exercise is to describe your company and product without mentioning crypto at all. What problems are you solving? What motivates you to build it? Why will it make the world better? This approach helps communicate your mission and vision without overwhelming listeners with technical details.
Another strong opening question: "What do you know about crypto?" Even if the answer reflects skepticism or negative perceptions—like media stories or narratives around casino culture—it opens the door to listen to their real concerns: external (policy), internal (technical complexity), personal (risk tolerance), etc. Acknowledge that many in crypto share some of those doubts, then steer the conversation toward the exciting technical problems your project is solving.
Not everyone is primarily motivated by money, but you must still be ready to discuss financial upside. Historically, top talent hesitated to join early-stage companies due to three main reasons: (1) intense work culture; (2) poor work-life balance; (3) lack of liquidity compensation. Even if you’ve solved the first two, failing on the third can cost you many top candidates.
Compensation innovations like token-based pay structures offer early companies a way to provide financial returns and liquidity—something rare in Web2 outside of IPOs or acquisitions. Use vesting schedules or token grant programs tied to long-term goals to align employees with the company’s future. Compensation is a complex and highly sensitive topic, so be fully prepared to discuss it.
If you execute these steps well, you stand a strong chance of attracting top-tier external talent to your company. Next, you need to help them understand how they can deliver their best work day-to-day.
Onboarding Considerations
Integrating new talent into a Web3 company requires education to shorten ramp-up time. You’ve already identified knowledge gaps during interviews. Use this insight to design onboarding experiences that close those gaps quickly.
For example, new hires may need support moving beyond the technical details of blockchains and decentralized systems to understand the real-world problems they’ll solve and gain confidence in their role.
Regular knowledge-sharing sessions connecting new employees with seasoned crypto veterans promote collaboration and mutual learning. Mentorship programs that pair newcomers with experienced Web3 professionals offer valuable hands-on learning. Even better: structure programs to pair "unicorn" talent—those with all the skills, knowledge, and background—with new hires, helping them grow into unicorns themselves over time.
Ongoing upskilling and education are essential and will remain important as the industry evolves. Resources like blockchain-focused blogs, podcasts, and educational courses—such as how to use smart wallets, how to stake, tokenomics, smart contract design, or basic blockchain concepts across use cases—are great starting points for continuous learning. Partnering with mentors from established crypto organizations provides practical insights, while thought leaders in the space offer deeper analysis—such as our own State of Crypto Report.
The key is this: whatever your new hires need to excel, your job is to help them learn, find, or access those resources from day one.
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