We’re adding a world-class product, business strategy, and global operations leader to the Origin executive team. The entire team is ecstatic that Linus Chung (Twitter, LinkedIn) is going to take on the reins as VP of Product. Linus’s primary mandate is to scale Origin Story to be the NFT platform of choice for creators worldwide and to ensure OGN delivers enhanced utility and tokenomics to holders.
Linus’s first initiative is launching our new OGN staking program, recently approved in our decentralized governance vote, that will accrue Story platform fees directly to OGN stakers. Linus will lead the expansion of Story’s platform to branded creator marketplaces, secondary trading, and other exciting new product features. Beyond building a world-class team of product managers, designers, and engineers, he will also work closely with me to build a business development organization that can build long-lasting partnerships with leading brands, gaming/metaverse companies, native NFT artists, and celebrities/influencers alike.
Linus is a product visionary and leader with an exemplary track record of scaling products and businesses. He’s taken initially modest user bases and revenues and scaled them 2–10x in multiple instances, and has built products used and loved by millions worldwide. He’s helped multiple organizations scale from early stages through successful IPOs (Coinbase, Pinterest) and also built an international joint venture (LinkedIn China) from the ground up.
Most recently, Linus was an executive at Coinbase, serving as Director of Product. While at Coinbase, he held many product leadership positions, including Head of Risk, Head of Growth, and Director of Product for payments. As Head of Growth, Linus led Coinbase’s global customer growth, growth marketing, and international expansion. Under his leadership, Coinbase expanded to 100+ countries, and its customer base grew from 25M to 50M+ in two short years. He also managed the teams that built and scaled some of Coinbase’s fastest-growing products, including Coinbase Earn, Coinbase Card, Coinbase Pay, crypto payroll, gifting, peer-to-peer payments, and international transfers.
Prior to Coinbase, Linus also served in senior product roles at iconic companies Pinterest and Tesla. At Pinterest, Linus led a cross-functional team of 40+ people that doubled active users to over 200M.
Beyond product, Linus also has extensive experience in business development, corporate development, and global operations. He was a founding member of LinkedIn China, where he led the establishment of the joint venture and served as head of both sales and corporate development. He was essential in bringing a major US Internet company to the Chinese market, one of the most complex markets for foreign technology companies to enter and operate.
Perhaps even more important than his decorated experience is Linus’s deep passion for Web3 and NFTs. Linus was an early investor in Origin, participating in our fundraise as an angel investor in 2018. Over the last year, he’s become extremely passionate about NFTs as a transformative medium. His favorite in his collection: Bored Ape #1418,
Linus has deep empathy for both NFT collectors and creators alike, having experienced ups and downs being a crypto degen. He understands tokenomics, Web3 user experiences, and the power of incentives to grow user bases and protocol revenue.
I’m especially looking forward to this new working relationship and partnership with Linus because we’ve known each other for 20 years and have always been looking for the right opportunity to build together. Linus and I first met as Stanford students. Throughout the years we’ve been close friends, housemates, confidantes, and co-investors, but this is the first time that we will be able to work together on a daily basis. I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Linus to the Origin family with the full confidence that he will 10x our business like he has so many others in the past.
Linus and I as young Apes
If you want to work with 10x product, design, engineering, and BD talent, please apply for our open roles and send us a message on our Discord or Twitter.
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