Big news...
Today I have been sworn in as President...of the Story Foundation!
In this post I'll share a little bit about me and how I got here.
Note: the next bit contains some devrelius lore – feel free to skip it if it doesn't interest you:
<START OF LORE>
Before Story, I was at small startups (one of which I co-founded back in 2009), as well as massive companies like Amazon. In all of them, regardless of my role, seniority or title, I've always felt the need to make things better – and more EFFICIENT. If something can be better, I have to build it.
For example...
> at Amazon as a product mgr, managing A/B tests was a nightmare, so as a weekend project I created an extension to make it better, posted the link on an internal wiki, and by the time I left it was being used by 20,000+ SDEs and PMs (ps: if you're an Amazonian and have used NeoWeblab, you owe me a beer).
> Or in 2021, amidst the crazy bull run, I created @CoinPerspective, a free website to help compare market caps, that went viral overnight and has since served millions of users and regularly receives millions of requests per month. Shout out to @coingecko and @Cloudflare for making it a zero cost service to run!
> Or in 2022, when I joined Flow, searching smart contracts sucked, so in my free time I built @contractbrowser, and also got super involved in the @emerald_dao, where one of my proudest accomplishments there was creating FLOATs (dot city) with @jacobmtucker – a free, community run proof of attendance platform for @flow_blockchain, that went on to get 4.5M poap nfts minted!
> And finally in 2023, @WeileiY reached out and pitched me Story, I chatted with @storysylee , @jasonzhao and @leochen, and I wasn't prepared for the massive clusterfuck that is Intellectual Property, and how badly it needs improving. Story is all about making IP more efficient - so for me it was a match made in heaven!
</END OF LORE>
Over the last 14 months at Story, my main focus has been building out the devrel function from scratch, helping ecosystem projects build on programmable IP as well as expanding the team, scoring legends like @jacobmtucker and @timtimtim_eth (& more on the way!)
In parallel, I also got deeply involved in core product and engineering work –some recent examples include the Orchestration/Attestation services, which you can read about in Story's recent whitepaper (hint), and Agent TCP/IP, the (much needed) agent to agent transaction protocol, used by more and more live agents every day.
I like to think I can now consider myself an all round Story generalist.
Despite the title change to President, I still am (and will continue to be) a devrel at my core. After all, an ecosystem's number one resource is its builders, and ensuring that builders continue to thrive is going to be *the* core mission of the Foundation.
So when I jokingly said "sworn in" at the beginning of the post, I actually did mean it, in the sense that: I swear to you, the community, and to all present and future projects in the ecosystem, to do what's best for you and for our mission to revolutionize the way we use, register, and transact intellectual property.
And it couldn't come at a more timely moment.
Generative AI is reshaping industries at an unprecedented pace, and intellectual property is becoming the currency fueling that transformation.
IP is one of the largest and most valuable asset classes in the world, yet historically, access and ownership have been concentrated among few incumbents. The complexities of registration, enforcement, and jurisdictional fragmentation have made meaningful participation difficult for most creators and innovators. Story changes that. By making IP programmable and accessible, we’re unlocking new ways for developers, businesses, and creators to collaborate, build, and monetize ideas on a global scale. I’m excited to lead the Foundation in realizing this vision.
We have a long road ahead and a lot of it will be uphill, and we really are just getting started. At Story, like at Amazon, it's always Day 1.
Now back to work.