Headline

0→1 Comms & GTM Leader | Built narrative, PR & community from day one - twice | I help founders explain hard tech to people who don’t care yet | Writing For the Plot

About

I've spent the last decade working with founders on the problem of explaining difficult things to people who don't yet care about them. At WazirX, I joined as the only marketing hire. Weeks later, India's central bank barred banks from dealing with crypto, cutting off the whole industry. I ran all communications single-handedly through the ban and Binance's announced acquisition, then built and led a team of seven as the company grew to 10 million users, including comms for India's first crypto exchange transparency report. At Shardeum, I was the first comms hire, joining before there was a product. I built narrative, PR and community from zero through mainnet: a 703K-member community, two international PR agencies across three continents, and coverage from Reuters to Fortune India. When a hack hit WazirX, a separate company with the same co-founder, I managed the reputational spillover. Before that, I went from community manager to Chief of Staff to the CEO at Crowdfire, ghostwriting his thought leadership and building the company's employer brand. It's where I first learned how early-stage companies are actually built. After a deliberate break, I'm looking for my next role in communications leadership, founder-side advisory, or a VC platform team. Meanwhile, I write For the Plot: essays on how belief gets built, and how it breaks — in technology, at work and in ourselves. Say 👋: Blog: https://prisharma25.substack.com/ Twitter/Telegram: @prisharma25 Email: sh.priyanka025@gmail.com

Location

India

AI stack

claude

notebooklm

perplexity

claudecode

ChatGPT

Zapier

Work experience

Writer at For the Plot (Substack), Mar 2026 - Present · 7 mos, Selected essays: • "PR is not a press release. Founders should know this by now." Why "just do something newsworthy" is survivorship bias dressed as a playbook. Featured in Gab Ferree's Off the Record newsletter. • "Women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. Here's what that actually costs." The game women didn't know they were playing, and what to do when the traditional playbook doesn't apply. The publication's most-read essay. • "AI can generate infinite content. But can it generate trust?" What Zohran Mamdani's mayoral race revealed about authenticity in the age of AI.

Health and well-being at Career Break, Aug 2025 - Mar 2026 · 8 mos, After 11+ years of continuous building across high-growth companies and two full crypto market cycles, I took a deliberate break to reset, reflect, and approach the next chapter with clarity. Writing on narrative and communications craft at prisharma25.substack.com. Advising early-stage founders informally on positioning and GTM. Now actively looking for the right next challenge.

Director of Communications at Shardeum, Feb 2022 - Jul 2025 · 3 yrs 6 mos, Built Shardeum's entire communications, PR, and community function from zero - joined before the project was public and led it through announcement, alphanet, betanet, incentivized testnet, and mainnet. Managed 3 direct reports and 2 international PR agencies. PR & Earned Media: - Managed two international PR agencies (India/Asia and UK/US), owning KPIs, editorial direction, and multi-region story strategy - 1.1K+ press mentions (March–July 2025) · 148M+ estimated article reach · 35% feature stories - Developed and placed thought leadership for Shardeum's leadership - opeds and profiles in Economic Times, Fortune India, Rolling Stone India, Forbes India, Benzinga, and others - Led EU regulatory PR: MiCA Whitepaper Acknowledgement (June 2025) GTM & Launch: - Led launch comms for Feb 2022 public announcement; managed fundraising PR for $18.2M seed and $5.4M strategic rounds - Shardeum's testnet: 1.4M global participants · 171K+ validators · 81M+ transactions · 1.2M+ wallets - 171K validators = highest physically run nodes ever recorded for an L1 testnet (covered by CoinDesk, CryptoSlate, Fortune India) Community & Ecosystem: - Scaled Shardeum to one of the world's largest L1 ecosystems: 703K peak Discord members (2nd-largest L1 on Discord globally; #1 on Telegram at its August 2023 peak), 366K X/Twitter followers, 84K Telegram, 47K developers on Discord - Designed strategy for Shardeum Leagues: 74 self-run regional community chapters across Telegram and Twitter globally

Head of Communications at WazirX, Mar 2018 - Feb 2022 · 4 yrs, India, Joined on Day 1 as WazirX's only marketing and communications hire. Three weeks later, India's RBI imposed a blanket banking ban on crypto exchanges. Built the entire comms engine through the ban, a Binance acquisition, a Launchpad IEO, and a bull run that took the platform to 10M users and $43B in annual trading volume. - Sole marketing and communications owner for the first 2.5 years - ran PR, social, content, email, product marketing, listings, and trading campaigns with no team and no agency - Conducted 9-country P2P market research that directly informed WazirX P2P (July 2018) - the world's first auto-matching P2P crypto trading engine; crossed ₹1.5 Cr in trades in two weeks - Owned all comms for India's first-ever crypto exchange acquisition by a global player: WazirX acquired by Binance (November 2019) - primary Binance liaison, sole WazirX owner of the entire comms workstream - Led sole ownership of WRX token IEO on Binance Launchpad (February 2020) - coordinated PR and co-marketing across 10+ global exchanges - Authored India's first crypto user behaviour report: $43B trading volume · 10M users · 1,009% growth in women's signups · 2,648% Tier-2/3 city signup growth. Cited by CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, The Block, Economic Times - Developed and placed CEO thought leadership: Financial Express, Inc42, CoinTelegraph; Ryan Selkis (Messari) podcast; CoinDesk's "Our Word on the Block"; Nikhil Kamath/Invest Smart - Led team of 7 from May 2020: social media, community, PR, listing

Chief Of Staff at Crowdfire, Jun 2015 - Feb 2018 · 2 yrs 9 mos, Navi Mumbai, India, Promoted from Community Manager as Crowdfire scaled from ~15 to ~55 people. Operated across strategy, employer brand, founder communications, advisory board support, and HR. - Supported advisory board formation through targeted outreach - Ghostwrote all CEO thought leadership for Nischal Shetty - placed in Quartz, Inc42, TechInAsia, and VC annual newsletters; managed CEO's personal brand on Twitter and LinkedIn - Built employer brand infrastructure from zero: Quora and social media content reaching 400K+ views; redesigned careers page with Design and Engineering teams; rebuilt Glassdoor, LinkedIn, AngelList; streamlined all hiring communications - Took over the full HR function from May 2017 - recruiting coordination, onboarding, performance review cycles - Organised Mumbai's first-ever Dribbble meetup (two consecutive years), Product Hunt Mumbai meetup (2016), Crowdfire LA user meetup - 60+ attendees each

Community Manager at Crowdfire, Sep 2014 - May 2015 · 9 mos, Navi Mumbai, India, We were a small team of 15 people with ~8M registered users when I joined Crowdfire (previously called JustUnfollow). Some highlights of what I did: - Singlehandedly managed our email communications with customers while my counterpart handled everything social media. I worked with tools like SupportBee, and Freshdesk. - Mentored two interns during the period. - Kickstarted our employer branding efforts on Quora. My posts got over 400K views, and helped increase our brand presence as well as the number of inbound job applications immensely.

Education

Master of Business Administration - MBA, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com.), Marketing Management, St. Xavier's College (Autonomous), Kolkata

Public links

prisharma25.substack.com: https://prisharma25.substack.com/