Building a new platform for powering commerce on the blockchain is challenging and novel work. Team, investor, partner, and community incentives must be aligned to ensure that networks are thriving and have active participation from all stakeholders. Feedback from investors and the community may sometimes be critical, but it is an invaluable tool that can help inform important decisions. Cryptocurrency projects must be open enough to genuinely listen to the community and be flexible enough to change when necessary.

In early 2019, we began receiving thoughtful questions about our roadmap, product direction, and the state of our community from one of our Strategic Round investors, Max Unger. His questions showed keen market insight, and we scheduled some calls with him to update him on Origin and get more detailed feedback. Our community had gradually weakened since the cryptocurrency gold rush of early 2018. We started to realize industry best practices around community management were changing dramatically while we had been heads down developing product.

Number of people in our Telegram channel over the last 1.5 years

After some time, we received a lengthy unsolicited email from Max. It contained a point-by-point, detailed critique of our community strategy with many actionable recommendations. Instead of taking offense to or ignoring his suggestions, we decided to listen to them and made the email mandatory reading for our whole team. Over the few months, Max provided guidance while we implemented changes to grow our community membership and engagement to new all-time highs. When we began hiring new community managers and asked for his recommendations, Max threw his hat in the ring and asked to be considered for a job. After spending hours talking to him in the interview process and working through several trial projects, it was an easy decision to welcome Max as our new Head of Community. Max will be setting new strategies and best practices for growing and strengthening our community, and he will manage our existing team of global community managers.

Part of why were were so impressed with Max was his unique background. He has been entrepreneurial from a young age, starting his own mobile phone trading business on eBay during primary school and running one of Australia’s biggest in-game currency (think World of Warcraft gold) marketplaces after graduation. Later, he moved onto web development and marketing, helping several Australian racing teams raise money from investors.

Max with Don Tapscott, author of Blockchain Revolution

Max started casually trading crypto in 2014 but fell deep into the Ethereum rabbit hole after reading Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott and Ethereum by Henning Diedrich in 2016. Throughout his time in the blockchain space, Max has built communities for the likes of EdenChain and OKEx, whilst acting as project manager for Restart Energy during their ICO. He has also worked extensively with RedNova, the marketing and incubation entity for Du Capital, to build communities for and promote their portfolio projects.

Max speaks fluent German and French, having lived in each country for extended periods of time. He was also a competitive table tennis athlete in the past. He enjoys practicing yoga, cooking, playing guitar, and playing tennis. He currently resides in Panama and is working on his Spanish.

Max after completing a 5k with family members

We’re thrilled to invite Max to the Origin team for a second time (this time as a full-time team member). If you want to submit your own critique or suggestions regarding Origin’s community efforts, please email info@originprotocol.com. Max and the rest of our team looks forward to hearing from you!

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