A few years ago I was a broke, university dropout, living in a studio-flat in a rough area. At 18 I started a company which would eventually become "Social Chain" - an industry leading marketing company. At 26 the company was generating $600m a year in revenue. At 27 I resigned as CEO, and launched 'The Diary Of A CEO' podcast with the simple mission of un-filtering success and giving you the knowledge you need to create the life you want. Thank you for listening. IG: https://www.instagram.com/steven TW: https://twitter.com/StevenBartlett LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenbartlett-123
E161: Coinbase Founder: The Crazy Journey Of Building A $100 Billion Company: Brian Armstrong
Brian is the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, a company thats reached highs of a valuation of $100 billion. After an adolescence and youth searching for independence where no one could be his boss, he’s come a long way, but he’s realised he’s had to change a lot too.
Before anyone had heard of Bitcoin, there was Coinbase. Taking a punt on an industry no one knew and no one understood, Brian quit his lucrative career to be his own man. No one encouraged him. No one. He’d told the idea to hundreds of people before someone told him it could work.
In this conversation, Brian brought a wisdom and a nuance about how to run and build a business like very few conversations we’ve had on this podcast. If you want to know how the best in the world take an idea from drawboard to $100 billion, this is the story of how it happened.
Topics:
- What made you the person you are today
- Lessons learnt from my first business
- How traveling shaped me
- Working for AirB&B and what made it successful
- The mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make
- How to build a sustainable company
- How to incentive your team to take risks
- My journey starting Coinbase
- Mistakes & key learnings when starting up
- Leadership lessons
- Fake news and dealing with it
- No politics in the workplace
- Hiring the best people & layoffs
- What are the ingredients in your happiness recipe
Brian Armstrong:
https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong
Thirdweb:
https://thirdweb.com/
Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos
Follow us on Telegram: https://t.me/diaryofaceo
Sponsors:
BlueJeans - https://www.bluejeans.com/
Huel - https://my.huel.com/Steven
Crafted - https://bit.ly/3JKOPFx