Hr

Operations, Product & Marketing Since Web 1.0

An entrepreneur and product lead for more than 25 years (first startup exited to Bankrate.com in 1999), John has a breadth of experience ranging from publishing and financial data, to corporate travel and rewards programs, to cryptocurrencies and blockchain/Web3. 

His roles have spanned product, marketing, operations, sales and software development. John started down the proverbial crypto rabbit hole in 2013 after a consulting project for Chris Larsen’s prior company (p2p lending platform Prosper) led him to being one of the first users of Ripple (XRP).

After 9 years at American Express, John completed a software engineering bootcamp in 2017 and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin hired him at Consensys as a back-end developer and product founder. 

At Consensys John co-founded a loyalty points platform for small businesses, as well as Smart Hotel Rate, which audited overcharging on corporate negotiated rates and spun out from Consensys in 2020. 

An advisor to threshold cryptography start-up Keep Network since 2017, John has been a key contributor to Threshold Network DAO (the result of the first on-chain protocol merger in 2022), serving in elected roles on its Council, Treasury, Integrations and Marketing committees. 


Experience: 11 years

Yearly salary: $170,000

Hourly rate: $0

Nationality: 🇺🇸 United States

Residency: 🇺🇸 United States


Experience

Operations lead, Treasury, Marketing & Integrations Committees
Threshold Network
2022 - 2025
Key contributor to Threshold’s protocol & DAO governance and operations structure Sourced & managed legal teams to establish Threshold Foundation; act as liaison with the DAO Work with law enforcement in US and Cayman Islands to minimize illicit use of tBTC bridge Implemented wallet screening capabilities by partnering with TRM Labs; manage periodic upgrades Growing out of my advisor role with Keep Network and my involvement as a Keep staker since inception, I have been involved with Threshold since its historic on-chain protocol merger (of Keep and Nucypher) on January 1, 2022. The author of numerous successful Threshold Improvement Proposals, I helped form our guild system, led the restructuring of the Marketing Guild's oversight and operations a year later, and participate in DAO governance and lead high-impact operations such as aligning stakeholders on the need for a Threshold Foundation, setting it up and coordinating token holder governance with foundation actions. Active contributor to DAO discussions on product development & positioning for Threshold's products: tBTC, thUSD, TACo.
Mentor
Consensys Tachyon
2021 - 2023
Provided advice & feedback to projects in Tachyon's accelerator program. Also supported projects after their cohort and made angel investments in a few of them.
Co-founder, Head of Product
Smart Hotel Rate
2019 - 2022
Smart Hotel Rate brought the efficiency, accuracy and transformative benefits of blockchain to managed travel. We invented and served corporate customers with an application that addressed the $14 billion hotels overcharge their corporate customers annually. Led team of 5, including 3 devs and designer, in 0-to-1 creation of B2B product preventing hotel overcharge Developed product and marketing strategy, positioning; aligned roadmap with customers, team, investor Served as company spokesperson in media, on conference panels and presentations; led customer pitches Led company fundraising effort and discussions with potential acquirers (including two public companies)
Hard Core Decentralization Developer
Consensys
2017 - 2020
Met with the early Consensys team in 2015; hired by Joe Lubin when Consensys was ~200 employees Co-founded a reward points app and developed positioning; co-wrote the back-end code Contributed to Mesh culture, recruited several employees, wrote a memo outlining an internal comms plan Recipient of 1st “Meshies” award, for organizing travel & helping plan Consensys’ 2018 Portugal retreat
Software engineering bootcamp
Hack Reactor
2016 - 2017
Computer Science: data structures, algorithms; Front-end development: JavaScript, Angular, Backbone, React, D3, jQuery; Back-end development: Node, Express, SQL, MongoDB, Bookshelf. Solo & group projects, communication/empathy, teamwork. Member of team that in 4 weeks build an app to translate news URLs to spoken audio streams.
Associate Director, Customer Experience (Products & Mobile)
American Express
2007 - 2016
Chairman's Award for Innovation (top 0.4% of employees). Launched novel subscription-based product suite and helped grow revenue to $20M in 4 years Led product marketing of travel technology solutions: value prop, channels, collateral, events Aligned commercial goals with sales and client management teams, incorporating customer research Initiated net promoter score survey for 10,000 clients globally, communicated results to field teams
Business owner
Ariston Investments LTD
2004 - 2006
Real estate development and investment.
Director, Digital Business Development
Informa
2002 - 2003
Recruited to launch the company’s digital marketing business, beginning with Quicken.com. Conceived, sold and developed groundbreaking online consumer finance tools with CNN, Yahoo Finance and Fair, Isaac (myFICO.com).
Partner Development Manager
Bankrate
2000 - 2001
Contributed to growth of one of the best turnaround stories of the dot-com era by driving revenue and helping build a leading consumer financial brand through content marketing with co-branded partners (Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, plus news & financial verticals).
Co-founder & Publisher
Green: Personal Finance for the Unashamed
1996 - 2000
Launched, built and sold an edgy, innovative publication supported by multiple revenue streams – subscription, advertising, list rental, brand extensions - including a book with Doubleday, a weekly TV spot on CNN, and content syndicated to other publishers. Exit to Bankrate.com.

Skills

business-development
dao
operations
product-lead
product-manager
product-marketing
hr
english