After 17 years, I've resigned from a company I founded and ran as CEO to go full time Web3. 3 cycles into crypto, today marks Day 1 of my full time crypto journey!
I'm proud of the mission based business I helped build and the impact we've made in our team members, clients and industry. It was just an idea with a purpose to do better than what existed in the market at the time. I believe we achieved a large part of our mission and will continue to do so in my departure running day to day operations.
I left a lucrative Hedge Fund job to start this business with my business partner and a dream. Cliche entrepreneur story of countless NO's, several roadblocks and failures, invested all my life savings, maxed credit cards to make the business run with basically no personal income and working 7 days a week on sugar free red bulls and ramen for the first few years. Failure was not an option.
Eventually scaled the business to a national specialty consumer brand with nearly 400 employees backed by one of the largest PE firms and generated hundreds of million in revenue across multiple channels over our history. But what I'm most proud of is the relationships I've built over that time and the impact we've had doing so.
There were many victories I'm proud of, painful lessons I've learned and incredible challenges that I've grown from. While the exit was not the one I imagined due to a number of post Covid era complications, it was time for me to move on and transition to an advisor to the new CEO and Board.
I'm excited to take another change in my career and begin a new chapter leveraging my professional experience to dedicate myself fully to this space in the early stages of a new cycle. Over the past few years, I've grown to love working with some incredible people and projects in my free time. Now in my 3rd cycle, have the opportunity to do so in a full time capacity now.
At my core, I'm a builder and love the hustle and grind with good people to do cool shit and making a meaningful impact. I can't see myself doing anything else.
Building on Solana. Building on Bitcoin. Blessed.
Thanks to the community and the opportunities, Pengu is home here in Web3. Win and Help Win. LFG!