Walk with Dreamers…
“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it.”
- Wilferd Peterson
When we started this journey, we knew one thing above all others: the people we wanted to join us along the way. We knew this endeavor would not be easy; that the path to success would be fraught with difficulties. But having an amazing team to help share the burden would make all the difference in the world.
And it has. Over the course of our first year, we’ve dealt with our fair share of challenges, from minute to the major, including a potentially catastrophic global pandemic. But at each turn, we’ve stared down the test to emerge a little stronger and a little bigger than before.
The core of our resilience is always the same: the Keyko team. We are arguably the best team on the planet at doing what we do. And the results speak for themselves. In the last 18 months, we have directly launched or helped launch two major networks, Ocean Protocol and Celo, and we’re working on a third (coming very soon! 😉). Our work has contributed to a combined market cap of over $400M+ and, more importantly, has helped usher in a new era of crypto solutions with tangible utility.
The reason this works is that we look for the best people first; fit is a distant second. We want the paragons and firmly believe that success begets success. When looking for new sensei, our goal is to find people that can do the job better than yourself. This approach doesn’t pose a threat, but rather an opportunity for growth. The sum is greater than the parts.
The result was the creation of a small group of exceptional talent that excels in the crypto and data space. We affectionately refer to ourselves as sensei because we have an obligation to leverage our expertise not just for our own personal benefit but to help train others to be experts as well. We view Keyko as a dōjō, a place for anyone and everyone to join us in our mission. It is incumbent upon us to train those willing to learn.
And so we’d like to highlight the Keyko sensei; to drag them out from the shadows and into the light. Each brings a unique set of skills to the team that complements the whole. Without further ado, we present to you the Sensei of the Keyko Dōjō…
Aaron Boyd
Sensei Superpower: Cloud architecture and blockchain ecosystem maven.
After a long career in traditional enterprise finance in Australia and recently founded a boutique staking infrastructure provider start-up in Berlin, Aaron made the wise decision to join Keyko as a blockchain engineer. He is additionally a lead developer and architect for the Blockchain Philanthropy Foundation, just because he can.
A believer that good humor and reason can resolve any problem — technical or otherwise — he enjoys listening to music and watching 80’s horror and sci-fi movies in his spare time. And playing bass guitar. Slap.Da.BASS!
Aitor Argomaniz
Sensei Superpower: Patience
A master of tech wizardry, our co-founder and CTO, Aitor, has 20+ years of hands-on experience notched on his staff. His roles as project leader, architect, manager and developer of enterprise software has led him to consult in various industries.
Now his hardest challenge faces him — fathering 3 children. And this proves to be a challenge for his spare time plans, or, as he puts it: — “I would love to have more time for hiking, traveling, running, reading and drinking wine. But due to time constraints with my 3 children I can only focus on one hobby and decided that wine is the best path.”
His wizardry expands to not only tech, but also time bending, as, on top of everything else going on in his life, he is still able to concurrently run a startup related to the art sector.
Brian Haacke
Sensei Superpower: Listening
Managing multi-million dollar service projects is this veteran’s game and we pat our backs for having him head Keyko’s Sales & Operations. Demand has led him to work as a business developer in contracts for international players including four years spent in Asia divided between Japan and South Korea. In his own words — “I am particularly proud of making it out of there alive ”- we honestly never wanted to get into details on this one, but we can assure you he’s well and safe. :)
In a past life Brian used to be an avid dirt bike and ATV rider. Now a family man, the only personal time he gets to spend with his bikes are when the kids are away mountain biking in the holidays. His friends would describe him as generous and loyal and we can attest to that.
Clément Bihorel
Sensei Superpower: Eating 100 oysters straight (who knew this could come in handy while working in tech!)
Before joining Keyko as a product developer, Clem’s past experience led him to work for NBT in Berlin. He holds 3 degrees and strangely none of them have to do with anything he has been doing over the past two years. It seems that Web 3.0 has seduced this man’s talents.
Not many people know this but, as a budding botanist, you may find Clem occasionally talking to his plants. This has proved a bit challenging in meeting clients at their headquarters
Dimitri De Jonghe
Sensei Superpower: understanding systems / systems navigator
Our co-founder, Dimi, has been in the Web 3.0 space since 2013. He holds a PhD in microelectronics and machine learning and has enjoyed co-founding numerous successful web3 companies like Ascribe, Bigchaindb, Ocean Protocol, Keyko and even bootstrapped a few open source communities along the way, including Interledger, Nature2.0, Token Engineering.
A research enthusiast, Dimi enjoys experimenting with AI and spending time on personal creative projects such as https://musicmap.info/ .
His more outgoing side has led him to experiment mixing psychedelics with mathematics and we can still see the effects of that everyday in his creative bursts. But what’s really intriguing, is that a famous cook published one of Dimi’s recipes in his cooking book for students. Stay tuned for our “Cook with Dimi” webseries, coming right up on Neverflix.
Don Gossen
Sensei Superpower: Herding cats!
A business veteran and analytics expert, Don, co-founder and CEO, has managed to build a blossoming company in under a year, turning it into a self-sustaining operation that hosts 20 team members operating globally.
When he isn’t running around doing a little bit of everything (including cheerleading), he likes to spend time with his wife and two children, and skiing, or as he calls it, “hitting the steep and deep in search of faceshots…tips up!” ⛷
An adventure seeker at heart, Don has spent his life living around the globe, including every continent except Africa and Antarctica for at least 3 years. His favorite accomplishment has been piling up the friends along the way. He likes to think that these friends remember him most for his charming personality and, can we add, his extreme love for using acronyms in everything. 😉
Enrique
Sensei Superpower: Consumption of food. (a lot)
Enrique is our incredibly adaptable software dev, a trait that comes in handy in the startup scene. An approachable individual who is always open to try new activities and experiment with new programming languages, Enrique has also a talent for swimming and lifesaving, so much so that he has been a national champion in both Spain and the UK. We want to take this opportunity and warn you that he is now looking forward to competing in Germany. Give up any hope of ever winning against him!
Gianluca Boccadifuoco
Sensei Superpower: Connecting People and Multitasking
Gi has consulted large corporates in the areas of venture building and investment strategy. As our very reliable Ops manager, he prides himself on generating motivation and positivity in the workplace by connecting on a human level with the people around him. His past experience involves co-founding the “Way network” and leading a team of 6 talented individuals seeking to change how people communicate and trust one another in the real world by integrating blockchain technology.
As a kid growing up in Italy, Gi was an avid chess player and won an Italian chess championship aged 9.
Gi also likes to hone his skills in martial arts and has over 8 yrs of combat sports behind him including boxing, Thai boxing, Krav maga and kickboxing! If team conflicts arise he is the man to resolve them. 😉
Javier Cortejoso
Sensei Superpower: Vim/Sublime/VSCode shortcuts master
Wizkid Javier, has recently been part of two major Ethereum network deployments in the last two years (Ocean Protocol and Celo). When he is not busy doing cloud computing and DevOps for us, he loves to lose himself in the classic texts of Shakespeare and Nietzsche, while listening to Schopenhauer and drinking a cold lime Pepsi. (Just kidding). He actually loves watching and practising sports, casually reading, playing video games and spending time with family and friends.
Oana Ionescu
Sensei Superpower: Crypto communities whisperer
With over 15 years marketing experience building brand campaigns for Fortune 500 companies such as Mercedes-Benz and Vodafone, Oana has turned her attention to driving adoption for game-changing start-ups like Ocean Protocol and Republic. Navigating the crypto industry as a marketer, she states that the biggest part of her job at Keyko is asking “Ok, how do we put this into human words?”
Fun fact — With Oana old habits die hard, as she still is an avid player of the 1996 PC game Heroes of Might and Magic II. (Shout out to Gamenostalgia for configuring this gem for Mac OS!)
Pedro Gutiérrez
Sensei Superpower: Build amazing front-end applications
Pedro’s talent lies in creating beautiful interfaces for Web3 applications, and he specialises in making the frontend modular and easy to reuse. On the flip side he likes to boast that he knows a lot of useless information, like “how long it took for the first SMS to arrive” or “how long a pig’s orgasm lasts” (though we think this is common knowledge)…feel free to quiz him sometime.
This guy also enjoys taking a whirl on the dance floor as is currently mastering his bachata & salsa dancing.
Rodolphe Marques
Sensei Superpower: Building complex tech that is easy to use
Data engineer and technical architect, Rodolphe claims that “for better or worse, his biggest achievement was BigchainDB.” He implemented the initial PoC and took over most of the responsibilities of leading the project. He states that “in the end we created an easy to use project and created a big open source community around it.”
He refers to himself as a “very quiet guy” and we can all confirm that, except that from time to time he casually throws in a witty remark that shakes the room. He has a penchant for heavy metal, you know, quiet guy, but metalhead…
Sami Mäkelä
Sensei Superpower: The Tsurugi of Debugmasa
Before Sami joined Keyko as resident smart contracts guru and solver of impossible problems, he was part of the design and implementation team for Truebit Virtual Machine: a blockchain enhancement which enables smart contracts to securely perform complex computations in standard programming languages.
When he is not casually swatting up on emerging disruptive technology you can find him on his gaming.
Fun fact — Sami somehow has a licence to drive tractors but not cars!
Sebastian Gerske
Sensei Superpower: Can cook minute rice in 58 seconds.
A multi-disciplined serial innovator, Sebastian has founded multiple startups over the years and accumulated 20 years of software development. After his first commercial exit in 2003, Sebastian ended up working more than a decade for the bank of a large car manufacturer in middle Germany. Entering the Web 3.0 space in 2015, he went on to found an internet company in 2016 and then founded a Web 3.0 company one year later. Just after that, he co-founded Ocean Protocol in 2018 and then he could not help founding a games Studio at the beginning of 2020. There is no stopping this guy, he just loves founding :)
If you ever get a chance to meet Sebastian you will get the opportunity to admire his curly moustache and humorous personality. Who knows, if you’re lucky he may even invite you to check out his retro video game collection.
