I just caught up with a friend who was looking for a job but had never done BD, and he was thinking about whether to do BD and find me DD After the chat, he said that he was very shocked, "I thought BD was a super simple job that anyone could do. But after talking to you, I found out that there are so many doorways here, and not everyone can do it at all." But I was even more shocked that there was such a big error in what BD was doing, especially in the details So I want to continue to write about the BD series, for those of you who may have misunderstood this job, or who are in this position but feel that "I'm not the only one who is so tired". ------------------------- TLDR; BD is a spectrum/range Some people do things like operations, some like strategy, and some are almost Tech Sales has nothing to do with cryptocurrency The real difficulty of this job has never been "negotiating a cooperation" Instead, make decisions in uncertainty and advance consensus in chaos It's a job that shatters ego, invokes emotional intelligence 100%, and treats itself as a search engine and product manager ------------------------- Like what - You communicate with a project repeatedly for a month or even two months, have four or five meetings, and after all the stakeholders are talked, it is finally advanced to the formal commit link. The boss of the other party suddenly told you that we currently feel that being an AI agent is the most promising, and other plans are suspended -It took me four or five hours to complete DD, and I struggled to find the founder's telegram and write a very customized cold pitch, and 99% of the time I didn't even get a reply of "not interested". -So every once in a while you send "hey xxx, kindly bump up this message, have you had a chance to review it?" and other attention-grabbing information, or 99% of them have not responded. But you know it's normal, you can barely talk without a warm intro, so you start repeating the same steps, but this time to your insiders -You feel very cooperative about a big project, and you are very bullish about the value that this cooperation brings to your project, but you painfully find that your boss feels that it is too troublesome to industrialize and has to give up Wait a minute These are the things that have really happened to me. Doing BD in Crypto is a game of constant uncertainty. -------------------------- What's even more interesting is that although everyone is called "BD", they actually do very different things. Doing BD at Gelato, which is actually Tech Sales, is probably the far right on the entire BD spectrum. Our daily work is like working on a crash project technology DD (fortunately, we have always had the skills to bring children from when we were doing VC): Understand how the other party's chain, architecture, DAO, token, or protocol works Analyze their use of OP Stack? Orbit？ Celestia？ Where does the gas fee come from? Do you want to be cross-chain? Which one to choose? Is there a native token? Are there any account abstraction requirements? Is there automation? What DA layer to use? Wait a minute...... And for these problems, sometimes you have to catch 90% of the information in the first cold pitch, so that you can give the other party a really suitable solution. It's really not as simple as "let's talk about whether there are any opportunities for cooperation". I could even write a separate article "The Daily Struggles of Doing Tech Sales in the Crypto Industry" And if I do BD on a project or chain, the work content is completely different Find early-stage potential projects in the community and help them incubate Talk to the head project to settle in your ecosystem, and strive for exclusive, incentive, or strong binding cooperation Establish high-quality relationships with VC, Infra, and DAOs, and continue to supply blood to the ecosystem and other projects brainstorm new ways of cooperation to maintain a win-win situation so it's a spectrum ----------------------------- From a standpoint point of view, BD is the bridge between the company and the outside world We are the first to contact users, partners, and market feedback, and see the most first-hand information A good BD not only delivers cooperation, but also brings key feedback back to the team, influencing the product form, route and even market rhythm Many times, BD is the "external brain" of founders and PMs But at the same time, at least 40% of BD's work is upward management (which many people don't talk about, but it's really true) It may take you weeks to polish the collaboration, and in the final stages, you have to convince your boss repeatedly why this matters. Internal push is often as difficult as external cold start. The boss doesn't want the green light, and it's more painful than the customer saying no. (Personal experience) ---------------------- There are too many to expand on and too many to talk about in public, but if you are also a BD, I hope you know that you are not alone when you read this It's a high-pressure job, but it's also a key player in connecting products and markets and turning chaos into collaboration, so I love it deeply What is most important in this industry? Landing, landing, and TMD is landing If you are not a BD, but curious about this position, welcome to talk to me, dm is always open