Saying Goodbye, to Say Hello to the Future

The Rocket is Taking Off 🚀

Well, this has been a long-time coming. I’ve now been at Purse for a year and a half, working as the Head of Growth and Product Content, while simultaneously building BlockChannel. I was first introduced to the world of crypto 5 years ago, when I was just 21.

I spent the majority of my young-adult life interfacing and learning from some of the most brilliant minds in the industry, and now it appears the dimly lit moon that remains forever in our gaze is finally upon the horizon.

When I came into crypto, I arrived from humble beginnings. I was your typical poor broke college student, yearning to be the first in his extended family to receive a degree (ODU c/o 2014, Go Monarchs!). I grew up in the conservative South in Georgia/South Carolina as a multi-racial individual in the 90s from a severely low-income family: I am no stranger to challenges, nor am I a stranger to persevering and overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles; it’s something I sometimes feel I was innately built to do better than most.

Since coming to Purse, our CEO Andrew Lee has been a dear friend of mine as well as a mentor during my time here; together we helped grow a team, a brand, bcoin (shoutout to JJ, he’s the coolest crypto-nerd I know), and the Purse platform— ensuring the story of Purse is both long, and prosperous for years to come...

I won’t list the many amazing things we accomplished as a team at Purse during my 1.5+ years here . But, I can however attest to how much I learned, grew, and flourished both technically, and socially. I managed many projects and relationships while building crucial connections and instilling my own unique flavor into everything I helped develop at Purse; that’s what I’ve done my entire life.

Building a world class brand is a journey in crypto, and boy was it weird somedays…From Hard Forks, to Extension Blocks, to SegWit and Twitter-trolls — — crypto is always entertaining, day in and day out.

A Changing Landscape 🌍

Now it’s time I start my own journey — I started from the bottom, and now well…I’m here :). But I stand alongside some very brilliant minds, atop the shoulders of giants. In the coming weeks and months myself and my partners will begin to unveil iteratively what we’ve been working on.

To keep things short, and to leave ourselves with more to announce later, the Purse Mafia officially begins with the creation of our hybrid hedge/venture fund, Amentum:

“Amentum is a hybrid fund, focused on investments in both public crypto markets, as well as ICO pre-sale investing. Amentum aims to be partners/advocates for the public chain cryptocurrencies and tokens we invest in, as well as work to provide value, ensure security, and find product-market fit for companies seeking to ICO, as they work to build and scale their crypto-centric business models. “

The world will soon evolve at an ever-hastening pace as the newfound paradigm of crypto-adoption proliferates globally (check out my post on understanding the ICO token hype here). As a team, we will work to promote diversity in both the teams we invest in, as well as the basket of currencies in which we opt to invest in long-term.

Time to Hustle 🏃🏽

I am very proud/honored to be joined by some very intelligent and multi-talented teammates — whom I am lucky to also call my close friends.

As stated above, we are a diversity-oriented firm; one focused on building value by utilizing our varied skillsets and backgrounds to provide expertise while interfacing with potential investors/entrepreneurs from all walks of life.

Our collective backgrounds range from Information Systems/Project Management, to Computer Science/Mechnical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Product/UI Design — and we are all technical, with years of experience trading/investing and working in this nascent industry.

We know that funds going forward will need to possess full-stack technical capability to finesse this growing industry accordingly — something we are all very capable of as a team.

2/4 of Amentum’s GPs

It Takes a Village 🏡👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

That about closes things for now. Through this process of forming this fund, I’ve met so many bright minds; many who have now become advisors to the fund (I can’t WAIT to reveal who’s onboard). The individuals in this industry are incredibly smart, and are really great teachers — it’s truly been a blessing for all of us.

Before closing and getting back to work (I’m so exited), I want to thank the many individuals who helped me make this decision, and provide me the much-needed affirmations that I wasn’t in over my head, and that an effort like this made sense:

Emin Gun Sirer; Joseph Poon; Ari Paul; Andrew Lee; Matt Liston; Balaji Sirinivasan; Kevin Zhou; Andreas Brekken; Eric Meltzer; Joe Urgo; my awesome lawyer Alexander; Ameen Soleimani; Ron Patiro; Bradley Miles; Joey Krug; Olaoluwa Osuntokun; Darren Mills; Christopher “JJ the Menace” Jeffrey; and of course my amazing GPs.

Thank you all for helping this little mixed-boy finally reach his dreams, I wont let you down. This is only the beginning. 🚀