Maciej ‘Mac’ Budkowski

Twitter: @macbudkowski | LinkedIn: in/maciej-budkowski |
Replit: @macbudkowski | GitHub: @macbudkowski

I’m a full-stack entrepreneur with 8 years of experience in building products, services, and processes from 0 to 1. I’m fluent in both high- and low-level work.

My attitude is reflected by the methods I use in every day’s work.

NOTABLE WORK EXPERIENCE

KIWINEWS 
(community-curated media dapp)
Remote
Co-Founder04/2023-now

  • Responsible for product, growth & community

GOERLINATOR (App that distributed 20,000+ GoerliETH to Ethereum developers)US
Co-Founder
02/2023-now

  • Developed product concept, brand, prototype, UX, UI & NextJS front-end for the app during the ETH Denver hackathon,
  • Prioritized security to maximize potential product adoption (gas-less claims via OpenZeppelin Defender Relayer, claim with address instead of connecting wallet, open-sourcing code & doxxing the team),
  • Designed & implemented GTM, resulting in 14,000+ GoerliETH distributed to Ethereum developers, endorsement from Base core team and members of the Ethereum Foundation, as well as getting featured in Week in Ethereum News.

WEB3 TALKS
(Builders-oriented podcast)
Remote
Founder & Host11/2021-now

  • Built one of the most popular builders-oriented web3 podcasts from 0 to 1:
      • Analyzing most popular web3 podcasts on Spotify & Apple Podcasts;
      • Interviewing 20+ podcast listeners to find the gap in the podcasts offering; 
      • Iterating my podcast from “people working in web3” to “web3 founders only” and then to “at least moderately successful web3 founders only.
  • Designed and optimized brand, promotion strategies & distribution channels, leading to 1,500+ subscribers from a niche of web3 founders, devs & operators,
  • Recorded 40+ interviews with top web3 founders such as Seb Audet (Zapper), Stefan George (Gnosis), and Pedro Gomes (WalletConnect).

PRIVATE CONSULTING
(Comms & Ops consulting)Global
Founder & Consultant
01/2019-now

  • Working with Co-Founders and exec teams of $X-XXXM web3 startups to improve their product marketing, roadmaps, & GTM strategies,
  • Conducted positioning & messaging workshops at ETH Denver ‘23 Main Event titled “How to explain what your web3 product does and convince users to try it”,
  • Built new messaging & communications materials for a $3B+ AUM European family office & $1.2B+ AUM European private debt fund,
  • Led the 5 people team to design a $90M+ deal investment brochure for the meeting with the King of Saudi Arabia for one of the top German real estate tech entrepreneurs.

EXPLAINVISUALLY (acquired)
(Communications agency)
 Warsaw, PL/Remote
Marketing & Sales Manager >> CEO
>> Advisor
03/2016-now

Stepped into CEO role after Co-Founder’s death and turned around the company from debt equaling 30% of annual revenue to repaying debt, profitability, 6X revenue growth & successful M&A process. Lead the company through the acquisition process – from finding a buyer through the negotiation, contracts & post-acquisition integration.

Listed on the ‘50 Most Creative People in Polish Business’ (2017) & received a special distinction in ‘Microentrepreneur of the Year’ by Citibank Foundation (2018).

End-to-end entrepreneurial experience where I:

    • Productized key services with Lean Startup methodology enabling a 40% margin increase:
        • Customer interviews: interviewing 30+ B2B corporate marketing managers using Customer Development methodology; 
        • Analyzing the market: being part of 3 big B2B marketers communities, watching top10 substitute competitors and reading Gartner/Forrester reports; 
        • Prototyping productized services: pitching, Landing Pages, and iterating on that to reach the right value proposition;
        • GTM: testing channels such as LinkedIn, SEO, SEM, FB Ads, Content Marketing, Conferences, Community Marketing, Cold Outreach;
        • Pricing: optimizing pricing models based on CRM & revenue data.
    • Designed and implemented marketing strategy which delivered inbound deals ($2-25k/each) from 30+ global corporations such as IKEA, Intel, ING, Pratt&Whitney and Pfizer as well as 100+ startups & SMEs (content, SEO, LPs, ads, SoMe, branding, newsletters),
    • Conducted two rebrandings & repositionings that increased our penetration of the corporate market by 3X (messaging, logo, visual identity, website copy & UI, user testing),
    • Built sales processes that provide an avg. 30% conversion rate (based on SPIN Selling & Challenger Sale + CRM analysis and optimization),
    • Designed Agile & Lean-inspired Project Management system reducing project delivery times by an avg. of 25%
      • Mapping processes with BPMN methodology, 
      • Running workshops to fill in the gaps with the team and analyze bottlenecks,
      • Testing PM tools such as Asana, Trello, Kanban, and ClickUp,
      • Adjusting Scrum to fit our agency’s needs.
    • Created a cashflow-optimization process that improved cash reserves by 40% (financial analysis, action plan, implementation).
    • Designed recruiting process, onboarded and built a 15 people hybrid team (designers, sales, marketing, PMs).

Notable ExplainVisually’s projects: 

    • Producing materials that introduced IKEA’s digital transformation strategy at their kick-off meeting to 700+ employees in offices in the US, Poland, and China,
    • Creating a global campaign for Carlsberg to educate employees about Health & Safety procedures in 30+ countries,
    • Designing a deck that helped to sell a $2.5M+ IT project to one of the leading European packaging companies,
    • Creating a pitch video for a startup that helped to win a $1M prize for the best Insurtech startup in Israel,
    • Designing an animation that helped to generate the first $100k revenue for the medical education startup,
    • Delivering explainers in Arabic for NestleHealthScience to launch a new medical product in Saudi Arabia.

IS-WIRELESS
(High-tech telecom startup)
Warsaw, PL
Junior Business Developer >>
Business Developer
08/2015-03/2016

  • As an only non-tech hire led marketing & product communications, reaching 1,500+ telecom engineers globally (marketing materials, ads, website, newsletter),
  • Built a global reselling program – from idea, through biz dev materials up to recruiting tech Partners from four continents,
  • Co-created a new product (aLTErnative) with the R&D team and CEO based on customers’ conversations and market research.

PRO BONO

 

INCREDIBLES BY SEBASTIAN KULCZYK
(Tier-1 CEE startup accelerator)
Remote
Mentor                   01/2021-now

  • Led pitch decks & strategic communications workshops with Bain & Co for 15+ CEE startups (highest-rated among all accelerator workshops)

 

SEKTOR 3.0 FUND
(Tech for Good fund & incubator)
Remote
Mentor                   06/2020-01/2021

  • Helped to design strategic communications, GTM, and product strategy for a social startup focused on people with hearing impairment.

EDUCATION

 

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE BUSINESS SCHOOL       Cambridge, UK
Business and Entrepreneurship   2019-2019

MULTI-LEVEL COACHING SCHOOL Warsaw, PL
(ICF-compliant 200 hrs+ coaching course)

Coaching Certification   2013-2014

UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW Warsaw, PL
(#1 University in Poland
)
Psychology Master’s Degree:
Final grade – 4.5/5
  2009-2014

    • Thesis: How does an information-dense environment influence understanding of complex concepts (Grade: 5/5).

      Supervisor: prof. Andrew Nowak, one of the world’s leading experts on the modeling and computer simulation of social processes.

Activities:
Student Council – Vicepresident,
Cultural Section – Founder & President,
Existential Psychology Student Research Group – Co-Founder,
Progress Student Research Group – Coaching Section Member.

LANGUAGES:
Polish (Native), English (fluent), Spanish (pre-intermediate), Russian (pre-intermediate), Chinese (basic).

PRODUCT & CODING-RELATED COURSES:
Product Owner (PSPO)
Scrum Master (PSM)
Python (Replit 100 days of code – finished #58 out of 59,000+ attendees)
Solidity (CryptoZombies + LearnWeb3 courses) 

PROGRAMS I USE:
G Suite, MS Office, Asana, Notion, Slack, Discord, Pipedrive, Ahrefs, Adobe Photoshop, Figma, Adobe Premiere.

NOTABLE CONTENT CREATED

“How to explain what you web3 product does and convince users to try it?”

Post version:
http://macbudkowski.com/how-to-explain-web3-products/

Thread version:

 

“Why it’s so hard to understand blockchain unless you see it as a new type of computer?” 

Post version:

https://paragraph.xyz/@kanfa/blockchains-as-computers 

Thread version:

 

“How exactly do Music NFTs plan to change the music industry?

(endorsed by Gigamesh from sound.xyz & 3LAU from Royal.io)

Post version:
https://paragraph.xyz/@kanfa/music-nfts

Thread version:

Web3 top design list:

https://web3talks.xyz/web3-design-examples/

 

OUTSIDE OF WORK

 

Interests:

  • Philosophy (stoicism, existentialism),
  • Psychology (social, performance, decision-making),
  • Meditation (1,500+ hours of practice),
  • Storytelling (storytelling guest lecturer for Ph.D. students at Warsaw School of Economics),
  • Traveling & different cultures (visited ca. 40 countries, incl. hitchhiking in 7 of them),
  • Literature (member of the artistic group “Skafander,” my short story got published in the literary quarterly “Wyspa”),
  • Photography,
  • Sports:
    • Snowboarding (3rd place in the Slalom Junior Class Warsaw Championship),
    • Basketball (University of Warsaw’s President Cup’s winning team member),
    • Judo (University Team member),
    • Volleyball (High school team member),
    • Soccer (Never done at the competitive level but love the game),
    • Sailing (Sailboat & motorboat licenses),
    • Horse riding,
    • Weightlifting.

Goodreads profile:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/127424423-maciej-budkowski

Favorite books:
“Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality” by Eliezer Yudkovsky,
“First Law Saga” by Joe Abercrombie,
“The Asian Saga” by James Clavell.