How to find decision makers in a company: 5 steps for crypto

How to find decision makers in a company, in short: name the decision you need made before you name a person, open the company's page on NAUT and read every name on it, pick the title that owns that decision, check the person is still in the seat, then send 1 note on 1 channel. NAUT names at least 1 person at 4,641 of its 10,472 published companies, so the search ends in a name at those 4,641 and has to start somewhere else at the other 5,831.

Data note. Every count here was read from NAUT's own database on 24 October 2026, read-only. A person is counted when their row is live and published, which is 14,275 people. The role split covers the 13,214 of them who carry a job title and are tied to a published company. The worked team, Espresso Systems, was checked against the company's own team page and each person's own X bio, both read on 24 October 2026: 6 of its 8 NAUT rows have both sources. Fernando Krell has no X handle, so the team page is his only source, and the team page omits Britt Madruga, so her own bio is hers. NAUT Research wrote it, and the places where NAUT's own record loses to those sources are left in rather than tidied away.

How to find decision makers in a company, in 5 steps

These 5 steps run on 1 question you can answer before you open anything: what do you need this company to decide?

• The decision picks the role. A partnership, a token listing, a vendor contract and a hire sit with 4 different people inside the same company.
• The most senior name is the easiest to find and the slowest to answer. 3,645 of the 4,641 companies that name anyone name a founder or chief executive, and 1,765 of those 4,641 name exactly 1 person.
• A title with no function in it, such as VP or CSO, is a question rather than an answer.
• A title is a claim about the past. Check it against the person's own page before you write.
• 1 name, 1 channel, 1 note. A shared inbox answers nobody in particular, and 3 copies of the same note landing at a single firm are visible to everyone who got one.

Step 1: name the decision, then the person

Write down the decision you need made, in a single sentence, before you look at a name. "Approve a liquidity partnership" and "sign a security audit" and "add our chain to the wallet" are 3 different decisions with 3 different owners, and the owner is rarely the same person twice. This is the step most outreach skips, which is why so much of it lands with a founder who has to forward it.

Then say which role would own that decision at a company of this size. On a small team the founder usually does own all 3. At a company of 300 people the founder has handed most of them to someone else, and the job is to work out who.

Step 2: open the company page and read every name on it

Find the company on NAUT and read its people. Of the 13,861 people NAUT ties to a published company, 13,214 carry a job title and 11,439 have a page of their own, so most names come with a role and a profile attached and some come as a name only.

Espresso Systems carries 8 people, which is deeper than most: the median company that names anyone names 2, and 1,765 of the 4,641 companies with a named person name exactly 1. Depth varies a lot more than the median suggests. 1,421 companies name 4 people or more and 408 name 8 or more. Counting every kind of row NAUT publishes, Binance names 64, the most on any single row, then Sequoia Capital at 56, BlackRock and OKX at 53 each, Animoca Brands at 51, ConsenSys and Galaxy Digital (Ventures) at 47 each, a16z crypto at 44, Coinbase at 41 and HashKey Group at 40. Investor rows fill half of that list. Depth falls away behind that, through 4 more rows NAUT files as investors, to the deepest project rows left: Aptos and Polymarket at 27 each. Several of those groups sit on more than 1 NAUT row, so the organisation behind a row can be larger than the row says.

Read the company's own team page in the same sitting. The 2 are different crops of the same team and neither is the whole picture, which is the subject of the worked example below.

Step 3: pick the title that owns your decision

Read the titles against the decision from step 1 and take the person whose title names that function. Where no title names it, the founder is the fallback where NAUT names one, and that is a decision you are making rather than a default you fell into. At 996 of the 4,641 companies that name anybody, no founder is on the page either.

Watch the acronyms. Of the 13,214 titled people NAUT ties to a published company, 87 carry a title that is only CPO, 70 only CSO and 48 only CCO. Each of those 3 maps to more than 1 job: a CSO is a Chief Strategy, Security or Science Officer depending on the company, and a CCO is a Chief Compliance, Commercial or Content Officer. 205 people sit behind one of those 3 acronyms, so for them step 3 and step 4 are the same piece of work.

Step 4: check the person is still in the seat

A job title is a record of something that was true when it was recorded, and NAUT's record carries no usable date against one. Of the 15,693 employment rows behind a named person, 5,859 carry no start date at all and 7,295 share 1 of 3 dates, 2026-04-01, 2026-05-18 and 2026-03-01, which are import stamps rather than the days those people took those jobs.

So check the name against the person's own sources, and start with 2, because each kind fails in its own direction. A company team page is edited by the company and leaves people off it. A directory is edited by whoever last imported it and falls behind a promotion. A personal bio is current but partial, and it usually links a third source that settles what the first 2 disagree on. The worked example below turns on exactly that link.

Step 5: pick 1 name, 1 channel, 1 note

13,011 of the 14,275 people NAUT names carry at least 1 way to reach them. Counted separately, with plenty of overlap, 8,948 carry a LinkedIn URL, 8,704 an X handle and 6,711 a Telegram handle. Pick the channel the person uses for work, send 1 note, and give it a week before you try the second channel.

Then stop at 1 name per company. A note that lands with 3 people at the same firm is visible to all 3, and the reply you want is from the person who can say yes.

How to find decision makers by role: which ones does NAUT name?

Founders, by a long way. Of the 13,214 titled people tied to a published company, more than 2 in 5 carry a founder or chief-executive title, and the role a crypto seller usually wants, BD or partnerships, is the second smallest group on the chart.

Each person is counted once, in the first role their title matches, so the 8 bars add to 13,214. The bars are shortened to fit a phone. Their full names, in the order the first-match rule tries them, are founder or chief executive, BD or partnerships or sales, growth or marketing, product or engineering, legal or compliance, operations or finance, investing roles, and other or unclear. Founder is tried first, so a Co-founder and Head of BD counts as a founder. The founder pattern also matches President. On that same first-match rule, 3,645 companies name a founder or chief executive, 1,534 name someone whose title is unclear, 1,092 someone in product or engineering, 945 in growth or marketing, 637 in operations or finance, 500 in BD, partnerships or sales, 244 in an investing role and 171 in legal or compliance. The BD bucket matches any title mentioning business development or BD, partnerships, sales, revenue or CRO, or commercial, so a Chief Revenue Officer counts in it. Counting every title that mentions one of those anywhere in it, including the founders who also run it, lifts that BD figure to 533 companies.

"Other or unclear" is 2,716 people whose title matches none of the 7 role patterns. Its most common entries are Core Contributor at 275, Advisor at 121 and Contributor at 115, and the 3 bare acronyms from step 3 sit in it too.

Who is the decision maker at a crypto company? 1 real team, worked through

Espresso Systems builds blockchain infrastructure, and its NAUT page names 8 people. Run the 5 steps on it with a partnership to propose, and step 3 returns Britt Madruga, Director of Partnerships, the only one of the 8 whose title names partnerships outright. Mariana Bernado's Ecosystem Growth is the nearer second, and on a deal that names a counterparty she is the one to copy. The CEO, Ben Fisch, is the easiest name on the page to find and the wrong one to write to about a partnership.

Start with what each source is missing, because this company shows both gaps at once. Espresso's own team page named 25 people on 24 October 2026 and NAUT holds 8, of which 7 are on that page. So the directory carries under a third of the team Espresso publishes about itself, on one of the 408 deepest benches NAUT has. The 1 name NAUT holds that the company page does not is Britt Madruga, which is the person a seller came for. Read both, in other words, and expect each to be short.

NAUT also holds 7 X handles and 6 LinkedIn URLs across those 8 rows and no Telegram handle at all, even though Ben Fisch's own bio publishes one. Step 4 then runs on the 8 rows NAUT does hold. NAUT's title string differs from what those outside sources say on 7 of the 8.

Person	NAUT's title	Verdict
Ben Fisch	Co-founder,CEO, CTO	CEO on both. Co-founder on his own site. No source for CTO.
Jill Gunter	CSO	Chief Strategy Officer on the page. Her bio adds cofounder.
Charles Lu	Co-Founder	Also Chief Operating Officer.
Benedikt Bünz	Co-founder and Chief Scientist	Chief Scientist on both. His own site gives co-founder too, in NAUT's words.
Britt Madruga	Director of Partnerships	Her bio agrees. Team page omits her.
Mariana Bernado	Ecosystem Growth	Ecosystem Growth Lead.
Ellie Davidson	Head of R&D	Chief Product Officer on both.
FKFernando Krell	VP / Vice President	VP Engineering. No X bio.

Sort those 7. On 2 rows NAUT states something neither source supports: the CTO on Ben Fisch, and Head of R&D on Ellie Davidson, who is Chief Product Officer on the team page and in her own bio. On 4 more NAUT is short rather than wrong: Charles Lu is also Chief Operating Officer, Mariana Bernado is Ecosystem Growth Lead, Fernando Krell is VP Engineering, and Jill Gunter's bare CSO is Chief Strategy Officer, where her own bio also calls her a cofounder that her NAUT row does not carry.

The 7th row is the one worth copying. Both of those sources would have told you Benedikt Bünz is not a co-founder: the team page calls him Chief Scientist and so does his X bio. His own university page, linked from that same bio, calls him "a cofounder and chief scientist" there, which is the same claim NAUT stores. The same 1 extra click clears Ben Fisch, whose own site says co-founder while the team page and his bio give only CEO. So a 2-source check would have marked 2 true titles as wrong, and the source that settled both was 1 link away from a source already open. The 8th row, Britt Madruga's, is the only one of the 8 that matches word for word.

The 2 outside sources also differ from each other on 3 of the 6 rows both of them cover: the team page calls Mariana Bernado Ecosystem Growth Lead where her own bio says "product & growth", and gives Jill Gunter and Charles Lu C-level titles where each of their own bios says only cofounder. On a 7th row they do not both cover, the team page omits Britt Madruga altogether.

3 findings come out of that, and each is a rule for the next company you run this on. A title read off any directory is a lead rather than a fact, because this one differs from the outside sources on 7 of 8 rows. A company's own page is not the backstop either, since the person who owns partnerships here is on it nowhere, and 4 of its people hold a co-founder title it never mentions. And a missing title is not a wrong one: stop at 2 sources and you will call a real co-founder an error, which is what happened here twice before the third source was read.

Why is the founder usually the only name you get?

Because that is the name a company publishes about itself, and the rest of the team is published by the team. 5,759 of the 13,214 titled people NAUT ties to a published company are founders or chief executives, against 563 whose first-matching role is BD, partnerships or sales, so the founder is roughly 10x more likely to be the person a directory can name. The company counts say the same thing: 3,645 companies name a founder or chief executive, and 533 name anyone whose title mentions any of those words at all.

That shape is a fact about public information rather than about who makes decisions. Plenty of crypto teams have someone running partnerships whom no public page names, and a page with only a founder on it means the directory ran out of names. It does not mean the founder owns the decision.

Who to contact at a crypto company when nobody is named

5,831 of NAUT's 10,472 published companies name no person at all. Of the 4,641 that do name someone, 533 carry a BD title, 3,165 more name a founder but no BD title, and the remaining 943 have neither on the page. So for those 943, and for all 5,831 that name nobody, the name has to come from outside a directory. 3 routes work, in this order.

1. The company's own X account. Many follow their own staff back, and where they do the following list reads as a rough team page.
2. Its job posts, which name the team that is hiring and sometimes the manager above it.
3. Its conference talks, which name a speaker with a title on the slide. An event page is a cheap place to find a BD person, because sending one to a conference is what BD is for.

What this tells a crypto business development team

A directory is good at telling you which roles a company has filled, and bad at telling you whether a given title is still true. That splits the work in 2. Sorting a target list by the role you need is fast, and a directory does it well. Confirming that the person in that role is still the person is slow, it cannot be skipped, and the worked team above is why: its NAUT titles differ from its own outside sources on 7 of 8 rows.

So spend the time where it changes the answer, in this order.

How to find decision makers FAQ

Who is the decision maker at a crypto company?

It depends on the decision, and the honest first answer is the role rather than the name. Of the 13,214 people NAUT names with a title at a published company on 24 October 2026, 5,759 are founders or chief executives and 563 have BD, partnerships or sales as the first role their title matches. Where NAUT names anyone at all, a founder is on the page at 3,645 of 4,641 companies, and 1,765 of those 4,641 carry only 1 name of any kind.

How do I find decision makers in a company without LinkedIn?

Read the company's own team page, its X account and its conference talks, and cross them against a directory. On NAUT, 8,704 of the 14,275 named people carry an X handle and 6,711 carry a Telegram handle, against 8,948 with a LinkedIn URL, so LinkedIn is 1 of 3 routes rather than the only one.

Which role should I contact for a crypto partnership?

The one whose title names partnerships, business development or ecosystem, and the founder when nobody holds that title and NAUT names a founder at all. At Espresso Systems on 24 October 2026 that is Britt Madruga, Director of Partnerships, which her own X bio confirms even though the company's own team page leaves her off.

How do I check that a job title is still current?

Read the person's own bio and the company's own team page, and treat a disagreement as a signal rather than noise. NAUT's record carries no usable date against a title: 13,154 of the 15,693 employment rows behind its named people either carry no start date or share 1 of 3 import dates, so the record cannot date itself.

How many crypto companies name anyone on NAUT?

4,641 of 10,472 published companies named at least 1 person on 24 October 2026, with a median of 2 names each. Naming someone is not the same as naming the right someone: 3,645 of those name a founder and 533 name anyone with a BD title. 1,765 of those name exactly 1 person, 1,421 name 4 or more and 408 name 8 or more.

Sources

• NAUT's own database, read on 24 October 2026, read-only: the published people and companies, each person's job title and employment rows, and the ways to reach each person. Every count above was computed from those rows at that time, and the role split uses the first-match rule described under the chart.
• Espresso Systems' own team page, espressosys.com/about, read on 24 October 2026. It named 25 people, with the exact title of each.
• The X bio of each of the 7 people on NAUT's Espresso Systems row who has an X handle, read on 24 October 2026: Ben Fisch, Jill Gunter, Charles Lu, Benedikt Bünz, Britt Madruga, Mariana Bernado and Ellie Davidson. Fernando Krell carries no X handle on NAUT, so his row rests on the team page alone.
• The personal page each of those bios links, where it has one, read on 24 October 2026: cs.nyu.edu/~bb/ for Benedikt Bünz and sites.google.com/site/benafisch for Ben Fisch. Those 2 pages settled the co-founder question on both of those rows.