Diego Borgo ᵍᵐ

Everyone talks about bringing crypto to the mainstream. I'm actually doing it.


With 20+ years in branding and 8+ years in blockchain, I help crypto founders translate complex products into narratives that mainstream audiences understand.


I've advised:

- adidas on their first NFT collection (€24M in minutes, setting the benchmark for how global brands enter Web3)

- Fortune 500s including Prada, Salesforce, Unilever, L'Oréal, and Mastercard on navigating blockchain and emerging tech

- Leading Web3 projects like Pyth Network, Aptos, Cookie3, and Nomina to attract mainstream partners, institutions, and users

Today, I help crypto founders translate their products for mainstream audiences, so they can actually scale beyond the echo chamber.


Here's how I help:

- Clarify your brand narrative so it connects with mainstream audiences and drives adoption

- Define a unique market position that wins recognition, relevance, and long-term growth

- Design go-to-market strategies that accelerate traction and scale effectively

- Coach you and your team to become trusted, influential voices in your industry


My content has reached 50M+ people on LinkedIn. I speak at Web Summit, Paris Blockchain Week, and other global stages.

If you're building in crypto and want to go mainstream, let's talk ❤️‍🔥

Top Voice for Web3 & Immersive Web

Elected LinkedIn Top Voice for Web3 and Immersive Web in 2024 for contribution to the community, content and understanding of Web3 and Immersive Web.

Diego Borgo

In 2018, when adidas first approached me for a potential freelancing project, my heart rate skyrocketed. 


ME? WORKING WITH ADIDAS? WTF?


At the time, I had already been living in Germany for three years and had been REALLY struggling to make friends, find a job I liked, and, most importantly, feel happy.

Being an immigrant in a new country meant starting from scratch, and it was a wild ride, both culturally and mentally. Everything I had previously taken for granted, such as friends, security, stability, and comfort zone, was suddenly gone.

Despite having spent three years trying to figure it all out, I was still stuck. 

But when I started working with adidas, my life changed completely. I finally made new friends, found a new path for myself, and, most importantly, was happy again.

I devoted almost four years of my life to the company, its culture, and the people who make "adidas be adidas".

So, leaving in December 21, after the insanely successful launch of NFT collection "Into the Metaverse," was one of the hardest decisions of my life. 

Why?

1. As a freelancer, adidas was my primary source of income
2. My son was just six months old
3. I had just bought a house in Portugal and didn't know how I would pay for it


But I knew I had to be done.


I knew it, because If I really wanted to push myself to unlock my full potential, I had to burn the rescue boats and cross the rough ocean on my own, even if I didn't know how to swim or how far the shore was.


Why am I sharing this with you? 


With Linkedin becoming such an AI slop machine I believe the only way to keep this platform alive is to show you REAL insights on how things REALLY go down in the REAL world.

I'm here to share publicly the stuff I've been through, because I know that MANY of you are also going trough some sh*t right now and trying to figure the way out.

I understand the feeling of looniness, darkness and hopelessness, but I'm here to tell you: 


You got this.


Even though you may not be able to see the shore and it feels your arms are about to fall off from the endless swimming, you gotta keep going, because the next island you are about to reach, is absolutely worth the effort!


Looking back to 2022 when I was featured on an adidas's campaign is still insane for me to grasp. 

I'm extremely humbled to have gone from "me working with adidas, WTF? " to being on their website and app for the whole world to see.

The world keeps spinning.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

Web3 Executive Advisor | Branding & Marketing | Helping Tech Founders Go Mainstream | Global Speaker

When I was 14 years old, if you had told me that one day people would find value in what I have to say to the point that they would want to be mentored by me, I would have laughed in your face and walked off.

I came from absolutely nothing. I moved houses more than 30 times in 35 years, especially when I was a kid.

I got bullied at school for always being "the outsider new guy with a funny accent."

Teachers were extremely harsh on me because they couldn't get my attention, and I never had good grades.

I never felt like I fit anywhere.

My first job was at the age of 16. (not because I needed, but because I wanted.) 
I didn't speak English until I was 24.
I didn't come from money.
I never had a mentor.
I left my country when I was 24 and never looked back.
I worked cleaning construction sites, painting houses, selling shoes, shovelling snow off parking lots overnight, and had many other side jobs.

Those were not "summer jobs for the vibe"; those were jobs I had to do to keep fuelling my dreams.

Coming from Brazil and having lived most of my adult life in first-world countries (Canada, Germany, Austria, and Portugal), it blows my mind to see how much people complain and can't appreciate what they have.

You see, for us immigrants, competing for jobs, projects, and gigs is like running against Usain Bolt in a 100m sprint race while starting five seconds later. 

That's exactly how I felt when I moved to Germany 10 years ago, with no money, no friends, no job, and not speaking the language.

But why the f*ck does this matter to you? 
Is this guy with the pink beanie looking for clout?

No, my friend. 

The more I develop on my journey, and the more people I meet throughout it, the more I feel a huge urge to share my story and – hopefully – show other underdogs who are in the same place I was my whole life that there is a fuck*ng away out.

Nobody is coming to rescue you.
You got this.
You are enough.

Grab 2026 by the balls.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

Study -> get a job -> work until you are 65 -> follow the path.


That's the only road I saw growing up.


It took me decades to realize that road is just ONE lane on an entire f*cking highway.

I didn't know about work-away programs, neither house-sitting in different countries nor the thousand unconventional ways you can live a life.


Nobody showed me that menu.


I want my son to see all of it.

What if we took care of kangaroos in Australia for a while? Worked a coconut farm in Hawaii? Tried things most people don't even know exist?

Not because those specific things matter. But because I want him to understand:

Life is a crazy menu. 

Go explore, study, work and do whatever calls to you.
This is the only way you'll find something you love.

This is a photo of him on stage with me last year.

His idea. 
He asked me, I said yes. 
We had a blast.

He's 4 and he's already seeing roads I didn't know existed at 24.

This is the mantra I want to leave behind.

Stop driving on someone else's path.
Find your highway.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

Executive Advisor to Crypto Founders | Brand Strategy, Positioning & Go-to-Market

Every tech pitch deck I have seen in 2026 be like:

“AI-powered, blockchain-enabled, agentic, hyper-scalable, privacy-first, enterprise-ready platform leveraging cutting-edge synergies to disrupt the future of everything. No demo, no use case, just vibes.”

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥
#RightClickSaveAs

Everyone's scrapping over marginal gains in crypto right now.


Most projects shout:

"We're faster." 
"We're safer." 
"We're more scalable."

Cool.

But here's the thing: to anyone outside the bubble, it all sounds like the same f*cking noise.

Having the product is one thing.
Being seen and understood is totally different.

That's why Daniel Cushing and I are heading to London on Feb 5-6 for the Digital Assets Forum to talk about exactly this.


In our keynote "How to Own a Space to Win" we will talk about:


1. How do you create space to breathe when everyone's screaming the same features?

2. How you can create and win with a category of 1 in a ultra saturated market?

3. How do you get heard when massive fund is deciding where to allocate and your pitch deck sounds like everyone else's?

We're not going to theorize about it. We're going to show how we've done it before for one of the largest blockchian companies to wild success


If you're a tech founder wondering why institutional doors aren't opening...
Or an institution trying to figure out which Web3 projects are actually worth your time...


This is what we're there for.

🌍 Digital Assets Forum
⌛ 11:10 AM - 11:30 AM
📍 Alpha Stage


See you in London?


LFGrow 🚀 
#RightClickSaveAs

I was talking to a Normie friend the other day and she said...


"My cousin had an accident, and I need to send €1,000 to Bangkok. My bank is charging me €75 and says it’ll take 5–7 business days."

My internal crypto bro: "hAvE yOu EvEr HeArd aBouT StAblE CoInS?"

My branding brain: "I know a way you can do that for cents and will hit his bank in literally seconds, I can show you."

So I pulled out my phone and showed her how to:

1. Create a wallet in 30 seconds
2. Buy $USDC with her debit card
3. Send it across the world for pennies
4. Have her cousin convert it to Thai Baht instantly

"Why isn't everyone doing this?" she said.

"Because we haven't managed to bring this to masses yet" was my reply. 

"We are still leaving in a era of legacy systems that are full of middlemen and forex exchanges, who are simply ripping you off."

Wiring money: legacy system vs. stablecoins, here's the difference:

→ 5+ business days vs. SECONDS on-chain — we're living in 2024, not 1974

→ Double-digit fees vs. pennies — banks stealing your money while blockchain respects it

→ Zero transparency vs. verifiable transparency — ever tried tracking a SWIFT transfer? Good fuck*ng luck

→ Centralized gatekeepers vs. permissionless protocols — because your money shouldn't need permission


New technology makes the old way of doing things look...


ABSURD.


Are you still waiting 5 days and paying crazy fees to move YOUR money?
That's absurd.


LFGrow ❤️‍🔥
#RightClickSaveAs

Recruiter: "So, being honest, why do you think you are a good fit for this job?"


Me:


LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

"Oh here we go just another fuck*ng AI slop..."

That was me, sitting in El Salvador last year and almost writting off one of the greatest applications I have seen for Industrial AI so far.

A new XFounders Accelerator Stories episode is live.

And this one follows Victor Amaya and Gloria Polío from CIRO AI.

When I first heard their pitch, I very was confused.
Not because it lacked ambition, it had sh*t tons of that, but the biggest issue was, it tried to explain too much and all at once.

That usually means one of two things:

Either there is no real core.
Or there is a very real one buried underneath.

Once we slowed it down and sat to work together to work on their value prop and brand narrative, the problem became obvious.

Most companies are not using AI to run operations.
They are using it to analyze what already went wrong.

A shipment fails.
AI explains it later.

Quality drops.
AI reports it after the damage.

Money leaks.
AI summarizes it weeks later.


Ciro is built to predict it, before it happens.


They are building a real-time AI co-pilot for operations teams which can:

> Ask questions in plain language.
> Connect every data source.
> See what is happening now.
> Act while it still matters.

As a cherry on top, this episode is worth watching just bceuase the founding duo themselves:

Victor is the engineer brain.
Reluctant leader.
Deep systems thinking.

Gloria is the operator.
People leader.
Has managed thousands of workers before.
Knows how execution really works.

Together, they are building AI that lives on the factory floor, not a vibe-coded “just cancel your subscription” app that nobody needs and that will likely scam you.

What REALLY got me excited about this project is that it all started from real operational pain inside a family business, not because they wanted to build something that is trending and hot right now.

It is a clear example of what happens when AI stops being a buzzword and starts becoming useful.

Watch the episode, tell me what you think, hit the share button, leave a comment blaa blaaa blaaaaaa you know the drill.

Link in the comments.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥
#RightClickSaveAs

Microsoft's Marketing team: "Hey, look, we're kicking Slack's a**!"

Microsoft's Customer: "Why am I forced to use this and suffer every day?"

#RightClickSaveAs

Remember when Web3 was supposed to actually change sh*t?


Not chase pumps, flip narratives but actually solve problems for real humans.

The original promise was simple: 


Give people control of their data, cut out the predatory middlemen, build systems that actually work for everyone.


Then came ape JPEGs and token dumps.

We lost the f*cking plot.

I've spent years as Brand and Marketing advisor advising Fortune 500s and Web3 founders. 

Here's what I learn:

Here are projects I worked with that are winning because they solve real problems.

1- Pyth Network streams real-time prices for global markets. 
2- Rise made global payroll actually work.
3- Addressable.io cracked how to actually find and reach crypto users at scale.


Web3 doesn't have to be complicated, it just needs to be useful.

If you're building something that makes people's lives suck less, drop it in the comments. 

I want to see what's actually happening out there.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

Claude is the real winner here.


#RightClickSaveAs

All of my 2026 conversations so far summarized in one picture.


LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

Most Bitcoin startups avoid mining.
Everminer went straight at it.


A new XFounders Accelerator Stories episode is live.


This one follows Max Matrenitski and Artur Matrenitskii from Everminer.

I have a lot of respect for founders who choose hard problems, and for the democratization of Bitcoin mining is one of the hardest in the industry.

Very capital intensive, hyper competitive, mostly dominated by big players and almost impossible to explain to normies.

Most teams I have seen working on it, either ignore it or overcomplicate it.

But Everminer did the opposite, they started by asking a simple question:


What if anyone could mine Bitcoin without knowing what mining is?


No hardware, energy bills, maintenance neither expertise.

Three clicks:

1. Google sign-in
2. Top up
3. Start earning

From a brand perspective, we worked really hard on the positioning being 

"Instead of selling machines, we are selling access."

A small, affordable piece of real mining power with no ongoing costs and an option to exit it anytime.

At its core, Bitcoin was built to decentralize money, but with time, mining has slowly re-centralized into the hands of corporations and big players.

Everminer is trying to reverse that by making mining boringly accessible again.

During the bootcamp, they already crossed real milestones.
Revenue, users, operations on multiple continents with a great product that people actually use

This episode is democratizing something everyone thought was out of reach.

Watch it if you want to see where Bitcoin infrastructure is really going. 

Link in the comments.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥  
#RightClickSaveAs

2026 will be the most boring year in crypto, and that’s great.


Crypto learned to entertain itself.

We built perfect hamster wheels: tokens, points, farms, airdrops, liquidity games. All of that is great, as long as you’re already in the bubble.

“Growth” became wallet musical chairs.
Same crowd, same money, new UI.

Looks like innovation, but it's not.

Most founders I talk to struggle with that, they feel their are being taken hostage by the degens.

But as they try to move outside of the bubble, they fail because their product assumes the mainstream speaks the jargon, trust the system, and want to spend time in the casino.

Reality is, the mainstream couldn't care less.

If you want to make them care, you need to understand that the "new narrative" is ruthless clarity.


That’s how mass adoption has always worked.


How do you do this?


Your most important asset this year is your brand, because that's the translation layer between emerging tech and real people. Brand lowers fear and says, quietly, “oh this feels familiar.”

You have to stop mining attention from exhausted wallets, replace it with earning trust from people who never touched a hardware wallet.

Look at Stripe, PayPal and Visa.

They won by being obsessively trustworthy: clean copy, predictable UX, predictable mechanics, clear regulation.

If your brand still screams “degen playground,” normies will leave. 

As you work on your 2026 goals, here's the simple takeaway: 

Your job is to make the unremarkable feel like quiet, steady progress.

Because trough brand is how you make boring feel inevitable.


LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

Thumbcorp is growing and we need help. 📢 


We've been closing deals, onboarding clients, and now we need extra hands to keep up with the momentum.

Looking for freelance Webflow developers who want to work alongside us as the scale engine for visionary challenger brands.

I'm looking for independent developers and freelancers who can move fast, communicate clearly, and ship solid work fast.

If you're fluent in Webflow and want to be part of something that's scaling, hit me up by DM with:

1. Your portfolio
2. Your hourly rate or project rate
3. Your availability


Keep it fuck*ng simple.


PS: No agencies.
PS1. This is not a full time role.

LFGrow 🚀 
#RightClickSaveAs

STOP SPEAKING ALIEN


What is the key benefit of tokenization?
Democratizing access to high-quality assets.

THAT'S IT

Tokenization is about letting regular people invest in stuff that used to be locked away for the rich - real estate, art, private equity, whatever.

Here's the thing:

The mainstream doesn't give a f*ck about tokenization.

They care about: 
→ Not being left out of opportunities 
→ Having the same access as wealthy people 
→ Building actual wealth, not just collecting tokens

Your grandma doesn't want to hear about blockchain rails and fractional ownership protocols.

She wants to know: 

"Can I finally invest in that building downtown without needing a million dollars?"

That's the translation of meaning right there.

Tokenized assets are already here, but most of the industry still leading with "real world asset tokenization" and "on-chain assets", its time to swim upstream.

Lead with the human benefit. 

The access, fairness and opportunity that was stolen from regular people for centuries.

The blockchain part? 
That's just how you deliver it.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

I am a senior B2B marketing leader with a strong focus on Lead and Demand Generation, supporting tech scale-ups in accelerating sustainable growth through effective GTM planning, brand positioning, and the development of high-performing marketing organizations.

With over 20 years of experience leading cross-functional teams and complex initiatives, I have driven GTM programs that strengthened brand presence in competitive markets, balancing short-term demand generation with long-term brand and growth strategy.

If you are scaling a technology business and seeking a marketing leader who combines strategic perspective with operational excellence, I welcome the opportunity to connect.
📩 rsikkema@gmail.com | 📞 06-15949046 | or via LinkedIn DM

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Diego Borgo

Remco Sikkema

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Remco Sikkema

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Diego Borgo's LinkedIn Performance

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