'The life lessons that help my bitcoin startup thrive'
My First Boss: The people who helped shape business leaders
Danny Scott is co-founder of CoinCorner, one of the only bitcoin (BTC-USD) exchanges based in the UK and situated on the Isle of Man. Today, CoinCorner has around 400,000 customers providing brokerage and custody services.
I was once a lifeguard at a swimming pool near Blackpool, with one of the roles involving cleaning the toilets and changing rooms. On one of my first days, my boss Steve turned round and told me that he would never ask me to do something that he hadn’t done himself.
He had done it since he first started and it stuck by me ever since, over 20 years later. Today, I would never ask one of my employees to do something that I wouldn’t have done myself and wouldn’t willingly do.
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I learned a lot about responsibility and had to jump in and pull people out if they were struggling. I did have one scary moment when a disability class came in for a session and we had to be aware and conscious of the dangers of swimming.
They had a supervisor and he told me he was going to the changing room to quickly fetch a towel and asked me to oversee one of the pupils who had epilepsy. Unfortunately the individual collapsed at the side of the pool and I had to make sure they were comfortable; there was nothing we could do until they came around from the epilepsy fit.
It was a scary moment for a 17-year-old and it underlined the responsibility we had in as much that we had people's lives in our hands in some respect.
I ended up in my part-time lifeguard job for 18 months before starting a software developer role. Steve said he would welcome me back if my new job didn’t work out.
There were positive sides where I was pulled into more influential meetings where my boss tried to show me the bigger picture in the company.
I also had negative experiences with a direct boss who effectively sacked the whole team. It was a massive hit as I tried to understand what I had done wrong. You end up blaming yourself. I learned over the years that it was just business and he didn’t need to do it that way.
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Coming into CoinCorner, I set out with the mantra of never doing it this way, we would never let people go on a whim if it came down to it and would be as transparent as possible.
And so I’ve learned respect in being a lifeguard, no matter the task, and being transparent in business as much as possible. The third lesson, with a different boss, was that I was promised a bonus at the start of the year when joining the company.
Naively, I didn’t get it in writing and the boss dismissed it when I approached him at the year end. I left straight away and it was a realisation at CoinCorner that whatever we told the team, we followed through with it and that we are a trustworthy company.
When you are a small start-up everyone is doing everything and it is finding that balance of respect with the whole team to drive the business to a high level.
What we’ve found over the years is having a focus on bitcoin has been our success 10 years later where many others have fallen by the wayside. We have a longevity mindset and we don’t force anything short term.
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As an example, Bitnet, a bitcoin wallet startup, raised over $14m in 2014 and tried to compete with us in some way, with their plan to get 100 big businesses online to accept bitcoin payment. We spoke with them closely but they went bankrupt as they couldn’t get any customers on board. It was just too early.
We know that regulatory framework won’t be introduced overnight and it is the same with big businesses accepting bitcoin.
They are long plays and so we look to see what needs there are now and what gaps we can fill, rather than trying to force anything in the short term.
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