Letter from the Outgoing CEO
Tom Tirman to become Executive Chairman at PARSIQ
Effective July 1st, 2023, I will be stepping aside as CEO of PARSIQ, and moving to a new role as the Executive Chairman for the company. Our current COO, Rong Kai Wong, will be taking over as our new CEO.
Reflections
July will mark five years since I first co-founded PARSIQ alongside Andre Kalinowski and Martin Best. After Anatoly Ressin joined as Chief Blockchain Architect, we went from three people with zero employees to more than 40+, and along the way, we have built a strong, respected, and recognizable brand in Web3. Our track record has been solid and our product market fit continues to improve with each new iteration of our product, and each onboarding of a new customer.
The journey has been an exciting one — consisting of difficult periods, challenges, successes, and savory wins. We navigated the aftermath of the 2017 ICO bubble all the way up to the 2021 bull run. Our industry finds itself again in challenging times, but the PARSIQ team has been through this rodeo before. During these periods, our focus continues to be building what our customers and our industry needs most to power their Web3 data backends.
As for me, it is time to move on. I believe that the value that I can add as CEO at this stage of PARSIQ’s growth is limited. My strengths as a professional have always been to grow a business from “zero to one.” The ability to identify and place initial key team members, identifying product market fit, working on Go-To-Market strategies, and wearing multiple hats all at the same time — these are the things that I truly excel at and wake up energized for.
With PARSIQ fully solidified as a company and as a product, we need a new leader that will grow the business to new heights. Compared to growing a company from 0 to 40 employees, this will require a different kind of skill set, different ways of thinking, and different approaches and strategies all together to embark on this next stage of growth.
Our New CEO
At this point, the PARSIQ community is well familiar with our current COO, Rong Kai Wong. Rong Kai joined the company two years ago — coming from the Ventures arm at Binance. During his time here, he has proven to not only be a strong lieutenant for the Company, but also an incredible leader at building out the needed organizational structure and processes which were greatly needed at the time of his initial hiring.
He has built significant trust within the various teams which we have internal to the organization, and he has also been a fantastic steward for the brand in client negotiations, investor meetings, and in public facing events.
As the current COO, he manages operations for our 40+ team base, but his experiences before PARSIQ had him managing hundreds to thousands of people, across the globe, and of varying capacities and skill sets.
In his time here, he has developed a real understanding of the PARSIQ business, culture, and the necessary steps needed in the road ahead, to take PARSIQ to the next level.
Therefore, I am confidently exiting my post as CEO — knowing that the Company is in good hands, with a leader that has plans for an exciting future ahead.
Executive Chairman, IQ Protocol, and Final Thoughts (For Now)
As for me, while I will cede my day-to-day responsibilities of running PARSIQ, I will still be involved with all that is happening. As mentioned, I will stay on as Executive Chairman, and Rong Kai and I will continue to discuss and work together on a strategic level the best ways forward for PARSIQ.
Without the day-to-day oversight needed from my end, I will be focusing my daily activities on IQ Protocol — where we have a number of exciting new updates, releases, and products that are in our pipeline. With this renewed focus, I will be able to push IQ closer to “1”.
Finally, before I sign off one last time as the CEO of PARSIQ, I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has been a part of this incredible journey. The last five years have been nothing short of amazing — being able to share the lows and the highs with our loyal community members, partners, and team members past and present, have made all that we have gone through worth it. PARSIQ simply would not be here today without all of the support, encouragement, and backing from those who believe in us. So from the bottom of my heart — thank you for all that you have done to support myself, the team, and the products and services which we have proudly offered throughout the years.
I ask that you extend the same support and encouragement to our incoming CEO, Rong Kai. Exciting times lay ahead, and I am very much looking forward to continue being a big part of the PARSIQ story.
All the best,
Tom Tirman
