Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Compass Mining, Inc.
Navigating Bitcoin Nashville 2024 With CJ Burnett and Curtis Harris & Meet Our CEO With Paul Gosker
CJ Burnett, Chief Revenue Officer, joins Curtis Harris, Director of Marketing & Business Development, to discuss Compass Mining's objectives and plans for Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville. The episode ends with a 9 minute section entitled "Meet Our CEO" and features a candid chat between Curtis and Paul Gosker, Compass' CEO!
This episode touches upon the following and more:
⛏️⚡️ Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville is an important conference for Compass Mining, providing opportunities to connect with customers and seek partnerships.
⛏️⚡️ A focus on improving the customer experience and offering a range of s...
About Paul Gosker
Paul Gosker, CEO and co-founder of Compass Mining, discussed the company's shift from aggregating retail customers with third-party hosting providers to vertically integrating its infrastructure. He stated that Compass is now operating its own data centers and actively seeking to purchase more infrastructure to improve customer accountability and uptime. Gosker described this as a move to gain more visibility into energy contracts and deliver higher levels of service. Gosker also addressed customer communication challenges, noting that he took on the role of a customer support agent for weeks to understand the experience from the team's perspective. He acknowledged that the company has not effectively communicated the improvements it has made for customers, calling this "opaque" and "our fault." Gosker said he wants to draw attention to the positive work Compass has done through social media, articles, or interviews, and emphasized that customers often just need to know what is happening with their miners, even if the news is bad.
Transcript (17 segments)
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CJ Bernett0:00
We want to engage with our customers in Nashville, learn what we are doing well and how we can improve, and deliver better services to help them take the next step as a business.
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Curtis0:22
CJ Bernett, Chief Revenue Officer at Compass Mining, it's my pleasure to have you on the podcast. How are you doing, CJ? I'm doing great, pleasure to be here, Curtis.
Few people know you are actually my boss, so I hope this isn't a performance review. I'm excited to talk about our team heading to Nashville for Bitcoin 2024. What are Compass's objectives and your objectives?
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CJ Bernett1:13
Absolutely. This conference has the most buzz I've seen in years. Our main objective is connecting with customers, learning what we're doing well and where we can improve. We're also looking for partnership opportunities with vendors, infrastructure providers, and capital providers to lay groundwork for the next bull market.
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Curtis2:44
I get exactly what you're saying. Bitcoin 24 is in Nashville for the first time, and it's the largest Bitcoin-specific event. Compass is bringing a large team, including Paul Gosker, our CEO. I'd love to hear about the customer journey from purchase to ongoing hosting.
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CJ Bernett3:45
Over the last two years, we've invested heavily in customer experience. From our website, customers can purchase the latest generation hardware with a few clicks. We ensure high uptime through our hosting partners, provide a robust dashboard for monitoring and payments, and continuously improve based on feedback.
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Curtis5:45
We serve a variety of customers. Could you speak about strategies Compass uses to ensure long-term success and strengthen relationships?
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CJ Bernett5:50
Yes. We started as a platform aggregating retail customers with larger hosting providers. Now we're focusing on vertical integration—operating our own data centers, owning infrastructure, and managing repairs—so we can be fully accountable to our customers. Nobody cares more about our miners than we do.
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Curtis8:05
That vertical integration is key. Can you elaborate on 'Accelerated by Compass' and its value?
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CJ Bernett8:15
Accelerated by Compass helps larger customers transition from traditional hosting to owning their own infrastructure, with us as their operations partner. We help them develop sites, manage operations, and improve their end economics.
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Curtis18:30
That's great. We're wrapping up with CJ and will now go to a conversation with Paul Gosker, our CEO. I'm proud to share that transparent discussion.
Paul, the intent is to learn about your role and the future of Compass Mining. You've been through leadership changes—could you speak about your role as CEO?
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Paul Gosker22:55
Sure. I originally was CTO and co-founder. As management changed, I became CEO. My main priority was stabilization, not growth—ensuring we give customers the experience we set out to. To understand customer issues, I even worked as a support agent for weeks using their tools. That insight helped our development teams build better tools for support, and the quality has drastically improved.
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Curtis25:40
We serve customers from large organizations with thousands of miners down to individuals with one machine. How does Compass help that small customer?
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Paul Gosker26:40
The key is using appropriate third-party partners and vertically integrating. When we run operations ourselves, incentives align. If that customer's only machine goes down, we can pull it, diagnose, and repair quickly. In contrast, when operators aren't aligned, downtime and repair times are excessive. Going forward, small to medium customers will be in Compass-operated facilities for aligned incentives and quick turnaround.
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Curtis28:41
That message needs to be heard. We've made amazing strides but haven't told our story well. How should we communicate better?
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Paul Gosker29:18
We haven't talked enough about the good we've done. Through social media, articles, interviews, we should highlight our improvements. Often customers just wanted communication—someone to tell them what's going on. That's what we've been building over the last year and a half.