Hello!
Startups and early-stage networks are exponential games. Turn up at the right time, do the right thing, and you may just get to be part of a rocket ship. In 2010, one of Uber’s earliest employees reached out after seeing a tweet from Travis Kalanick. A decade later, when it IPO’ed, Ryan Graves became a billionaire. But those transitions require people to grow with the ventures they spend time on.
There are no playbooks for it. This is why learning from people who have ‘been there, done that’ is a hack—a cheat code of sorts that lets you take non-linear bets on rocket ships.
Our guest today explains what it takes to rapidly evolve alongside one of the fastest-growing (and possibly controversial) networks – Polygon. Sanket Shah joined Polygon as an intern in 2018, when it was a fledgling startup. He is currently their Head of Strategy. That transition did not happen overnight.
He has donned hats ranging from marketing to BD to strategy. He played a crucial role in bringing together Hermez Network, Miden, and Mir Protocol, working on ZK tech to help solidify Polygon’s positioning as the trust layer for the internet.
But how close are they to that vision? How do you map out strategic acquisitions and structure deals when a network is rapidly growing? What even is a trust layer or ZK-EVM? Sanket Shah joins us to explain all this and more. The podcast episode has two parallel stories playing out. One of Sanket Shah’s personal growth as somebody who was early to a network. And the other, of Polygon over the years. When you work at fast-moving organisations, a lot about growth involves rising up to what the organisation needs.
Sanket shares nuggets of wisdom to help step into those shoes as somebody who has done it. Tune in to the episode using the links below.
Signing out,
Saurabh Deshpande
Sanket Shah from Polygon