2017 and my road to MyEtherWallet
2017 was the craziest year of my life.
I say that every year. Seriously. Each of the past four years have gotten stomped on by the following year in terms of eventfulness, personal growth, and career growth. It would be weird to think that 2018 could dwarf 2017, but at this point I’d be surprised if the trend didn’t continue.
2017 saw me experiencing a lot of emotions and learning a whole lot. Love, pain, fear, confidence, doubt, insecurity, success, and more.
In early 2017 I was:
- In my first real relationship
- Living alone for the first time
- In a great job at Legendary Entertainment
- Fully self sufficient with everything looking up
Half of the above has changed. Half hasn’t.
That first real relationship ended in the middle of 2017 after about a year and it was the first time I experienced the pain of a break up. Thankfully, good friends and some time helped me to realize that life could go on. And on it went.
Living alone for the first time was daunting. I was a bit apprehensive to see how I fared on my own as I was 24 years old and had always had a roommate, whether it was family or friends. It turns out it’s not so bad. The first few months were scary and lonely at times, but facing those anxieties head on took me to a new level of freedom and I really learned to embrace the independence. I now understand when people say they would never want to go back to a roommate situation again.
Now onto the career part of this post. Prior to Legendary, I worked at Azubu, a start-up in the esports/gaming space. Azubu was fantastic in countless ways. It was my first “real” job where I worked with other departments, traveled, and learned a great deal about marketing, business development, social media, and basically everything involved in being a start-up and a real company. Major shout outs go to Matthew Gunnin for giving me that initial shot and relocating me away from Seattle and a shitty office job to a salaried position at Azubu in early 2014, Kat Jones for being the best boss ever as I dove into a marketing role with no experience and mentoring me with patience and kindness as I learned as much as I possibly could, and Ian Sharpe for being a CEO who became a great friend and an excellent source of knowledge — I didn’t know lowly employees like myself could become friends with a CEO! Honorable mentions to all those who worked with me at Azubu. I’m pouring one out for the gone-but-not-forgotten-but-probably-will-be-forgotten-soon streaming company that was supposed to rival Twitch.
Azubu was just the tip of the iceberg though.
I moved on to Legendary Entertainment in September 2016 (the first round of layoffs at Azubu began a week later, so I dodged a bullet there). In the one year I was at Legendary, I was a marketing manager working on Nerdist, Geek & Sundry, and Alpha. Starting at Legendary was basically just a huge sigh of relief because this was an actual established organization, with real followings, real budgets, real teams, and so on. Not to mention being in a place with an amazing boss like Rachel Romero who saw the potential in me and brought me onto the team. Seriously, I cannot believe what an absolute BOSS Rachel is. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet anyone who completely dominates in her position like Rachel does. It was a complete eye-opener as to what real companies could be like. Of course Legendary had it’s own issues over time but I now realize that it’s impossible to find a company that doesn’t. I was just happy to be in a place that had structure, because I know I want that structure in the future. My time at Legendary working under Rachel gave me the knowledge and confidence to take further strides in my career development.
Enter Ethereum.
March 3, 2017, was the first day of the rest of my life. I didn’t drop my life savings into ETH and get rich or anything, but I became rich with opportunity. God that sounds dumb, but it’s true.
Between March and June I basically became obsessed with Ethereum and all it had to offer. It was the real deal. (I had known about Bitcoin back in late 2013 but didn’t have the money to buy any as I was still in high school, and I promptly forgot about it for a few years.) Ethereum was gonna be huge. A platform for decentralized apps sounded amazing (and yep it turns out it is amazing) so I invested as much as I could and then kept doing research on it.
I wanted to get involved in Ethereum but I’m not a developer — I know no programming languages and can barely make my way around an HTML newsletter template. So the next best route was to get into the business side of things.
On a whim, I reached out to MyEtherWallet. I don’t remember what inspired me to do so, but I did. Somehow, via their Twitter, I got the vibe that they were a small team and that they could use help.
After that DM conversation, I sent an email and had to follow up a few times to get a response because Taylor (MyEtherWallet’s CEO and the person I conversed with on Twitter) was too busy to even think about reading my email. Persistence won, we had a long chat, and we agreed that I would handle all of the marketing for MEW on a contract basis, starting June 1st.
The next few months flew by, lots of stuff happened, and Taylor and I had a serious conversation about me quitting Legendary to work full time at MyEtherWallet.
I couldn’t believe it was actually going to happen. The opportunity of a lifetime to work for an organization that had a tiny, tiny team, but somehow managed to become one of the biggest sites in the cryptocurrency industry.
My last day at Legendary was on September 15th, four days short of a full year working there.
I’ve now been working with MyEtherWallet for over 6 months and it’s been the most interesting time of my life. I could write pages more on my experience at MEW thus far but that’s for another time. When it comes down to it, I am endlessly thankful to be in this position. The organization has seen so much growth and I’m excited to be along for the ride (and even having a hand on the wheel at times!).
What does 2018 hold for me? Hopefully more growth.
- I’d like to grow with the MyEtherWallet team and continue to build and promote the biggest and best tools for Ethereum.
- I’d like to keep progressing physically. Lost 25 pounds in the latter months of 2017 and need to keep that trend going.
- I’d like to grow mentally by continuing to learn about and conquer various anxieties.
- I’d like to grow spiritually in regards to my relationship with God and Christianity.
- I’d like to read more. I’ve got a handful of books that I’ve barely touched but I know they’re all amazing. I need to read!!
- I’d like to write more. Writing is so cathartic that it’s not even funny
2017 was the craziest year of my life. Here’s to 2018, the craziest year of my life.
-Jordan
