FLOCKS grew out of a simple idea: people are more than one job title. Each person brings a unique mix of interests, skills, and passions, and DAOs offered a way to contribute to multiple communities in different capacities.

We envisioned a two-sided platform connecting DAOs seeking contributors for specific tasks and bounties with individuals whose skills, interests, and preferences were a good fit. We also explored mutual reviews and reputation systems to help build trust between communities and contributors.

I presented FLOCKS at Launchable, MVL's demo day, in March 2022, which opened doors to conversations with investors. Although the concept remained exploratory, it sparked a broader question: how could people make their experience and contributions visible across different DAOs? That question eventually led to WR3P.

We envisioned connecting users’ crypto wallets and indexing their on-chain activities across four areas - NFTs, DeFi, DAOs, and the metaverse - alongside verifiable off-chain credentials. These would form the basis of a Web3 reputation score (WREP), represented through NFTs that users could display on their profiles.

The idea was to make people's experience, skills, and contributions more visible and verifiable, allowing DAOs and other Web3 organizations to discover potential collaborators based on their track records and reputations. Messaging and personalized recommendations would also help users find relevant connections and opportunities - the idea behind our “LinkedIn meets Credit Karma for Web3” concept.

My co-founder and I developed and pitched WR3P to investors through the fall and winter of 2022. On-chain identity and reputation were gaining attention at the time, including through Vitalik Buterin and his co-authors’ paper on decentralized society (read here). Against this backdrop, WR3P attracted interest from investors even at the pre-MVP stage.

At SQRT, our ambition was to bring “hedge fund experience, robo-advisor simplicity” to retail crypto investing. Working with our quant traders and engineers, I led product strategy and later product design, translating sophisticated trading models into an intuitive consumer experience. Users could access strategies through restricted API connections to their existing exchange accounts, retaining control of their assets and visibility into trading activity.

We ran a series of closed and open beta tests with early retail investors. In parallel, our B2B asset management business serving a family office, alongside our prop trading operations, generated revenue that helped support B2C product development.

But building SQRT also meant grappling with questions about what kind of company we wanted to become. Some encouraged us to focus on our B2B business and eventually launch a fund, rather than navigate the regulatory uncertainties of serving retail crypto investors. Even among those who supported a consumer platform, opinions diverged: should we expand beyond crypto into a broader fintech platform, or double down on crypto and evolve into a decentralized protocol?

I also had to consider the team behind it. Most of our team came from traditional finance, particularly equity markets, bringing deep expertise but also some reservations about going fully crypto-native. Weighing these different directions against our collective strengths, while keeping the company moving, became one of the most formative parts of my experience as a founder.

fashionxDAO brought together a group of friends around a shared idea: creators should be able to bring their work to life more freely with the support of a community, while supporters should have a voice in what gets made and what it stands for. We wanted to explore whether NFTs could connect the two - helping finance physical production while opening up new ways to participate in fashion.

Our model paired a Creators’ Club, responsible for creative development, with a Supporters’ Club whose NFT purchases would help fund production. For our first pilot, Save the Whales, launched in November 2022, we minted a collection of NFTs that could be bought and sold on OpenSea. The collection combined digital artwork, membership, and redeemable T-shirts across three tiers - Standard, Premium, and Super Premium - with a custom-embroidery option at the highest tier. Proceeds from NFT sales helped fund the production of the physical garments.

The founding team retained decision-making responsibility for the pilot, while greater community participation and decentralization remained part of our longer-term vision. To that end, I worked on a tokenomics and governance model that separated NFT-based membership and voting rights from a utility token designed to reward contributions and support payments within the community.