Conrad Fireside Chat Overview

Quick and actionable mindset advice to founders

We co-hosted a day during the Solana Superteam UK Buildstation, a 2 week programme helping founders prepare for the Colosseum hackathon, helping founders with their GTM strategies and general business advice. We also had the delight of running a ‘fireside chat’, an interview, by the fire.

I, Alex, interviewed Conrad Young, Co-Founder of Paragon, a Web3 PR agency. Whilst he’s an expert in PR, I wanted to ask more personal questions, diving not into his expertise but into his founder journey. Conrad has been a successful digital asset service provider for many years now and I wanted to use this interview to get answers to questions that most founders don’t even know they have.

You can find the full interview here: https://x.com/SuperteamUK/status/2052410660315685352 but below are some of the more interesting questions and answers for founders.

What to do if you’re introverted

Alex: "How would you say a less animated, less degen, just kind of mundane founder should go about their personal branding?"

Conrad: "No one is truly mundane. If you're calm and introspective, there's a way to communicate that as trust, safety, and clarity, without coming across as boring."

It’s common to get incredibly bored when listening to some founders pitch their companies, and if I can get bored then so too will the investors, partners, and clients. Investors read confidence in the founder as a proxy for confidence in the company; a founder who can't articulate themselves makes their GTM and roadmap feel softer too. But there’s no need to be a degen. The industry has matured, and as the institutional crossover has grown; a quieter, more professional voice now carries weight it didn't five years ago.

If you have a quiet, introverted character, and would rather let the product do the talking, then work on coming across as calm and trustworthy rather than timid and unsure. It’s not a big shift, but one that must happen consciously nonetheless.

Growing through word of mouth

Alex: "How are you growing Paragon? What's your go-to-market?"

Conrad: "I've scratched my head so many times to find out, is there a way of systemising growing an agency? … It is, unfortunately, something to do with the slower network effect of reputation, good works and stability."

Conrad has tested the obvious flywheels: SEO, paid ads, etc., but whilst they can amplify reputation, the best way to grow is word of mouth - doing a job so good that your clients / users simply do the marketing for you.

Pivots in line with market

Alex: "Over the last four years as a founder, how have you pivoted in a changing market?"

Conrad: "Being a generalist is good as an individual professional, but it's not good as a company. If you try and do everything all at once, people just see you as a jack of all trades, master of none."

Paragon is a lot more focused service-wise than Conrad’s previous company, Athena, was. Doing multiple services, or offering multiple products, is typically detrimental as you’re not carving your market share out of a specific niche that you can build your competitive advantage in. Focusing 24/7 on one service/product allows you to become the household name for that thing. You can expand vertically or horizontally, but you must capture that thing first.

That one service/product however may need to adapt with changing markets. Paragon focused on more mature firms and policy-adjacent names, fewer degen-era clients. But remember, if you’re pivoting, which every start-up has to do, then your services, pricing, language, and positioning have to pivot with your output.

Don’t hire too quickly

Alex: "What lessons from Athena Labs have impacted how you run Paragon?"

Conrad: "Don't grow too quickly. Don't hire too quickly. And when you do hire, hire the absolute best people you possibly can… [But] when you've got a new client signing on in two weeks' time and you really need to find that person, that is the worst time to try and find someone."

Hiring too quickly, and the wrong people, can impact runway significantly. For startups, that’s not an option. The way to hire slowly and the best that you can is by building relationships with people, and when the time comes, call on them. The role doesn’t have to exist yet but you can build a shortlist of people for when capacity runs out.

What we recommend is subcontracting people first. Once you’re happy with their output then offer a part/full time role.

Trust is utmost importance in crypto

Alex: "What are the three things you wish clients, partners, and employees said about Paragon behind your back? And what are the three you wish they didn't?"

Conrad: "…Trust is the most important thing in so many industries, but in ours, where trust has been tested so many times by not just agencies but everyone else, it's the most important thing."

Conrad wants for clients to praise professionalism and long term support, but the main thing to avoid is, “yeah, I’ll never trust those guys again.” In crypto, trust is rarer than tanzanite, and building it takes years whilst destroying it mere seconds. Make sure you’re building a brand image of a trustworthy company.

How to start from 0

Alex: "If you lost everything today (company, followers, connections, everything except knowledge and experience) and had to move to a new city, how would you start over?"

Conrad: "I would only look to provide value. And if you have the capacity to do free work and free advice for people and build relationships… so valuable."

1. Step one is showing up where the relevant people are (side events, conferences, the right rooms).

2. Step two is providing value without trying to sell.

3. Step three is building up that portfolio and gradually increasing prices.

4. Step four is finding the first great teammate (co-founder or “lieutenant”), giving them long-term upside, and building from there.

Conrad estimates with his near decade knowledge, it would take him 2 years to get to where he’s at now, but keep in mind Warren Buffett's "time in the market" framing. You can't manufacture demand on your own timetable. Conrad advises that a lot of growth happens not just by sheer output but also by being present and staying top of mind, so when the prospects, or market as a whole, is ready, you’re the name they go to.

How to keep going during tough periods

Alex: "What thought keeps you going when the biggest client leaves, or the market is bad, or budgets are running hot?"

Conrad: "Back in the day, the thing that would stop me from quitting was, honestly, just like, what else would I do? The idea of going back to a nine to five was more demoralising than staying."

Some people are not destined to be founders, and that’s perfectly fine. The way you know, is when times get hard and you find yourself asking, "what else would I do?"

I couldn’t agree more. My personal solution when things get rough is to follow a simple line of reasoning: if Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Alex Hormozi, you name it, were in my shoes, they would succeed - that’s an objective fact. So there is clearly a solution, a right way to play my current cards, a right way to spend my current hours. I just need to figure it out.