As I look forward to an exciting semester of classes, meeting old friends and making new, and helping grow the Penn Blockchain Club, I also spent some time reflecting on my summer experience. After spending six years in the quantitative investment space in sell-side banks (Deutsche Bank and Nomura), I was looking for new experiences during the MBA summer internship. I knew the “start-up life” would be different and boy was I surprised over the summer at ConsenSys.

I have been reading, listening, and writing about blockchain for a year now and was expecting an exciting and challenging summer at Viant and ConsenSys. So, what was it that made it all the more special? Was it the start-up setup as compared to being in a big organization? Was it the chance to see the Blockchain ecosystem up close and work with some of the most incredible people in this space? Was it the rare opportunity to aid technology adoption at some of the biggest companies in the world? Maybe it was all of it, and more! But what struck me the most was the culture!!

But what is organizational culture? Borrowing from Schein, 2003, I dug deeper, and three broad themes emerged.

Transparency: This is a strong espoused value within ConsenSys — practised via open slack communication, open calendar, etc. The basic underlying assumption is in line with the value proposition of blockchain itself; transparency fosters trust and efficiency. It was a radical shift from “Information should be shared on a need to know basis” to “Information should be shared as openly as possible.” Imagine a 1000 person, multinational, organization which runs on Slack and Google drive where everyone is encouraged to share what they know as openly as possible. Private one-on-one conversations were just as important as group communication. ConsenSys Slack channel is a unique treasure of information and knowledge which promotes healthy, frequent, and open debates and in turn generates better ideas and unexpected discovery of insights. It was a unique liberating experience to embrace a culture of transparency and openness.

Flat hierarchy: Another strong enacted value practised throughout the organization. Open unassigned seating, lack of organization charts, remote first work culture, etc. are clear artifacts of this value. Again, the basic underlying belief is in line with the value proposition of blockchain; decentralization and flat hierarchy promotes faster decision making, reduces the burden on “top executives,” empowers employees, and facilitates rapid expansion. The flat hierarchy within ConsenSys is as real as possible within a functional global company. Instead of roles split into verticals and horizontals, teams interact in circles and meshes. On my very first day, the founder of Viant@ConsenSys told me “here are some interesting ideas I have for the summer, feel free to throw them down the drain if you have something more interesting to do. Also, you are welcome to reach out to the other team and work with them if that is more interesting to you. We trust you with your skills”. The message was clear “ideas, motivation, and skills over titles, authority, and hierarchy.” Everyday decisions were driven by consensus, as compared to being top down, and opposing points of views from everyone was encouraged, valued, and rewarded.

Embracing Uncertainty: Start-up’s in general work with uncertainty but given the unprecedented uncertainty around blockchain technology and its use cases, ConsenSys lives and thrives on uncertainty. These values were displayed via open voicing of healthy scepticism regarding the technological challenges that lay ahead and in the stories of everyone’s blockchain journey. Further, people are encouraged to try out their crazy disruptive ideas; failures were evaluated, celebrated, and openly shared with the whole company over bi-weekly calls. Also, most of the teams within ConsenSys are building in parallel to work being done at the Ethereum protocol level around privacy and scalability. This means that every team is not only managing the uncertainty of product market fit and user adoption but is also staring right at the elephant in the room — Ethereum protocols own bottlenecks and upcoming technological improvements. The whole web 3.0 stack is in the flux, with various innovators building different parts of the stack. The blockchain start-up community and specially ConsenSys is embracing this uncertainty and still charging ahead.

Needless to say, there are two sides of the coin when it comes to cultural and organizational behaviour. It is difficult to coordinate with flat hierarchy and harder to align on a vision and mission. Also, transparency is good as long as the communication doesn’t become overwhelming and distracting. Nevertheless, it was a refreshing change to see a company deeply espouse the values of the technology and services it promotes.