This article was originally written on Medium in 2018. Information below may be out of date.
At Origin Protocol we believe in bringing together the best parts of the “traditional” startup world with the most exciting and innovative parts of the blockchain world.
Trusted axioms for hiring the very best, moving fast and breaking things, constantly shipping code, and having a maniacal focus on serving customers are just as true today as they were in the web 1.0 and 2.0 worlds.
In our quest to disrupt the way that global marketplaces function (removing intermediaries and making them truly peer-to-peer), we can draw from the experience and learnings of the best companies from the first waves of the Internet. One of the best ways to emulate these highly impactful companies is to work with and learn from the people that built them from the ground up.
Today, I am excited to announce that Yu Pan has joined Origin as lead research and development engineer. Yu Pan began his career as founding engineer at PayPal and later was the very first employee at YouTube. He developed many core parts of PayPal’s payments and auction infrastructure. He also built the YouTube embedded video player that kickstarted the video-streaming platform’s explosive viral user growth (first on MySpace then elsewhere). Yu Pan’s experience also includes founding multiple startups and serving as CTO to others. He also recently was integral in building payment/credit service Affirm’s integrations with multiple ecommmerce platforms, enabling millions of users to more easily transact via non traditional payment channels. To say that he has seen it all and amassed an invaluable set of software engineering, product development, and “intangible” startup skills is an understatement.
Who is that “crazy” guy in the middle?
Throughout his career, Yu Pan has used his hacker mentality and creative thinking to kick-start projects that have led to widespread user adoption. Yu Pan has always looked for opportunities that can create seismic shifts in consumer behavior, especially in commerce and finance. He’s passionate about emerging decentralized technologies and the ability to impact Internet users across the world. Yu Pan will be focusing on engineering and product explorations for Origin’s mobile initiatives as well as working on user growth strategies.
Beyond being a battle-tested entrepreneur and software architect, Yu Pan brings forth a genuine, biased-to-action, and “brilliantly crazy” personality that makes him an ideal fit within Origin’s engineering team.
In 2006 when I started my career as an inexperienced and unproven product manager at YouTube, I met Yu Pan and forged the beginnings of our friendship and working relationship. Despite being significantly more senior and experienced than me, he was always supportive, patient, and humble. I count him amongst the friends and colleagues at YouTube that helped me grow as a product leader and entrepreneur.
Today I feel extremely blessed that we get to team up again and go for round two. The rest of the Origin team is equally excited. Please join me in welcoming such a strong addition to the already fantastic Origin team.
Celebrating at Yu Pan’s wedding with the YouTube team
If you’re passionate about what we are building at Origin and want to work alongside amazing coworkers like Yu Pan, please reach out. We’re eager to hear from you.
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