Why Joining TRM Is the Smartest Career Move in Tech Right Now
Why the smartest career move in tech right now is a $2 billion company, not a $2 trillion one
I've worked in San Francisco for 15 years. In that time, I've joined six startups. Two went public. Two were acquired. One is still grinding it out.
Now, I'm at TRM Labs now, a company that's going through explosive growth. It's the sort of place you wait your whole career hoping to get lucky enough to find and join. Through close friends, I've also had a front-row seat to Airbnb, Coinbase, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Yes, those companies have minted extraordinary careers. Plenty of people I know walked in as individual contributors and walked out running teams, with equity that changed their lives.
The thing I've learned from it all, is this: the best career growth happens when a company doesn't just grow fast, but is built, on purpose, to grow its people alongside it. The first happens all the time; the second is much, much rarer.
So, here's my claim. If you're top talent, and especially if you build things for a living, TRM is the best place in tech right now. I'll make the case up front, and spend the rest of this post proving it.
The case, in three parts:
- TRM is built so you capture the growth. Most fast-growing companies leave that to luck. We designed it in advance, with a one-two punch: a system that constantly matches top performers with new opportunities, and a pay-for-performance model that rewards outsized impact with outsized compensation.
- The time to join TRM is now. We're past the existential new-company risk, but haven't yet gotten to the point where the roles, and compensation packages, begin to narrow. It's a brief window in the growth of every rocket-ship company, and it only lasts for a few hundred hires.
- ... while the upside is still enormous. At a $2 billion valuation, with our flagship platform, Ardence, just launched, there's a lot of room left to grow.
I'll wrap up the post with five questions to ask any company that's recruiting you, including mine.
Argument 1: TRM is built so you capture the growth
The problem: growth you don't capture
When a company's valuation doubles, as TRM's just did, your equity doubles with it. If you hold $400,000 in equity, it's now worth $800,000*
A doubling on its own doesn't tell you much, though. What matters is how fast your equity keeps growing from here on, and how much upside is left. The equity you hold is only half of it. The other half is whether the company's growth turns into yours:
a bigger role, faster raises, and rewards that reflect what you delivered.
At a lot of companies, especially AI ones, it doesn't. Not because anyone is acting in bad faith, but because the compensation structures weren't designed that way.
Today's AI companies are raising rounds that would have been IPOs ten years ago, then sprinting to hit revenue targets on compressed timelines with tiny teams. At these companies, rewards get handed out reactively, based on on who was visible, which manager pushed for you, and which recruiter set your offer.
If you ask people at these rocket-ship companies how their careers grew so fast, you'll often hear about timing: the right team, the right manager, the right door opening at the right moment. That's real growth, and they earned it. But the company didn't design for it, which means it's not repeatable. For each person who caught the right timing, a hundred more who were just as talented didn't.
At one of these companies, whether or not you grow is a coin flip. You could do exceptional work at a company that's tripling in value, and not see it reflected in your comp—because the company hasn't connected the two.
Here's my read on things. If you're talking to a fast-growing company, and the recruiter can't clearly articulate the levers that create financial and career wins for you, that's the reddest flag there is. At a company like that, you won't control your own outcomes. A dozen variables will: your manager's memory, the mood of whichever executive runs your org that quarter, whether your project happened to be in the spotlight, who was in the room when budgets got set. I don't want that to happen to you.
At TRM, your growth is a business goal
There's one question TRM asks every time we make a major business decision or set a new strategic direction: what will our people get out of this, at every stage of their career here?
This isn't a nice-to-have, that we check at the end. It's a top-line business goal. Building a safer world is our mission—and right alongside it, is giving our people an exceptional growth experience. We plan for it, staff for it, and measure it like all of our other goals.
In theory, it defines our company decision-making. In practice, it lives like a one-two punch.
Punch one: we engineer opportunity
Every six weeks, we look at performance and reward it. At most companies, you get a performance review once a year. At TRM, we do a (very light weight, just a red/yellow/green on performance) pulse check every six weeks. If you ship something exceptional in March, you shouldn't have to wait until December for anyone to notice.
Every quarter, we audit opportunity. We look at what new opportunities are opening up from recently closed deals or additions to the product roadmap, and match people based on what people have expressed an interest in development-wise.
Twice a year, we have stay conversations. Today, most companies ask people what they want in the exit interview. That's like asking for directions to the place, once you've arrived. At TRM, we ask what you want twice a year, and then line up opportunities, compensation, mentorship, and coaching based on what you tell us.
And it's not one size fits all. When someone is driving serious impact, we show up fast with what they actually want. For some, that's executive coaching. For others, it's a mentor from our leadership team, the chance to lead a customer engagement that just opened up, or a speaking opportunity at an industry event. When life happens (a house, a wedding, a new kid), it can mean flexibility in how rewards are structured. And when someone is going all in on a big push, we give them air cover at home so they can focus. (That one isn't a reward. It's just how you show up for people.)
Punch two: we pay for performance, by design
We are a pay-for-performance company, in the most literal sense: outsized impact earns outsized rewards.
A few real examples. We've sent top performers and their families on five-star trips to see the Northern Lights and stay in an igloo (this one has stuck with me, new bucket-list item!). We've given people performance equity packages tied to ambitious goals, and then watched them blow past those goals and earn major accelerators on top. And we have our bi-annual merit rewards (one time bonus and base increase) have accelerators based on your performance scores.
None of that was improvised. It's built into our compensation policy before the work starts. Each employee knows the rules; everyone can see the path.
That's the difference between a generous company and an intentional one. The first rewards you if someone happens to notice what you've done. The second tells you up front what great looks like and how it's rewarded, and follows through.
Argument 2: The time to join TRM is now
It takes skill and judgment to join a company at the right time.
Too early, and you're betting your career on whether the company survives, with cash compensation that reflects the risk. Too late, and the company is safe, but your role is a sliver of a sliver, and the build-it-from-scratch opportunities went to the people who showed up first.
Right now, TRM is in the sweet spot, directly in between. We're just north of 500 people. We've crossed $100 million in ARR and are set to 2x in under 2 quarters. In about six months, our valuation doubled from $1 billion to $2 billion. We're well funded, and we pay competitive salaries with meaningful equity packages. We're stable enough that we're not going anywhere, but we're early enough in our growth that the people who join now will build the TRM of the future, and be compensated accordingly.
In my experience, this window lasts only a few hundred hires. At TRM, I anticipate it will go for 18 to 24 months, as we move toward 1,000 people. After that, new hires will still have incredible careers here. You just won't be early.
The time to join TRM is right now.
Argument 3: The upside is still enormous
The math
I'll be careful here, because I'm not a financial advisor and equity is never a guarantee. But the numbers are worth doing.
There are some incredible frontier AI companies right now, with matching incredible (really, really, REALLY) high valuations. On average, will those companies again double in valuation? Possible? Sure. A modest bet? No.
The math makes a lot more sense at TRM. At $2 billion, growing by 10x makes us a $20 billion company. It's not only possible—it's what we're aiming for, and it still only puts us at a fraction of what other frontier AI companies are worth today.
In short, TRM has room to grow.
Yes, equity appreciation is the floor at all companies. At TRM, though, the floor has more room to rise, and you get to benefit from a compensation structure that turns the company's growth into yours.
Five questions to ask any company recruiting you
Not convinced?
I'm not offended at all—I want you to land at the place that's best for you. To help you do that, here are five questions to ask every company you're evaluating for your next career move (including TMR):
- What's my level, and what does the next one require?
- How often is performance reviewed and rewarded?
- If I deliver outsized impact, what specifically happens to my comp?
- How do new opportunities get matched to people?
- When will someone ask me what I want to grow into, other than in an exit interview?
If the answers are vague, your growth is going to depend on luck. At TRM, we can answer all five.
Your career should grow as fast as your company. At TRM, it does.
If you're a builder who wants to be early to something that matters, and be rewarded accordingly, come talk to us. Check out our careers page here.
*Of course, there are plenty of nuances and exceptions here. Liquidation preferences and the preference stack, dilution from future rounds, different share classes, strike prices, taxes, and the timing and terms of an exit can all change what a given grant is actually worth to you. There are a million ways the math can play out differently. Directionally, though, the point holds. And as always, this isn't financial advice.
