I'm a small-business owner in the blockchain industry. I relied on 3 tactics to lead my company through a 'crypto winter' and other volatility.

• Constellation Network is a decentralized network and Web3 blockchain ecosystem.
• With a few strategic moves, the cofounder was able to grow the company during industry uncertainty.
• The company diversified and restructured when necessary — while preparing for future growth.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Altif Brown, the 33-year-old cofounder and director of community at Constellation Network, a decentralized network and Web3 blockchain ecosystem. Insider has verified the business' growth with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

When we first launched Constellation Network in late 2017, it was during what I would consider the first big bull run in the crypto space. Bitcoin had broken $10,000 for the first time, Filecoin raised nearly $200 million in under an hour, and it felt like everyone was building cool stuff around us.

And then, toward the end of 2017, the markets majorly pulled back and we entered what many refer to as a "crypto winter." Not only did that mean the crypto in our accounts was suddenly worth a lot less, but it also led to an unfavorable change in public perception and regulatory concerns that could affect the future of our company and the industry as a whole.

To be impactful as a first-time cofounder, I had to quickly learn how to manage a team whether it be "feast or famine." During times of "feast," we learned to become agile and adaptable, quickly capitalizing on opportunities for growth and expansion. When market contractions forced us into "famine," we needed to be equally agile in reducing costs, finding new markets to branch into, and pivoting our growth plan to be competitive.

After six years of ups and downs, we now have over 25,000 users spanning 95 countries and tens of thousands of community members across social media and other platforms. We also work with a variety of customers, from Web3 companies that are disrupting traditional industries to the US Department of Defense.

In retrospect, the hyper-volatile crypto market oscillating between scarcity and abundance was a forcing function to build our company with resilience, which has allowed us to weather a variety of storms over the past six years and has led to our ongoing success today.

We looked for opportunities to diversify

Diversification as a strength is one of the first things you learn in business school, but it's a bit harder to figure out what that means in an industry where there's no framework and things are constantly changing. We had to build the plane as we were flying and figure out ways to add more variety to our business model.

One thing we did was revisit who we were targeting as customers. While we originally sought to work with enterprises, "crypto winter" was taking a huge toll on the industry and we were no exception.

Enterprises then, and still often today, are skeptical of crypto and blockchain technology as a whole. We decided to start working on contracts with more stable budgets, and after a big effort on our part, we landed a contract with the US Department of Defense in August 2019.

Though they had some skepticism, they had a growing need for cyber resilience and generally take pride in being at the forefront of new technologies, so they opted to overlook uncertainty in favor of exploration. It's nice to know that, whatever happens, we can fall back on government work.

In 2019 we also acquired a more traditional technology company, Dor, and also absorbed their team. This made our team way more robust, expanding us beyond a group of crypto diehards, and creating fewer blind spots within the company. Because the team is more eclectic overall, we can see beyond the scope of our echo chamber within the crypto space.

We prepared for when the feast would return

Even during times of downturn, my team and I always believed the industry would bounce back. For one, algorithmically speaking, it should. But also, to work in an industry this volatile, you have to be a little bit insane, and we tend to be hopelessly optimistic about these things.

So, planning during downturns for us has always been about getting the pieces ready to maximize our success when the "feast" returns, building new products in stealth so that they're ready as soon as excitement for the industry comes roaring back.

For example, during the latest downturn, we spent time building up our accelerator program, Web3 Launchkit, which helps founders learn all the pieces to launch a successful crypto company. By getting it prepared now, we'll have it ready for when passion for the industry starts roaring back.

Preparing for better times also meant shifting our priorities and budgets. For instance, during times of "feast" it makes sense to invest a bit heavier into marketing, partnerships, and events. When things pull back, those budgets are absorbed into other things.

As the director of community, I had to think of where else I could provide value. I shifted from building our open-source community to building relationships with new groups, such as the space community, which widened our overall exposure to the defense industry.

We restructured our team when necessary while doing our best to keep them in the fold

Like many companies during industry downturns, we have had to lay people off at times, but we've always looked for creative ways to keep as much of our team as engaged as possible.

We've offered some people we had to lay off the option to shift to contract work and have reconverted several team members back to full-time positions when their roles made sense again.

We've also helped place some folks who we couldn't keep at companies that are building within our blockchain ecosystem. This way, the employee's career is still advancing, we reduce costs, and the adjacent company gets an expert to grow its in-house knowledge.

To keep more of the team during hard times, we've also looked for ways to get creative with compensation. Outside of the founders and leadership team taking reduced salaries, we worked with team members to build individualized compensation packages that aligned their needs with our financial situation. Some people were happy to forgo regular cash to receive compensation in a combo of crypto and equity, for example.

No matter what, we worked hard to parlay people into parts of the business that utilized their skills while still contributing to our long-term success — helping to keep us growing and keep team morale strong.