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Working in crypto is about belief and passion, with Artem Bondarenko, CTO at De.Fi
61 Plays8 months ago
In this episode, I spoke with Artem Bondarenko, CTO at De.Fi.
We had an in-depth conversation about Artem’s career, what a CTO is and does, why web3 and blockchain, and the problems that De.FI is solving, such as helping people to understand whether they’re investing in scam projects and improving security in Web3.
We spoke about the reality of working in a Web3 startup, how continuous education is important, what you need to be aware of about the industry, where you should go to start to learn about the industry, the pressures of building when you have a community following the project and skills to learn to build a successful career in Web3. The key attributes of being a good CTO in Web3, challenges when stepping into engineering leadership, advice for first-time leaders and how to help your team members hit their own goals.
This episode has something for everyone!
Behind The Blockchain is a series of conversations with leaders who have built successful products, teams and careers in Web3. You will get a chance to discover how successful individuals were able to accomplish their career objectives, the skills they have acquired, the mistakes and difficulties they encountered, and the advice they can offer you to help you reach your career aspirations.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Artem's Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Behind the Blockchain podcast. My guest today is Artem Bondarenko, CTO at D.Fi. Artem, welcome to the show. How are you? Hey, Jack. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Thanks. Really interesting to take part in your interview, in your podcast. Thanks.
00:00:24
Speaker
Great stuff, yeah. Thanks for being here. So Artem, for people who don't know who you are, could you introduce yourself, please? Sure, sure. My name is Artem. So I started as a software engineer maybe more than 10 years ago.
00:00:42
Speaker
Yeah. So I've always been keen on the blockchain. I was always interested in that. And yeah, now I'm, as you mentioned before, I'm a CTO at G.Fi. I joined the team more than two years ago. Yeah. And now we are working on the really cool stuff in the blockchain sphere.
00:01:07
Speaker
Great. Well, I'll probably ask you to go into D.Fi in a little bit more detail in a few minutes. But if you could take us back to the start of your career, can you talk us through your career journey so far?
00:01:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So I started as a software engineer, like software developer, like in 2030 or 2012, I think, yeah. After some time, I became a technical lead. I was a technical lead in different companies. Some of them were product companies. Some of them were like, like,
00:01:52
Speaker
like out stuff. So I was working on Web 2, Web 3, also AI stuff when it was not so popular, maybe in 2018, I think. Yeah, so I was able to see this, how this particular technology started to be popular.
00:02:18
Speaker
I also, regarding the blockchain, my first touch was in 2014, I think, when I started mining some of the coins, so it was really interesting and unusual at the time.
00:02:34
Speaker
Maybe in 2017 I realized that it would be really popular after some time. I think I returned back to crypto in 2017-18 and started from that time I've been always interested in this stuff.
00:02:53
Speaker
Even if I did not work in this area, at that time I was working as a software engineer, technical lead on different Web2 projects and mobile also. But yeah, I was always interested in crypto.
00:03:11
Speaker
Starting from maybe 2020 or 2021, I started investigating more deeply the technical part. I think it was the first thing that
00:03:27
Speaker
was interested to me is Solana, Solana blockchain, how the smart contracts work and also EVM, EVM chains, Ethereum community and all this stuff. Yeah. And in 2022, I joined the G.5 team that I was really happy about. Yeah. And now we are working on this really stuff.
00:03:49
Speaker
Sounds great.
Artem's Journey to CTO
00:03:50
Speaker
Sounds good. So when you were younger, did you always have an interest in technology and in software engineering? Was that always the path for you?
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think even from my childhood, I felt that technology is my passion, not only IT, but only some mechanical stuff, also some welding, also things related to the automotive. So I think
00:04:23
Speaker
I truly believe that people who are keen on technology, they like everything which is related to technology. They were born as people who like everything that works with electricity, with some programming, all this stuff.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, so it was like I think back on the day in from my childhood. I think even at that time I realized that I would be really close to laptops and to the internet.
00:05:04
Speaker
That sounds cool. Were you one of those people that used to take everything apart and then try and pull it back together and see how it worked? Yeah, exactly. If you see a toy, you're always interested in what is inside and how it works.
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So you touched on it there that you first took an interest in Web3 and crypto back in 2014 from mining. But why did you get drawn to it? Was there a particular thing that kind of sparked off an interest for you? Why Web3? Why blockchain?
00:05:40
Speaker
Maybe because at the time it was something new, right? So it was not really clear for me how it works, right? This was something new and at the time I started believing that this potentially would be the, you know, something cutting edges, you know, like something really hyped, something really interesting.
00:06:06
Speaker
and something that might be the leading technology or something like that. I think at the beginning I would say that it's because there are a lot of questions there, not clear questions. Because people usually are driven by questions and interests.
00:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. Do you remember what you were mining back then? Was it Bitcoin? Dodgecoin, I think. Dodgecoin. Okay.
00:06:39
Speaker
Nice, nice. Early adopter of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, as more or most people did at the time, we just mining and selling, maybe buy some some other coins. I don't know. I still remember. But yeah, it was like it most it was like not about it was not about money. It was about knowledge. It was about the community, you know, and things that are not really that are really interested. Interested, interesting for you. Yeah.
00:07:10
Speaker
Definitely. So when you first started out in your career, did you always know that you wanted to be a CTO? Was that the end goal for you? When I started, I'm not sure if I realized what CTO does, but I truly understood that I would work with people.
00:07:38
Speaker
that at that time I realized that I wouldn't be just a regular developer because I like working with people, I like communication, I like building the environment, the community. There are two types of people who
00:07:56
Speaker
who like just sitting and solving some really interesting tasks, coding and deep brain work. And the second part, like me, the people who like combining some tasks with communication with people.
00:08:20
Speaker
So I see my work, my life, only related to communication with people and technology. So it's like a balance.
00:08:33
Speaker
And you mentioned there that when you started your career, you may not have even really known what a CTO does at the time. Absolutely. So for people listening, people watching, could you talk us through a day in the life of the CTO at d.fi? What does that look like?
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah, we have really interesting days. Yeah, I think mostly what we do, we are looking for the best answers, best solutions for challenges, I would say.
00:09:12
Speaker
if you're talking about the technical part. If you're talking about non-technical part, it's about people. It's hiring people. It's also to keep things going on. I like the term that the CTO and also managers, they need for some companies
00:09:39
Speaker
for providing the stable environment, the stable technical environment, stable also mental environment of your team, right? And also for sure we are looking for the next steps, right? So as a CTO, you should be aware that some technology or some solution that you suggested or somebody from the team suggested will be
00:10:06
Speaker
reliable enough and will be for long term, I would say.
Introduction to D.Fi and Its Tools
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah, like there are 40 in terms of CTOs work, it's like tools, technologies, team, and I forgot about the last one, sorry. Yeah, so it's like, it's about the combination of the technology and the team.
00:10:32
Speaker
I like that. Do you tend to spend most of your time with the team these days? Would you still get to get stuck into the technology side as well?
00:10:41
Speaker
It's a really hard question because you can't avoid both sides. You have to have a balance between that. I like coding for sure, but I also like organizing this stuff. I think the CTO should cover both sides, but only in this case when some other side doesn't block everything.
00:11:09
Speaker
So the first rule for a CTO is just not to block other people. If you feel that you want to do some coding, to cut some piece of application, you should be aware that it's not a blocker for others.
00:11:25
Speaker
usually you are involved in different calls and different things related to planning, to discussion, new features, discussing some technical challenges with the product team, with the decision makers. Sometimes you just write in the code and you realize that you need to jump on another call and it can take
00:11:51
Speaker
one hour, two hours, so it's really hard. But yeah, there are some patterns and rules that you should get and you should proceed with, for sure. Yeah, I like that. I like that. So could you introduce us to D.Fi in a little bit more detail, please?
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah, regarding D.Fi, so we are working on the huge platform for what I like to say is for people who are keen on crypto, who has some investments on wallets, who do DeFi on regular stuff, but also for people who just have some tokens on their wallet and they want to learn about DeFi, they learn about crypto more,
Security and Community Education in Crypto
00:12:34
Speaker
right? Because we have different sub products in terms of DeFi, D.Fi.
00:12:39
Speaker
We have a portfolio tracker, we have a crypto antivirus, the thing that we are really proud of because it's like I would say we are the first crypto tool that covers a lot of analyzers. So what we do, we just
00:12:58
Speaker
We analyze different metrics. We analyze code of the smart contracts. We analyze the parameters. We also analyze the current situation on the access, for example, for some particular token. And we show this information to the people. Also, we have AI attached to this process, because we have some type of score, which is based on AI tools.
00:13:25
Speaker
Besides that, also we are working on our accelerator, so it's like a launchpad where our other projects can proceed with ICO on our platform.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, also, what else? Yeah, we also have a really great team who is watching for, you know, some different racks on different blockchains, different scams, right? So we are always trying to keep in touch with our community. So we have people who are tracking that, adding to our internal database, analysis that and also post this on the social media.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah. Sounds great. Sounds like you guys are, yeah, feeling a really big need there for people to really understand whether they're investing in scam projects. Yeah. Yeah. I took part in multiple Twitter spaces with people from different projects.
00:14:27
Speaker
And we are all agreed on the fact that now there is a lack of security on the market. There are a lot of people who just jump in into some coins, into some narrative, but they don't understand and they don't know where to look at.
00:14:45
Speaker
So this is the main priority, I think, the security, the education of the community, right? So people should know that it's not good, you know, to store some token, save token on some hot wallets or on taxes, right?
00:15:04
Speaker
I think the first narrative for crypto was do your own research, maybe back on the day, but still it's also actual. But now there are a lot of things that it's really hard to track. And if you do your own research, you need to spend days to be fully clear about something.
00:15:30
Speaker
But that's why we have this tool, so that it can show you everything in one second. Not a lot of information, at least. That's cool. And is it super, super accurate?
00:15:44
Speaker
I think yes, yes, we have, we, you know, it's really hard to say super not super, but yeah, I think it's 100%, it's accurate enough, you know, for people who want to make a decision to buy or not to buy some token because we, I mean, in terms, not in terms of price, yeah, for sure we track prices, but in terms of security, I would say.
00:16:11
Speaker
We have a set of different services that tracks, for example, liquidity, right? And if you want to buy something, you need to check liquidity first, I think, one of the initial markers, right? Or owners of the smart contracts or deployers, what is the behind of this wallet, right? Something like that.
00:16:38
Speaker
Sounds great. I'm going to check this out myself.
Navigating the Web3 Landscape
00:16:43
Speaker
I will. In the past, I've definitely been guilty of just jumping straight into tokens that I like the look of and stuff, definitely. Probably now I obviously do a lot more research, but I think when I first started, three years ago,
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah, I was probably just diving in to anything at the time without really doing much research around it. So I can imagine, yeah, there'd be a lot of people in the same boat or similar boat if they're not well versed about the space and stuff. So what's it?
00:17:18
Speaker
I really like them building or working in a Web3 and blockchain startup. Obviously from the outside, it can look quite glamorous, right? To work in a new startup that's on the ground. I would imagine the reality, sometimes it probably is really good fun. Other times it's probably really, really hard work. What's the reality of when you're actually on the ground in an early stage startup?
00:17:41
Speaker
The reality is that the Web3 area is really flexible, on the other hand, but also things change really fast.
00:17:57
Speaker
So everything can change in one day, right? And you have to be ready for that. So you have to be ready to react instantly. And also you have to be ready to continuously educate yourself, right?
00:18:12
Speaker
because every day we see new contracts, we see new patterns. Still, once a week, our team, maybe not once a week, but maybe once a month, our team and the community as well also see different types of vulnerabilities.
00:18:36
Speaker
The things will be worse, I think, even in the scope of security. So you need to be ready for that. You need to accommodate yourself for that. So this is, I think, the main difference between Web 2 and Web 3 world. So it's not so calm, I would say, comparing with the others areas.
00:19:00
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, I was going to ask you if there's anything that you'd really like people to understand about the industry before becoming a part of it. Is it the security aspect of it and the fact that everything new is popping up all the time? Is there anything else that you think people should be?
00:19:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think security is not the easiest thing. So I wouldn't suggest to start with it. I think maybe basics. Even one time, one hour video from YouTube would be helpful just to understand basic of the security. But what I would like to suggest to start with is that
00:19:40
Speaker
Maybe the basics of the blockchains, how the liquidity works, what is the difference between DEXs and DEXs, and then dive deeper and deeper.
00:19:56
Speaker
Also, it makes sense to start with the consensus mechanisms, different consensus mechanisms. This is about the hard skills. Regarding the soft skills, I also would suggest people to...
00:20:11
Speaker
to be open to communications, to be open to new communities. Because if you don't have enough information about some project, what people usually do in crypto, they go to Discord, for example, and write just questions. And you should not be afraid of the challenges like this. So you have to be open for communication.
Community Influence in Blockchain
00:20:40
Speaker
I like that. I think that's definitely one of the ways that Web3 differs a lot to Web2 is that there are such open communities for every project. If you want to go and find out a load of information about the project, about technologies, about the team, about the problem that's being solved, there's some really helpful communities out there that can support that.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Also, there are a lot of conferences. Yeah, even like blockchain weeks. Right. So there are a lot of space spaces for for communication. A lot of communities.
00:21:17
Speaker
Definitely. Does it make it harder to build as an engineer and as a CTO? Does it make it harder to build when you've got the community there? Do you feel more pressure because there's the community looking at everything that you do and that you're building as a team?
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think at that level it's not It's more not the pressure. It's I think it's more a pressure of responsibility for your side, you know From inside, you know because you understand that now the the price of failure is much higher, right? so Yeah for sure that that's you know, I think every every manager
00:21:57
Speaker
Even from V3, especially when he becomes a CTO, he should be ready and understand the price for every failure.
00:22:13
Speaker
So it's like a professional skill I would say even. At some point when your site, when your project, where your community reaches some number of participants, number of users, number of teammates, you have some sort of responsibility for that. So it's like
00:22:36
Speaker
I think for sure it's a pressure, but it's like a guilty pressure.
Skills for Success in Web3 Careers
00:22:42
Speaker
I like that. Again, I think that's something that people probably need to be aware of before they get into the space as well, is to really understand that there is the community there, and sometimes there are
00:22:57
Speaker
There are some really good and really helpful communities and there are some communities that do end up putting quite a lot of pressure on the teams if they haven't seen updates for a couple of weeks or whatever it might be. You know, everyone's looking for a lot of the community or parts of the community will be looking for, you know, when's the token price gonna increase and this kind of stuff, right? So it's, yeah, I guess a bit of added pressure there. If you're not used to it and you're coming into the space, you've been in for a while, so you kind of understand it, I guess.
00:23:25
Speaker
someone new to the space, it's probably worth getting your head around the community aspects of it and how it works and this kind of stuff. Yeah, absolutely. The community usually helps you to get more information. That's why you have to be open to new information for sure. One of the main criteria that we look at during the hiring
00:23:55
Speaker
process, for example, inside of the team, right? So we will look, we just check if the developer, if the, I don't know, any team member is open to learn something new, right? So self-educate, right? If this person is reliable enough in scope of some responsibilities, right?
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. So making sure that everyone's got that growth mindset to be able to always learn new things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So are there any other attributes other than a growth mindset, any other attributes that that you think make a that allow people to build a successful career in web three?
00:24:50
Speaker
I think what is really important is not to be in rush. At first look, you can say that everything changes really fast and you need to make decisions really fast. But no, I think in the long term,
00:25:11
Speaker
You shouldn't be in the rush with learning, with making decisions, because it's a really deep area. There are some books for sure, but there are so many different things there, so you have to be able to catch some information from different sources, part of information. By the way, our team also
00:25:38
Speaker
has written a book about DeFi so I think it can be found on the site so yeah about the basics of DeFi and how how the liquidity works and all this stuff yeah what else yeah and hard skills I think we are you know we are talking about soft skills self-management all the stuff but
00:26:00
Speaker
We shouldn't forget about hard skills. Coding, we are talking about developers, engineers, so they also have to use their imagination combining with coding. How to be successful in crypto as a project, right?
00:26:22
Speaker
You have to have an idea, something new ideally, right? Something new or maybe already exist idea but with some extra features that came from your imagination or imagination of the team members, right? And on the other hand, you have to have resources or you have to know how to make it done.
Specialization vs. Broad Focus in Web3
00:26:42
Speaker
So regarding resources, I think for now, if we return back to five years ago, that was not so much. There were not so much, I think, sources, not so much courses. For example, about Solidity, about Rust.
00:27:04
Speaker
there are especially in crypto area right but now it's really i think it's really easy to find a lot of courses books youtube you you don't even need to pay for that you just open youtube and type solidity coding or something like that so there are a lot of free courses as well so yeah i think this is also really important really important to
00:27:32
Speaker
to work on your hard skills. For sure. And just on the hard skills side of things, if someone is stepping into Web3 for the first time, they're a software engineer, they're stepping into Web3 for the first time, do you think that someone should try to pick an ecosystem and
00:27:58
Speaker
3D develop their skills within that area. For example, stay within the Ethereum or the EVM space and go really in on Solidity, for example, or go down Solano or Polkadot Root or whatever it might be, obviously depending on their interests and things like this, but do you think you can
00:28:15
Speaker
pick an ecosystem and go really deep in that? Or do you think you can be quite broad and look at Solidity Rust and just kind of learn everything you possibly can? What do you think is the best? I think people should start with broad vision. So what they need to do, I think they just need to prepare a list. They can prepare a list and look at the different projects without any relation to the stack, right? Because
00:28:42
Speaker
Some people like NFTs, like this idea, and then they should look at the projects that are mostly involved in NFT stuff, in NFT project creations. For example, NFTs are really popular on Solana. If you're talking about DeFi, there are a lot of tons of projects mostly on Eevee. I think
00:29:09
Speaker
I truly believe that people are driven by ideas, by passion, and it's really hard to block yourself, to restrict yourself only by the technology, but not by
00:29:25
Speaker
your ideas, well, something that you like. For example, you like racing, right? And you spotted some game, I don't know, web tree game about racing, or I don't know, maybe some NFT collection about that. So, and you, once you find something interesting for you, then you can just develop something on top of that, right?
00:29:46
Speaker
So I would suggest not to stick to some technology, but stick to something that's interesting for you. And then maybe you can align something based on the skills. But if you are experienced enough in development,
00:30:07
Speaker
I think it shouldn't be a problem to jump between EVM or non-EVM chains like Rust, Solidity, because if you are in it, it's not a big deal for you to learn new language. The basic concepts of blockchains are more or less
00:30:30
Speaker
the same like in general but yeah there are some aspects of consensus mechanism but yeah also it's all about self-education but the general idea is just to not to stick to technologies but looking towards towards your ideas and something
Attributes of a Successful CTO
00:30:48
Speaker
that you like okay yeah i think you're i think you're definitely right on on that i couldn't agree more
00:30:57
Speaker
I was speaking with Anthony Rose on the podcast a few months back. He's the VP of Technology at MatterLabs.
00:31:07
Speaker
he was first getting into the Web3 space. That's exactly what he did. He thought, right, what problem do I really want to have a go at solving? What problem do I love? And he thought zero knowledge tech is where I want to be. And then that's how we ended up landing the job at MatterLabs by saying, look, I'm so passionate about this, about this idea, about this technology. I really want to solve it.
00:31:29
Speaker
And then, yeah, they gave them a shot to join the team. So, yeah, I couldn't agree more that finding what you're really interested in is definitely key. Because I think founders and people hiring can see that, right? And I'm sure you as a person who is hiring, if you had someone who came to the interview super enthusiastic about the problems that you're solving,
00:31:51
Speaker
you're probably much more likely to hire the person thinking, actually, if they're this enthusiastic about it, they can probably learn the harder stuff. If they've got transferable skills, they can pick up a new language or they can pick up something else. As long as they've got a passion for it. So yeah, couldn't agree more. So do you, or is there any attributes that you think make a really successful CTO in Web3?
00:32:19
Speaker
in terms of attributes
00:32:25
Speaker
books, new podcasts, any sources of knowledge. Also, if you're talking about the character of some particular person, it's all about listening to people. If you want to be a successful manager, not only CTO, but any manager you have to be,
00:32:51
Speaker
listen to people from your team and also to hire and to invite reliable people into your team. So only those people who you trust.
00:33:16
Speaker
Not only for sure, but yeah, I think this is the goal of a good manager to trust the team and do not do any micromanagement. It doesn't make sense if you hire somebody as a developer, then you spend half a day calling by yourself.
00:33:42
Speaker
It's a team. I really like the concept that every team should have its own culture. And the type of the culture that I really like, it's like a baseball team, where the people are
00:33:57
Speaker
On their places, right? So you these guys responsible and all for for the infrastructure So yeah, you're a good guy. I if you need any help from my side Just being me we already aligned about some details. But yeah, I I I really know that you The you are educated enough, you know really well this area so yeah, I believe you I trust you and
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, so this is one of the top faders of different managers is to be afraid of smarter people in
Challenges in the Crypto Industry
00:34:34
Speaker
the team. So you can hire somebody as a technical lead, you can hire a developer who is
00:34:40
Speaker
who can be much smarter than you. But some people see a problem in that. But in my opinion, it's not a problem. It's a benefit. So having smart people, even smarter than you in the team, it's a really good benefit.
00:34:59
Speaker
because this is the team. You have to think not only as a single developer, it's like an entity. The team is an entity and it's a really good benefit for you and a really good achievement for you if you found somebody really smart and smarter than you. This is I think the main metric.
00:35:24
Speaker
Definitely. I think sometimes people's I guess the only thing that would stop stop you from hiring that type of person is if your own ego gets in the way, right? You kind of worried that that person is better than you and might show you up. Yeah, you have to let go, let go of all that. And think, you know what, if that person was want to be in a CTO position, then eventually they'll probably get to that gets that role, but they might not want to do the management and the
00:35:51
Speaker
the day-to-day running of the team stuff. They might just be super, super good at coding and wanting to stay super, super technical forever. Everyone's got their own path. I think being able to put the ego aside to hire amazing people into the team is definitely a skill. It's probably a quite difficult question to answer, but were there any challenges that surprised you when you stepped into engineering leadership or being a CTO?
00:36:22
Speaker
Interesting. I think to find enough time. It wasn't a surprise, but yeah, I think there's always not enough time. What else?
00:36:40
Speaker
Also, there was a challenge that it's not really easy to find a good professional people, right? So people who are really good engineers and maybe a lead, it's not so easy to find people like this. What else we can say?
00:37:07
Speaker
I would say every new day in crypto can be a surprise. Also, I think in general, in crypto, not even for managers, but also for developers, for any people who are here, so that everything changes really fast.
00:37:38
Speaker
It's really hard to predict something, right? You can predict some narratives, you can predict some maybe future long-term, right? But you have to... The challenge is to match your beliefs, to match your commitments in terms of some product with future uncertainty, right?
00:38:05
Speaker
So then you have to be really believer. Yeah, this is I think the main challenge that we just came up with. Believing in something, crypto is really important, right? So it doesn't work. So crypto is not for people who are looking for some part-time involvement or
00:38:29
Speaker
who not only for money, it's about beliefs, about your passion, and about something that you are really interested in.
00:38:42
Speaker
For sure. And it will consume your life as well over time. It's all you end up reading about, listening to, watching, speaking about. It consumes you really, doesn't it? You have to give something back in exchange of this time that you spent on the script, all right?
Advice for New Leaders in Web3
00:39:03
Speaker
Definitely. So could you share some advice for people who are maybe stepping into leadership for the first time?
00:39:12
Speaker
Yeah, so I think if you're talking about the leadership, I would suggest people to be open to new ideas, to be open to other people and to be flexible enough if you're talking about in general, right? Because flexibility is really important.
00:39:38
Speaker
and listening to people also. Also other ideas because you can have different people in your team who have different ideas, different thoughts about some project, some solution, right? So you have to be able to listen and not to be toxic and avoid dictatorship.
00:40:06
Speaker
And obviously a big part of being a leader is I guess to remove blockers for the team to be able to succeed and to be able to hit their own goals and to be able to deliver their work to a level that they really want. Do you have any advice on how you can help teams succeed or help people in your teams hit their own goals, whether it be career aspirations or whatever it might be? Do you have any tips on how you help your team members do that?
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, so always help them. One of the tips is just the rule that you need to help your people, not to restrict them, not to block, right? Also, be really careful if you're talking about some teams and running, for example, development process.
00:41:00
Speaker
in teams right you have to be really careful about the security about about some you know details because there are a lot of hacks right now a lot of keys compromised so on one hand you have to you have to help people not to block them but on the other hand you have to really
00:41:22
Speaker
careful and cautious and you should track these details that sometimes they're not important they look like not really important things but in general security
00:41:38
Speaker
And as a result, you have to be sure that your teammates, your team is educated enough about even some basic stuff, right? About blockchain, about the security in the blockchain, because this is your core, right? And core of your team should
00:42:02
Speaker
should be safe enough. So the goal of the CTO is to help, to make themselves safe and satisfied. And this is the good part and not the bad, but it's a big different part.
00:42:21
Speaker
to track the way how your project is going on in the technical side. So you have to be sure that what you're working on right now will be working in one year, five years, in one day, for example. For sure. Sounds good. Good advice.
00:42:50
Speaker
And knowing what you know now, throughout your whole career, you've obviously learned a lot, whether it be harder skills, softer skills, leadership. If you could go back to the start of your career and give your younger self a piece of advice, what would you say?
00:43:10
Speaker
Uh, what would they say? It's really, really tough question. Yeah. I think, uh, one of my friends asked him something like this, but, uh, give me three words that you would, uh, write, uh, for yourself. Uh, you know, for five years ago or 10 years ago, watch for Bitcoin, right?
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's a joke. I think, yeah, what I would suggest maybe to start reading, watching videos earlier, something like that, because start educating yourself early. Because, you know, when you know something, right, when you start working on something,
00:43:55
Speaker
you realize, well, it would be much better if I had started reading about that five years ago or two years ago. I think it's applicable for most people.
00:44:13
Speaker
we are always thinking that reading or knowing about something much earlier would be really a great benefit. So I think something like that. I see a lot of smart people
00:44:33
Speaker
In crypto who just just who are still in the university studying the university so they who what 20 21 Years old rights and they really they're good guys. They know a lot in their young years, so I think this is the good example and
00:44:54
Speaker
Especially for those who were entering in the space Not in 20s,
Advice for Aspiring CTOs
00:45:01
Speaker
right? It's not it's it's not a problem. I think There are a lot of examples not in only in crypto but in big tech right when people after 40s they became a CTO they became like founders of some they started a company successful company, but yeah, I think
00:45:22
Speaker
As earlier, you start educating yourself, reading, watching podcasts, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos. So yeah, it's as much beneficial for you. I like that. Pretty good advice. So Artem, you've shared some great tips and some great insight over the last 45 minutes.
00:45:51
Speaker
To finish up, what advice could you give to people who are looking to follow in your footsteps? A CTO role within a cool Web3 blockchain startup is the career aspiration of a lot of people. They look at CTO and think, I'd love to be there. Do you have any advice for someone if you could summarize everything that you shared today? Any advice if someone's looking to follow in your footsteps and reach that point in their career?
00:46:21
Speaker
I think you just create a plan, make a plan, like for 2, 5, 10 years, right? Just make it like a list of bullet points, what you need to reach, what technology you need to know, to learn, right? What, I don't know,
00:46:45
Speaker
how many hours or days in a week you need to spend to reach this sub-goal, this item, for example, to learn Rust, to be a developer on Rust. How many hours, how many days?
00:47:02
Speaker
Yeah. And then just go step by step. And it's really important not to forget about hard and soft skills, because it's really the skill to balance is also a skill, right? So to know how to balance between hard work, like coding and making a self-representation, making some propositions.
00:47:31
Speaker
like making presentations. It's also a skill and really hard to balance. To make a plan based on your goals.
Final Remarks and Contact Information
00:47:45
Speaker
Also, if your final goal is to be a CTO, you have to understand what kind of CTO.
00:47:55
Speaker
It depends on the details. For example, if you want to be CTO in a small startup or you want to be CTO in Google, right? So there are totally different, you know, not skills, but yeah, also skills as well, I think, responsibilities, right?
00:48:14
Speaker
If you're talking about small startup, you need to code a lot, right? So you need to write code every day. And the CTO in the startup, it's mostly a really hard-skilled engineer. But if you're talking about the big enterprise company, the companies that are more than 1k people, it's about separate presentation.
00:48:41
Speaker
CTO in companies like this, they don't write code at all. So what they do, they just go between conferences and explain why the companies are cool, right?
00:48:56
Speaker
So yeah, it depends on the goals. Let's create bullet points. Make a plan. Make the final gore as much more clear as possible. Stick to this plan.
00:49:19
Speaker
Sounds great. Sounds great. Well, Artem, thank you very much for taking the time to have a conversation today. Yeah, I've learned a lot. Yeah, I'm looking forward to listening back to this and making a few notes and putting some advice into practice. So yeah, thank you very much for sharing.
00:49:40
Speaker
If anyone's listening to this and they would like to reach out to you if they have any extra questions or say if they're really passionate about the problems that you guys are solving at d.fi, if anyone wants to reach out, are you active on Twitter or LinkedIn or Farcaster now? Are you on there at all?
00:50:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's really easy to find us, so d.5. You can just type it in the browser or also just type d.5 in Twitter and you will find my account or the account of our company and feel free to reach us out. Sounds great. Sounds great. Well, welcome. Thanks again. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. See you. Bye bye. Take care.