I’m delighted to announce that I will be jumping head-first into web3 and joining Paradigm as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR). From Matt’s encouragement, to Georgios’ stream-of-consciousness, to Mizbani’s incisive analysis, to Sudhanshu’s breadth of market knowledge, I’ve been struck by how sharp and thoughtful everyone at Paradigm is. I’m excited to continue collaborating over the long-term for this next chapter of my career. But before diving in deeper — how does someone who spent their entire career in web2 decide to step into web3?

For the first 7 years of my career, I was deeply enmeshed in web2 working on a mix of infrastructure, product, and company-building. First at Wish, where I built out core infrastructure for a massively scaled e-commerce app with billions in GMV and hundreds of millions of users. Then at Quill, where I led product and engineering from the company’s earliest stages through launch as the first engineer. In scaling Wish and Quill, I learned that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whether you’re building a company or infrastructure systems, supporting a growing business is about anticipating tail risks and being incredibly pro-active. Even more challenging is leaving flexibility in the system to allow for iteration, new products and enhanced features.

After Quill was acquired in late 2021, crypto became the mind-virus that I couldn’t shake. What electrified me about web3 was that it offered a fundamentally new paradigm of a shared and composable substrate. This shared computing layer allowed for a wealth of new applications and captivated me because of its far-reaching implications on the future of coordination.

The arc of technology has been a story of Moore’s laws and compounding optimization. Our computers become faster, our food gets delivered more conveniently, we have the world’s knowledge just a click away at our fingertips. Crypto represents an inflection point in that arc. The compute isn’t faster, the database is slower, and the technology is harder to use. But what it offers for the first time is a platform for people to permissionlessly innovate, coordinate, and build natively virtual worlds — together.

All that to say — I’ve been hooked and I’m ready to start something new.

I’m particularly excited to explore ideas at the intersection of web2 and web3, where I’ll be able to better leverage my infrastructure and company-building experiences. While we’ve seen a surge of crypto-native startups, there’s been a dearth of companies bringing web2-scale techniques to web3. My hope is that the right infrastructure can greatly accelerate the innovation and adoption of crypto as a whole.

To help me realize these ambitions, I’ll be joining Paradigm as an EIR. I couldn’t think of better partners to start this journey with than the thoughtful and hard-working folks at Paradigm. Special thanks to Georgios, Mizbani, Charlie, Sudhanshu, and last but not least Matt for spending time with me and encouraging me on this new adventure.

Onwards!