Startup Life: Unscripted #32 with Dan Johnson, Head of Product at Caleb & Brown

Startup Life: Unscripted is a TNG Media newsletter, as part of The Nudge Group, where we feature candid conversations with startup operators about their career journeys and experiences. If you received this email as a forward, you can read all our past interviews and subscribe right here.

Welcome to another edition of Startup Life: Unscripted! This week, we’re diving into the startup world with Dan Johnson, the Head of Product at crypto brokerage Caleb & Brown and co-founder of creative collective Ethical Mischief.

Dan's unique career path has seen him merge the worlds of social impact entrepreneurship and cryptocurrency, creating a fascinating blend of innovation and social consciousness.

Key interview takeaways:

🚀 Blending Social Impact and Crypto: Dan reflects on how his work with Ethical Mischief intersects with his role in the cryptocurrency world, and the value of education in both areas.

📈 Adapting to Crypto's Evolving Landscape: Dan discusses the challenges of staying ahead in the ever-changing cryptocurrency industry and how he adapts strategies at Caleb & Brown to align with these shifts.

🔧 Product Management in Fast-Paced Environments: He shares his approach to balancing perfection and speed in product development, ensuring timely launches while maintaining quality.

🌟 Leadership in Startups: Insights into Dan's journey of leading teams in the dynamic environment of startups, emphasising the importance of agility and vision-driven leadership.

Dan, your background is fascinating, particularly the combination of social impact entrepreneurship with Ethical Mischief and cryptocurrency expertise at Caleb & Brown. How do you see these two different areas intersecting, and how has one informed the other?

Thank you! I’m a firm believer that life isn’t a dress rehearsal, there are rarely second chances that crop up. So when exciting opportunities land in, or near your lap, jump on them. And if you’re taking on too much, you’ll find a way to figure it out.

At a high level the crossover between both businesses isn't obvious, but they actually largely address and (hopefully) educate the same demographic. The fact that education is the overlap is just a wild intersection between internet money and social impact.

Ethical Mischief was an idea born in COVID lockdowns, when myself and many creatives I knew were craving something more than what their 9-5 could offer. It started with myself and my co-founder Damien Hashemi and quickly grew to some 30+ volunteers collaborating on several projects, chiefly a social campaign “Boomervention” which aimed to educate older everyday Australians about what it meant to vote for climate in the 2022 Federal Election.

Where-as Caleb & Brown was initially a chance for me to move into fintech, and B2C Product Management, two areas I’d long been interested in gaining exposure to. It quickly became a role where I had to view every feature and product through the lens of an older demographic who typically aren't tech native.

So in a roundabout way, designing and building with empathy is probably the biggest takeaway from these quite different endeavours.

As the Head of Product at Caleb & Brown, you're at the forefront of the complex and rapidly evolving world of cryptocurrencies. Can you share a bit about the challenges and opportunities you see in this space? How do you stay up-to-date with such a rapidly changing industry?

We have a phenomenal team at Caleb & Brown. My ability to stay abreast of all things new and emerging within crypto now largely falls to the internal output of our team, whether it be the research & marketing teams and their weekly roll up of all things crypto - or the passionate conversations I have around the office or at team events with the crypto-natives I work alongside.

As for challenges and opportunities, there are many. One of the biggest challenges facing all crypto participants is legitimacy through regulation - very few governments have been willing to take a firm stance on this, which makes it exceptionally hard to know if what you’re building will ever see the light of day.

In my time at Caleb & Brown there are a handful of projects we’ve worked on, or started working on that have yet to see the light of day, and they may never. That really sucks, especially when you and the team put so much effort in. But that’s the reality of building things in an unregulated environment.

Opportunity wise, there are too many to list now. But probably the biggest opportunity we see is the chance to educate the everyday person about finance, how they can understand it themselves and how they can seize any opportunities that may present themselves.

Scams are rife - and are largely made possible because those that can legislate refuse to do so thoughtfully, which leaves the average consumer vulnerable. Just the other week a dear friend of mine was taken advantage of and almost lost thousands to a Ponzi, masquerading as an international stock trading platform. It’s these people I hope we can educate through Caleb & Brown.

Reid Hoffman famously said, "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." As someone leading the product team, how do you balance the desire for perfection with the need to move fast and iterate?

Ultimately, you need to trust in your team's process. Whenever we sit down to scope a new feature, we try to frame it in one of three categories, MVP, Feature Complete, or Market Leading.

This helps us focus on the end goal of the project, and allows us to ship a less than perfect product. Plus any PM working in software should realise the value in getting something out soon, so they can start watching exactly how their users are interacting with it.

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Given your experience in both Client Success and Product Management roles, how have your customer insights helped shape the product strategy at Caleb & Brown?

Understanding the customer and having empathy for their pains, their problems, their wants and their desires has been instrumental in helping me be successful in Product. I can't overstate how important it is to know your customer, it's cliche but for good reason.

At Caleb & Brown, we exist and we build for a pretty unique segment of the crypto market. While everyone is running to capture the largest piece of the general pie, we're building for the user that maybe isn't the most computer literate, or maybe hasn't had much exposure to financial markets previously.

In every touch point, we try to educate them and guide them on their journey. It's also pretty funny, because the initial questions I get when I tell someone I work in crypto is always the same "what's the name of your coin/project/NFT" the assumption is first and foremost we're building on web3.

Now, never say never, we're certainly keeping our eyes open for those opportunities, but right now we just want to be the best customer experience of any other crypto brokerage. That isn't always the coolest thing, but our customers love it.

How do you balance your roles at Caleb & Brown and Ethical Mischief, and what skills or lessons have you found to be transferable between them?

It's certainly not a walk in the park, when I started at Caleb & Brown things were really ramping up at Ethical Mischief. At one point one of my business partners had to take time to be with his family and his workload fell on me.

So I was scoping and building out Caleb & Brown's first customer interface, then while driving home I was dialling into Ethical Mischief project strategy meetings and once home I was replying to client emails and triaging the outstanding tasks to team members with any capacity. Keep in mind, Ethical Mischief was entirely volunteer run, so when they couldn't do the task it likely fell to me or another co-founder.

During that time I really had to remind myself that done is better than perfect, and again, trust in the process.

Some personal takeaways from that especially hectic 6 months;

• Be honest about how you're feeling, but don't let that be another's problem

• You need to sleep, grinding away when your mind is mush probably means you'll need to redo it anyway

• Incidental exercise is rare in a digital world, stringing together a few dial-in meetings can be a great way to get that step count up

• Sort your tasks, cerebral and mind-numbing

  • Try and get to your cerebral tasks after some exercise, and group the mind-numbing ones when you've got a chance to vege out

• Don't force deep work, if you're having a hectic day context switching or in and out of meetings you're probably going to find it hard to then sit and do some quality deep thoughtful work

What have been some of the most rewarding and challenging aspects of working in the startup ecosystem, both from your current role at Caleb & Brown and your previous role at Lexer?

When I was a kid I always wanted to be an inventor, but in leaving high school I wasn't really sure what that looked like in the 21st century. I got a chance to design and build some new products for a family business early in my career and I knew I'd tapped into something.

Now having spent years working in the technology sector, always having to build the next thing, solve the next problem, grow the next team, I consider myself a really lucky dude. That constant change and feeling of spontaneity is reward enough for me.

But the constant state of flux can come at a cost, it can be really challenging. People you love working with will move on and you lose a friend and an ally. Or a project or business you were working on suddenly doesn't make sense anymore and you have to shut it down.

I think the reward of having to make each day anew is pretty special, but that's also really challenging. That and the acceptance that sometimes your best idea isn't good enough at that moment.

Looking back at your career journey, is there a piece of advice you wish you had known when you first started out in the startup world?

A good leader or manager can be immeasurable. But when you find one, try and learn all that you can. Very few people are good leaders or good managers, and even fewer managers or leaders will actually have the hard conversations with you for the right reasons.

Don't let another's surface level opinion of you occupy any more space in your head than it needs too. Take the advice however it comes, try and contextualise it and move on. And in the same vein, a good leader or manager can be immeasurable. If you join a business and you gel with someone senior other than your direct report, make a point of interacting with them, you'll always learn something, maybe even how to make an omelette on a sandwich press.  

From the Startup Life team

And that's a wrap! We hope you've enjoyed this edition as much as we loved putting it together. Stay curious, keep learning, and above all, enjoy the rollercoaster ride that is Startup Life. Catch you in the next one! 👋 Not subscribed yet? Do it here and don't miss out! Subscribe Now.

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