⌛Experience
My long term goal is to build my own company.
There are two ways to get there: (1.) start immediately and learn by doing, or (2.) spend time inside strong startups first, learn from people ahead of you, and build the judgment, skills, and network before taking the leap. Obviously, I chose the second path.
🐝 Hive Ventures
VC Investment Analyst | Jul 2020 – Apr 2022
Why I joined
I watched GoFreight receive VC funding mid-internship and became obsessed with how that world worked. Hive was recruiting. I got lucky.
What I did
- Market research, competitive analysis, and financial modeling across 20+ deals
- Due diligence meetings with founders across enterprise SaaS, AI, and IoT
- Built benchmark databases to evaluate companies faster and more consistently
- Helped portfolio companies think through growth strategy and financial projections
What I learned
Good analysis is not about gathering more information. It’s about forming a hypothesis and being honest about where the logic breaks down. I’d read the same materials as a partner and walk away with a completely different picture. That gap wasn’t skill -- it was accumulated judgment from seeing hundreds of companies across years.
The bigger realization: I could analyze a growth strategy on paper, but I had no idea whether it was actually executable. That discomfort is what pushed me toward my next move.
Further reading: → Internship Notes: Lessons from My Time at Hive Ventures
⛴️ GoFreight
Founder Associate / Strategy to CEO | Apr 2022 – Mar 2023
Why I joined
I wanted to get inside execution, not study it from the outside. A CEO I trusted gave me a direct path in.
What I did
- Attended every CEO meeting; acted as bridge between leadership and departments
- ICP analysis and competitor benchmarking across geographies, company sizes, and industries
- Google Ads strategy and A/B testing, including CRM-to-ads data integration
- Website copy and conversion optimization
- Multi-scenario financial models for internal planning and fundraising
What I learned
The cross-border team (Taiwan and US) exposed something early: the US-educated colleagues could articulate the "why" behind any decision almost reflexively. It surfaced blind spots in how I reasoned out loud, not just in language but in thinking structure.
Sales and marketing clicked in a new way too. They work less like separate departments and more like coordinated branches of a campaign: timing and sequencing matter as much as the tactics. A lot of assumptions didn’t survive contact with reality.
Further reading: → Year-End Review: A Practical 2022 & A Deepened 2023 (Part 1)
🌓 Phase
Chief of Staff | Mar 2023 – Mar 2024
Why I joined
I had done Phase’s due diligence at Hive, so I already knew the market. Nick’s depth of domain knowledge in the designer space was the kind of thing you rarely see in a founder. The role also promised direct exposure to GTM execution, which was exactly what I was looking for.
What I did
- Built the program review system: cleaned up Jira, introduced dashboards (burndown, bug trends, WIP cycle time), restructured weekly leadership meetings
- Owned engineering hiring: sourced and closed 2 frontend engineers in 2 months, a role that had been open 6+ months
- Supported early GTM planning and fundraising preparation
- Managed CEO information flow: meeting transcription, Notion knowledge base, action tracking
What I learned
At 30 people, you can’t say "that’s not my area." I got pushed into product reviews, project management, and hiring -- areas I had almost no background in. The discomfort was real and so was the growth.
The pattern I kept noticing: the underlying logic of good systems is the same across functions. Fixing the weekly review meeting was the same problem as building a sales dashboard. Data to information to insight to action. The tools change; the thinking doesn’t.
After a year, I got honest with myself. I had been a generalist for a long time. GTM was where I wanted to build real depth.
Further reading: → Year-End Review: A Practical 2022 & A Deepened 2023 (Part 2)
⛴️ GoFreight
Growth Lead | Apr 2024 – Dec 2025
Why I joined
I wanted to own growth end to end for the first time. GoFreight was the right place to do that, with a domain I already knew deeply and a working relationship I trusted.
What I did
- Demand generation: SEM, content, paid acquisition, outreach sequencing
- Conversion rate optimization across the full funnel, free trial and paid
- Product marketing: value proposition, feature launches, customer interviews, ROI framing
- Sales enablement: messaging, competitive positioning, qualification criteria
What I learned
Owning a function is different from supporting one. The hardest part is not running experiments -- it’s knowing which results to trust. A metric can improve for the wrong reasons. Something can look broken while quietly working. Reading signal rather than just measuring activity became the most important skill I developed here.
Going deep on freight forwarding as a domain also mattered more than I expected. In niche industries, insider knowledge compounds in ways that generalist skills don’t.
🦭 Seal
Founder Associate | Dec 2025 – Mar 2026
Why I joined
I wanted to go global. London made sense: largest startup hub in Europe, English-speaking, close to the US in business culture, and accessible on a working holiday visa. Seal was vertical B2B SaaS at an early stage -- territory I know well, but a new context entirely.
What I did
- Talent acquisition: building the hiring process from sourcing to close
- Finance operations: Xero, Pleo, Apron, Airtable
- Whatever else a small team needs that week
What I learned
How to work with a genuinely international team. How to build credibility somewhere new, where no one knows your history.