Hi, I’m ml_sudo
I do crypto and I dabble in AI. I have a background in private equity investing but it’s a distant memory ago.
My interests: freedom tech. privacy, cybersecurity. robots. growth. consciousness.
skills
I’ve deliberately done a lot of different things in my career. Some people like to specialize and become world-class experts at certain things. My brain works better when I’m tying together different domains and doing new things all the time. I like adding value in the gaps where emergent problems are found.
I’ve done strategic finance (M&A, fundraising), early-stage business development, started a sales team, product (crypto and insurtech), high stakes negotiations and litigation (private equity), managed the board of a publicly listed bank, operations (including factory manufacturing), and corporate finance (management accounting, budgeting). Somewhere in there was discovering and managing fraud, lobbying in government, and hiring private investigators. I also did a full-stack web dev bootcamp and a machine learning course.
I’ve been #2 to number of successful #1s. I’m opinionated about what should be done and I don’t entertain ego trips.
If you ask me what my strongest skill is, it would be asking the right questions. I’ve transitioned careers and domains a few times, and the way to go up steep learning curves is to 1) frame the best questions, and 2) ask shamelessly.
experiences
(written in third person) Sudo grew up in Asia, developing a strong desire for people to live freely. As a technophile, Sudo believes technology is a primary tool with which people can do this.
Sudo fell in love with business as a teenager and started working with C-suite execs as an M&A banker during the Global Financial Crisis (~ 2008 to 2009), and then as a private equity investor across the Asia Pacific region, also helping to manage the board of a publicly listed bank.
Sudo is currently a board director of the Electric Coin Company, makers of the Zcash protocol; in 2021 served on the first Zcash grant organization, the Zcash Open Major Grants Committee, helping make a large grant to the Tor Foundation among other initiatives. In 2023-2024, Sudo was a member of the Spartan Council, the 8-person governance DAO of the Synthetix protocol, one of the longest running and highest fee-generating DeFi protocols. Sudo also helped to establish the Universal Privacy Alliance, an alliance of the leading privacy projects in crypto whose goals include negotiating the difficult divide between technology and regulations today. Sudo organized a 4-hour privacy special at ETHDenver 2023, with participants including Roger Dingledine (cofounder of Tor), Frances Haugen (Meta whistleblower), speakers from the EFF, ACLU, Fight for the Future, a professional hacker called Alien and many others.
Previously, as Head of Business Development at the digital bank Anchorage, and as the first business hire, Sudo worked on partnerships and sales, product, customer experience and other matters, helping bring them from pre-product to $1bn assets under custody in 8 months. Sudo has also worked with Bitpay, the leading crypto payment processor, and Copper, the digital asset custodian. Sudo served as Chief Strategy Officer at Prenetics, a health tech startup that is today a leading DNA testing and wellness company across Asia.
Sudo has run an independent consulting business since 2015, working with conglomerates at the intersection of tech and finance. This has included helping a multi-billion dollar insurance company explain their machine learning platform to investment analysts during an IPO; creating analytics dashboards to measure AI application penetration and digital traction; and launching a remittance partnership between an Asian financial conglomerate and the Stellar Development Foundation, which included successfully convincing the regulator that a crypto license was not required (the company had failed to do so 3 times before).
Sudo codes occasionally at https://github.com/ml-sudocode/. Sudo graduated in 2007 with a BSc in Economics from the Wharton School and a BA in Economics from the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.