I remember clearly it was coincidentally the week that I saw Apple’s “Celebrating Steve” video when I reconnected with then-Head of Token Marketing Jackie and learned about the amazing growth and opportunities at Covalent. The video commemorates the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs' passing with this quote:
"When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much."
"But life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use…"
It reminded me again of my passion and why I do what I do. My greatest passion is to use technology and common sense to simplify the complications of life and improve the quality of life. Throughout my career, I look for opportunities to be able to create an impact either by directly creating, changing, or influencing it, be it through my past entrepreneurial experiences or joining small startups like my previous role as Director of Engineering at Social Nature, where I was part of the leadership team with a mission to make it easier for consumers to discover more natural and sustainable products while generating almost 10x revenue growth.
I have been interested in the Web3 space and looking for a practical application for quite some time. When I learned from the CEO and Co-founder of Covalent Ganesh Swami that the team has brought a hackathon project through a bear market to a 10x growth headcount within a year and become well funded, I was genuinely impressed by their grit. If anything in my past entrepreneurial experiences has taught me, it's that there's no such thing as “overnight success”. It’s always years in the making, by people with grit, and that’s the type of people I want to spend time making an impact / changing the world with.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to experience exactly that fast-paced and high-impact driven culture firsthand in my first month at Covalent. After completing the first week of Web3 onboarding challenge, I was immediately tasked with owning and shipping the balances endpoint to support our first non-EVM chain: Solana. It was a perfect example of a culture of trust and focus on impact, trusting and providing opportunities for everyone to own high-impact initiatives all within the first month of joining.
When I learned about Covalent’s vision to provide the richest and most robust data for the entire blockchain ecosystem, it reminded me of a once small startup’s mission to organize the world’s information. It reminded me of this quote from the then-CEO of Google Eric Schmidt.
"Get on a rocket ship. When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. And when companies aren’t growing quickly or their missions don’t matter as much, that’s when stagnation and politics come in. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on."
My role as an engineering manager at Covalent can be summed up simply with one word: “Growth”. Ensuring the team is satisfied, challenged and growing, and we’re laser-focused on growing, building and shipping impactful features that delight our customers. Come join me on this journey to change the world. It may sound naïve to say, but the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. Get on this rocket ship. Just get on. I don’t usually swear, but #LFG.