Happy Friday, everyone. It’s finance editor, Jeff John Roberts, stepping in for Allie. I’m curious what Term Sheet readers—many of you from the startup and VC world—think of the following: a company on the cusp of an IPO taps one of its earliest venture capitalists to step in as top executive and get it across the finish line.
This isn’t just a hypothetical. In August, I joined Tribe Capital co-founder Arjun Sethi at his home in Menlo Park to hear about his latest gig—running Kraken, the respected cryptocurrency exchange, as it gears up to go public next year. As our recent profile reveals, Sethi is an unusual guy:
“My neighbors think I’m under house arrest,” observes Arjun Sethi. It’s not hard to see why. On the driveway of Sethi’s comfortable Menlo Park home, located a few miles from Stanford University, sits a black Cybertruck that rarely leaves. Meanwhile, various figures stream in and out of a wide-open garage anchored by a table littered with electronics. Inside, there are no pictures on the walls and the domicile’s only personality is supplied by a large German shepherd patrolling the backyard.
Sethi has brought his idiosyncrasies to Kraken, where he stepped in as co-CEO last fall. Despite the “co” title, everyone with whom I spoke made it clear Sethi is calling all the shots and, according to one former exec, is running the company very much like a venture capital firm. This includes eschewing team-building exercises and pep talks in favor of detached, data-driven decision-making and relying heavily on members of his own network—sometimes at the expense of Kraken’s own employees.
