Undergrad, 2015.
Friend’s parents were sending 100’s of BTC from Portugal to the U.S. to pay his tuition - it was cheaper and easier than a wire.
Bitcoin immediately clicked for me.
Problem was, I was a broke Finance student.
I watched the little BTC I had rise and fall, but never considered selling it.
In 2019, I met my first crowd of Maxi's the N.A. BTC conference as a volunteer.
That conference reignited my interest and deepened my resolve.
As a registered financial advisor, I was a Michael Saylor disciple, and scoffed at the monkey pictures and dog tokens.
Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to talk about Bitcoin at work.
I left my TradFi job and joined a 401k provider that enables a 5% allocation to crypto.
I was the Bitcoin expert at the company - except for one co-founder, David, and a couple of the devs.
I couldn’t fathom why David, a CFA with more time managing portfolios than I had breathing, would allow shitcoins like ETH and SOL in a 401k.
It wasn't until late 2021 that I put a small amount of Eth in Metamask to start playing Gods Unchained...
Which was pretty cool. I own these digital cards?
Then I started degening on BSC and AVAX.
Finally, my eyes were opened to the world of smart contracts.
It felt like leaving a cult.
I spent some time trying to learn Solidity, but quickly realized my skill set was in communication.
By the summer of 2022, I just wanted to be closer to the tech.
A recruiter told me I was better off staying in TradFi than entering crypto at the beginning of a bear market.
For better or worse, “no” doesn’t really land for me, so I started my own consultancy where I supported some DeFi projects, Infra protocols, and dev shops in their GTM process.
Finally, I wasn’t the most crypto literate person in the room. Everyone I talked with had an incredible depth of knowledge.
To be honest, I stumbled around in the dark - this was nothing like TradFi or SaaS.
In Web3, network is everything, so I spent all my time trying to make friends.
At a conference, I met a crypto accounting Founder who was looking for a sales guy.
It was Web2.5 SaaS, but I joined him for the health insurance and safety of W2.
Kept networking.
Kept learning.
Kept grinding.
I spent 12 hour days at my desk. I learned a ton about integrating Crypto data with TradFi accounting systems - but this wasn’t the type of knowledge I was looking for.
I was back to talking with TradFi’s and institutions, but what I really wanted was to was embrace my degen side.
When I met the co-founders of scrib3.co, it was the perfect fit.
Finally, a place that only cares about technical differentiators, narratives, and GTM strategies. A place where I get to talk with builders and founders, the people that actually move the tech forward. That was 6 months ago. As I enter 2024, I’m finally on the second upward slope of the learning curve.
In Web3, every day is a new adventure. Something changes, something breaks. Everyone's journey is different, but this was mine.
