> I'm not asking for free work, fwiw. It's our job to figure to this out (we don't have an answer for this question ourselves). That is partially a reason why I stopped believing in his leadership. His CEX manager attitude really stands in his own way, especially since he also tried to stir the pot a little further down: > But hiring a "marketing team" when you don't have an answer to this question is not going to solve the problem. This is not leadership, this is trying to be right and the motivational factor is to please his ego. He should be reminded that he is, in fact, in the web3 space and that people like collaborating over "fighting it out on the timeline." Great leadership, in my view, is tapping into vulnerability and being willing to say, "I don't know." It also means being curious and not optimizing to be right. That, anyway, is leadership "above the line." I know there are times when even being above the line is hard or straight-up unproductive (war time CEO). Still, in this case, he should have actually sought the feedback from his PEERs. And he did not because he chose to insult. Interesting replies; nevertheless, I will read them now.

Re: hiring a marketing team - it depends on how much agency you want to give them. If you think of the marketing team as "guys that execute our ideas," then yes - hiring the marketing team wouldn't help if you haven't figured out your GTM. But if they want to treat their CMO as their peer, then this person should design the GTM for them. And it goes without saying that he should be an active FC user who also participates in user interviews so he feels the product. I don't know how many growth guys in crypto could handle that, but in B2B SaaS, figuring these things out is a pretty standard assignment for the CMO.

must say Dan actually made lots of level-headed points here