I’d like to work with the other Governors to build this DAO, to promote liquidity on the Harmony blockchain through building opensource Hummingbot infrastructure that meets the needs of traders.
I learned about this opportunity from Mike Feng, who I’ve known for 7 years since advising his previous startup.
My superpower is getting projects off the ground, working with people that bring diverse perspectives from engineering, legal, users, design, and finance. I organize teams and processes to achieve success in environments of ambiguity and risk!
I’ve built multiple companies and projects from zero to success.
15+ year product management career in leading Silicon Valley software companies
Including: (1) Next Force - VP Product, leading product, design, user research from seed to Series A. Investors Mayfield, August, Foundation, (2) NFX - helped start NFX, a leading venture firm, which recently raised it’s third fund at $450M, (3) Adchemy - Director New Business, leading cross-functional teams to build partnerships and prove product-market fit, leading to $61M series D from Microsoft and others, (4) Siebel - Group Director of Product, started multiple businesses lines, acquired by Oracle for $5.85B.
I have a traditional finance background. I started my career as an analyst and trader on the Financial Engineering desk of New Zealand’s largest bank - as a market maker in currency and interest rate options and swaps - after completing my degrees in Accounting, Finance, Economics.
I currently invest in and advise seed-stage software companies. I also research and write about blockchain.
What does a DAO mean to you and why do you want to be a Governor?
I think DAOs have the potential to be incredible in engaging worldwide talent in unique ways towards common goals. I ran an entirely remote, multi-country team at CVKey last year and it was really effective.
By contributing here I hope to grow my DAO expertise, Defi expertise, and work with people I admire, like Mike Feng and the other folks I’ve met through Hummingbot and Harmony!
How can you help?
Out of 9 governors, many will be experienced engineers who are familiar with developing opensource software for Hummingbot, HarmonyOne or the ecosystem partners (bridges, ViperSwap Suhsiswap, DeFi Kingdoms). Several will be active traders that represent our target user base.
What else do we need? At least one should be a “product person” in the sense that they are not an engineer or a user, but someone who glues the project together to achieve the intended results.
I’d bring my product skills in these areas, as needed:
- provides clarification by asking questions
- provides alignment by helping the group discover priorities and build a roadmap
- helps communicate clearly to all members including newcomers
- promotes the group’s output by designing processes and organization, helping to find and eliminate blockers
- watches the Defi ecosystem to see where there are opportunities we could benefit from.
I think I’d be a great fit to join the DAO and am excited to get started.
I can contribute up to 10 hours/week to this project.
I don’t believe I have a conflict of interest.
Experience in crypto.
I made seed investments in Filecoin and Kraken in 2016. I followed blockchain as a technology since then (including considering an ICO for my startup in 2017 (seemed easier than raising from VCs 
). I started investing in crypto in 2021.
What’s Your Thesis (So Far)?
To get more familiar with Hummingbot I have: created a Hummingbot account, read the user documentation, noticed which connectors are active and which are not, interviewed a crypto trader, etc.
To kick off the conversation, here’s what I have come to understand so far about liquidity. I could be way off, but I’d like to learn from others. Liquidity problems appear to center on a few issues:
- Too many protocols chasing too few investors/ traders. The larger protocols get the most attention and this is somewhat a self-reinforcing cycle.
- Large investors/traders sticking to the top 100-200 protocols
- However, the opportunity is that investors will look for yield, e.g. I was excited to see that Mark Cuban was a small LP in Titan / Quickswap; it shows even large investors will look to smaller protocols and help provide liquidity
- Even if a trade looks lucrative, trust in protocols is a concern, hence improving actual/perceived trust is a big deal
- Barriers that make it hard to start experimenting (e.g. under-developed exchange APIs). I think Hummingbot could address this issue pretty well.
- High transaction costs?
- Gaining awareness in the places that investors/stakers/traders gather their info
- Traders have certain tools that they expect to use to manage trades… (excited to hear from traders and build what they need)