TLDR:
- San Francisco, CA
- Technical
- Interested in crypto
- Full-time exploring startup ideas
- Can do design, eng, sales, GTM
- Worked at 4 startups (2 acquired)
About me
I’m exploring startup ideas in crypto. I was most recently at Uniswap, after they acquired Genie, an NFT marketplace aggregator that did $800M of trading volume where I was head of product.
I want to build a mainstream business that uses crypto behind the scenes. I’m excited to bring together my DeFi and NFT expertise with my consumer software experience working at Lyft and Microsoft.
I enjoy coding, though my strengths are in user research, design, and go-to-market. I iterate quickly by evaluating markets, brainstorming ideas, and validating problems before writing code.
I’m looking for a cofounder who is also technical and is excited to go from 0 to 1.
My Background
Impressive accomplishments
- Improved Lyft’s pay and matching algorithms, reducing costs by $67M/year while increasing top drivers’ earnings by 4%
- Built a system at Kite for scaling our AI code completion plugin, growing language support from 1 to 13+.
- Grew usage 10x of PowerPoint’s AI design features by shipping 30+ changes and running 100+ A/B tests
- Won UNC’s first hackathon as a team, and 2nd place in “most web3” at Uniswap’s company hackathon as a solo hacker
- World-class Go (strategy board game) player, representing Canada in international tournaments
Education
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (on full-ride merit scholarship), BA in Computer Science, 2016
Employment
- Uniswap, Product Manager, 2022 - 2023
- Genie (acquired by Uniswap), Head of Product, 2022
- Lyft, Senior Product Manager, 2020 - 2022
- Kite (acquired by Affirm), First Product Hire, 2019 - 2020
- Microsoft, Product Manager, 2016 - 2019
Life story
I have always worked on my own projects. I resold candy when I was 8, sold candy kebabs in middle school, ran a tutoring service in high school, and built apps in college.
I love scrappy growth. I won election to student council by a landslide with a rick-roll-inspired candidate poster, got enough Lyft and Uber credit to take it for free for years by posting in freshman orientation Facebook groups, and sold hundreds of t-shirts in one weekend by writing in chalk around my campus.
Then, I got a front-row seat at 4 startups as we grew from pre-fundraising/PMF to Series B.
Now, I just can’t stop thinking about ideas. When I was taking the night shift for my newborn daughter, who woke up every 45min from 9pm to 5am, I chose to build prototypes rather than sleep.
More notes
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- At Genie (pre-funding), I learned how to go from insight to launching a feature in a day, doing whatever it takes to unblock engineering, and how to collaborate in real-time.
- At Kite (Series A), I learned the importance of being problem-focused. This means not being a solution in search of a problem, knowing clearly what success looked like, and the difference between a vitamin and painkiller.
- At Teespring (Series A), I learned the importance of a lean team, fast experiments, and positive unit economics.
- At Uniswap (Series A, B when I left), I learned the importance of focus on a few areas over taking too many bets, hiring only who is needed instead of growing too quickly, and having a clear product vision to work towards.
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- I handled design at a previous startup since we didn’t have a designer
- I am able to craft a Figma design, build a Figma prototype, then build it in React.
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- I am a member of South Park Commons. They provide hands-on support with fundraising, have a network of 300+ funds, and also provide support in the ideation phases. There’s also a free co-working space you can join me at in SoMa.
- I have a strong crypto background, having worked at Uniswap, one of the most well-known companies in crypto, and at an acquired crypto startup. After leaving, I’ve gotten many VCs reaching out.
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- My wife and I have a 1-year old daughter. I generally work 50-55 hours per week from 8-6pm, with limited availability on evenings and weekends. I can stretch on this every so often, but I won’t be able to work 70+ hour weeks regularly.
- I’ve been told I’m methodical. Every morning, and throughout the day, I make sure the work I’m doing is always the most important work. I do weekly sprints and have accountability partners. Here are my past monthly updates.
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I have a 1-year-old daughter who takes up all my free time! In the past, I used to surf, hike, and social dance. I also enjoyed backpacking and living in different places around the world.
Links:
Potential Areas to Explore
I’m excited to build a mainstream business that uses crypto behind the scenes. Currently fascinated with new business models, incentive design, and new technology.
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General thoughts
- My belief is we can build an open source product that people want to build on top of, yet be financially valuable. This is a hyperstructure.
- The world runs on open-source, yet the only business model is to sell optional SaaS alongside it. Marketplaces build closed networks so they can extract fees, so no one wants to build on top of them as a platform. What if there was something else?
- My theses on where protocols are uniquely well-suited:
- Where assets of value are pooled, and these pools are fragmented due to competition → Software platforms that cannot exclude anyone means everyone cooperates instead of competing
- Asset types with a long-tail distribution → Software platforms with limited restrictions allow for any market to be created
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Let’s pick a few areas that are “trending” and figure out value chains:
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- What doesn’t generate enough liquidity to deserve a dedicated marketplace?
- This is where crypto has good PMF.
- Could you issue high yield bonds for new projects? High yield bonds financed hostile takeovers
- See an undervalued business, entrepreneur buys the business with $20 of own money, $80 of debt that the company is liable for
- Could be a way to finance takeovers of NFT projects that aren’t doing well, securitized by the NFT project itself. Sort of like Twitter takeover.
- Based on assumption that there are many projects that would benefit from new management and also have debt that is attractive on risk-adjusted basis
- ICO → IBO?
- Both susceptible to rugpulls
- Bondholders have the right to get $PAT at face value in 1 year
- If you raise $100 of bond from a bank, and can’t be paid back, goes back to bankruptcy proceeding
- Problem is no long tail oracle
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- Uniswap lets people launch equity, is there an equivalent to let new projects to get debt financing?
- Loan refinancing
- Allow someone to get better terms than what they get at a bank
- Allow any bank to offer better terms
- Unclear: How do you keep information private?
- ForEx
- Price is tied to real monetary markets and generally has low variability.
- Is there an equivalent to “I’ll sell at X% above the prevailing price, buy at Y% below” that doesn’t have impermanent losses?
- Banks
- Currency exchanges
- Speculators/traders
- Exporters and importers
- Multinational corporations
- Onchain betting markets
- Polymarket / Kalshi → move onchain with no fees.
- NVM - Polymarket is a non-custodial prediction market protocol built on Polygon. Polymarket was founded by Shayne Coplan and launched in 2020.
- Hedging market risk - this is generally for sophisticated traders only
- Generally you buy an options contract on the opposite side
- Is there a way for a user to say “I think X will go up by Y” and we offer different strategies with different stop losses / hedges which have a cost but reduce risk?
- Bundled asset loans
- Allow you to put different assets as collateral (WBTC, NFTs, etc)
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Why not
- Securities - there’s enough legal risk here.
- The SEC asserts that all tokenized securities need to be registered. Tokenized stocks that do not register their issuances will be regarded as illegal.
- Commodities
- there’s tokenized gold already, unsure if there’s a “why now” moment
Market evaluation
Hyperstructures - online transactions | |
Market selection | Insights - Few are aware of hyperstructures as a way of making money.
Interested - It’s cool. I like the idea of building public infra. Can work on this for 10 years. |
Market evaluation | Advantage - worked at Uniswap. small knowledge, but also resume fits
Large/growing market - people are looking to trade more, speculation is inherently human
New tech - decentralized protocols to execute transactions, get best prices |
Talking to people | Value chain:
- Asset types: Securities, commodities, ForEx, Indexes/ETFs
- Transaction types/stages: List, sale, escrow, contracts, options, margin; reducing complexity via intents, debt financing
- People: Day traders, trading desks, hedge funds, institutional funds |
Idea brainstorms
Idea | Market selection | Market evaluation |
Loan/debt financing | Low - low interest, no insights | Low - Unlikely that initial loan happens onchain |
Refinancing | Low - low interest, no insights | Low
- Contracts may come onchain (eg. mortgage). Value prop is known (get a better rate) but this is not a new problem. |
ForEx | Low - low interest, no insights | Low
- These markets are generally as efficient as possible. Largest volume, relative stability, also trade happens this way. |
Betting and prediction markets | Low - not that motivating to work on purely speculative stuff | Low
- Polymarket and many other prediction market protocols do this already |
Hedging risk - giving people who need to hedge a more efficient way to do so | Med
- Have a thesis that any time there’s forced sellers, there is market inefficiency
- Could be impactful | Med
- Different from below, since this is related to specific types of assets that are generally traded |
Individualized insurance - creation of insurance market | Med
- Interesting
- Follows thesis above | Low-Med
- Don’t know any real world insurance products that are crypto
- Insurance is basically a betting/prediction market, but localized. Eg. Earthquake insurance - instead of per house, state it as if 5.0+ on Richter scale, and epicenter is <50 miles from your house. Which makes it OK if your house didn’t collapse, you still get paid out.
- How do we handle claims? Quite complex → Can we tie this into specific, verifiable events?
- Do you need KYC? You could make a bet on it.
- Timing: Prediction markets are mature, and settlement on events is figured out.
- Difficult to handle pricing of insurance
- High probability of arbitrage if pricing is public, and sale is irreversible |
Bundled asset loans | Med
- Interesting math problem | Low
- Don’t see much of a need for this. Cool to do, not really much benefits. |
Carbon credits | High
- Isaac is very interested
Low - Patrick doesn’t know anything about this | Low
- Important to solve, but not the right founder market fit
- Much harder than just a market problem, it’s a standards / regulation problem as well
- Multiple companies and DAOs in this space |
Commodity markets | Med
- MEV is similar, there are relevant crypto concepts
- Seems interesting | Low
- Fragmented, geographic markets
- Low liquidity markets because constrained, forced demand: people need downside protection |
- I’m exploring
- 1) different financial and digital assets and how users interact with them
- What type of asset or transaction is missing from protocols today?
- Fungible tokens - Uniswap (sell, earn yield), Dydx chain (options)
- NFTs - Zora (create, list, sell)
- 2) evaluating peer-to-peer marketplaces, exchanges, or pooling of money, to see if there is an opportunity to build a protocol as a platform.
- Best things to tokenize are things that involve some sort of consensus
- Blockchains allow the transmission of different types of value over the internet that wasn’t possible before
- Best markets lower interaction friction
- Thesis that any time there’s forced sellers, there is market inefficiency
- Separately, if we believed in a fat apps thesis - or building apps and interfaces on top of popular protocols - is there an opportunity to build a payment software platform (eg. Stripe, Visa) on top of a stablecoin like USDC, where the software is 1) open-source 2) is fee-less but has a fee switch?
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Proposals
- Enable trustless and private whistleblower programs
- Prove you’re an employee of a company or a user in an email group list without disclosing your identity. This can be done via zkemail on a welcome email that all users get, or on an email that only a select group of employees received.
- Streamline verifications of airline status matching
- Prove you have status in a trustless manner. Currently, users submit screenshots of their account page and customer service does labor-intensive validation. This can be automated using TLS Notary, which could prove that a user had a certain # of points on their points page.
Brainstorming around applications: Zero-knowledge proofs, attested data, and escrowed transactions
Thoughts:
- Attested data and escrowed transactions. It’s like having a magic wand to be able to privately prove something without sharing who you are, use private data from any service without API access, build trustless escrow systems, and ensure code was executed correctly among a non-trusting group.
- My takeaways
- People trust third parties to verify identity or assets for the vast majority of pseudonymity use cases
- Anonymity is not desired by businesses and especially governments
- Finance problem space has 10x more product-market-fit than identity. That said, I haven’t identified large opportunities outside of peer-to-peer payments coordination (eg. zkp2p), which have a number of players now.
- I’m exploring SaaS instead, in areas with zero trust (eg. whistleblowing) or marketing/sales opportunities based on private data (eg. offering VIP benefits if you prove you’re a top customer of a competitor).
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Idea brainstorm -
Idea | Market selection | Market evaluation |
Whistleblower program | Med
- Interesting! | Med
- Enable any company to build a whistleblower compliance program. Employees don’t have to trust that HR will leak their info or get retaliation. Uniquely ZK-enabled
- Proof of concept, hacks, hacks |
Giving VIP benefits to top users of competitors | Med
- Interesting!
- Not uniquely zk enabled | Med
- Winning over users from competitors already happens (eg. TMobile), but could be cool to provide VIP onboarding as a service (product + ops) to companies
- Can give you free trial if you use competitors, are a top streamer or influencer, VIP benefits (eg. if you are top gamer, get credits in new game), etc. |
Bootstrapping social graph | Low
- Interesting | Med
- Automatically being friends on a new app if they’ve ever emailed you, etc. Export social graph without API access in a way that’s better than connecting your contacts |
Private networks of likeminded individuals | Med
- Interesting!
- Quantification of an aspirational value for an individual | Low
- Zk verify some credential, organization, verification, assets for pseudonymous discussion
- Most are fine with a third party doing verification - Teamblind for work, Backchannel for founders, Benjamin for net worth, many VC/founder gossip groups
- For many use cases, it’s good to know who someone is (YPO, EO Network) |
Donation matching | Med
- Could be impactful | Low
- Zk verify you donated, and onchain funds are dispersed
- Tough to take money when the subject is donations
- Public wants to know that the matcher did actually donate, but this doesn’t need blockchain to solve |
Airline points P2P transfer | Low | Small
- Feature of zkp2p / zephyr, also small market given that most airlines/hotels don’t let you transfer, those who do charge you a lot |
Concierge for crypto degens | Low
- Low cost business
- Not zk enabled | Low
- Concierge service for crypto degens / money laundering
- Crypto degens don’t want to deal with friction of offramping, the wait time, etc.
- Wants to have all money in one place, not have to worry about money in different places
- If you can buy stuff in crypto, will never have to offramp anything
- Chrome extension. Before you pay, click a button and fill in virtual credit card,
- Doesn’t use zk
- Running afoul of tax laws |
Provable AI doctoring detection tool | Low | Low - Not a trustless problem.
- Using zkml to prove that an image or video wasn’t doctored
- More a community notes product since a lot of context needed. Eg. it could be multiple videos stitched together, incorrect captioning, etc. |
Rebates | Low | Low
- Zk verify that you bought something, then get money back
- They’re designed to be high friction, so likely not a business need |
Proof of financial reserves for mortgages | Low | Low
- Zk verify your financial assets. Why not just use Plaid?
- Someone is already doing this at Pineapple.mortgage |
Public proof for flexing | Low | Low
- Only useful for specific Twitter influencers, but doubt it’s a high priority for them
- Zk prove that their dashboard from Stripe (indie hacking) or trading account (trader influencers) is real
- RealReturn built at ETH hackathon |
Questions to ask, when I think about “Plaid for the internet”
- What data do apps not want to share? eg. banks didn't want to share a user's checking account balance
- What data is helpful when aggregated, or presented differently? eg. i want a portfolio tracker, or deep analytics into budgeting, etc
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More to be added.
Links:
About you
I’m looking for a true thought partner who:
- Is also technical. Ideally, more technical than me. I’m a coder and am looking for a partner to build with.
- Lives in the SF Bay Area. I prefer in-person collaboration with the flexibility of WFH.
- Is passionate about crypto. I’m solely exploring crypto for the next 6 months since I have founder-market fit there, and I’m excited about completely new applications, business models, and go-to-market strategies. You’re similarly excited, and know that it’ll likely be a long difficult slog during this bear market.
- Wants to build a scalable business, rather than tinker with new tech or indie hack. You’re problem-oriented, rather than solution-oriented, so if a customer’s problems can be simply solved without using new tech, you find that ideal. You’re also willing to take the time needed to find founder-market fit and build conviction.
- Generates lots of ideas and is methodical about evaluating them. I’d love for brainstorms on one idea to generate many more ideas as we bounce off of each others’ enthusiasm. You are then open to iterating on, or discarding, ideas based on market sizing, research, or customer feedback.
- Has an obsessive focus: There’s a thousand things you could be doing, but only one of them is the most important, so you tune everything else out. Our product and users is all you can think about on nights and weekends.
Equity expectations
Equal split
Next steps
Would love to hear from you, even if some of the above don’t match. Contact me at:
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- I can build basic web front end, write scraping scripts, and handle data queries. I’m able to learn new programming languages as needed. Even without a cofounder, I’m able to prototype.
- I majored in computer science and participate in hackathons, winning 2nd place at an internal Uniswap hackathon category by myself this year.
- I’m easy to work with. Although I’ve been a product manager since college, I’ve learned from working with eng teams from startups to big tech, and on technical projects like developer tools and backend infra
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- I shipped many features of our NFT marketplace as Head of Product at Genie, which was acquired, and subsequently at Uniswap. I then led our backend team through two migrations.
- I launched a new pay model for drivers as a Sr PM at Lyft, created two new teams, and shipped our biggest earnings change ever.
- I expanded our AI code completion tool from 1 language to 13 languages, plus launched our paid enterprise tier, as first product hire at Kite.
- I led the Windows and Mac PowerPoint teams as a PM at Microsoft, and led growth for our AI design (Designer) and copywriting products (Editor).
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- At Genie (pre-funding), I learned how to go from insight to launching a feature in a day, doing whatever it takes to unblock engineering, and how to collaborate in real-time.
- At Kite (Series A), I learned the importance of being problem-focused. This means not being a solution in search of a problem, knowing clearly what success looked like, and the difference between a vitamin and painkiller.
- At Teespring (Series A), I learned the importance of a lean team, fast experiments, and positive unit economics.
- At Uniswap (Series A, B when I left), I learned the importance of focus on a few areas over taking too many bets, hiring only who is needed instead of growing too quickly, and having a clear product vision to work towards.
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- I handled design at a previous startup since we didn’t have a designer
- I am able to craft a Figma design, build a Figma prototype, then build it in React.
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I have brought creativity and hustle to getting sales for my entire life.
- In college, I sold $1500 worth of t-shirts in one weekend by writing in chalk around my campus. I got $500 of Lyft and Uber credits by creating custom promotion images and posting them in freshman orientation Facebook groups
- In high school, I won election to student council by a landslide with a rick-roll-inspired candidate poster. When I was in middle school, I made money by trading items in MMORPGs and playing online poker. When I was 8, I made money reselling candy on the school playground.
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I’m interested in problems in crypto, personal productivity, and B2B SaaS. Here are some of mine:
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I expect to spend most of my time in the coming months doing market and user research, building Figma prototypes to validate ideas, and coding only after we’ve gotten interest. I plan to go through the following ideation lifecycle recommended by South Park Commons:
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- I am a member of South Park Commons. They provide hands-on support with fundraising, have a network of 300+ funds, and also provide support in the ideation phases. There’s also a free co-working space you can join me at in SoMa.
- I have a strong crypto background, having worked at Uniswap, one of the most well-known companies in crypto, and at an acquired crypto startup. After leaving, I’ve gotten many VCs reaching out.
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- My wife and I have a 1-year old daughter. I generally work 50-55 hours per week from 8-6pm, with limited availability on evenings and weekends. I can stretch on this every so often, but I won’t be able to work 70+ hour weeks regularly.
- I’ve been told I’m methodical. Every morning, and throughout the day, I make sure the work I’m doing is always the most important work. I do weekly sprints and have accountability partners. Here are my past monthly updates.
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- You’re excited to build products, and are comfortable learning new technologies as needed. I’m not looking for a specific skillset, since I understand that ideas change as we investigate deeper.
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- I like getting to know people in person. My preference would be a hybrid approach where we meet up regularly but also get work done from home.
- I live in Oakland and go into San Francisco every Wed and Thu to work at South Park Commons in SoMa. I also have a car, so can meet you wherever you are. You can even work at my place in Oakland!
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- You are problem-oriented, rather than solution-oriented. We’re at an inflection point where there are cool developments with crypto and AI, but these are tools in a toolbox. If customers’ problems can be solved without using cutting-edge, and often complex, technology, you find that ideal.
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- I applaud indie-hackers but believe that making an impact at scale requires funding to grow fast. I’m willing to take whatever time is needed to find founder-market fit and build conviction.
- At the same time, I’d like to work on a lean team and am OK bootstrapping until we’re ready to raise money.
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- I’d love for brainstorms on one idea to generate many more ideas as we bounce off of each others’ enthusiasm.
- You don’t get attached to one idea. You are open to iterating on, or discarding, ideas based on market sizing, research, or customer feedback.