Farewell Marqeta and the Bay Area

This is going to be a bit bittersweet because it was probably the most difficult decision to leave, career-wise for me. I am going to seriously miss my amazing colleagues that I’ve had an opportunity to work with for the past 4 years.
My story with Marqeta started of with a Facebook message from an old friend of mine from High School, Dave Matter. I was actually in the process of moving out of the Bay Area, back to my home town of Minneapolis, MN. When Dave reached out after such a long time, I knew I had to figure out a way to meet up with him. We met up in Emeryville at Farley’s Coffee, where he told me all about Marqeta. At the time, the product was quite different. It was a Groupon-like product where you would pre-pay for offers at local restaurants and grocery stores. Unlike Groupon, all of these pre-paid offers were stored on a single Discover card. The premise was, well, “it is annoying to have to keep track of all of these gift cards, coupons, and pre-paid offers, wouldn’t it be great if it was all stored on a single piece of plastic.” I’d heard pitches like this many times while at Startup Weekend, but I never saw someone actually executing against it. So I thought it was pretty interesting, but then Dave goes on to say that they are about to sign a big deal in Dubai. I stopped him, and said, “Well, working in the Middle East has always been on my bucket list.” He then looks at me and asks, “Do you want to work for us?” At which point, I had already told everyone that we were moving back to Minnesota, and I said, “well let me discuss it with my wife”. Later that night, I asked my wife Mona, “do you prefer the snow, or the sand?” She said “Sand”. and that is how I got to Marqeta.
Fast forward 4 years, and what an amazing ride! I got a chance to see so much. When I started, I was employee #35. When I left, we were past the 220 employee mark. I got an amazing opportunity to make a significant impact on the company and the world of Payments as a whole. It was all possible because of the amazing leadership team, the immense support of my friend, mentor, and boss, Dave Matter, and an amazing set of colleagues working hard day in and day out to solve really hard problems.
So now we come back full circle, 4 years ago, we were planning on moving back to Minnesota, and on September 1, 2018, my wife, Mona, two kids, Misha and Mikal, and I are officially moving to Minnesota! Stay tuned for updates on the next chapter!
