My first encounter with Bitcoin in 2013 opened my eyes to the immense possibilities of a digital currency that was natively digital and decentralized. From spending time growing up in Kenya with the widespread usage of m-pesa mobile money, to later using Bitcoin to pay un-banked girls in Afghanistan for their online contributions, I knew that global digital currencies were a 'when' not an 'if.'
Most of my pre-crypto career was spent at Ray Dalio’s macro hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, working with some of the most sophisticated pools of capital in the world. While Bridgewater was a fascinating place to learn about financial markets, by 2017 the disruptive promise and allure of programmable smart contracts on Ethereum was too compelling to ignore, and most of the people around me spoke about crypto in derisive terms.
I spend the first two years of my career in the cold crypto winter of 2018-2020, helping early Ethereum founders grow their brands and advising institutions on enterprise blockchain solutions (the era of “Blockchain, NOT Bitcoin”). As the application layer of crypto finally started to mature with DeFi and collectible NFTs,
I left ConsenSys to join the marketing wizard Amanda Cassatt at Serotonin as first employee and head of operations, helping to scale our team to over 50 people and 30 clients in less than two years. At Serotonin we have worked with 100+ of the top startups and scaleups in the industry across DeFi, infrastructure and tooling, creator economy, gaming, and increasingly more corporate clients like PayPal, Sotheby’s, Condé Nast, and others as they bring web3 products to market.
I then went on to help launch and scale Serotonin's first spinout from our product studio, Mojito, partnering with global brands like Sotheby's, Liverpool FC, Tampa Bay Rays, Prada, and CAA to pioneer integration of web3 and blockchain technology into their consumer product offering.
The ’killer application’ of blockchain technology is digital ownership; in its simplest definition that’s what it allows you to do – truly own and possess something digital for the first time, not through an intermediary. The first manifestations of owning a digital ‘thing’ have been currency and speculative tokens, and some early applications for digital art and collectibles. In an increasingly digital-first world, online ownership (of data and assets) will be paramount to everything we do. As we evolve our relationship towards digital ownership, online coordination, and redefine online ‘trust’ in an AI-dominated world, decentralized and immutable blockchains are a crucial development for human social evolution.
If you want to work with me or collaborate, send me a note.