About
I'm currently 22 years old, from the Bay Area, California, and based in New York City. I'm the founder of a technology company that builds predictive analytics and execution algorithms for financial institutions.
"While facing the camera he knows that ultimately he will face the public, the consumers who constitute the market. This market, where he offers not only his labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach. During the shooting he has as little contact with it as any article made in a factory. This may contribute to that oppression, that new anxiety which, according to Pirandello, grips the actor before the camera. The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the 'personality' outside the studio."
— Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Authentic interests include hip hop music, US politics, algorithmic trading, market microstructure, philosophy (McLuhan, Zhuang Zhou, Nietzsche), and dealmaking.
Career Journey
In high school and college, I interned at consulting companies, venture capital firms, and technology startups. These experiences sparked my interest in financial technology.
I dropped out of NYU to build Pebble, a crypto neo-bank, with two of my closest friends. The experience taught me resilience, perseverance, and what it takes to build companies from the ground up.
After Pebble, I stayed in crypto, trading with my college roommate. He left his trading desk at UBS, and we built trading infrastructure at hacker houses and accelerators - winning global hackathons.
We received invaluable mentorship and gained firsthand insights into how top trading firms operate. Our trading tools have been used by hundreds of traders to analyze trillions in volume, uncovering tens of millions of dollars in hidden trading costs.
We founded Blockhouse, to do this at scale, and now build quantitative research and trading technology for financial institutions, leveraging state-of-the-art methods to drive superior P&L outcomes.
"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."
— J.M. Culkin, A Schoolman's Guide to Marshall McLuhan, The Saturday Review
Reading Influences
Literature that has shaped my thinking on business, markets, and philosophy.
Give and Take
Adam Grant
Examines how success is influenced by generosity, reciprocity, and social dynamics.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
Insights on managing startups and making the difficult decisions that determine success or failure.
Genuine Pretending
Moeller & D'Ambrosio
On Daoist philosophy's concept of wu wei and how identity forms through social roles rather than authenticity.