Billy Crypto

Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong on why the best co-founder disagreements are resolved with a number, not a title: "It would be a bad move for me to say every time, well I'm the CEO, so I'm making the final call. That's a good recipe to just piss off other people who are working with you." He and his co-founder agreed on 90-95% of decisions. For the rest, they needed something better than hierarchy. So they created a simple game: "1 to 5, how much do you care?" played like rock, paper, scissors. "On three, 1 2 3, we're going to hit, you know, I'm a three, you're a four. All right, let's go your way on this." The genius is that it exposes what passion alone can't. You can never tell from an argument how much someone actually cares: "Sometimes somebody will be like really passionately arguing for something… and then you're like, they're a two out of five. They just love to engage in debate." So @brian_armstrong added a built-in accountability layer: Whoever cared more didn't just win the decision — they owned the outcome: "You care more. Let's go your way, but if it breaks, it's on you to fix it." When asked what happens if both people are a five out of five, Brian says it essentially never happened once. But if it did, they'd simply flip a coin. The result? Faster decisions, no resentment, and conviction paired with responsibility. You don't need to pull rank to settle a disagreement. You just need a way to measure who cares more.