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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he looked to the Gipper when he was considering the future of his crypto exchange in 2020.
When he was thinking through how to explain to Coinbase’s employees the company’s controversial decision to ban political discussion amid nationwide unrest following the killing of George Floyd, Armstrong said he took inspiration from President Ronald Reagan’s famous decision in 1981 to fire more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers
“I watched a couple of speeches, actually, in the run-up to that, which gave me a little bit of confidence,” Armstrong recently told Jack Altman during an episode of Altman’s “Uncapped” podcast.
Armstrong also cited Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s response to labor unrest within Singapore Airlines. Lee, viewed as the nation’s modern-day founding father, recalled a tense meeting with the pilot’s union ahead of the 1980 election.
“Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him, or give it up,” Lee said.
As for his own speech, Armstrong said he was a lot shakier.
“I remember getting in front of the company, and my voice was cracking and my leg was shaking, and I almost couldn’t get through it, presenting it to the company,” Armstrong said. “But ultimately it turned out to be one of the best things we ever did.”
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At the time, Armstrong wrote that political discussions were a “distraction” and “creating internal divisions.” He said that larger companies in Silicon Valley, including Google, were showing what failing to act would mean for Coinbase.
“We’ve seen what internal strife at companies like Google and Facebook can do to productivity, and there are many smaller companies who have had their own challenges here,” Armstrong wrote in a September 2020 post. “I believe most employees don’t want to work in these divisive environments.”
Some fellow tech executives criticized Armstrong’s move. Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey questioned how a company dedicated to cryptocurrency could make political discussion verboten. Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo went even further.
“This isn’t great leadership. It’s the abdication of leadership,” Costolo wrote on Twitter. “It’s the equivalent of telling your employees to ‘shut up and dribble.'”
Ultimately, 5% of Coinbase’s workforce (60 employees) accepted an exit package that was offered to those who didn’t want to follow Armstrong’s new policy.
“If you’re in a position of leadership, it will occasionally become necessary for you to do something really difficult, which will piss off some large group of people, but it’s the right thing to do for the company,” Armstrong said. “And so these moments present themselves to you. And when I did it, I had no idea I would be talking about it five years later.”
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