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.
The former executive said this didn’t do wonders for morale, and also expressed concern that Sethi’s staying on as Chairman of Tribe Capital—an arrangement blessed by both Kraken’s board and the firm’s LPs—posed a conflict of interest. Meanwhile, both Tribe and Sethi himself were among the investors who participated in a $500 million funding round that closed this month, valuing Kraken at $15 billion.
All of this is an unorthodox way to run a company, but investors are unlikely to care if Sethi is getting the job done. So far, there is evidence he is. In recent months, Kraken has been rapidly shipping new products, including its xStocks tokenized equities, a service that aligns with the company’s broader vision of integrating crypto and traditional financial stacks. Sethi is also working to remake Kraken as a family of brands, each of which has a full suite of executive services behind it. Sethi says the mode is Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta—though it also sounds very much like how a VC firm treats its suite of portcos.
Sethi’s approach, which has sought to “make the organization leaner and faster,” may prove effective in Kraken’s current acceleration period, but it will be interesting to see if it works after the company goes public. In my experience reporting on big companies, the best have a tightly-knit and cohesive C-suite that can motivate employees at all levels to buy in.
That will be a bridge for Kraken to cross in 2026 when it plans to list its shares. In the meantime, the storyline to watch—in addition to Sethi’s unusual management style—is whether he will be able to hit the IPO finish line before the current bull market peters out. In the last few months, a parade of crypto companies has had gangbuster IPOs, including some that are hot garbage wrapped in marketing fumes. Kraken, by contrast, is a great business. It would be ironic if it missed the current window.
See you tomorrow,
Jeff John Roberts
X: @jeffjohnroberts
Email: jeff.roberts@fortune.com
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