If there’s one thing that stands out about the crypto industry, it’s that it moves fast. Prices jolt up and down by the hour, news of scandals and rug pulls shakes the industry, and thousands of new projects are born onto the blockchain each day. It’s impossible to keep up.
If you want to run a crypto startup that lasts amongst this chaos, you need to do more than just ride the waves and hype cycles. You need to execute well, understand your market, and, most importantly, build products that people want.
But there’s another factor that often gets overlooked, and it can make the difference between a company that thrives and one that fizzles out without a bang.
The most successful crypto founders have mastered the art of networking. Not the superficial kind that involves roaming around conferences and collecting business cards (only never actually to contact the person). Instead, it’s the type that creates genuine competitive advantages and builds relationships they can use over the long run.
Why Quality Beats Quantity Every Single Time
A significant portion of crypto networking is hype. It’s just people trying to sell to each other, and nobody is making a real effort to build connections. You’ll also find the founders at conferences who just want to increase their following. You’ll usually see them frantically exchanging contact information with anyone who has a pulse and a crypto Twitter account. They’re optimizing for the wrong metric.
The successful founders take a radically different approach. They don’t try to meet everyone, they identify the five or ten people who could genuinely change their company’s trajectory. Then they figure out how to provide value to those people first.
This isn’t about being exclusive for the sake of it. It’s about understanding and recognizing that meaningful relationships require time, energy, and effort —finite resources. The founder who spends three hours in deep conversation with one potential partner will always walk away with more than the person who spends thirty seconds each with six different VCs.
Building Bridges Before You Need Them
The crypto space moves a mile a minute. Projects gain popularity quickly, exploding overnight. Then, they implode. By the time these companies realize they need a specific connection, it’s often too late to build it authentically.
Smart founders start building relationships during the quiet periods. As they say, fix the roof while the sun is shining. They’re reaching out to other builders when they don’t need anything, sharing insights, offering feedback, and connecting people in their network who may be able to add value at a later date.
But don’t make the mistake of approaching this superficially. Try to be genuinely helpful, and don’t expect anything in return right away. Genuinely celebrate other people’s wins (and do so publicly). And if the situation calls for it. Offer honest feedback when someone asks for it, even if it’s not what they want to hear. The payoff for all of this comes later, and it can often happen when you least expect it.
Attending The Right Conferences
Conferences are where most crypto networking occurs, but many people do them incorrectly. They try to attend too many events and meet too many people, only to end up exhausted with a pile of business cards they’ll never follow up on.
Successful founders are strategic about which crypto events they go to. They pick two or three events per year that align with their specific goals. It could be the conference where their target customers are gathering, or the one where the investors they want to meet are speaking.
Then, once they’ve selected a few conferences to attend, they ensure proper preparation. Researching attendees in advance is a must. Look at the people you want to meet and think of ways you can strike up conversations that will interest them and add value. You could even reach out before the event to schedule specific meetings, rather than hoping for chance encounters.
And while the main talks are always good to witness, the real networking often occurs in smaller gatherings, such as dinners, side events, and impromptu conversations in hotel lobbies.
Look Beyond The Crypto Space
Don’t limit yourself to networking within the crypto space. Suppose you only go to blockchain conferences, join crypto-specific accelerators, and surround yourself with people who speak the same technical language. In that case, you are creating an echo chamber that actually limits your growth potential.
Take the time to actively seek out connections in more traditional spaces, whether that be finance, enterprise software, consumer apps, or even completely unrelated industries.
A founder who’s building a DeFi protocol might learn more from a conversation with a traditional banking exec than they would from another DeFi founder. Suppose you’re setting up an NFT marketplace. In that case, you may find that you get a lot of user experience insights from a founder in the eCommerce space (since they have likely got a great understanding of building digital asset marketplaces).
This cross-pollination approach also works when it comes to hiring talent. The leading crypto companies of today don’t just look for crypto natives. They actively seek out people who bring experience from other industries and can translate those lessons into the crypto context.
Wrapping Up
You could argue that crypto is still very much in its early stages, which means that the effort you put into networking now will pay dividends for many years to come. The main takeaway is to be consistent, authentic, and always to provide value.
Networking should not feel transactional. It should be about sharing the knowledge and insights you have with other like-minded founders or companies, and in turn, they reciprocate when the time comes.
Just remember not to limit yourself to just the blockchain space. There are many adjacent industries with numerous talented and skilled leaders that you can leverage to your advantage. So, start building those bridges now, while you have the time and space to do it right.
