Trust, story, partnerships and the AI layer now being built on top of them. Figures reflect the applicable reporting periods, with cumulative scale labelled as such.
How I built and ran a lean PR function for an early-stage company competing in a fast-moving market with limited brand recognition, team capacity and budget.
The company was an early-stage startup entering a rapidly growing but highly competitive market — limited brand awareness, a small team, no large communications budget. At the same time, product launches, security concerns and unverified rumours could spread quickly across media, social platforms and user communities.
The communications function had three priorities: explain product launches, security measures and user protection clearly; respond quickly and accurately to crises, rumours and misinformation; and build visibility through leadership, product and community stories.
I built and ran the PR function end to end, combining strategic ownership, team coordination and hands-on execution. I set communication priorities, developed the media and storytelling approach, managed a small team and coordinated closely with leadership, product, technology, business and community teams — while personally handling the core delivery, from press releases, media pitching and journalist enquiries to executive interviews, media relationships and crisis response.
Direct access over corporate distance. I created opportunities for the founder and leadership team to communicate directly with journalists, users and communities through interviews, AMAs, meetups and WeChat group discussions — starting before the company had an established public profile.
Transparency over delayed responses. I worked across teams to verify facts quickly and translate complex product, security and operational information into clear public communication. During a major crisis, I briefed more than 20 media outlets and organised an immediate founder AMA, allowing journalists and community members to hear verified information directly rather than letting rumours define the story.
Relationships over paid visibility. With a limited budget, I focused on long-term relationships with journalists, editors and industry voices. Product updates, leadership perspectives, user stories and market commentary were developed into narratives that could work across earned media, owned channels and community platforms.
How I built a content system rooted in company priorities, responsive to market shifts, and extended through search, media and communities to support growth.
The crypto market was evolving at extraordinary speed. Attention was expanding beyond centralized trading towards Liquid Swap, DeFi and yield farming, while the rise of NFTs brought artists and creators into the community. Internally, new products, business initiatives, events and campaigns were generating increasing content demands from product teams, business units, regional markets, campaign teams and SEO.
For a three-person content team, the challenge was not to publish more. It was to respond to a fast-moving market without allowing the company's story to become fragmented.
I shaped the editorial direction and content system that determined which stories deserved attention, how they should be framed and how they could support both users and the business. I treated the content operation as a tree: its roots in the company's products, priorities, users and market reality; its trunk a coherent brand narrative; its branches extending through the blog, search, social media, communities, regional markets and earned media.
Publishing was only the beginning of the user journey. I worked with the SEO team to turn product information, market developments and user questions into topics with lasting search value, adapted for local keywords and search behaviour across more than 20 language markets.
Traffic alone was not the objective — each article needed a relevant next step. Calls to action were designed around the reader's level of awareness: explore a product, visit a product page, join a programme or community, or complete a new-user registration. The growth journey moved from discovery to understanding, and from understanding to action.
Content was adapted for social media and distributed through more than 100 community channels — and questions, feedback and market sentiment from those communities informed future editorial decisions. The strongest narratives were reused by brand and PR teams for media briefings, journalist outreach and earned coverage, while regional teams localized the same core story without changing its central meaning.
Direct content output:
Overall scale by the end of my tenure:
These broader scale metrics represent the overall content operation at the end of my tenure and should not be attributed solely to the 59 articles.
How a portfolio of 200+ global affiliate partners was developed and managed to acquire high-quality users, increase trading activity and revenue, reactivate dormant relationships, and build a more scalable partnership operation.
Affiliate partnerships were a major channel for user acquisition, trading activity and revenue. The central objective was not simply to expand the network, but to identify high-potential social accounts, KOLs and affiliate partners and convert them into loyal, long-term platform partners through tailored commercial models.
As the portfolio expanded across APAC, Southeast Asia, MENA, Latin America, CIS/CEE and Australia & New Zealand, the operation had to manage three growth priorities simultaneously: acquiring new high-potential partners, increasing the lifetime value of established partners, and reactivating inactive or dormant affiliates. The core challenge was determining which markets, channels and relationships deserved the greatest share of limited commercial, operational and campaign resources.
The role covered the full affiliate lifecycle across English-speaking regions and other priority markets: market opportunity analysis, partner research, outreach and pitching, commercial negotiation, partnership design, activation, campaign execution, performance optimisation and re-engagement. The portfolio included more than 200 global affiliates at different stages of maturity.
The objective was not to sign the greatest number of accounts, but to build relationships capable of generating sustained high-quality acquisition, trading activity and revenue.
Concentrating on high-potential markets and channels. Historical partnership performance, regional growth trends and market data identified the geographies with the strongest potential. Outreach and pitches were adapted to each prospect's audience, content model and market position rather than distributed uniformly.
Using data to set priorities. Partners were reviewed regularly across new-user volume and quality, subsequent trading activity, revenue contribution, audience–market fit, consistency of growth, campaign participation and long-term potential — differentiating top-tier, growth-stage, low-activity and reactivation accounts. Resources followed commercial performance and incremental potential, not portfolio size.
Designing tailored partnership and incentive models. High-potential and top-performing partners received collaboration structures designed around their audience, channel capabilities and growth objectives — customised campaigns, community incentives, joint content, market-specific growth plans, offline event invitations, milestone-based rewards and longer-term performance incentives.
Managing the full partner lifecycle. New partners needed activation; mature partners needed upgraded collaboration models; low-activity partners needed renewed strategies; dormant partners needed reactivation plans based on historical performance and the reasons behind disengagement.
Improving efficiency and accuracy with AI. Once the portfolio exceeded 200 partners, an AI-enabled internal workflow project automated repeatable elements — record organisation, follow-up reminders, performance consolidation, portfolio segmentation and opportunity identification. AI supported, rather than replaced, commercial judgement.
During the relevant reporting periods:
These figures reflect performance during the applicable reporting periods and were not uniform across every partner, month or quarter.
How I am translating proven business judgement into modular AI workflows that expand individual capacity and support ambitious growth.
The company set a target of 10× user growth within one year. Once translated into team and individual OKRs, the ambition could not realistically be supported by longer hours or incremental process improvements alone. The opportunity was not simply to use AI to reduce costs — it was to make AI the hands of top performers: executing their strategy, extending their reach and taking on the repetitive work that limits individual capacity.
Media Monitoring Assistant — monitors media, social platforms, communities and user sentiment to identify emerging issues, organise evidence and support faster crisis response.
Shadow BD — follows an established commercial strategy to support partner discovery, qualification, outreach, portfolio operations and performance analysis.
The underlying capabilities are being tested in a live Content Creator Campaign, where AI supports social-profile review, participant qualification, automated notifications, content scoring and preliminary ranking.
These projects are in development and live operational testing. A 10× increase in individual productivity is the design ambition, not a result already achieved.
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