dereksilva

ZeruAI is a behaviour intelligence infrastructure layer providing a trust and reputation scoring system (zScore) for onchain and agentic economies. Joined at early stage to shape marketing messaging, community strategy, and brand positioning as ZeruAI pivoted from an AI-driven DeFi app to its current infrastructure focus. Launched and hosted the Exploring the AI Rainforest podcast, covering finance, crypto, reputation, and AI. Led GTM execution for the Zaps (zaps.wtf) product launch including content strategy, social calendars, referral programs, and community activation across X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Telegram, and Discord. Contributed to business development outreach and ecosystem partnership identification.

Stepped up from community leadership to own cross-functional operations, taking responsibility for ecosystem business development and vendor relationships for the first time. Managed migration of key ecosystem properties and coordinated external development resources. Contributed to early-stage strategic planning for Reef's repositioning as an RWA and tokenized equity platform.

Joined Reef in April 2021 as a copywriter and was promoted to Community Lead within months, taking ownership of community strategy and execution. Built and managed Reef's global community across Discord, Telegram, and X/Twitter, growing and retaining a highly engaged base of token holders, developers, and ecosystem participants. Produced community-facing content, announcements, and developer-facing communications. Established community governance frameworks and led AMA programs, ecosystem calls, and community events.

Bloom was a decentralized identity and credit protocol. This was a full-time contract role managing one of the industry's most technically engaged communities. Led engagement for a community of 50,000+ members and developers across Discord, Telegram, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms. Managed one direct report and oversaw all community operations including content, support, and channel moderation. Took on developer relations responsibilities, successfully onboarding multiple SDK integration partners for user authentication and KYC use cases. Launched the Bloom Collective ambassador program to incentivize community-led content creation, meetups, and user acquisition. Produced blog posts, web copy, and documentation; translated marketing materials into Portuguese.

Managed the full sales cycle, built and executed marketing initiatives, and trained clients on web platforms and applications. Provided internal IT support and performed technical troubleshooting across hosting, email, and SSL infrastructure. Took increasing responsibility for DevOps: launched and configured EC2 and RDS instances, configured Ubuntu Linux environments using Apache and PHP. Expanded technical skills into Python, Bash scripting, Git, and Docker.

Worked directly with the COO on product design, competitive research, product launches, and staff hiring across multiple hosting brands (Site5, BlueFur, AptHost). Coordinated system maintenance scheduling with engineering teams and outside vendors; crafted customer-facing communications across all brands. Conducted server audits to assess infrastructure health, identify outdated or underperforming hardware, and reduce operating costs.

Built and operated CleverHost as a solo founder — a web hosting business targeting small businesses and freelancers. Designed and managed the full infrastructure stack including load-balanced servers and a dedicated MySQL (later MariaDB) database server. Optimized WordPress hosting performance to sub-600ms load times through Apache, PHP, and MySQL tuning, server-side caching, and cron job management — on par with major hosting providers. Handled all sales, marketing, customer support, and technical operations solo until exit. Acquired HostPolar (a VPS provider) and expanded offerings to include VoIP services prior to exit.