• I like to get my hands wet. I enjoy playing at the intersections of Web3/crypto, AI, and community to empower the masses.

    Since 2023, I’ve been serving as the co-founder and CEO of SQRT, a personalized investment platform for digital assets. It’s designed to provide entrée to crypto for ordinary people by using quant trading tools normally deployed only at hedge funds. Our goal is to make crypto investing easier, safer, and more enjoyable for retail investors.

    Prior to SQRT:

    2022. I co-founded fashionxDAO, a collective of fashion creatives and Web3 believers, collaborating to incubate brands together. (OpenSea & Litepaper.) fashionxDAO was founded on a thesis that there should be a space for everyone to make a conscious choice on what they want to wear, how it gets produced, and what it represents.

    I also served as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR) at Madrona Venture Labs (MVL), a prominent venture studio based in Seattle. During my time at MVL, I explored a matching platform for DAO discovery and engagement. Think pitchbook meets glassdoor for DAOs.

    2021. Following my bestselling NFT book publication in the fall of 2021 (a shameless plug: the book was subsequently published across Asia in multiple languages!), I worked with various startups and corporations as an advisor to their NFT/Web3 endeavors.

    2018-2021. I was a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Foster School of Business, where I taught strategic management and entrepreneurship. My research program included semantic strategies in nascent markets, the interpretive dynamics of categories and identities, and creativity. 

  • I enjoy delving into new things that challenge previously held assumptions.

    As a management researcher with sociological training, I study organizational phenomena that defy explanations rooted in dominant social movement theories. For instance, my theory work on decentralized forms of emergence (paper).

    Using a mixed method based on AI/ML to uncover evolving semantic structures of social- and news media conversations surrounding a new technology, I look at:

    • How a new market comes to be categorized and consensually validated from uncoordinated social interactions, and

    • How entrepreneurial firms maneuver in that crowd landscape to become the most attractive reference point within an exciting market category.

    Overall Research Identity

    Emergence | Crowds and communities | Innovation and creativity | Symbolic management | Categories and identities | Entrepreneurship

    Google Scholar

    Select Honors & Awards

    • Poets & Quants, World's Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professor, 2020 (LINK) (Interview)

    • Outstanding Author, Emerald Literati Awards, 2018 (LINK)

    • Rudolf & Valeria Maag Scholarship in Entrepreneurship, 2017-2018

    • Finalist, Best Conference Paper Prize, Strategic Management Society (SMS) Annual Conference, Berlin, Germany, 2016

    • Strategy Research Foundation (SRF) Dissertation Scholar, SMS, 2015-2016 (LINK)

    Academic Footprints  

    I earned a PhD in Management with a specialization in Entrepreneurship and Organizational Theory from INSEAD. I hold a joint MSc in International Relations and History from the London School of Economics (LSE) and a BA in Sociology with a secondary field in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College.

  • I regularly speak and participate as a panelist at academic and tech conferences.

Think - Build - Propagate. And repeat.

“In an alternate reality, each of us might have embarked on different paths, potentially moving along a path of more instantly gratifying, ostensible success. That could have been nice too.

However, we would not have evolved into the individuals we are today— scholars and builders who can truly appreciate the beauty of uncertainties and be comfortable with not being heard right away.

We owe an obligation of stewardship to our ideas. They are struggling to be given life, to achieve currency in the world, to create real value for people who can build and run a better society.

So today, as we step out the door as newly minted doctors, let us continue to inquire and inspire to be the best possible representatives of our idea-children that we can be.

From my PhD graduation speech, 2018