Deborah Newman

Coinbase had the best onboarding process I have ever experienced. Unfortunately, in most legal teams, onboarding is treated like an afterthought. Some docs on a shared drive, a few meetings, and then you’re on your own. No wonder most new hires spend their first quarter (or more!) just figuring out which processes to follow, where to find the right templates and the right people to ask questions. That’s why Coinbase’s process stuck with me. In a remote first company, they managed to bring newcomers up to speed in 2 weeks. → Videos that explained the different functions in the company → A list of critical Slack channels that introduced people to ongoing projects → Quizzes to reinforce what you learned → 1:1 intros with relevant folks so you knew who to go to for what So here’s a tactical list for Legal Ops teams building onboarding programs: 1. Share org charts and key tools. 2. Assign a legal team buddy to answer questions informally. 3. Record a Loom video explaining where to find SOPs, playbooks, and templates. 4. Host intro calls with key cross functional partners (Sales, Finance, Procurement etc). 5. Set up learning modules explaining internal processes. 6. Add new hires to relevant Slack channels and explain their purpose. 7. Schedule recurring 1:1s in the first month for feedback and support. 8. Use quizzes or checklists to make learning fun and track progress. Shout out to L.J. Brock and Emilie Choi at Coinbase - yours is one of the best onboarding processes I’ve seen. Would love for legal teams to learn from it too. What’s one thing that has helped with onboarding in your legal team? #LegalOps #LegalLeadership #Onboarding #LegalTech #ScalingLegal

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Have you ever seen a colleague complain about the way someone does something behind someone's back? At Coinbase, we don't believe in political behavior. We've found the best way to stop this is to celebrate openly discussing problems as part of our culture. You have to take the time to put it in writing, which forces you to fully think through and lay out the problem, and then propose your solution to fix it. This either solves the problem, or helps the team get re-aligned on why it's the way it is. This is how you can actually be constructive and make real progress, as opposed to just complaining about something.

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High-performing teams aren’t built through comfort. Like it or not, friction is the currency of building a talent-dense organization, especially one in hypergrowth. When I was at Coinbase, talent density was a constant focus. Now at Engine, I see how that same principle comes to life in new ways. Raising the bar isn’t just about better performance. It’s about creating a culture where peers, managers, and direct reports all push each other for more and better. That can feel uncomfortable, especially for people who haven’t worked in an environment where expectations keep rising. But that discomfort is what growth feels like. The right kind of friction shows who leans into challenge and who prefers comfort. I see it in hiring too. When there’s some friction in the process, you uncover grit and conviction. Discomfort isn’t the goal. It’s the natural result of ambition and accountability coming together. Friction is how talent density grows. And it’s how great cultures stay great. 💪

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The announcement from Y Combinator in collaboration with Coinbase marks more than just another startup call. It signals that the infrastructure and market conditions have aligned to make onchain finance not just possible but inevitable. We are witnessing a trifecta of forces shifting power away from siloed legacy rails toward open programmable money. Regulation is becoming clearer, infrastructure is maturing, and demand is surging. Regulators in the United States are beginning to define rules for stablecoins in ways that echo banking frameworks. That clarity removes a major barrier for builders. On the infrastructure side, Layer 2 networks now support sub-second and sub-one-cent global transactions, enabling real money movement at scale. The market is already showing up. Stablecoin settlements are in the trillions annually, crypto user bases are in the hundreds of millions, and many native onchain applications now serve real users in real economies. The traditional financial system is rigid. Transfers can take days, cross-border wires are expensive, and foreign exchange costs erode value. Onchain rails change that narrative with instant settlement, near-zero friction, and composability built in. Imagine a world where contracts self-execute, money streams continuously, and financial instruments can be created by anyone with code. YC’s request emphasizes three broad domains of opportunity: stablecoins especially local and programmable versions, tokenized assets, and fully onchain applications and agents. That is not accidental. These are the areas where incumbent finance must evolve or risk becoming irrelevant. If you believe as I do that money is becoming software, then this is our moment to build the rails. The institutions of old have had their chance. Now is the time for a new generation of financial builders to define how capital moves, gets allocated, and creates value everywhere and for everyone. #Stablecoins #WAS2025 #AfricaStablecoinNetwork #Base #YC

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Seattle just dropped another beat in fintech. Upward Financial, the embedded finance infrastructure startup led by Co-Founder & CEO Aaron Gregory and Co-Founder & COO Danielle Hill, just locked in an $8M Seed+ round to scale its mission of helping brands build, launch & grow digital financial products with speed. The round was led by Dundee Venture Capital & Breakwater Ventures Fund , with backing from Techstars, Altari Ventures, Cascade Seed Fund & Outside the Box Ventures. The announcement came paired with a new partnership with Mastercard, giving companies the power to launch branded #credit, #banking & #payment programs in weeks, not months. Gregory and Hill built the playbook for how fintech moves at scale. Both veterans of Remitly, Gregory spent 6 years steering global compliance, #risk & #legal through hypergrowth while Hill mastered operational precision across Rmitly, The Riveter & Amazon. Together, they've turned Upward into a platform that trims the fat from fintech builds, no tangled vendor web, no red tape, no waiting on #regulators to catch up. Upward's platform runs like a finely tuned engine, modular, developer-first & designed to launch. #APIs handle #cardissuance, banking, payments & compliance under one roof. Instead of stacking 5 vendors & 3 risk reviews, a company plugs in once and gets a full suite of infrastructure ready to go. It's fintech without the friction, built for brands that don't have time to babysit integrations. The Mastercard partnership is the catalyst. By integrating Mastercard's Easy Savings & Business Builder Program, Upward clients can drop custom-branded card experiences into market before most competitors finish their compliance audits. Scout, a Techstars '23 alum, is already using it to power NIL financial programs for college athletes at SMU & Iowa State University, turning student-athlete banking from an idea into execution. But this isn't just another funding headline, it's a signal that embedded finance is maturing. The past few years have been chaos: fragmented systems, endless APIs, & a graveyard of half-built fintech dreams. Upward's move brings order to that noise. It's building the rails for #creators, gig platforms & small businesses to move capital seamlessly, with compliance handled quietly in the background. Think of it this way: #AWS did it for computing. Upward's doing it for money. And while everyone else is chasing disruption, Aaron & Danielle are busy building infrastructure that hums, quietly, reliably, and fast. This $8M round isn't just capital, it's confirmation that the next wave of embedded finance will be clean, compliant & lightning-quick. Upward is the platform turning financial friction into forward motion. #Startups #StartupFunding #EarlyStage #VentureCapital #SeedRound #EmbeddedFinance #Fintech #Infrastructure #Compliance #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem If software engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

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𝗟𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸. This is a piece of advice I learned at Coinbase that I now tell myself—and my clients—at least once a week. When you're the founder, leader, CEO, it can feel like everything is on your shoulders. You are holding up teams, holding people to deadlines, holding the line on standards. It's exhausting and every time you turn away from something, it feels like it. . .breaks. And, the important question to ask is . . .𝘴𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵? How bad is it? What were you able to move forward instead of making tweaks to keep something else on track? Here's what I've learned about 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗻𝗲𝗴𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁. Not everything that feels urgent actually is. This is ESPECIALLY true for companies at an inflection point. That weekly report? The slight delay in responding to that non-critical email? The process that's 85% instead of 95% perfect? The cost of your attention on these things is higher than the cost of letting them slide. 𝗟𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: 1) 𝗜𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝘀 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆. If you're not out there fixing everything, others have an opportunity to rise up. It's pretty incredible to see this happen. (Of course this is only true if you have a team, but I'm finding it to be true with superstar contractors as well.) Your team will never learn to problem-solve if you're always swooping in with solutions. 2) 𝗜𝘁 𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗖𝗘𝗦 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. Just ask yourself, what would be OK if it breaks? Just for today, this week? When you stop trying to keep every plate spinning, you suddenly can see which plates actually matter. The ones that would cause real damage if they shattered? Those get your attention. The decorative ones? Let them fall. 3) 𝗜𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀. When everything feels important, nothing is. But when you let non-essential things break, you get real data about what your business (and your sanity) actually depend on. You start to see the difference between "this would be nice to have running smoothly" and "this is mission-critical." To be real, letting things break sucks for those of us who have perfectionist tendencies, the "good girls" in the room. But here's what I've found: most of the time, what you thought would be a disaster turns out to be barely noticeable, or at the very least, highly explainable in a way that actually demonstrates strategic thinking. When you sit with that for a minute, it's actually kind of freeing. And the time you gave yourself to focus on the bigger project? That's where the real growth happens. 𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩'𝙨 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙗𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙠 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙬𝙚𝙚𝙠?

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Sierra raised at a $10B valuation. Here’s my take on how they grew so fast as someone who competes with them every day. 👉 They sell a vision, not a product. From day one, Bret and team positioned Sierra as the “AI Agent OS for the enterprise” and built a wide tent everyone could find a cozy home in.  👉 They start with Chat. Not because it’s the most important channel (hint: it isn’t, voice has ~7x more volume), but because it is the easiest entry point. Lower stakes, simpler problems, and a safe place to pilot without tackling the hard stuff. 👉They go shallow, not deep. Most Sierra deployments today are lightweight chatbots, think FAQs and basic data retrieval (try Casper, Rocket, Pendulum, or any of their other customers). No deep integrations, minimal red tape, and fast wins. The harder problems, like voice, overall containment, resolution rate, and true enterprise-grade automation are still on the table. As I was typing this post, an investor texted: “What do you think about Sierra’s $10B valuation?” My one-word reply: Excited. The market we helped create is getting the money and attention it deserves. Let’s keep building, the hard stuff is where the real value lives!

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Robinhood has officially added support for Sei! One of the largest retail trading platforms in the world is now giving millions of users direct access to the most performant EVM ecosystem. Markets move faster on Sei ($/acc)

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You know ChatGPT is hiring a content strategist. But did you know... RH's Editor in Chief was formerly EIC at Architectural Digest Coinbase's Managing Editor spent time at HuffPost and Forbes Resy's Managing Editor was the wine critic at SF Chronicle Robinhood's Editor in Chief is the former EIC at The Outline and BDG CarMax's Managing Editor came from MotorTrend and KBB Salesforce's VP, Editorial spent over a decade at WIRED and Fortune The Trade Desk's Editor in Chief is the former EIC at AdWeek SoFi's Managing Editor came from cnet Mastercard has a VP Content that spent time at both WSJ and cnet CARFAX's EIC is the former editor at Consumer Reports Experian's top data journalist spent over 6 years at Dow Jones hims & hers top editor started their career at Healthline and Verywell Fora Travel's new VP Content was Exec Editor at TIME's Health Magazine Hone Health's Editorial Director led editorial at Women's Health Magazine These companies are not replacing journalists with AI. They are hiring great talent and putting them to work on great coverage. There's been a stigma around journalists moving from traditional media to brands, which has lead to there being less of a community for this group. But there are so many examples of 10/10 content coming out of these efforts, and as the chart shows.... it is not a small group. Hopefully sharing the deluge of these roles (week after week after week) helps normalize that this is more than just a flavor of the month trend, with real talent behind it producing real coverage. Slowly curating the best of the best of the output from this effort - if your team is following suit, or you're looking for roles in this space... say hi//follow along. What other orgs (or individuals) deserve a call out here? hat tip to Alex Hamilton and Live Data Technologies for the chart.

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Brex’s amazing $5B+ exit last week had a lot of people asking how did Ramp “win”?  Ramp started 2 years after but is larger, faster growing and valued at >$32B.  tl;dr More experienced fintech founders @eric and @karim at Ramp focused on getting a few things very right this time (a) Hiring & velocity; (b) product culture; (c) risk and (d) strategic growth.  I wrote more about it from my experience leading Growth at Ramp here: https://lnkd.in/enW6ddka

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