Business Development Representative

About Sherlock

Sherlock believes that a sound currency and functioning financial system should be basic human rights. Sherlock’s mission is to help create an open, uncensorable financial system that is secure enough for billions of people to trust with their life savings.

Smart contract auditing is a good start, but it’s not enough. That's why Sherlock provides protocols with state-of-the-art, incentive-aligned audit contests as well as smart contract exploit coverage and bug bounty coverage.

Sherlock is the only audit provider to offer a "best of both worlds" solution to auditing, as well as back audits with up to $2M in smart contract exploit coverage.

The best of both worlds approach combines traditional auditing (reserving 1-2 highly talented security experts) with an audit contest approach that gets hundreds of eyes on a codebase and surfaces things that teams of 2-4 can just never find.

And Sherlock is the only auditor to offer smart contract exploit coverage behind each audit. If activated, it means Sherlock can pay out up to 2M USDC if the contracts Sherlock audited get hacked. Sherlock also includes a 200k USDC bug bounty on any covered contracts (with ability to go higher). No other security player has more incentive alignment than Sherlock.

Sherlock has done more smart contract audits than nearly anyone else since launching audit contests in September 2022. Repeat customers include Optimism, GMX, Ajna, Gitcoin, Index Coop, Opyn, Notional, OlympusDAO, Lyra, Perennial and many more.

And Sherlock is currently protecting ~$11M of funds on-chain right now for 8 protocols through the on-chain smart contract coverage protocol that Sherlock launched on Ethereum.

Join Sherlock's elite team at the ground floor, backed by some of the leading Silicon Valley and crypto venture capitalists including IDEO, Archetype, Dragonfly Ventures, Spartan, A Capital, Scalar Capital, DeFi Alliance, GSR, CoinFund, LedgerPrime, and Synthetix founder Kain Warwick.

Sherlock's Culture

Sherlock's culture is fast-moving, intense, and not right for everyone. To excel on this team, you must:

• Be mission-focused. Anyone who is in this for reasons other than creating the best worldwide financial system in history will either get too demotivated to last through multi-year bear markets or get too distracted during the frothy bull markets.
• Be willing to work long, hard and smart. If Sherlock has any advantage, it is the willingness to work harder and think with more discipline than anyone else. This includes thinking from first principles about all important decisions and always thinking in tradeoffs and bets.
• Be an owner. You will get ownership in Sherlock after a short time in this role, so you will be expected to act like you are the owner of a Michelin-star restaurant where no effort or detail is too small for you.
• Be a builder. Everyone at Sherlock is deep in the arena and we are reminded of that every day by the people who sit in the stands (on Twitter or elsewhere) and criticize. There are no "idea people" or managers at Sherlock; everyone is in execution mode first and foremost and gets their hands dirty.
• Be a customer at all times. The customer is always right and if the customer makes a mistake, it is Sherlock's fault for not making the rules, UI or UX, etc. clear enough. It is too easy to sit behind a computer and build in an echo chamber, so we must experience the customer's viewpoint as often as possible.
• Be a professional athlete. Professional athletes opt in to a high-performance, meritocratic culture. This creates an environment that brings out the best in people and rewards each for their respective performance. But it's also an environment where being in the 70th percentile in your role means you will have a short tenure on the team.
• You thrive in a direct, transparent environment. You must be comfortable giving direct feedback to others and receiving direct feedback yourself. "Not ruffling feathers" comes at the expense of moving in a suboptimal direction for too long. Sherlock is extremely transparent internally (and with customers) which means you can get involved in decisions made in any part of Sherlock.

The Role

Sherlock is lucky to be in a place where its auditing services are likely the best in the entire crypto industry. Sherlock regularly finds vulnerabilities that top teams miss and is almost never found in a situation where the reverse happens. And Sherlock is the only auditor willing to repay millions of dollars in the case of a missed exploit. The Sherlock team is working every day to improve the product and make this gap even wider. See this link for a breakdown of why Sherlock audits are superior: https://docs.sherlock.xyz/audits/protocols

However, Sherlock's superior performance is not widely known. This is where Sherlock needs your help.

For the past 12 months, Sherlock has done more audits than nearly any other auditor (~100). But the vast majority of these audits have come to Sherlock from word of mouth and repeat customers. This is incredible, but it means that there are vast swaths of the ecosystem that still have never heard of Sherlock or don't know why Sherlock is superior to other auditors. Every time a high-quality crypto project chooses an inferior auditor (instead of Sherlock) it holds the space back from its full potential and puts the life savings of end users at risk. If you're serious about applying for this job and you've read this far, please email jack at sherlock dot xyz with 4-sentence answers to these three questions: In what ways have you creatively gotten in touch with people you wanted to meet in the past? Why will you be able to get connected to the best protocol teams in crypto? Why should Sherlock select you over hundreds of other applicants?

Your role is simple:

Find high-quality existing and up-and-coming protocol teams in crypto and convey the superiority of Sherlock audits to them.

Of course, in practice this job involves a lot of skills.

An understanding of smart contract security and a protocol development cycle is a plus, but it's not needed to get started in this role.

You'll need to be very skilled at both speaking and writing: Sherlock makes important decisions and weighs tradeoffs exclusively in written communication, and many protocol teams want to see a face and hear a voice before choosing an auditor.

You'll need to find ways to get connected to decision makers at high-quality protocols (and chains) in crypto, build relationships with them, and share the benefits of Sherlock with them.

With that in mind, the day-to-day responsibilities of this role likely include:

• Sourcing and getting in touch with protocol teams (10x weight)
• Building relationships with decision-makers on these teams and sharing the benefits of Sherlock with them (5x weight)
• Sourcing relationships with ecosystem teams and other parties to make sure Sherlock is a preferred partner for their ecosystem/collective (3x weight)
• Helping out with marketing/events/social media campaigns where relevant in order to get more inbound/attention for Sherlock (1x weight)
• Working to onboard protocol teams to Sherlock bug bounty and smart contract coverage once the audit phase is complete (1x weight)
• Being extremely hungry/driven and ready to wear a completely different hat on any given day to help Sherlock succeed (variable weight)

Requirements

• Must have (or quickly develop) an edge at getting in touch with high-quality protocol teams
• Must be competitive and driven to succeed in bringing customers to Sherlock
• Must have a strong belief in the future potential of crypto
• Must understand and share the cultural values of Sherlock listed in "Sherlock's Culture" above

Nice to Haves

• Some knowledge of crypto/engineering/auditing to converse with prospective customers
• Proficiency in Solidity/Python
• Proficiency in Solidity smart contract security

What's in it for you

• Attractive base (payable in fiat or crypto) + bonus/commision + benefits + potential for tokens/equity
• Flexible time-off policy
• Fully remote and flexible workstyle gives you the autonomy to live and work how you want
• Optional access to shared working space at your local WeWork or equivalent
• Great healthcare including dental
• Multiple offsites each year in places like France, Colombia, Portugal, etc.
• Build connections online and in-person with tons of up-and-coming crypto founders and learn about new technologies
• Root access to the decision-making process/criteria in all areas of Sherlock and working directly with the founders
• Move quickly and get stuff done on a small, elite team that is already making a big impact in the crypto space
• Play a huge role in defining the future of Sherlock and accomplishing the goal of making crypto/DeFi accessible to everyone