Pivoting to a Career in Cryptocurrency: Graduate Advice from Global Head of Institutional Account Management at Coinbase Sashi Dias Valtz

Global Head of Institutional Account Management at Coinbase, Sashi Dias Valtz, joins Ying Cao to discuss her career journey from working at an investment bank to her current position at Coinbase and give advice on how others can pursue their passion in this field or any field in general. 

Sashi Dias Valtz has always had many passions starting from an early age, but an interest in entrepreneurship and financial services led her to seek experiences and eventually work at investment banks. Her desire to continue to pursue her passions and explore new challenges led her to get involved in the new FinTech emergence and take on new risks at FinTech companies including Symphony and Coinbase. 

In this interview, Sashi goes over the motivation behind her career moves, shares her perspective on the development of digital assets, provides insight on qualities she would want in her teammates at Coinbase, and inspires those who want to pivot their career or are in the process of starting their careers to pursue their curiosities and leverage their network. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ying: Welcome everyone to the new podcast from Work in FinTech. My name is Ying Cao. I'm a co-founder of  Work in FinTech and I'm so honored today to join you with my guest Sashi. Sashi can you quickly introduce yourself and your role?

[00:00:21] Sashi: Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. So my name is Sasha Dias Valtz. I'm currently the global head of institutional account management at Coinbase. I'm based in London currently. And I reside here with my two children. So I'm happy to be here and share any knowledge that I can share with you. 

[00:00:47] Ying: Awesome. Thank you so much. Sashi, it's actually quite an honor to have you with us today because your career journey, it's such an amazing journey in itself and to many of the audience that don't know, Sashi actually started from Merrill Lynch and then Goldman Sachs, right after graduating from Stony Brook. So Sashi, I was curious, did you always know you wanted to work at an investment bank or how did you enter that career? 

[00:01:18] Sashi: So I absolutely didn't always know what I wanted to be. I had a lot of passions early on in my life. Some fashion design, some in dance. And my inspiration for getting into financial services was actually my father. And while he's an engineer by profession, he had and continues to have a deep interest and passion for financial services and the financial markets in general. And I still recall him giving me my first copy of the Wall Street Journal and Barron's to read when I was in high school and I was intrigued by the industry ever since then.

And that being so, I began pursuing internships at investment banks over the summers in order to broaden my exposure to the markets and the inner workings of the company. And in addition to that, his entrepreneurial DNA was something I always admired. So while I haven't started my own company like you, Ying, I have definitely a strong passion for startups and emerging businesses and companies. I'm super inspired by what you're doing and what my father has done. 

[00:02:28] Ying: that is quite an interesting story. And what's interesting even more is after you really established your career at Goldman Sachs, you made a very courageous move now. Right? When we look back that you joined this new startup called Symphony. 

So what made you go from working at a very established investment bank to joining symphony as one of the first few employers? 

[00:02:57] Sashi: Yeah, it's a great question. And I had an incredible experience working at both Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs set a fantastic foundation for me and my knowledge of financial services.

But I certainly in my 15 years kind of working through the side of the financial services of things, I certainly had come across quite a few mentors and a wise mentor once told me, evaluate your work and role at a minimum of every five years. And then ask yourself, am I motivated and challenged in the work that I'm undertaking?

So I certainly kind of reflected you know, at various points of my career. Are there other curiosities I'd like to pursue in other parts of the business that I'd like to pursue? And I found myself drawn to what I was observing around me at the time. And this was in the 2011, 12, 13 timeframe. I started to observe in the banking industry, there was certainly an increased investment in technology resources.

So where are the banks we're staffing, are continuing to staff, or beef up staffing was in technology and development. In conjunction with that, there was a lot of creation of applications that I saw that were proprietary to the banks. And then also an interest in technology companies, whether the banks were investing in technology companies as part of a portfolio strategy or spinning out an application they may have created out of the bank.

And so I saw this trend continuing to emerge over the years. And I was certainly interested in pursuing what I viewed as FinTech emergence and the writings on the wall for meaning to pursue a role in FinTech.  And I hope you can relate to that. And I knew it was time to jump in and take a risk to join a startup.

And in the case of Symphony, that firm was certainly focused on solving a real problem for financial services organizations, focused on secure collaboration, data ownership, the automation of key client workflows. And I was excited to help them build a business and a team and make a difference in the way financial services organizations operated their businesses long-term.

So that was really the draw for me. It was reflecting on my career, reflecting on what changes were happening in real-time in the industry. And then looking outward to say, where can I apply my skillset that could create value? Not just for me. But for my clients and for the company too. 

[00:05:27] Ying: And you actually mentioned the word Fintech and that is all that we're about. So what does FinTech really mean to you? What is your definition of FinTech? 

[00:05:38] Sashi: Yeah, so I definitely feel like fin FinTech is the perfect combination of technology meets financial services, workflow, and, and how that will transform the way that we do business and the way that we do business can be facilitating transactions.

It could mean processing workflows more seamlessly. It could be leveraging multiple technologies to build something great. And so FinTech in my view has endless amounts of possibilities and I think is rapidly changing every day. So the solutions that can be born out of the FinTech space, I feel are endless and it's really up to the imagination of so many creative engineers and technology experts as well as folks with financial services backgrounds and as you think about most industries, they evolve and technology is helping us evolve more quickly. Financial services are ripe with competition. And so the way that you're going to gain your edge in the future is embracing technology in order to facilitate really great business opportunities, for your clients and for the company that you either are starting or that you work for.

So in general, that's how I think about it. Like endless possibilities and the ability to create, as we talked about earlier, just creating that ecosystem that allows for innovation that allows for advancement and evolution of financial services. 

[00:07:14] Ying: And it seems like creation is such an important thing.

Your career after Symphony, you now joined or decided to make the transition to Coinbase. So how is your role at Coinbase different right from your investment bank roles at Symphony? And how did you make the decision to capture this opportunity and decided to join Coinbase from Symphony? 

[00:07:41] Sashi: Yeah, that's a great question.

Similar signs showed up for me in my next career transition. So I was with Symphony for about six and a half years, and I was reflecting on my accomplishments, which I really felt the company had done great, great things. I know you and I had an opportunity to work together when I was there and that's how we continued our friendship and our working relationship.

But I certainly wanted to think about what was next for me and my career transition and the way I look at it, Ying, there were four main catalysts that drove that change for me, and I really wanted to pay attention to those. 

First my personal interest in the digital asset space. So I'd become a retail investor in digital assets via Coinbase. Coincidentally enough a few years ago, so way before I'd engaged on potentially working there, I had personally been curious about the space. Secondly, my institutional clients while I was at my last firm were inquiring about access to crypto data and analytics and the ecosystem in general and their curiosity was peaking across the board. So that was certainly another candidate. 

Third, at the same time, the media was publishing trends of major corporations, major traditional asset managers, getting into the digital asset space, either via direct investment in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies or you know, digital assets or basically via futures.

And so some of the traditional asset managers were getting access to the space via futures and trading Bitcoin futures in some of their investment funds. So I was observing all of those tangentially. And then lastly, I observed many leaders whom which I have tremendous respect for and a history of working with entering the industry for various companies, not just Coinbase.

And I was excited to continue to help build a business with them.  So all in all those factors gave me the confidence to transition into a new yet tangential industry, which allowed me to one, build my FinTech experience to leverage the kind of background that I had in working in, a technology organization that centered around encryption protecting data and embraced APIs, which allowed clients to integrate and leverage data within the application suite.

And one of the most important things I continue to think followed me in my whole journey across the career was being able to leverage your client capital and, you know, with the network that I've built, and obviously that you've built Ying, it really affords lots of opportunities to create and broaden the relationships that you have and the value you can bring those relationships, no matter what company you end up joining.

And so that created a large amount of excitement for me. And  I'm really thrilled to be able to work at Coinbase and really help them scale and evolve their institutional business forward. 

[00:10:50] Ying: And you even mentioned that you have this personal interest in crypto many years ago, right before a really become mainstream as what it is now. So why do you think crypto has become so popular and what opportunities do you see for crypto in the future?

[00:11:08] Sashi: Sure. Well, I think the popularity has stemmed from I think lots of things, you know, I look at the environment that we're all in as a result of COVID and, you know, the working environments, we've all been not being able to access travel and maybe the way that we were normally used to, and then also the current events that we've observed, whether that be in Afghanistan or other parts of the world, Beirut, there's so much happening around the world that that is impacting I'd say the social aspect of financial freedom and I tie it back to what our CEO, you know, continuously ties our mission to which is providing economic freedom to the world. And I think if you think about having access to capital through digital assets, it creates a lot of opportunities, for people that may not have had the same amount of access for those that have been in developed countries and have had that privilege.

So I think that is one,  decentralized finance is a topic of quite a lot of interest in our space. And it's very exciting to see institutions getting involved in how that aspect of what we're doing will evolve over time. And then also, as you think about government,  currencies, there's also a lot of opportunities to see how we cohabitate.

So how do the governments think about cohabitating with digital asset exchanges and the way that our financial system is evolving over time? So I think it's a combination of all those things. Social aspects, curiosity,  creating the economic freedom factor, and then just having opportunities or different asset classes as digital assets being called to augment portfolios in the future.

[00:13:05] Ying: Sashi, thank you so much for sharing these amazing opportunities that you look right for the industry. And as you are now forming a team at Coinbase what do you see as priorities for your team at Coinbase in the near future? 

[00:13:22] Sashi: Yeah, absolutely. So priorities around how we think about our advancement and evolution. So I kind of think about them in two buckets. So we have the business bucket, and then we have the kind of personal advancement bucket and how we think about how we evolve as professionals. I think on the business bucket continuing to be global collaborators. So how we think about our products, and how we service our institutions globally is essential for our success.

How we think about automating processes continuously and doing things better and more efficiently is something that I hold my team accountable for. How we cross collaborate across the different business lines in the company is essential to our advancement and our evolution. And so we partner very closely with sales, trading, and product to ensure we're delivering the best experience possible to our institutional class.

And then being not only client-centric all the time and client first, all the time but also embracing content. And what are the tidbits of content that we can continuously share with our clients to make sure that they're informed of the latest updates, whether those are macro-related trends or they're regulatory-related trends and things that we want to share in general?

I'd say at a very high level, those would be the business buckets that I believe will continue to transform the team and our team is growing rapidly globally. And I'm very excited to be leading this organization on the softer side of things. I do think that it's quite important in order to grow the team kind of creates really great focus on being self-aware.

And I think this is advice for everyone Ying that I would share either folks coming out of school, thinking about what they want to do next or professionals that are already in the business. But, I believe these challenges are going to present themselves, whether those are regulatory challenges, competitive challenges.

Always having to, you know, accept feedback with an open mind affect changes, and reflect on them. And that's the way you're going to advance in whatever role that you're doing. I think because we are in an evolving industry, leveraging the strength of your network is critical, just like you and I are continuing to maintain our connections, even though we're in two different organizations we're bringing together very common themes and I encouraged the team to continuously, no matter what industry they came from, whether this traditional finance or FinTech or market data,  leveraging the strength of the network, we'll continue to do well by you. It's one of the most cherished things you could absolutely tap into, staying balanced.
 I mean, we are in a 24-hour market, right. So that is challenging in itself. But it's important to stay balanced, mentally and physically prioritizing yourself, your family, your hobbies, as well as your work.

So really encouraging that in order to have a really good state of mind is super important to me and something I continuously articulate with my team and challenging your knowledge base. I mean, this, especially our market is moving so quickly. You know, it's hard to say you're an expert in digital assets with the pace that it moves.

So spending time where you can make an immediate impact, but then also looking at areas that you need to enrich yourself on and spending the time and taking the time to learn and get deeper in that stuff. So those are kind of areas that I'd say that I think are important to evolving the team where I would expect us to kind of build and grow towards.
But those are just some areas I thought would be helpful to share. 

[00:17:21] Ying: Yeah. That is really great. And especially to see that you not only put your clients first but also put your team first. Right. And really create this supportive and collaborative environment for them to not only achieve professional achievements. Right. But also personal balance and person personal fulfillment. It's really important. And, you know, as someone like you, who has made so many transitions in your career, what advice do you have for someone in the middle of their career, when do they really consider their next career move? 

[00:17:57] Sashi: So I would certainly say lean into your curiosities.

If you are curious about a space about an industry, read up on it, find people in your network or in the networks of people in your network that can share real-life experiences on what it's like to be there. Don't be afraid to tap into that space and learn more and take a chance even through an internship or a part-time consulting role in that space, you can really get under the hood on what it's like to work in that industry or that company or you know, really satisfy that curiosity of yours. So, lean into your curiosities, I'd say would certainly be one. And I'll say it again, but I think really challenging your current knowledge of the way you do things and execute them with purpose.

So make sure while you can spend time on areas that you can make an immediate impact. And so the things you're comfortable with, but the things that make you a little uncomfortable, right? How are ways that you can think about evolving your strategies and incorporating feedback from maybe the community around you in order to expand your horizons?

 I'd say certainly tap into the network, lean into your curiosities, challenge your current knowledge base, and bring all of that together. And it will probably abode you quite well, in terms of the outcome at the end of the day. And then keeping balance as we talked about before, but I'd say thinking about those consciously, constantly educating, reading, tapping into your network, and even setting twice a week, a conversation with two people that you either haven't caught up with in a while that are in your network, and you want to understand what's going on and there may be connected to that space that you're curious about or asking them for someone that they might know. And even if it's two conversations a week, those are two more conversations than you had scheduled that you'll probably have more questions and more information than you entered the week with. And so it could be something as simple as that to get ideas sparked or to, for you to kind of get to that next place in your journey. 

[00:20:13] Ying: That's such great practical advice, right? Both from a mindset perspective as also from the actual action that you can take, especially what I love, what you shared about those little things that you can do that really hone in right from curiosity and know what you really passionate about.

[00:20:33] Sashi: I appreciate that. 

[00:20:35] Ying: Thank you. And we'll conclude with our podcast by asking you to share a fun fact with our audience about yourself. 

[00:20:44] Sashi: Sure. So I have actually two fun facts I can share, but when one is interesting, a good family friend of ours who works for Disney came to me one day and said, you know, I've been trying to write a series.

And every time I submit the cast members' names, I always get shot down. You know, I put my family, I put, you know, my best friends, but he's like, I put your name out there and they liked it so he ended up naming a Disney character after me. So I have a Disney character if anyone watches Disney XD named Sashi Kobayashi and she's a really innovative sidekick for one of the main characters on a show called Penn Zero.

So that is one, I have a claim to fame via an inspiring name for a Disney character. And then the other one that I think is fun to share. And my kids like this one is so we talked about balance. And so the way that I get my balance is I set aside time almost every day to work out and I choose a workout that's quite intense. I do dance cardio and I have to stay focused in order to execute that workout. But my passion for dance started very young. When I was five years old, my mother got me into ballet and I was dancing all my life. And when I moved to California, when I was working at Merril Lynch I, in the evenings, I would take dance classes and I was introduced to, for those of you that know the NBA, the national basketball association in the U.S. the Golden State Warriors spaced out in Oakland or was now in San Francisco.

I auditioned for the team and I became a Golden State Warrior Girl for two seasons. So I did that while I was working full-time in finance. So anything is possible. The hours were crazy. But I made it work and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made because it gave me such a wonderful expanded network to people that were not necessarily in financial services that I still keep in touch with today and an experience that I'll never forget.

And also, I feel like it's certainly helped me with, you know, my ability to connect with others and being able to perform in such a large forum. Certainly, I think helps me with doing speaking engagements. So those would be my two fun facts Ying, I hope you found them fun. 

[00:23:10] Ying: Thank you so much. And thank you for being the warrior girl and also getting for all of us that you do kind of achieve win-win by having your pursuit of your passion, as well as making it a great.

[00:23:23] Sashi: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And I hope it will serve as an example to my children, you know, that anything's possible. And I try to do my best to make sure that they see that every day in me. Definitely. 

[00:23:35] Ying: Awesome. Thank you so much. 

[00:23:38] Sashi: My pleasure Ying. Thank you for having me. It's been an honor and I hope to touch anyone that's listening or watching this podcast, but thank you so much for having me I really appreciate it.