Hi folks,
I’m a strategic advisor, operating leader, human-centered product builder, and lifelong learner.
Currently, I’m COO of a DeFi startup named DELV backed by Andreessen Horowitz.
Previously I served for 2 years as the first hire and COO of a Series A Web3 product startup named Tessera, backed by Paradigm. Collectively across all products, we supported $100M+ in transaction volume involving digital art.
At Tessera, the co-founders tasked me with a vision which involved building a remote-only workforce. This posed a unique challenge in building and operating a team that would feel connected to one another. We had to onboard and ramp up people to build our business with the ultimate goal of achieving product-market fit (desirability, feasibility, viability), completely remotely.
Strategically, if we could build our company operations to be workforce-centric, lean, and friction-minimized to reduce administrative headache, it would maximize the time others had to focus on the most value-adding activities towards aligning and achieving PMF.
Clearly defining our company functions, roles, and responsibilities felt especially critical to ensure all hires stayed motivated in a remote environment. We also needed intentional ways of working to allow insights to flow and avoid information silos introduced by remote work.
While we made mistakes and faced our fair share of challenges over those 2 years, our workforce hit a 30 person headcount at peak, and spanned across 8 states, 4 countries. We pivoted thrice; shipping 3 products, 3 side projects, and a podcast along the way. Despite rapid shifts in the company vision, the team stayed tightly aligned and (mostly) had the information they needed with the way we operated. Before winding things down, we had the foundation to nimbly scale if/when ready.
Team testimonials echoed a strong culture of feedback, passion for the work, continuous personal improvement, and strong subject matter expertise. A few folks shared with me this was the best job experience they ever had. We all learned a lot, and I hope our team carries the legacy of our vibes and team environment forward into their next roles, and future careers.
This guide is something I wish were available to me when I had started.
Prior to the startup world, I worked at Deloitte Consulting for 5 years, where I completed over 14 client projects serving members of the C-Suite (CTOs/CIOs primarily). and their direct reports, from a variety of Fortune 500 companies, mainly within the Consumer industry.
While there, I held a plethora of roles as either a management consultant, executive advisor, technology advisor, M&A utility player, product manager, ethnographic researcher, financial analyst, project planner, data analyst, and vendor manager.
In my last two years at Deloitte, I was a part of Doblin and worked with some wonderful people to apply a powerful combination of design thinking methods with practical change management and strategic implementation approaches to help our clients innovate.
- For a firm initiative, I led the genesis round of research breaking down Trust to its first principles. This led to the eventual publishing of The Four Factors of Trust following my departure. I still wonder whether the four factors are really just two: competence & intent.
In my first three years at Deloitte, my time was spent on M&A activities and agile transformations, where I helped remodel legacy technology organizations. We worked with technology executives to champion agile mindset principles, build true product teams, and restructure 1,000+ person workforces to iterate more quickly and keep pace with innovation.
Further back, I grew up in New Jersey and studied electrical engineering and entrepreneurship at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.
In my spare time, I enjoy traveling, listening to podcasts, collecting digital art, meal prepping, working out, practicing Muay Thai, and catching up with friends I’ve kept up with from each stage of my life.
I hope you find my writings valuable.