The Community Management Jobs You Turn Down

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[00:00:04] Announcer: You’re listening to Community Signal, the podcast for online community professionals. Sponsored by Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Tweet with @communitysignal as you listen. Here’s your host, Patrick O’Keefe.

[00:00:25] Patrick O’Keefe: Hello, and welcome to the show. This week we’re talking about the reasons why you’d end your interview for a new community job, hiring by community opportunists, and the motivations for Web2 versus Web3. Our guest is Ryan Arsenault, a contract community manager for Intuit’s TurboTax. Thank you to Carol Benovic-Bradley, Jenny Weigle, and Serena Snoad for supporting our show. If you’d like to join them, you can learn more at communitysignal.com/innercircle.

Ryan Arsenault has been fascinated by the power of community as a member of online forums for two decades. He has managed communities for over 7 years, building strategy and scaling super user and advocacy programs, while establishing trust and lasting relationships. He has worked in pre- and post-IPO companies, and won a 2018 TheCR Connect Award for Best Recognition + Reward Program (for Mimecast community).

Ryan, welcome to the show.

[00:01:12] Ryan Arsenault: Hey. Thanks for having me, Patrick.

[00:01:14] Patrick O’Keefe: It’s my pleasure. We talked on Twitter for a while and had some fun conversations. I was like let’s just bring that to the show. You brought up an interesting topic before the show in the pre-show questionnaire, where you mentioned that you had repeatedly shut down interview processes for new community roles. You’ve talked about this on Twitter too, and I thought it might be fun to talk about. What has led to you ending an interview process?

[00:01:35] Ryan Arsenault: It almost sounds arrogant, I have the gall to do that, but it’s just more having identified roles in the past, what has worked, it’s more experienced in identifying the red flags, things that might not set me up for success in the role, for instance. Is the purpose community? In one interview, the platform was purchased already. No community goals in mind, no strategy. Well, how do you know if the platform is even going to meet your needs if you don’t know what you need the community for yet? Just little things that I’ve learned from past experience that make me want to run in the other direction a little bit.

[00:02:12] Patrick O’Keefe: Yes, it’s tough because if you feel like you’re stepping into a role where you’re not going to be successful, then why would you take the role? I don’t think it’s arrogant at all. It’s a funny juxtaposition to have the platform first, which is for a lot of companies, it’s a fairly serious purchasing decision, especially if you’re going with some of these platforms, like the type that sponsor my show, where it’s an investment of five to six figures into a platform over a period of time where you know you’re going to be fully bought in and have to use it and to not have the people first and not have something else in place first before you make that decision is a little odd.

[00:02:45] Ryan Arsenault: Yes, and it certainly would have been a big investment, like you said. It would’ve probably been well into the six figures. They were a publicly-traded company. To not even know how you’re going to use the platform or the team around the processes, is there executive buy-in, just a lot of intangibles that go in with the job, whether it’s going to set you up for success or whether you might be out of a job in two months because the community isn’t needed or isn’t the right fit for the market and things like that.

[00:03:12] Patrick O’Keefe: Let’s trade it off. You told one story about shutting down an interview, maybe you have another one. I’ll give you one, and then you can go have your turn. The one I’ve told probably the most, and it’s just wild to me and it’s wild when most people hear it is I went to interview for a role at a company that were- I never actually said what it was related to, but I’ll say that it’s related to events. It’s a specific type of events, but we’ll say events. It was a community role and I applied for it and it wasn’t really where I wanted it to be, but I told them, I said, “Hey, if you can make it a certain level, then I’m interested.”

It was director level in this case and it was, “Okay, we’ll do that. Come up for an interview.” I drove up, it was like four hours from where I lived at the time, spent a day, spent four or five hours interviewing with people. All the interviews went well, except for the one with the director of marketing. It was a few different things, but the biggest thing was that I told her about how I was really interested in a director-level role based upon my experience, and no joke, she looks down on my resume, which she had in front of her.

She looks up at me, she makes a face and she says, “Why do you think that you would be at director level?” I answered this question and it was very like, inflection the tone was like, “Why would you think this?” I honestly answered the question beautifully. It’s very easy and I’m definitely someone who can be very direct, but I answered the question very thoughtfully and like, here’s why, here’s what I’ve done, here’s who I’ve worked with, and here’s how I see it working. It was a great answer and I’m so proud of it to this day, but that’s not even the thing.

The thing is the thing that she said that always stuck with me is that, and this is not a joke, she said this, is- Well, because she’s director, she says, “Well, I’ve put in my time with these companies, I worked at Vistaprint, maybe you’ve heard of them.” I thought to myself, again, there’s so many snarky possible responses to that, but it’s like, “Yes, you mean the 50 free business card company? Yes, I’ve heard of them.” That’s all I said in the moment, but I got in my car and I drove home and on the way four-hour drive back, which was right after the interview, I had already decided that it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to be there because this is someone that I would have to be essentially partners with in growing this business.

I didn’t report to marketing as I recall, I don’t think so. I would’ve had to work closely with them for obvious reasons. At that point, no matter what else, because they had decent benefits, whatever, but it just wasn’t the role for me.

[00:05:24] Ryan Arsenault: That’s a great point. If they’re not going to lift you up as your manager, if they’re going to make snarky comments right away, if they’re going to ask you right off the bat looking at your resume, if the experience doesn’t speak for itself in your resume and how you feel about it.

[00:05:39] Patrick O’Keefe: The Vistaprint comment, that’s the thing. FAANG, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Vistaprint, FAANGV as they call it now. It’s Vistaprint, come on. I gave you one, you have another story?

[00:05:53] Ryan Arsenault: I feel like this is poo-pooing companies, but I do think it’s important for a lot of community manager roles right now, especially for people just getting into the industry to look at red flags. This one specifically though was just a more drawn-out process. There was a phone interview, first-round interview with hiring manager, second round, third round.

They hadn’t made a decision in a week or so. They had mentioned we’re still scheduling a final interview with the candidate following week. We’re still scheduling this final interview with the candidate. We want to accommodate them and radio silence for a bit, got a word back. Oh, you’ve advanced to the final interview process when it was mentioned several times that you’re going to be having three interviews, there already was a final interview in the process.

For me, the communication throughout was important. I just didn’t feel like they got back in the timeframe they were supposed to, on a couple of different occasions, and also basically invented another round in the interview process that wasn’t there previously. The interviews went well, there was a great team. It seemed like a great opportunity, but for me, just the drawn-out process, I didn’t know if I was being let on or there couldn’t be a decision, but by the time I had reached out, they had asked for another interview and I just had to stop it there because it gave me red flags just either about the recruiting process or just what the culture might be there.

Despite the hiring manager being awesome, despite a couple other folks on the team that I would’ve worked with being awesome, wasn’t an indictment on them at all, just more direct and honest communication and it didn’t seem to be there.

[00:07:27] Patrick O’Keefe: That’s a good one. I’ll say I have one like that, but I didn’t shut it down, I just ended. I went to interview with Splash the event company. This is a different event company, splashthat.com. They had a community role. I went pretty far in both these conversations that I went to their physical office, which is not where I lived. I think they were in New York and I was in North Carolina.

Went up, spent a couple hours with them, talked to, I think it was a senior executive, met the CEO, seemed to have some good conversations, gave them some advice around community. They wanted to create a bunch of dummy accounts and talk to themselves. I was like, “Why? You’ve got a big customer base.” It was the weirdest thing. I never heard from them again. Never.

I went to their office. I met the CEO, had a good chat, I followed up. I never heard anything, not a single message from them ever again. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” Anyway, I’ll give you a real story though. I guess another one I share is I interviewed with Apple pretty far for a few months. It was for a community role because Apple has forums for customer service discussion. It was pretty far in there. I went through multiple rounds.

I went up to the senior director of advocacy, was the last person I interviewed with. Basically, what happened was, and I knew this going in, I just decided that it wasn’t worth it was that you just have to disappear. That was the vibe on that was that I had to disappear meaning I have this podcast, I write this blog, and did this stuff. You just can’t do that. That was the feeling I got and it just was like, “This is fun. Apple’s fun to think about. It’s nice to be wanted. Everybody seems cool.” No fault to anyone. I don’t want to disappear.

Life works out in a certain way. If I took that job and I moved to Texas, I guess, I wouldn’t have even met my wife. You don’t go down that path in life because I’m not in the same proximity. All is well that ends well.

[00:09:06] Ryan Arsenault: The specific stories too, there’s also just some general trends I’ve been seeing for community managers. A lot of social media positions disguised as community positions. I’ve seen a lot of that. I’ve had to shut down the process just because of that.

There can be some benefit to being the man who knows about community, but when you’re the man in an organization that doesn’t know anything about community management and thinks it’s social media, there might be building towards an audience and not a community. Those are the types of situations where I’ve also had to stop the process on, and maybe NFT communities as well, but that’s a whole different story altogether.

[00:09:44] Patrick O’Keefe: I’d like to take a moment here to pause for our generous sponsor, Hivebrite.

Hivebrite empowers organizations to manage, grow, and engage their communities through technology. Its community management platform has features designed to strengthen engagement and help achieve your community goals. Hivebrite supports over 500 communities around the world, including the American Heart Association, JA Worldwide, Earthwatch, the University of Notre Dame, Columbia Business School, and Princeton University Advancement. Visit hivebrite.com to learn more.

I’m glad you mentioned that, because I was going to call it out from a tweet you said, where social community hybrid roles were another situation where this had happened. Had there been any roles where you thought going in that it was a community role, but when you got to talk to people, it was just not?

[00:10:26] Ryan Arsenault: One role I was in was just building more towards of an audience. It was a fast-growing company. They needed more of a social media person for the strategy there.

[00:10:36] Patrick O’Keefe: I have a story like that, because I interviewed for– it was VP of community for Lionbridge. It was very quick brief interview and it was only with the screener and I’ll tell you why. They do localization and translation services globally, pretty big company, I think. I got to talking with the person and I realized something, I said, “Let me stop you for a second. These people that are in this community, do they talk to one another?” She said, “No.”

I said, “Oh okay, I understand. I have to say I don’t think I’m right for this.” I manage spaces that are shared spaces where people come together, they talk to one another, they don’t always just hear from someone at Lionbridge or someone at this company. That’s just a different role from what I do, that very quickly brought it to a close. That’s my go-to question sometimes. It’s not all the time, it happens once in a while.

We’re getting these conversations with people about what they’re building and what I could do. It’s like, “Well, can they talk to one another? I don’t mean glibly. Can these people talk to one another without the company being there?” If the answer is yes, then maybe we’re building something. If the answer is no, then we’re building more of a blog or maybe an announcement list or something like that.

[00:11:43] Ryan Arsenault: Right. One-to-many communication versus just full conversation.

[00:11:47] Patrick O’Keefe: Yes. Sticking to this topic, in the pre-show chat, you mentioned that you’ve come across a lot of roles from “community opportunists.” How so? What does that mean?

[00:11:56] Ryan Arsenault: Community is a very slow burn. It’s hard for a lot of organizations to stomach that sometimes. The concept of an NFT community, to me, it’s a trusting for instance as well–

[00:12:08] Patrick O’Keefe: In a trustless world, mind you.

[00:12:10] Ryan Arsenault: Talking to someone who’s like an NFT image, you don’t really know who you’re talking to. You don’t know what’s going on in the background. There’s a trust issue. It’s such an unregulated market right now. Crypto has seen so many scams and it’s hard, as a community manager, to find opportunity with something that isn’t a proven business model. NFTs are very unproven right now. We’ve seen the crypto market collapse already. To me, the concept of buying an NFT and then you’re part of a Discord community doesn’t make it a community. A community’s built on trust, moderation.

[00:12:45] Patrick O’Keefe: I think it’s hard because wanting to make money doesn’t make it bad. My dad got me into the stock market picking stocks with no money. Just like, “Yes, pick a few stocks, see how we perform against each other in six months.” I got on the Yahoo Finance message boards in ’90 something and there’s pump and dump schemes. I’m not you’re familiar with that. That’s penny stocks or whatever. People try to push the stock to get people to buy it and then they sell it.

The thing is like everyone knew that’s what they were doing. It became clear just that I can say the phrase pump and dump in the stock market and you know. People who don’t invest in the stock market know what that is. It’s hyping something up to push it to a higher price so that a certain group of people can sell at the right time and make money quickly. Is that ethical? I never did it, anything like that, but is that ethical?

No, but there was more like we knew what it was, you identified what it was. You knew not to trust it as much. Whereas with the NFTs and with maybe not all cryptocurrency but certainly a lot of cryptocurrency, if not all cryptocurrency, there’s a lot of the same behavioral things going on. Some would argue, that’s just market forces, stocks go up, when people buy them, they go down, people sell them, certainly.

With NFTs and with crypto, their volatility is so extreme and it’s so susceptible to that thing where these NFT “communities” are here and gone in a day. You could buy the NFTs and then the market crashes or the whales sell or whatever and there’s no community left.

[00:14:06] Ryan Arsenault: Right. Holding a bag of nothing at that point.

[00:14:10] Patrick O’Keefe: Yes. What does that mean for the person whose job it is to manage that community? It’s tough to place your flag in the ground. I think DAOs so far are not that impressive to me because it seems like the best that DAO can be is to just mimic good community management practices that we all know and bake it into their existence. The only difference seems to be that, with DAO is you have this ticket to the community that is potentially influential because you bought that token or whatever it is, you bought a certain number of tokens.

You have a certain amount of influence in that DAO and you can sell that influence more easily to someone else. Maybe that person has a totally different ethos than the community manager has been building towards, or that the community’s developed, but they’re influential. They move the token, they control the DAO or they have a substantial voting interest or whatever it is. I don’t know. It seems like all the ethical things aside and all the red flags and all that stuff, I don’t like any of it, I’m not going to be taking any jobs in that place. All that aside, just the finicky nature of it seems like that’s a community challenge.

[00:15:09] Ryan Arsenault: I think it’s a solution in need of a problem. I think there might be some use for Web3. I do like recognizing people for their contributions. Right now, there’s a lot of just giving useless swag or things that they don’t need but to monetize every transaction in the DAO as well seems crazy to me. Some people might be motivated because they like to help people and just to make every transaction monetized in the DAO with tokens and things like that, it devalues the concept of community to me.

I think there’s a need for crypto. I do think there is a need for certain pieces of Web3. To hear so many people that were on the Web2 bandwagon and all of a sudden, just flipped a switch to Web3 on something pronouncing it the future it’s way too early.

[00:15:51] Patrick O’Keefe: You don’t want a dinosaur, come on, get in line, get your dinosaur, it’s free. When I had Jacob Silverman on the show from the New Republic, he’s writing a book about crypto and crypto scams and how people are being taken advantage of and everything under the sun related to that topic. One thing I’ve come to see, a lot of Web3 community, NFT community, it’s such a cynical use of the word community.

As I’ve gotten older, I have gotten I think softer at what I see as a definition of community and how much I care about that as a topic, how much I want to discuss or argue about such a thing, like how you define community.

Not to say I don’t have specific feelings about community versus audience or whatever but you see these tweets come up every month, quarter, year, or someone’s like, “This is not this, this is not that.” You know what? You’re right. I’m not saying you’re not right, or whoever’s tweeting that isn’t right, but I try to just say, “Whatever. Now I’m on to other things. I’m past that.”

This is one case where when there’s a rug pull, to borrow the terminology that means everyone just lost their money. Whatever they were thinking they would get out of this NFT project, it’s gone now, or there’s almost no chance. To use the term community as a way to try to make people feel better or to ensure they stay bought in with that project and don’t sell and get whatever pennies on the dollar they can get now or just leave and stop hyping it, it feels incredibly manipulative.

It’s very much like a social engineering thing of like, “Oh, we’re part of this community, we’re all in this together, hold on for dear life, we’re all going to make it, not going to make it,” all that stuff. It’s all just social manipulation that’s been going on forever. You’re seeing this more and more, and you’re going to see so much more of people losing substantial amounts of money because they got on that high train.

It is no different than any other MLM or anything else that has a good veneer to it, or says like, “Look at these people made this money.” That’s great. Betty’s doing great, but the reality is that there’s 5 Bettys and there’s 5,000 people who are in the project, and you need those people to bump up the Bettys. What does that mean for a community where we deal with–

Oh, here’s a comparison. You have a user or member who’s been around for 10 years, and this community is 10 years old, they have 10,000 folks. You got one person who joins today, they have won.

There’s a view of influence, they say, “Oh, look at this person, they made all these contributions, whatever.” We have that sort of thing. Now, what is it when the difference in those two is that you either succeed 100% or you fail 100%? How do you build a community based on trust, which I realize is oxymoron in this stuff because it’s all trust the systems, but how do you actually build something that people want to come back to when there’s such a disparity between the people that succeed and the people who don’t?

I don’t want to do it, I know that, so it’s a reason to shut down an interview. How do you even approach that? Have you been recruited? Have you had people reach out to you to try to hire you to work on a project like this?

[00:18:53] Ryan Arsenault: I had one project on LinkedIn where they wanted to set up a phone interview but before there was even a phone interview, they wanted me to fill out a few questions. I would have been fine filling up the first couple, but then there was the question that probably would have taken me three hours to answer so I asked them, “Will I be compensated for this?” Because it was prior to even speaking with anyone knowing anything about the operation. Surprisingly, they didn’t get back to me.

The other one, there’s a couple for– Coinbase was another one that had reached out to me, great brand, but just the whole concept of crypto being so volatile, not only for people investing in it, but as a community manager, it just wasn’t something that I wanted to pursue at the time. I’ve had a couple, one being Coinbase, which is a more reputable brand, and other that could have been the company that didn’t even exist because I didn’t talk with anyone. I do see a lot out there on Twitter as well, just a lot of community manager posts for crypto NFT communities, and they always require building NFT communities and just deep experience in NFT communities but it’s not really that. I’m not really sure what they–

[00:20:01] Patrick O’Keefe: I had Microsoft Paint.

[00:20:04] Ryan Arsenault: There’s been a variety of crypto and jobs that I’ve seen just either proactively on Twitter or just folks reaching out to me.

[00:20:11] Patrick O’Keefe: I should be clear I’m being careful here not to paint people who get involved in NFT projects in too negative a light. When I make a Microsoft Paint joke, there are legitimate artists, great art, that’s part of some of these projects, no doubt about it.

I think the mechanism is the point at which a lot of people object and we have to have a conversation around but when you mention these recruiters and things and just the industry, people flipping, to Web3 or all of a sudden they have a dot whatever, ETH in their handle or whatever.

[00:20:42] Ryan Arsenault: One case is that ETH has disappeared once. I think some folks realized that it was a scam.

[00:20:47] Patrick O’Keefe: Oh, I think way more than once. Also, it doesn’t work as a domain name. I understand, I get it, it’s a short link for your wallet which is gobbledygook alphanumeric characters, I get it.

What I’m going to say is that when leaders in the industry do things like that and they do it early and they do it quick– When I say leaders I mean people who run big resources or events or whatever. They help encourage this sense of not only hype but FOMO, very real feeling of, “Oh, they’re doing that. Well gosh, how do I stay up to date? How do I continue to work in this industry if I don’t do that? I’m going to go drop $200 on an ETH or whatever it was.” Oh, now and it changes based on the fluctuations of the currency. It’s probably less now actually.

It’s like, “How do I stay up to date? What do I need to read about NFTs? I need to go and buy an NFT. I need to learn how this works. I need to join Discord. With no offense to Discord, I use Discord to talk to my brothers when we play video games. Discord is a fine product for what it does and in the specific circumstances but I got to get on these things. I got to learn these things, it’s for my career survival. That’s really sad to see, I think, in some cases.

[00:21:53] Ryan Arsenault: It is, and there are going to be use cases that shake out. We’ve already seen some of them, I think, like with actual music communities like Pearl Jam, that’s a community I’ve been involved in for 20 years because they’re my favorite band. I could see them for sure putting out NFTs. That’s an actual community with millions of members that has been active for probably 25 years on the internet.

I could see artists like Pearl Jam providing to their communities just NFTs of exclusive releases coupled with a couple of digital pictures for the album and things like that. I think they could be use for having exclusive copies of something and having value for communities down the line but it is a case of FOMO right now. I’m also guilty of it because I bought Ethereum. I’m trashing it but I also got in on that FOMO as well.

[00:22:38] Patrick O’Keefe: Everyone’s vulnerable to it. I’m vulnerable to it. I think about certain things. I think about what I’m shutting myself off to or what I’m doing or what I’m not doing. The thing is, I can always change my opinion and I can always adjust myself. I’m not dug into some hill here but I always like to ask, when I talk to people about these projects, the question I ask and it’s hard to successfully answer it, so people don’t, and it’s not asked in a rude way, it’s what does this make better?

Pearl Jam, for example, I know you’re a massive Pearl Jam fan, massive. Band and online community for a long time with your introduction into communities. I would even challenge the notion that they need to deliver anything through an NFT. Why would it need to be in a ledger? Why would it need to use those resources or use cryptocurrency? Is it actually going to be more lucrative long term that they just sell a limited release? What do we need these extra layers for?

[00:23:25] Ryan Arsenault: It’s true. Radio had pioneered the model with pay what you want, download their album. Why would you need another layer of complication and finances on top of it? It’s a good point.

[00:23:37] Patrick O’Keefe: Pearl Jam doesn’t need to do that. We can do limited releases without– You’re right, there will be use-cases like blockchain, very hyped at one point. Blockchain is a database. When developers think it’s best to use it, they use it. When they think it’s not, they don’t.

[00:23:52] Ryan Arsenault: Yes. The whole decentralized internet just brings up so many questions of just moderation and trust. They’re having problems right now on preventing things like mass shootings and things on Web2 platforms right now. I can’t imagine just the completely decentralized Web3 three utopia if they can’t get a lot of things right in the current environment

[00:24:13] Patrick O’Keefe: Speaking of Web2, last year I posted a tweet talking about how I had seen a lot of younger folks, meaning teens, early 20s, that didn’t seem terribly thrilled about Web3, NFTs, et cetera. A substantial volume of younger people who feel that way, and I was in that age range whatever web 2.0 was, and I don’t remember that being the case. Maybe that’s bad memory but as I think back I don’t remember this substantial rejection of something that is being heralded as the future. Kids generally are into the future. I say kids loosely there. I was into the future at one point before I got to my age. You shared an interesting anecdote in response to that tweet which is that you mentioned Facebook specifically and how you didn’t need to be persuaded to join it, which I thought was interesting. Talk a little bit about that.

[00:25:03] Ryan Arsenault: Facebook, for sure. It wasn’t pulling teeth to get me or really anyone on that. We got Facebook when I was a sophomore in college. It was around 2005. For then, it was only for college kids, which I would have been fine with the business model staying like that after I left college because I feel opening up to the masses has completely ruined it, but that’s a different story.

We got it in college when I was a sophomore. We had no way to communicate with one another. This was pre-smartphone era, there was a need to get in touch digitally with people, especially me coming from a small town not knowing anyone in the school at first.

For me, it was huge. There was a need for it. Even to the point, I remember when there was a Facebook outage, people yelling down the floor of our dormitory that Facebook is down. It was an event to have Facebook. It solved the need. There was no pulling teeth. There was hype for coming to campus but for someone especially just as a social introvert, it was something that I wouldn’t have made as many friends as I did without it.

It’s just fun to reminisce. It was fun to use, its value prop was there, sharing photos with friends. I would be hard-pressed to come up with a coherent value proposition for Web3 right now.

[00:26:19] Patrick O’Keefe: I didn’t go to college. I remember when Facebook opened up, when it was like, “Oh, everyone else could join now.” I joined and signed up.

[00:26:27] Ryan Arsenault: You ruined it because you’re the person that- no, I’m just kidding.

[00:26:29] Patrick O’Keefe: That’s me. I remember when they allowed you a namespace, that was a big deal. Me and my friend, Brandon, we’re like, “We need to get our name.” I got /patrickokeefe, of course. That era feels very different and maybe the thing that’s different about it, among many other things, is just how much money plays into your motivation in a way that should be empowering, I think, but ultimately doesn’t feel that way.

People who joined Facebook, built businesses through Facebook but they didn’t join for that reason at first, it just became a part of their online persona and how they met people and they leverage relationships in order to turn it into a business where it feels like it’s backwards with a lot of the Web3 stack, where right from the start when you’re buying into something you’re choosing to buy into it because you believe there’s going to be some sort of financial benefit.

You’ll even see YouTubers now pop up because they just want to share videos of they love butterflies. They don’t choose to make money from a YouTube channel. Not everyone wants to do that even though YouTuber is a popular profession with kids now, but you have people who choose to do that. You still feel like you have that option where, I think, a lot of, unfortunately, the Web3 NFT stuff, and I don’t want to group those together, obviously, Web3 is more than NFTs, unfortunately, a lot of that hype is on the outset of you’re going to be buying in, you have to put dollars down to buy into crypto.

That just wasn’t the motivation with Web2. It ultimately is the end result in many ways for both the companies themselves that are platforms and the people who use them, but it wasn’t the entry point.

[00:28:02] Ryan Arsenault: No, 100%.

[00:28:04] Patrick O’Keefe: I think we’ve reached our exit point here on the show. Ryan, I wanted to thank you for coming on. It’s been great to chat.

[00:28:10] Ryan Arsenault: Thank you for having me, Patrick. It’s been a pleasure. It’s an honor to be on here.

[00:28:14] Patrick O’Keefe: We have been talking with Ryan Arsenault, contract community manager for Intuit’s TurboTax Export Community. Follow him on Twitter @ryanarsenault, that’s A-R-S-E-N-A-U-L-T.

For the transcript from this episode, plus highlights and links that we mentioned, please visit communitysignal.com. Community Signal is produced by Karn Broad and Carol Benovic-Bradley is our editorial lead. Until next time. Until next time.

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