Joining Chapter One as Head of Community and Growth - David Zhou

From Chapter Zero to Chapter One

I am thrilled to be joining Chapter One, a crypto native fund, leading initiatives in and around community and growth for portfolio companies and beyond.

Chapter One, helmed by a fantastic group of people, gives me the environment and opportunity to tackle complex problems related to community, growth, and business development within the crypto ecosystem in fun and unique ways.

I’m excited to find a crossroads where I can focus on people, data, and products on a daily whilst creating memes that delight each step of the way.

What makes Chapter One special?

Chapter One’s values have always aligned with my perspective on crypto in a uniquely personal way. We believe in building a “multi-chapter story” with the founders we invest in. We strive to become a venture contributor fund — getting our hands dirty helping on multiple fronts such as Founder Experience, Talent and Education, or Product with founders when they need us.

Jeff and Mene have assembled a fantastic group of immensely talented individuals who come from diverse backgrounds — bringing with them an arsenal of incredible experiences that can be immediately applied to the day-to-day work that we do regardless of the scenario thrown at us.

I’m so excited to dive into the themes that Chapter One believes in:

Multiplayer Money: crypto being the foundation of unlocking group coordination
Next Billion Owners: onboarding the next generation of crypto users
Cult Communities: a focus point for helping unlock radical thinkers to manifest their ideas

WHY Community and Growth?

Fundamentally, there will come a time when yields taper and the world of crypto no longer flouts outrageous APY's or gains to entice newcomers. Those that continue to evangelize crypto and its community will do it, not because of speculative monetary gains, but because of the right onboarding experience.

I believe that communities that border on cults will help onboard, lock-in, and engage the next generation of crypto natives. Protocols and products that create advocates who bring in others because they are convicted will create an essential flywheel of onboarding with a positive feedback loop.

Community and in conjunction growth are now an integral part of the fabric of culture in general and in crypto especially. It creates an infinitely scalable opportunity that encompasses anything from marketing activations to technical breakthroughs on a grassroots level.

This has been my primary focus and a nascent point of excitement since I entered crypto in 2020 and I aim to have the privilege of working on it as long as I can.

(ignore the above meme - I actually do stuff outside of making memes)

So, what does my role look like?

As Head of Community and Growth, I’ll be working directly with portfolio companies to create uniquely personalized journeys for the founders we work with.

I’ll be doing this by examining what the founders want for their community of users, brainstorming what long term growth might look like with each company, and working with other parts of Chapter One (Founder Experience, Talent and Education, Research and Experiments) to create the most holistic experience for Chapter One’s portfolio.

In addition, I’m excited to dive into developing and curating resources surrounding community, growth, and business development and open-sourcing anything I find for the public good. Long term, I hope to build robust connections within the space to generate content that helps surface best practices for decentralized communities, internal and external, as well as scalable GTM playbooks for companies of all shapes and sizes.

What brought me here?

I’ve always been a big believer in trying and experiencing first before judging. This has brought me on a wild journey where I submerged myself into different fields from the government defense industry, airline industry, spatial work startups, to multi-billion hedge funds — ultimately landing in crypto where I now call home.

I think it would be remiss to not highlight a few formative experiences below.

Delta ✈️ - my first job as a sophomore in college.
- From the first day where I could barely figure my way around the spreadsheet maze, to my last month (a year and a half later) where I was responsible for staffing entire airports on my own using scripts and processes I had worked on. Oh yea, also the free flights worldwide, those were nice.
Zeet 💻 - my first introduction to startups.
- This job was an important view into how a good leader can unlock and empower someone to achieve much more than they could ever imagine. Here I was able to self-start, own, and execute high-leverage projects with little oversight and a lot of encouragement. Shoutout to Johnny Dallas (+ frens), where without them I for sure wouldn’t be where I am now.
Branch ✨ - my first FT(ish) job.
- This job gave me the first glimpse into the serendipity that could be possible in the metaverse. Being a Customer Success Manager I was able to see the direct impact my interactions could have in a B2B/B2C context as well as how important education was for a product regardless of how intuitive it might seem, an essential lesson, especially in crypto.
Special mention to D.E. Shaw🏦 - a look into the trad-fi void.
- This gave me an intimate inside look into the vast world of finance that remains abysmally archaic for the everyday person. From learning about how markets were made to the complex technical systems that facilitate the millisecond trades executed on a day-to-day basis. This look behind the curtain gave me the push I needed to finally land me permanently into crypto.

Finding myself glued to everything crypto. It led me down a rabbit hole of learning and finding what I was passionate about (memes, people, and data) which dropped me right into the team @ Rainbow Wallet🌈 . Here I spent my time at Rainbow dreaming of ways to help onboard the next generation of crypto users through an accessible interface as simple but impactful as a crypto wallet.

But with Rainbow being my Chapter Zero, a proverbial foreword to my ongoing and seemingly never-ending adventure in crypto, I’m super thrilled to begin Chapter One of my crypto journey with an amazing team, and even more importantly the amazing community of crypto that has brought me to where I am.

Let’s Connect!

The next few months are going to be fast paced, productive, and invigorating which I can’t wait to lean into and bring y’all on the ride as well. I’m always looking for more people to vibe on crazy ideas with and chat about community, growth, biz dev, and anything meme-related in crypto. If you’re interested reach out at any time to my email: [email protected] or Twitter: @TheDavidZhou.