Announcing Proof CTO Marcio Moreno and COO Nila Das
When a new hire joins Proof, they are making a conscious trade-off: they are forgoing significant cash compensation, especially in the short term, to be here. There is a lottery ticket aspect to joining Proof, like with any startup, but if your goal is to become rich, there are probably higher likelihood ways of doing so in this industry.
What we offer instead is a real mission, authentic values, and ample opportunity for personal and professional growth. It is also just incredibly satisfying to have autonomy, individual impact, and freedom from the endless meetings and insufferable politics and bureaucracy of a bank.
From the beginning, Allison and I have been blown away by the caliber of candidates that have wanted to join us. It is such an honor that folks are even curious about our quixotic mission: trying to compete with the giant banks to build better institutional execution algorithms and reduce the slow bleed of assets from investors to the dizzying layers of middlemen throughout the financial system. That talented people actually want to drop everything and be a part of it? Amazing!
We maintain a very small team, and we have had to turn away far more exceptional candidates than we have made offers to. For all of the challenges of startup life, recruiting is one area where we count our blessings. This industry has plenty of brilliant folks, but almost every company is just a soulless money making machine. Everyone just talks their own book, and every decision just comes down to whether it will increase profits.
But at Proof, when we make a business decision or decide whether to publish a piece of research, it doesn’t matter if it will help our competitors or if it will reduce some theoretical perception of mystique around our product. It is simply a question of whether it is true to our values and mission. Yes, we need to do enough business to keep the lights on, and there is of course a strong connection between client adoption and our potential for positive impact. Yet while we run a real business that needs to make money to survive, there is a key distinction that attracts folks to the team: our fundamental goal is positive impact, not profit.
With that said, it gives me great pleasure to announce two new members to our executive team:
Marcio Moreno joined Proof three months ago from Goldman Sachs, where he had spent the previous 11 years in various roles in New York and São Paulo, most recently as Co-Head of Latam Engineering. We were actively interviewing him for the role of VP of Engineering when our former CTO decided to leave the firm, and in light of this news, we weren’t sure if Marcio would still be interested in Proof. It turned out he was even more excited by the new opportunity this situation presented.
We hired Marcio onto the team with the expectation that his first six months would be a trial run, and the CTO position would be left vacant so it was his to earn. We are now three months into that trial, and Marcio has far exceeded our expectations. From his first week, he hit the ground running and learned our system inside and out in record time. In his short time with us, he has already made numerous meaningful contributions to our platform, including a full overhaul of our production deployment process. Marcio joined the company at a relatively dark and difficult time in our history, and he was the jolt of energy and talent we needed to get fully back on track. He has clearly earned the CTO title, and we can’t wait to see what amazing contributions he makes from here!
And that brings us to our newest hire: our COO Nila Das who joined us this week. I have known Nila since we were first year analysts together at RBC back in 2009. I went straight to equities, and Nila chose fixed income. Since then, we’ve stayed close as we both found success in our respective markets.
Nila was a trader at RBC for four years and then spent the last nine years running various books of mortgage-backed securities at Citigroup. She is one of the smartest, most well-rounded, and most accomplished people I know. At Proof, we expect she will play a major role in all facets of the business, from driving our corporate strategy to influencing the product to overseeing business development. As a leader at a startup, you need to be able to wear a great number of hats, and I can’t think of anyone more suited to this role than Nila. We are delighted to have her on the team!
There is no greater joy in running a company than when someone you tremendously admire decides to join your cause. Nila and Marcio are two rock stars who could work anywhere they want, and they’ve chosen to work here. Allison and I are filled with immense gratitude and excitement to have them both on the team. Nila and Marcio: congrats and welcome!
