Around the Block With Jefferson Nunn – Interview with Jan Silhavy of the Crypto Headhunter

Jefferson Nunn  0:46 

Hello again. And welcome to another edition of Around the Block with Jefferson and I’m here today with Jan Silhavy, how you be how you doing?

Jan Silhavy  0:55 

I’m doing great. Thank you so much for the invitation, Jefferson.

Jefferson Nunn  0:58 

Awesome, awesome. Well, okay, we were just talking about some of the exciting things that you’re working on, can you tell us a little bit more about what you do what you got going?

Jan Silhavy  1:10 

For sure. So, what I do as a Head Hunter is that I help projects with connecting with the right talents in the crypto space. And my ultimate goal is to help people with getting into the space, helping them with lending desire jobs, as well as helping the projects to grow. So, for example, let’s say that you’re a project that is in need for solidity developer, which by the way, is a very demanded position, what you can do as a project is reach out to me and I would use my network and other approaches to find the right person. And what actually helps me for example, is that for the past eight months, I’ve been creating a community of active job seekers that are looking for new opportunities, and that enables me to deliver very fast.

Jefferson Nunn  2:00 

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And I know, there’s a lot of very complex, complicated crypto projects. So, I’d imagine you know, the project team must come to you with some very specialized requirements. Is that right?

Jan Silhavy  2:15 

Yeah, yeah, they actually do. What I would also like to mention is that there’s actually a base big misconception that crypto is an industry only for technical people, which is not true, even though the technical departments based on my experience are bigger than the other departments. Nevertheless, I am on daily basis looking for people for marketing operations or finance departments as well. Unfortunately, I must say that those are also the departments that were hit by the biggest layoffs during the current bear market. But I’m sure that those departments will be getting bigger and bigger, especially when the bear market is over. Talking about the projects, I actually have signed NDA, so I can’t really talk about detailed information, as some of the projects are, for example, right before the ICOs, what I can say is I had the privilege to work with awesome teams across the whole world that are really passionate about the industry. I work with many projects, such as exchanges, gaming studios, defi projects, and lately also NFT projects.

Jefferson Nunn  3:23 

Awesome. Yeah, that’s a wide variety of different kinds of projects. And it’s really interesting. I know the industry is continuing to grow, even in this bear market. So, I’m just curious. I mean, I know a lot of job seekers don’t see a requirement, like must have 25 years of experience in solidity you know, how is that even possible? You know, so I presume this is something that you helped set expectations arm with both the employer and the seeker, right?

Jan Silhavy  3:57 

Oh, yeah, exactly. Unfortunately, sometimes what happens is that the hiring managers don’t really know what candidates are available at the market. So, what I have to do as a headhunter, I have to tell them, what we can do and what people are available, we can possibly find.

Jefferson Nunn  4:16 

Awesome. All right, well, how did you get your start in to this crypto market is and even to that in headhunting, that’s a really interesting combination.

Jan Silhavy  4:31 

I actually finished high school a little bit over a year ago, and through high school I worked in let’s call them the web 2.0 recruitment agencies. And I tried everything from pre sales to being a hands on recruiter myself. After finishing high school, as I wasn’t sure what to do. I took a year gap and started the business. And since then, everything has been kind of crazy. I have partly moved to Dubai, even though I’m in Prague (Capital of) the Czech Republic at the moment as we have just opened a new office here.

Jefferson Nunn  5:03 

So, do you find that there’s more people in like Czech Republic, Europe? Or are they just all over the world?

Jan Silhavy  5:14 

I would say that they are over the work, we mostly what I do is when I look for people, and that’s one of the biggest advantages of digital industry is that the people are able to work remotely, which I really appreciate it. In here in Czech Republic, we have a lot of great communities. That’s also one of the reasons why we just opened an office here.

Jefferson Nunn  5:35 

Awesome deal. So Czech Republic, I know they’re an up-and-coming country. I mean, he certainly isn’t quite like America or England. Right? So, do you find that people are more eager to do the work than some of the more established countries? Or what do you find about willingness to work?

Jan Silhavy  5:58 

I would say as the crypto is an industry that is rising every day, when I talk with candidates across the board, they all are very passionate about crypto industry. And that’s one of the reasons why I really love working here. I can meet people that have the same passion and I can, you know, talk with them about the job. I can also talk with them about other things that are at the moment happening, which is a great advantage.

Jefferson Nunn  6:25 

Awesome. Well, turning our attention to maybe a little bit of what’s next. You know, where do you think the crypto industry is gonna go? They’re gonna go into the metaverse, is it gonna go into something else? Or are we just stuck with day trading forever? Where are we going?

Jan Silhavy  6:43 

Honestly, when talking about Metaverse, I have no idea. There are so many projects, so it’s hard for me to keep up. What I look forward to is for example, what will the acquisition of Prasad by Microsoft bring as a hardcore gamer. I look forward to that. And I think that the technologies used in gaming industry will be indeed the key in development of virtual worlds. Well, I also look forward to see more is for example, somnium space, which by the way, is a chip project, which is pretty cool. Overall, I’m looking forward to all the new projects and I can’t wait to see what the future will bring crypto wise. First of all, I think that’s not going to be anything like the like the next Bitcoin. Bitcoin has reached many milestones such as being accepted as a legal tender, surviving, when many other digital currencies started emerging as a competition, and of all changing the way we perceive money. I think that hopefully, in the future, traditional and central entities like banks, going to be replaced by DeFi and the usage of smart contracts, even though I feel like it’s, it’s a bit of a wild west at the moment, and we still have a long way to go. But yeah, I think that this will be the future. And we still have many things to discover.

Jefferson Nunn  8:01 

Quite right, right, right. I mean, I see Ethereum merge is happening, and they still have a very long roadmap ahead of them for coding improvements and standard improvements, and things like that. There’s a lot of people doing, just even outside of that Xinfinity isn’t going away. If anything, I think they’re showing the way forward. So, it’s exciting.

Jan Silhavy  8:28 

Right, I look forward to see more ecofriendly Ethereum. But let’s see how the automatic goes. As the gas is not really going to get cheaper, I look forward to the sharding more, which you know, would basically expand the capacity to store data and recover the gas. That would be great, right? So it will make it more scalable. We’re not losing the security and disinflation Asian bar, but let’s see how that goes as they are estimating this as I think it’s like 23 2025 thing, but definitely, I look forward to seeing the match and also the sharding goes

Jefferson Nunn  9:02 

Yeah, Sharing is gonna be one of the big improvements in talking with the folks over at Ernst and Young they’re just waiting patiently for that even though they’re heavy into development for what will happen after comes outside. I really think that the pace of innovation will greatly increase after those couple of mergers, which is exciting. So, are there any other projects that you’re looking forward to you know, stuff coming out?

Jan Silhavy  9:33 

Not really, I wouldn’t say that I’m 100% Bitcoin maximalist but it’s what I like to call myself you know, my portfolio is mostly bitcoin does still some, although tokens from when I firstly got into crypto, but I mostly focus on Bitcoin.

Jefferson Nunn  9:48 

Yeah, I would say I’m typically the Bitcoin and Ethereum for me and I know I always tell people to buy just those two and you’ll be buying for the long run. I mean, unless you’re really sophisticated savvy, you believe in the project, just like, you know, if you looked up and down Main Street, would you buy the dry cleaner? You know, no. Well, then why are you investing in it? You know?

Jan Silhavy  10:13 

Yeah,yeah, for sure, exactly. I believe that at this moment, I see a lack of knowledge being a problem. I personally know a lot of people that have no idea what, for example, a blockchain is and they are buying Bitcoin. That is the fortunate case, and also buying absolutely worthless altcoins, which is the worst case. And I think that in order to be able to fully understand whether a project makes sense, and to do your own due diligence on the project, you need to have some kind of economic and technical knowledge for sure. And it’s kind of hard with all the current boom and hype. Because people don’t want to wait alone, they want to invest and make money fast, which does not happen with the majority, the majority loses money. So, what I also think is part of the problem could be that it’s kind of hard for people to understand how things work, as it’s really, really complex. And it takes time to learn what I believe. And I like to mention this, for example, ENS, aka the Ethereum Name Service, right. It’s basically a DNS for your wallet. And instead of sending money to a long code that can be copied the last digit or letter, you can simply send the tokens or coins to for example, decrypt 200 of ETH. Like it’s easy as that. And even though you lose the privacy, I believe that in the future, they still and similar ones will be used way more, and it will, you know, help the new people to scripts on daily basis. And it’s going to make it very more accessible.

Jefferson Nunn  11:40 

Yeah, agreed. I liked the unit project, and to a degree I like uphold Unstoppable Domain is doing. I know, there’s a little bit of controversy about it. But I think we need more domains that we can have control over not some nameless entity that charges the renewal fee every year, you know, for what? You know, it makes no sense. So, but to that end, you mentioned privacy. I think even Bitcoin they have some privacy options coming up. And they’re big enough to where it’d be almost like Manero a level security audit transaction. I mean, imagine you can, I can transact with you, I might not disclose the amount of bitcoin and out of Eosin for those times that it makes sense. But still, you can use the ledger and have the security of the ledger knowing that the transaction is good.

Jan Silhavy  12:44 

So um, yeah, yeah, for sure. I actually, as at the moment, I’m 20. And I’ve lived in I’ve been living in Europe for my whole life. And the worst thing that ever happened to me on a global scale was COVID. And fortunately, nobody from my family got sick. So, I’ve been living a great and peaceful life all together. So, for people like me, it can be kind of hard to really understand why the decentralization is needed. For the past year, as mentioned, I live partly in Dubai and Prague. But I also traveled quite a lot. I just got back from a month in Cuba. And you know, when you think about these people, when you think about people that have no access to clean water, about people that are living in a country where it’s a wall, about people that are unbanked, they can simply open a bank account and send money. It’s so unfortunate, you know, and when you really think about these people, you see them with your own eyes, you hear their stories and talk with them, you really start to understand this is why decentralization and something that is resistant to censorship, politics, and it’s accessible on a global level is really needed. And for me, that’s why I love working in this industry. And that’s why I think that this is the future.

Jefferson Nunn  14:02 

I agree with the two degree what Alex said with Celsius, he had the right message. Even though he was a scam artist, we need to unbank ourselves and I agree with that, you know associates went bankrupt, unfortunately, because you were just another scam artists but yeah, we need to have control over our own Ledger’s and there’s a lot of reasons for it. But at the moment, you put somebody in the middle, they’re gonna steal its greed, they’re gonna steal and you go well not PayPal. I had a PayPal wallet just short story and a paper wallet about $1,000 in it and I did a Craigslist posting I was selling you know, some x pack stopped you know, console for, you know, a couple 100 bucks, you know, no big the guy was gonna come two and a half to my house. us. We’re standing at the front door. He calls me to 200 bucks; I give them the Xbox. Life is good, right? Well PayPal then froze my account. They froze my account and demanded like a stack of papers, my tax returns, you know, my business license, you know, my IDs, you know, proof of residency, my gas bill? I mean, I am by the way, this is in the data faxing, right. And I had a fax all of this information over to PayPal before they would let me have my profit a buck back. And it took a month. It took,

Jan Silhavy  15:39 

That’s horrible. This by requests slows everything, everything down.

Jefferson Nunn  15:44 

So, you mentioned by so I think to Dubai once and I think they’re really being innovative out there. Do you think, you know, Dubai is gonna become that crypto capital of the world or one of them?

Jan Silhavy  16:04 

Yeah, I think because the regulatory that is in Dubai at the moment. That’s the main reasons why Dubai is going to become the crypto hub.

Jefferson Nunn  16:16 

Right, right. So, if you’ve met with the people there and the government is there, I really think that they’re going to be trying to be innovative. They have literally like whole powers in District dedicated towards crypto innovations. So, do you think actually, that’s going to be what’s going to be coming next, where entire countries are going to be dedicating land and resources towards crypto innovation?

Jan Silhavy  16:45 

Oh, yeah, I actually think the day we’ll because you know, the cryptocurrency market is expanding. And it’s even expected to, in my opinion, replace the traditional financial systems in the future. So, I do think that they are going to be soon doing the same things that Dubai is at the moment.

Jefferson Nunn  17:06 

Awesome deal. Yes. I think you know, the places like Dubai, El Salvador, even Texas, you know, there’s the whole city Rockwall, Texas, that they’re probably going to be one of the largest crypto minds anywhere. I don’t know if you’ve heard but they plan to all but 30x decides that crypto mind.

Jan Silhavy  17:33 

That sounds interesting.

Jefferson Nunn  17:35 

Yeah, yeah. And not just there, all the different natural gas players that they had to convert all of that to Bitcoin mining. So, turn that into a carbon neutral, you know, because right now, when you burn you, I mean, you’re just burning the flares off, it comes into carbon dioxide. When you cap it, and turn it into mining, you actually get better the carbon dioxide. So, which I think is fantastic. We need more of that. And I last. And even if you stop 100% of oil production today, all those natural gasses are still going to be leaking out of the ground. You got to do something with it. So, I think it’s interesting that crypto innovation is leading us into a greener future. So, do you think there’s gonna be other things like environmental green technology? Do you think there’s gonna be other industries turning into crypto or solutions?

Jan Silhavy  18:37 

Sure, why actually think as, for example, what Ethereum is doing as they are becoming ecofriendly, right? I believe the other projects are going to be trying to do the same thing in order to make crypto sustainable. And after they are going to do this, I believe that is also going to attract more users who say, you know, one of the reasons a lot of people that I’m actually talking to they say that Bitcoin is bad is exactly because it’s not sustainable. You know, and why I always tell them is, you know, I would say that eating meat is even more not sustainable. And it’s a force against the planet then, you know, for example, mining Bitcoin.

Jefferson Nunn  19:18 

Yeah, very, very true. Reminds me of that movie star. They went to the Oscars all dressed up in a meat suit. That was hilarious. But alright, so a couple of last thoughts. If you’re just getting started in this crypto space, you know, you’re maybe 17 years old high school student, where should they go?

Jan Silhavy  19:43 

Well, I think it’s most important to say is that you need no previous work experience in this field, even though it’s a big advantage. So, what I would personally do if I had to start now as a young person is first of all, I would start learning about Bitcoin and crypto in politics. That there are so many resources on the internet that provide you with content that is easy, very easy to understand. And also, it’s very interesting. So having experience, such as being a trader, providing liquidity or just flipping NFTs can also be an advantage. I would also join the local communities and talk to people. Even though it might seem a bit difficult or scary, there is nothing easier than talking to people that share the same passion. And I can assure you that networking has a great value. So, I believe that you could be able to find a job when networking and local communities, I also strongly recommend reaching out to headhunters such as me or recruiters, this actually might be a faster way or than just applying for a job post. And what I always appreciate when a person reaches out to me, and trusts me with the process of finding a new job as the person that reaches out, has a great CV prepared and also some basic information. Lastly, I would say applying for a job post is also a great way of getting a job even though it might be a bit slower, you just have to make sure that you have read the job description that you meet the requirements and that you overall fit the position.

Jefferson Nunn  21:19 

Brilliant. Okay, any final thoughts that you’d like to share with our listeners?

Jan Silhavy  21:26 

Um, I think if there’s one thing today that I’d like to share with the listeners, it’s that you should think of yourself on a global scale, it’s going to help you to understand what the core values of crypto and I can guarantee you that if you understand those values, you will very soon start being passionate about it. And I know that from my own experience.

Jefferson Nunn  21:48 

Well thank you very much, Jan for coming on the show. If you want to reach out to Jan, you can use the link at the top of the show page or find Jan Silhavy on LinkedIn. Thank you very much.

Jan Silhavy  22:01 

Thank you for the meet up awesome.