Pursuant to PIP-22, I would like to formally submit my candidacy for the role of COO / Product Lead on Pickle’s core team.
I have been a member of the Pickle community since its early days (I joined this forum in late September 2020, just a few days after the founding team set it up) back when we were an elastic farming experiment. Furthermore, I have been a member of the multi-sig since mid-November, shortly after the protocol governance expanded to include community members. I have been here through Pickle’s highs and lows, contributing in the best way I could. Other dwellers of this forum are probably familiar with me, particularly through the Smart Treasury discussion, but also other initiatives like the switch to WETH rewards for stakers, the Bug Bounty Program, and discussions on liquidity, the rewards mechanism, and community initiatives. You can read more about me personally and my Crypto journey in the dillboard discussion.
My professional background is that of a Growth hacker, sort of a cross between a product marketing manager and a technical product manager. I have been working in startups and technology for the past 10 years, as an employee, an entrepreneur, and twice as a co-founder in venture-backed projects, the most recent one providing crypto-native tools for protocol developers to conduct compliant token distributions and increase the effectiveness of their community marketing. Before working in crypto, I handled the productization of a computer vision (AI) solution for smart city stakeholders (railway operators, airport operations, oil & gas, etc.) that was featured in both TechCrunch and the New York Times. More about my background can be found on my LinkedIn and GitHub. I understand this role is high-profile and I am comfortable being non-anon.
I believe Pickle is at a point in time where its initial experimental thesis has been proven, and a dedicated focus on growth would allow the protocol to break through and scale as well as open new opportunities within the nascent Yearn partnership. Given the many talented people involved in the Pickle community, any process set up to grow the protocol should also be able to leverage those resources. As someone who has developed and managed such Growth processes in the past, and having worked with both other community members and the core team, I believe I am well-suited to take up this role and, personally, I would be absolutely stoked to be working in DeFi where I already spend a lot of my time .
I have laid out how I see myself leading product for Pickle in this governance discussion. In short, I believe this goes with setting up a Growth process that starts with determining the goals and metrics that will serve as proxies for progress (e.g. TVL, strategies released per mth, # of addresses locked to governance) and from there set a framework by which the whole team (and the community) can ideate, implement, and test the changes and enhancements that will allow Pickle’s growth to hit its momentum. I understand this is a role for which many hats have to be worn at once (i.e. product manager, coder, UX designer, marketer, data analyst), and though I am by no means able to cover every area, I know where I might fall short and will need to reach out for assistance. Having this growth process in place means Pickle can formalize innovation, encourage appropriate risk-taking with its resources, and properly implement lessons learnt even when goals aren’t always reached.
I hope in 6 months we will be looking back at this moment from the vantage point of a culture and mindset that shifted to embrace the hardships we endured in our quest for growth. My thanks to everyone who has read this and @Larry_Cucumber for spearheading this particular initiative to further strengthen the core team. Whether I am ultimately selected or not, I will do my best to see this great community succeed.