Team
Built with people
It’s a rare privilege to have people dedicate their time and energy to bringing your idea to life. When that happens, it’s my duty to honor that trust.
“Something magical happens when I becomes us.”
December 2023 to January 2025
My first team
At 15 I built and led a team of 17 teenagers from 9 countries. We called it Inner Crypto Team.
It started at a football match. I was with a friend, explaining why crypto was going to the moon, when I suddenly realized I needed to build an airdrop farming team. I ran home before the game ended and started planning. By the end of the week I had built the system and pitched my father, who invested.
Airdrop farming means using new crypto projects early to earn their token rewards. I didn’t have the capital or the experience to compete as a trader, so I bet on people instead.
All I had was belief. I knew it wasn’t enough, but it was enough to try. The first month we were 12. By the second month we were 17, and for most of us it was our first job.
The 17, by country
I was obsessed. Finally I had a place to channel all my energy. My job was to be able to do every role in the team better than anyone else, and to hold myself to a higher standard than I held anyone else. Every day started with a morning meeting, and I took calls on the bus to and from jiu-jitsu.
“In the beginning we weren’t making any money, and a lot of teams would have fallen apart at that point. Ours didn’t, and that was because of him.”
Every week each of us, me included, had to answer one question. Did you earn your place this week?
I kept raising the bar, and the team got smaller and much better. By September 2024 we were 4, and those 4 could run circles around the 17 we had at the peak.
The other side
We ran several accounts per person to farm more airdrops. Most projects don’t allow that. In the first month some of our accounts got banned for it, and we lost what we had made on them.
Most of our money came from launching meme coins and trading them. A few of our launches reached multi-million dollar valuations. In total we made low six figures.
In October 2024 I was 16, living alone, and engulfed in greed. I barely slept for four days. On one launch my take profit sold at the peak while I was passed out from exhaustion, and the holders were furious. When I woke up I bought back in, then everyone sold, and I lost 95% of what I had two hours earlier. But I kept my reputation as a founder who doesn’t scam his holders.
Soon after, a partner dumped a token we launched together. My body crashed and I got sick. I felt like I was losing myself.
I stopped well before that era ended, because it wasn’t fulfilling and some of it, like the meme coin launches, felt morally wrong to me. I don’t feel guilty or ashamed of that part of my journey. I just wouldn’t do it again.
Inner Crypto Team taught me that leadership has a cost, and that cost is responsibility. It also taught me that you can’t expect others to do what you can’t do yourself.
2024 to now
Level Up Blueprint
In 2024 I started Level Up Blueprint, a community for people who want to become the best version of themselves. We’re active every day. Over the years 24 people have been part of it, and 6 of us are in it full time.
We’ve never tried to make it bigger, because it’s only for people who take it seriously. Every year starts with our New Year’s hike on January 1st, and on 1 January 2027 we’ll be 9. I’ve been organizing hikes since 2022.
For me, accomplishments go far beyond titles. One of my most significant achievements will always be my relationships with people.
Learning from people ahead of me
“Would I rather not look stupid, or not be stupid?”
Blackwater Capital
In the summer of 2025 I interned on the single stock futures desk at Blackwater Capital in Istanbul, under Eray Yazgaç, the Head of Trading. He asked me to look at whether a small rebate-based strategy could work inside their trading framework. I structured the problem and proposed an outline, and parts of it were useful for their internal review.
“His questions were precise and showed that he was considering problems from multiple angles rather than following steps mechanically.”
Roger Ver
I met Roger Ver through jiu-jitsu. When I found out he was in crypto, I went to him with questions. After we talked about a privacy-focused crypto project, I worked with him on it for a few months. The details are under NDA.
“What has impressed me most since then is not just his enthusiasm, but his ability to take advice and translate it into action.”
September 2026 to now
Tori Finance, the best team I could find
I started this year as an independent VC scout, and I realized I’d much rather build with projects than investigate them.
At EthCC in Cannes I met Sam, Tori’s founder, before Tori had anything public. I believed in what they were building, and more than that I believed in the team. It’s the best and most interesting team I’ve seen in crypto that is building something new. I asked if I could join once I graduated, he said he loved my energy, and we agreed on the spot.
Tori is a DeFi protocol whose synthetic dollar earns yield from a hedged strategy. Since September 2026 I’m its Relationship Manager, connecting Tori with institutional investors like funds and family offices. As of November 2026 it has $72.3M in total value locked.
Cold email and LinkedIn were slow, so on my own initiative I built an outreach system with AI. It finds leads, writes a personal message to each one, sends it and logs it, and Claude checks every message before it goes out.
The tool was never the hard part. The real limit is how many people in this space are worth contacting, so I’m taking it to LinkedIn and building a version for cold calling.
“He also built, on his own initiative, an AI-powered outreach system that now supports our institutional engagement. He saw a slow process and improved it himself, which says a lot about how he works.”