Lessons from Emilie Choi, president of Coinbase

Emilie Choi, the President and Chief Operating Officer of Coinbase, is a prominent figure in the technology and cryptocurrency sectors. Her career, which includes leadership roles at LinkedIn and Yahoo before her tenure at Coinbase, has provided her with a wealth of experience in corporate development, strategy, and scaling high-growth companies.

On Leadership and Strategy

On the importance of adaptability and foresight: Choi's leadership style is characterized by "a blend of analytical precision and visionary thinking," which enables her to navigate complex challenges in dynamic industries. [3] Her career underscores the importance of these qualities for growth and innovation. [3]
On continuous learning: "One of the values that I love about Coinbase is continuous learning. We make mistakes, we learn from them and we hopefully don't repeat them in the future." [4]
On making tough decisions: When faced with a product that had potential privacy concerns, despite the team's excitement, they scrapped it. Choi acknowledges such decisions are "deflating for the product teams" but are essential learning experiences. [4]
On scaling and different phases of a company: "There are people who are going to be better suited for the zero to one phase of Coinbase and there are people who are going to be better suited for the next phase of Coinbase. I'm one of those people, right? Because I've been at slightly bigger companies." [4]
On the importance of a mission-driven team: "What we look for is people who truly believe in the mission, which is to increase economic freedom in the world. And if people are missionaries not mercenaries they're here for the long term they don't get put off by little blips." [5]
On hiring for resilience: "The thing with crypto is that you have to be able to weather the cycles. And to that end we do test for resilience when we're hiring folks because we want to make sure they understand that it's not going to be this entirely predictable path." [6]
On the value of grit: "We value very deeply grit and resilience because we have very high volatility in crypto. You have to be prepared for the worst." [7]
On creating a clear company culture: The "mission first" memo, which established an apolitical workplace, was "one of the best things we've ever done as a company because... we were just refreshingly honest about the way that we want to operate the company." [6]
On communicating with context: When making decisions, it's crucial to share the "why" behind them. "If you share with them why they go 'Oh. now I get it.'... if they know the why they can actually better implement the decision that's being made." [8]
On empowering teams: For reversible decisions, you can "push that authority down to the VP level or below. and hopefully start creating some some level of delegation. in the company. so folks are empowered. and have some level of autonomy." [8]

On Navigating Crypto Cycles and "Crypto Winters"

A mantra for volatility: "It's never as bad as it seems and it's never as good as it seems. And I think that that's a... great mantra for life." [5]
On staying focused during downturns: When Choi joined Coinbase, the market was at a peak and then began to fall. She observed that the "smartest people in the entire company... were just building... this is awesome like all the phonies get out of the space." [7]
Crypto winters as an opportunity: "We're also not afraid to take bets during winters it's actually when we can punch above our weight." [6]
A higher bar during tough times: "For things like M&A during a crypto winter we're going to have a much higher bar for M&A we're going to make sure that we focus on things that have more known revenue and profit opportunities." [6]
The test of endurance: "The funny thing about crypto is that people think they'll get rich quick it doesn't work that way it's almost like there's like a test of your endurance." [9]
The long-term perspective on crypto: "Everybody who kind of disproportionately benefits from crypto tends to just ride it out on the long term and be holders throughout the ups and downs." [10]
On building an "all-weather" company: "The good news about Coinbase is we have spent so much time building what I call an all-weather company that we're prepared for every scenario." [5]
Learning from over-hiring: "I think one of the big painful lessons we learned in 2021 is we got a little ahead of ourselves in terms of hiring and being a little bit frivolous with expenses... we tightened ourselves. we started to do more with less." [5]
Never quitting when you're down: "I will never quit a company when it's like down... and so when I first joined... I felt like an idiot... but I just grinned and bared it and... when things came back up it felt so gratifying." [7]
The resilience of Bitcoin: "I think Bitcoin is the gateway asset. and I think it has proven so resilient. and enduring... It's never been hacked it's decentralized. and it's it's an incredible asset i think it's actually a store of value." [3]

On Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) and Investments

The foundation of a good investment: "To have an amazing team is foundational... because an amazing team will figure things out... If you invest in amazing founders they will figure something out even if it's not immediately." [4]
Investing with a mission in mind: When considering investments, a key question is: "are they potentially helping us achieve our mission of creating an open financial system for the world?" [4]
The value of an ecosystem approach: "Experiment and invest in all parts of the ecosystem... because you never know which parts are gonna take off, which parts are gonna be strategic, which parts are gonna accrue value in terms of monetization, and so on." [11]
Being an advocate for founders: Choi has a reputation as "an advocate for founders through every step of the M&A process," which was a key reason for her joining Coinbase. [12]
The importance of maintaining strict ethical walls: "We have I would argue probably the strictest rules in place about Chinese walls between venture decisions and listing." [11]
Scrappy and focused venture operations: "What's interesting about Coinbase ventures is we don't actually have any dedicated team. We're super scrappy so it's a group of people who are doing it as a side job." [4]
Finding investment opportunities through alumni: "One of the cool things about Coinbase is that we have a lot of great Coinbase alums who are going to found companies... Oftentimes that's a great source of investments for us." [4]
The uniqueness of crypto business models: "I love the idea that in crypto, for example I was mentioning before that we are a brokerage and exchange and a custodian -- that doesn't exist in the offline world." [4]

On Regulation and Building Trust

The need for sensible regulation: "The most important thing for the industry is that crypto has healthy, sensible regulation... but that it doesn't overreach or stifle any of the great entrepreneurship and development." [11]
Advocating for a level playing field: "We just want to make sure that there is an even playing field for crypto firms and other financial-services providers." [13]
The call for regulatory clarity: "What we've asked for is very simple we just want one regulator... so that we can have much more clarity about the whole kind of cradle to grave activities that one uses with crypto." [10]
Transparency as a core principle: "The things that we should all care about are — first and foremost — transparency and integrity." [14]
The power of direct communication: "Why don't we just say what we're really thinking... and what our legal case is or what our policy case is and why people should care about crypto... let's just go direct to our user base." [5]
Trust as the foundation: "Our success... boils down to five key strengths. first it all starts with trust trust is our foundation. it always has been and it always will be." [15]
Leaning into compliance from the start: The founders "did things that were pretty counterintuitive... crypto is kind of considered this libertarian movement. and they actually leaned into things like compliance. and regulatory." [5]
The transparency of the blockchain: "The reality is that the blockchain is transparent... It's public. And so transactions are always going to be monitored on that blockchain. That's one of the features and benefits of crypto." [11]
Never scaling back on security: "We will never scale back on security. it's part of our fundamental value prop it's our differentiator. and we'll continue to invest in it." [6]
Taking an offensive stance when necessary: After the FTX collapse and facing an SEC notice, "It was a combination of chutzpah and maybe desperation that we were like, 'We have to go tell our story, because if we don't, nobody else will.'" [7]

On the Future of Crypto and Finance

The promise of crypto: "The real promise of crypto is oriented around a bunch of different features that don't exist in the traditional financial system today... It is global. It doesn't see borders. It removes the need for a middleman or centralized authority or bank. It is near instantaneous." [11]
The future of financial transactions: "A dream would be that you're doing virtually all your financial transactions in crypto. and you don't even know it. it's... become just a layer of technology in the same way that TCP IP and things like that have powered the internet." [5]
The tokenization of everything: "The world is going to be tokenized... it could be an NFT it could be that we digitize real estate it could be whatever the whole world is is likely to be tokenized at some point things are going to be digitized." [3]
The inadequacy of the traditional financial system: "The traditional financial system has elements that feel kind of clunky and outdated. so things like instant settlement should be no-brainers. things like global access should be no-brainers." [5]
Crypto adoption is on pace with the early internet: "If you look and track the adoption of internet we're actually on pace or accelerating what the early internet was... and so i think we're there." [10]
The path to a billion users: "The interesting mark to me will be when we hit a billion users globally in crypto because i think that's where everything basically is... if you look at current kind of pace. it would be within the next five years." [10]
The importance of usability: "There's no doubt that usability is the biggest thing and some level of regulatory clarity to kind of get it to the next point." [10]
Competition validates the space: "We love JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs getting into crypto because it just validates the space it's good for everyone." [7]
The expanding pie of the crypto market: "The thing about crypto because it's such a nascent market... it's like an unlimited pie... the TAM will only get bigger and bigger and bigger." [7]

On Personal Growth and Career

On the value of objectivity: "I never want to get over-exuberant about a new technology... But I also wanna make sure that I'm not such a skeptic that I miss out on the opportunity that these new technologies hold so much promise in." [11]
On finding your happy place: "I have had the great fortune of being at places where I'm really inspired by the people I work with... my happy place when I just get to be around great technologists because I'm the ultimate partner to them on the business side." [4]
On defining economic freedom personally: For Choi, economic freedom ultimately means "time... you're not going to be able... like I know we forget about that we're all on a a a clock that's running out." [16]

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