Ben O'Hanlon
Growth & Marketing Executive | Building Distribution & Activating Ecosystems | Growth Beyond Headcount
- Greater Manchester, UK
- benohanlon@pm.me
Solving growth, adoption and distribution problems for 10 years in digital-asset infrastructure. I am a builder who operates in developer ecosystems, building open technology and financial operating systems. I build and lead the marketing functions to tackle those problems.
I think about growth as a Celtic knot, which is why I believe numbers come before strategy. I don’t see product, distribution, adoption, partnerships and community as separate jobs that happen in sequence. I look at how they affect one another, then decide where interventions will make the greatest difference to the whole. A small set of system-wide units of account creates an axis for coordination at scale, allowing high alignment and loose coupling. Teams and partners develop their own strategies while remaining accountable for their contribution to the whole. This counters “activity therapy”: roles and layers optimising locally without regard for the whole.
Built functions and teams from zero, starting as an IC. At Input Output, I built the ecosystem function from the ground up, hiring and leading a team of 5–10 as the company evolved from research and engineering into a venture studio. I built product marketing capabilities within the ecosystem team, working with venture-studio business units on positioning, marketing, adoption and fundraising through the treasury as they spun out. I managed agencies and contractors alongside the internal team.
Proved the open source model from a commercial point of view by creating our customer, who then chose to pay us. I took Cardano from testnet to #3 by market cap, growing a proof-of-stake network from 175 to 3K validators. I brought together engineers building the infrastructure and developers building on it to form coalitions such as CDEC, scaling the smart-contract ecosystem from 0 to 2K+ projects. I built the world’s largest DAO measured by population and participation, handed over stewardship of a $1.3B treasury to the community and later led the campaign that won $190M in continuity funding for research and engineering.
At RealFi, I led GTM for the testnet launch of stablecoin and RWA infrastructure backed by private credit. I turned an existing validator network into a measurable distribution and activation channel, designing and launching the SPO Accelerator in my first 60 days. Four weeks of testnet activity generated 3K+ verified wallets and 40K attributable onchain actions.
I get hands-on first and grow the team around what works, extending its capabilities beyond headcount through ecosystems, partnerships, community and AI. I draw on a network across the US, Europe and Asia, particularly Japan, for talent, partners and specialist capabilities.