When building technology startups, one of the best predictors for long-term success is the strength of the core team. Even as product development and market conditions can change unexpectedly over time, a highly-functioning, mission-driven team can adapt, ship product, and pivot its way to eventual success.

Today I’m ecstatic to announce that another world-class engineer, Franck Chastagnol, has joined Origin Protocol. Franck started programming at the age of 8 with an Amstrad CPC 664. He and I have known each other since he was the engineering lead on my very first successful product launch at YouTube. Together we built Claim Your Content, YouTube’s earliest content detection, licensing, and monetization product. This was an integral launch when YouTube was still a young 35-person startup figuring out how to effectively partner with companies like Universal Music Group and the BBC. Our work was pivotal in establishing a sustainable business model when it wasn’t yet obvious that YouTube would be a profitable business that could work effectively with content partners all across the world.

Franck and I at the YouTube office in 2006

I’ve spent close to a decade figuring out how to work with Franck again, and today we finally have the right opportunity and timing to partner up again with Origin.

Franck has had a successful career leading engineering teams at numerous high-profile startups that have since grown into some of the largest tech companies in the world. Coincidentally, this will be the sixth company that Franck and Cuong (former head of NYC engineering at Dropbox) have worked at together (Inktomi, Paypal, YouTube, Google, Dropbox, and now Origin). Founding Paypal engineer and first employee at YouTube, Yu Pan, has also had a long, proven working relationship with Franck across numerous companies.

Franck has had extensive experience building highly scalable, distributed systems across payments, video streaming, search, and many other technologies. At Origin, his initial focus area will be building a low-latency, responsive, and reliable search and indexing system for all the smart contract data that Origin stores across the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS.

In his spare time, Franck enjoys playing football (not the American type) and spending time with his family. At Origin, he is now the best soccer player (sorry Josh) and also the most fluent in French. Franck loves the outdoors, and once climbed both Kilimanjaro and Mt. Whitney in the same week.

Franck hiking in New Zealand

Franck grew up in a rural area of France, in a village with less than 10 houses and more cows than people. He’s also skilled at the quirky art of mushroom hunting (specifically chanterelle and porcini mushrooms). Please extend a warm welcome to the talented and multi-faceted Franck as we continue to build out the Origin engineering team.

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