How Sedicii Built Trust in an Industry Defined by Skepticism

How Sedicii Built Trust in an Industry Defined by Skepticism

Trust is the hardest currency to earn in enterprise sales. It’s even harder when you’re asking financial institutions to give a startup custody of billions in digital assets. No pitch deck, no demo, no reference architecture can manufacture trust. It has to be built, transaction by transaction, implementation by implementation, one satisfied customer at a time.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Rob Leslie, Founder & CEO of Sedicii, revealed how his team approached this fundamental challenge. “In enterprise, your reputation is everything,” Rob says. “If you do a good job for your first customers, they’ll help you get your next customers. If you do a bad job, word travels fast.”

That simple truth shaped everything about how Anchorage approached customer relationships. They understood that in a market defined by skepticism about crypto and caution about startups, their growth would be determined not by how many prospects they could reach, but by how well they could serve the customers they already had.

The Trust Deficit Problem

When Anchorage started selling to institutions in 2017, they faced multiple layers of skepticism. First, institutions were skeptical about crypto itself. Was it a legitimate asset class or a speculative bubble? Second, they were skeptical about entrusting custody to any third party—traditional finance had been burned before by custody failures. Third, they were especially skeptical about trusting a startup with no track record in an emerging, unregulated space.

“We basically had to go out and convince people that we were the right team to build this,” Rob explains. But conviction requires evidence, and evidence requires time. This created a classic cold start problem: you can’t get customers without trust, and you can’t build trust without customers.

Anchorage’s solution was to understand that their first customers weren’t just revenue—they were references. Every interaction, every implementation, every support ticket was an opportunity to prove they could deliver. “We were very customer-obsessed from the beginning,” Rob says. “We would basically build whatever our customers needed.”

This obsessive focus on customer success wasn’t altruism. It was strategic. In enterprise markets, especially in financial services, buyers talk to each other. Your reputation spreads through informal networks of CFOs, treasurers, and risk managers who compare notes on vendors. The question Anchorage needed every customer to answer positively was: “Would you trust them with your money?”

Turning Service Quality into Sales Strategy

The mechanism that transformed customer satisfaction into business growth was referrals. “Once you get a few customers, they start referring you to other customers,” Rob notes. But he immediately adds the critical qualifier that too many founders overlook: “You have to make sure you’re delivering a really good product and really good service.”

This seems obvious, yet companies mess it up constantly. They close their first few customers, then immediately shift focus to acquiring more. The result is that early customers feel neglected, implementations drag on, support requests go unanswered. These customers don’t become advocates—they become cautionary tales.

Anchorage took the opposite approach. They treated early customers like partners, not just accounts. “We spent a lot of time educating the market on what custody is, why it matters, what the risks are,” Rob explains. This educational approach continued post-sale. They weren’t just implementing custody solutions—they were helping institutions understand how to think about digital asset security, compliance, and risk management.

This created a dynamic where customers felt invested in Anchorage’s success. They weren’t just buying a service—they were part of building the institutional crypto infrastructure. When those customers talked to peers, they weren’t just recommending a vendor. They were explaining how they’d solved a complex problem with a trusted partner.

The Compounding Returns of Reputation

What makes reputation so powerful in enterprise is how it compounds. Your first customer refers you to Customer Two. Now you have two references. Customer Two refers you to Customers Three and Four. Now you have four references. Each successful implementation makes the next sale easier.

But this only works if the quality remains consistent. “In enterprise, your reputation is everything,” Rob emphasizes. One bad implementation can undo the trust built by ten good ones. This is especially true in regulated industries like financial services, where a security breach or compliance failure at one institution becomes a warning for all of them.

Anchorage’s approach to maintaining quality at scale was methodical. “In the beginning, it was just us,” Rob says. “We were the salespeople, we were the product people, we were the customer support people.” As they grew, they had to institutionalize the same level of care. “You have to have a methodology,” Rob explains. “You have to have a way of qualifying leads, a way of moving them through the funnel, a way of closing deals.”

But methodology extended beyond sales. They needed consistent processes for implementation, support, and ongoing account management. They needed to ensure that Customer Twenty got the same quality experience as Customer Two. They needed systems that scaled without sacrificing the personal attention that built trust in the first place.

Strategic Trust: The Regulatory Bet

The most strategic trust-building decision Anchorage made was pursuing a federal banking charter. “We always believed that regulation was coming and that the companies that were prepared for it were going to be the winners,” Rob says. This belief led them to make an enormous investment. “We spent probably two years working on getting our charter,” Rob reveals. “It was a massive undertaking.”

The charter served multiple trust-building purposes. First, it demonstrated commitment. Spending two years and significant capital on regulatory approval signaled that Anchorage was building for the long term, not chasing quick wins. Second, it provided third-party validation. Federal regulators had reviewed their security, compliance, and operational procedures and granted approval. Third, it gave them access to customers who required that level of oversight.

“Having that charter opened up a lot of doors for us,” Rob explains. “It gave us credibility with institutions that otherwise would have been very skeptical.” The charter became a trust shortcut—proof that someone other than Anchorage believed they could be trusted with custody of digital assets.

But the charter alone wasn’t enough. Rob is clear about this: “You have to make sure you’re delivering a really good product and really good service.” Regulatory approval opens doors, but customer satisfaction is what keeps them open and brings new customers through them.

What Trust Looks Like in Practice

For founders wondering what “customer obsession” actually means in practice, Rob offers a clear framework. It starts with understanding that your job isn’t finished when the deal closes—it’s just beginning. Implementation quality matters as much as product features. Support responsiveness matters as much as pricing. Every interaction is an opportunity to either build or erode trust.

It means being willing to build features customers need, even when they’re not on your roadmap. “We would basically build whatever our customers needed,” Rob says. But this has limits: “You can’t just build custom stuff for every single customer. You have to figure out what the common problems are and build products that solve those common problems.”

The balance is understanding that customer obsession doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. It means deeply understanding customer problems and finding solutions that serve them well while building a platform that scales. Sometimes the best way to serve a customer is to build exactly what they asked for. Sometimes it’s explaining why a different approach will serve them better.

Why This Approach Creates Sustainable Growth

The most underappreciated aspect of reputation-driven growth is how sustainable it becomes. Referral-based customer acquisition has better economics than almost any other channel. The customers you acquire through referrals typically close faster, have higher lifetime value, and are less price-sensitive than customers acquired through cold outbound or paid advertising.

More importantly, reputation-driven growth becomes self-reinforcing. As your customer base grows, the network effects strengthen. You have more references, more case studies, more proof points. Prospects hear about you from multiple sources. Your reputation precedes you into sales conversations.

But this only works if you maintain quality. Rob’s warning bears repeating: “If you do a bad job, word travels fast.” In enterprise, negative reputation compounds just as powerfully as positive reputation. One security breach, one failed implementation, one unresponsive support team can undo years of trust-building.

For founders building in enterprise markets, especially in skeptical industries like financial services, Anchorage’s playbook is clear: understand that your early customers are building your reputation, not just your revenue. Treat them like partners. Deliver exceptional service. Be obsessive about quality. And recognize that in enterprise sales, your best salespeople are often your satisfied customers—if you give them something worth recommending.