Sean O’Connor

2021

January 30, 2022

It sure does seem like the velocity of change in the world is increasing. Perhaps this is partially due to crossing into my 30s and my changing view of the world. But it seems far more likely that we are at several major inflection points in the world. Some of the major ones I am tracking are:

  • Climate Change: This last year showed us just how critical climate change is. As our climate’s cancer rapidly advances, we are starting to see more wildfires, droughts, intense storms, and bizarre weather patterns.
  • Blockchain and Web3: The world has never been more networked than it is today (thanks to the web and mobile boom). And now crypto-based systems are quickly spreading across the globe at a pace that makes the internet’s growth look sluggish.

And, of course, Covid-19. Like seemingly all of the world, I joined the #COVIDclub around the holidays this year. Luckily it was a mild case — but still enough to delay getting this yearly reflection out by a few weeks.

Community

Moving to a new city in the middle of a global pandemic turned out to be a great decision. A year and a half into Colorado, and it really feels like home. Moving across the country, dealing with a global pandemic, and more than doubling the size of our team at work has given me a lot of perspective about what community means.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have found some incredible friends and thought partners around the world. And the internet makes it so easy to stay in touch.

But luckily vaccines started rolling in the spring, and we were able to get out into the meat space and meet people in real life again. This led to a lot of great dinners — reconnecting with the Sandbox network and meeting some new friends across Colorado. Our friends Jamie and Brandon even organized an incredible multi-day retreat in the woods. Unplugging for three days without screens was really the reset I needed after the past few years of mostly engaging with the world behind a keyboard.

And vaccines also meant that Denver was able to throw a Pride this year. And it was a blast. The LGBTQ+ community in Denver has been incredibly warm and welcoming — and we have made some really great friends in this city.

Crypto

I’ve been working in Web3 since late 2016. In that time this industry has gone from speculative white paper boom through crypto winter, into DeFi Summer and NFT Summer. It feels like we have been following Gartner’s hype cycle pretty closely:

There was a ton of speculation in 2016 and 2017 — as new protocols raised hundreds of millions of dollars in ICOs. But then, crypto winter hit and we spent most of 2018 and 2019 in the trough of disillusionment — building away and trying to realize the vision that all of those white papers set out. By 2020 we were starting to see real use cases come online — and DeFi summer led to over $20B locked in DeFi protocol. 2021 saw NFT summer — and the first real mainstreaming of blockchain technology to the masses. We ended the year with nearly $100B locked into DeFi and applications being developed by many of the fortune 100. I view DeFi and NFT summers as putting this industry firmly in the slope of enlightenment.

Web3 is growing at an exponential pace. User adoption is growing at 113% per year and the rate of developers coming into the space is growing at 15% per month.

And in spite of all of this growth, it feels like we are still in the early days for this tech revolution.

The pace of innovation is impossible to keep up with — even for someone working full time in the space. And we are quite a ways off from realizing the promise of this technology. Today financial intermediaries take about 9% of GDP — and decentralized technologies have the ability to drive that percent towards 0. Imagine what the world could do with the trillions of dollars that would be freed up. Suddenly the most pressing problems of our generation — climate change, education, poverty — seem addressable.

Work

I’ve had a blast working with Blocknative this past year. The tl;dr is that we build core infrastructure for transaction orchestration on public blockchain networks. Simplifying that a step further — we are trusted by some of the largest DeFi protocols, NFT platforms, and blockchain foundations to help ensure users can get connected and transact with confidence in crypto.

Over the past year, we grew our team to 30, closed our Series A, and shipped a myriad of new products with new partners. All in all, it was a pretty knockout year of growth for the team.

During this year I also formalized my role as Chief of Staff (CoS). The title originally comes from politics but has become commonplace in tech startups over the last decade. And it tends to mean something different at every company. In general, in tech, the CoS role is focused on 1. organizing the leadership team, 2. taking on special projects as the company scales — often paving the way to hire into various roles, and 3. the operating rhythm and cadence of the business. The role can and should vary depending upon who the CoS reports to — being a CoS for a CTO or CMO is very different than working for a CEO.

The role at Blocknative has been a lot of fun — and I am incredibly fortunate to learn Matt and help act as the connective tissue to the business.

I am also quite grateful for the On Deck community. Last year I joined their Chief of Staff fellowship. Every month there are modules on topics ranging from fundraising to OKRs to parental leave. And whenever I have faced a challenge at work that I am unsure of, I have a community of like-minded individuals I can tap for resources, advice, or best practices from their own experience.

This is the first time I’ve been part of an online professional community like this since the altMBA, and it feels great to be surrounded by driven people doing great work.

Writing, Speaking, and Teaching

Most of my writing energy this past year was internally focused at Blocknative. But I was able to ship some personal writing and podcast appearances. In no particular order:

Learning and Personal Growth

I took a different approach than years past and did not track a single book I read. And frankly, I fell out of the habit for a good chunk of the spring and summer. I just stopped reading. And then when I did start reading again — it was almost entirely pulp fiction. It felt great to just read for fun — without any goal for learning or pressure to hit a set number of books. And I found after a few months of reading for fun I started digging into deeper topics. All in all, the books that stand out to me from the past year are:

And I was really fortunate to join a community of peer learning — through the On Deck Chief of Staff fellowship. Not only has it helped me level up in my role — learning new frameworks, best practices, etc. — but it has given me a community of great people who are on similar journies to give and receive feedback from. Honestly, this has been a highlight of the past year and I’m grateful for the opportunity to engage with such a great group of people.

This year also provided a few opportunities for me to expand my domain knowledge and explore new areas of investing.

Real Estate: We went from shorting the property market (renting) to being long. In April we purchased a duplex and in the process, I learned a great deal from our realtor about the housing market. We were fortunate to be able to rent to a friend — which made the process easier for management. My big takeaways from property management are 1) real estate only makes sense on a multi-decade time horizon, 2) good contractors are worth their weight in gold, and 3) a creative offer can be the difference between getting a property and losing an offer. It took us 13 offers to get under contract, and the only reason we landed the property we did was because of the way our agent wrote the contract — she pulled some non-obvious levers to give us leverage in the deal.

Angel Investing: I got the opportunity to invest in two friends’ startups — Asaak and Maven — and one rolling fund. We all know that most startups fail. But these investments give me an opportunity to back founders I truly believe in and gain access to the inner workings of their companies. I look forward to learning from their startup journeys. And writing two small checks gives me a front-row seat to watching two great founders operate in very different markets.

I don’t know about you, but I was feeling pretty burnt out by the end of the year.

And I know I am not alone in this. Many friends — especially those with young kids — talk to me about being feeling burnt out over this past year. Something about a multi-year global pandemic really just weighs you down. Weird. But I have a feeling I am not alone on this one. I found TalkSpace to be helpful — but was ironically getting frustrated with engaging on yet another app. Journaling is another effective tool — but I have found myself to be inconsistent in writing my morning pages. The last thing that made a positive impact on my mental state was MindBloom. Each session was sort of like combining a quarter’s worth of therapy into an afternoon. I found it to be a really approachable way to explore the root cause of my anxiety.

Adventure, Fitness, and Health

I can sum up my overall approach to health and wellness in a few bullets:

  • I want to ski and hike into my 80s
  • Time in nature recharges me
  • Keep myself and others safe
  • Look good naked

Last year I got out for 24 days of snowboarding, enjoyed multiple days of hiking, and got back to the gym in a serious way. In January I started working with a diet coach — who helped me get consistent with eating enough to start gaining muscle again. Between tracking my food intake every day to ensure I was eating enough and consistently lifting, I put on just over 10lbs of muscle and cut some body fat. I was able to get back to my pre-COV strength — and broke my past personal records on bench press, deadlift, and squat. It is really fulfilling seeing this strength translate into outdoor sports and crossfit.

Vaccines in the spring meant that the world started opening again to travel. My family came to Colorado and we spent a week in the mountains over the summer — hiking, exploring hot springs, and spending relaxed quality time together. Last year was also filled with celebrating several weddings (and I officiated another one). We had some close friends and their kids visit Colorado — and I cannot tell you how much fun it was taking a 5-year-old to WaterWorld for a day of rides and adventure. I also met up with my colleagues for the first time in over two years during Blocknativepalooza in Palm Springs. And we had a lovely weekend back in NYC — seeing Yayoi Kasuma’s show at the botanical gardens, spending time with my grandparents, and more. It felt good to get back into the world.

And concerts… Can we just talk about live music for a minute and how much fun it is. This year we were able to make up for some of the lost time and catch quite a few concerts. The highlights were Orville Peck (our first Red Rocks show), Lane8, and Porter Robinson. Going to a concert helped to make the world feel somewhat normal again. And I did not realize what a needed release valve concerts are for me.

That’s about all I have in reflecting on the last year. I’m looking forward to making a dent in the universe this year.

-Sean

p.s. how has your year been? shoot me an email, it would be great to catch up.

p.p.s. Check out past years in review: 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2020

© 2020 Sean O’Connor. All rights reserved.