Kindly help assess my Exceptional Talent application

Stage 1
1

Hello all, I’m planning to submit my application within a few weeks.

I would love to get your feedback on the strength of the application. I’m planning to go with the following outline:

Letters

  1. A startup CEO that exited to US big-tech successfully (400M GBP). Worked with me between 2003-2011, but is familiar with my work since then and has advised me on building my startup and the career moves that followed.
  2. A CTO for a blockchain startup that raised 80M GBP in an ICO and has close familiarity with my work.
  3. A serial entrepreneur who co-founded 4 companies, one of them exited for 1M GBP to a publicly traded product-led company at 3.5B GBP trading on NASDAQ, and another raised 25M GBP and exited for an undisclosed amount.

Evidence

Mandatory

  1. Accepted to two US big tech companies as a senior engineer (accepted offer at one of these), evidence of offer letters / contracts / stock. Total compensation was 2.5x compared to average in my country and 3.5x compared to UK (acording to indeed).
  2. Technical co-founder at a B2C startup that raised 1.65M GBP from a well-known VC, accepted to a top US accelerator with a 1-2% acceptance rate.
    • The startup was accepted to the US accelerator mid 2017 (so over 5 years), but the company operated until 2019. Is it acceptable to present evidence regarding the accelerator since it’s important to explain the company trajectory?
  3. Evidence of current employment contract at a blockchain startup, demonstrating total compensation over 3.3x the average in my country and over 4x UK for software engineers.
  4. Invited to participate as a mentor and a judge in 2 hackathons that award 180K GBP in total. (One of them is taking place Q1 2023). These hackathons are part of an effort to attract developers to a prominent layer-1 blockchain project (2.3B market cap)

Optional - Innovation (OC1)

  1. First engineer (principal) at a startup which raised a seed of 5M GBP (previously successful founders who exited for 85M GBP) and has created a product that generates autonmous API tests for Kubernetes environments. Was responsible for core backend architecture and development, recruiting the initial R&D team.
    • The startup (after I left) extracted a core portion of the product to an open source offering which has 7.5K github stars.
    • What I’m not sure here is about demonstrating taking part in this. I can probably get a letter from one of the co-founders and also show my employment contract, but I don’t have commits in the open source repo, for example.
  2. Co-wrote the design spec, and wrote implementation for a decentralized blockchain smart contract source code verification system. The implementation was adopted by that blockchain (2.3B market cap) official foundation and integrated to the leading blockchain explorer.
  3. As part of work in a US big-tech company, wrote a critical privacy module that was required in order to launch a large-scale project. The privacy module was novel in that it integrated with the core company’s infrastructure without sharing any personaly identifiable information (PII) data back to it.
    • That project had lots of PR, but the company shut it down a few months after launch
    • As I cannot demonstrate my work (closed source), the evidence here would be a reference letter from a colleague who was my tech lead and is more senior.

Optional - Contributions (OC3)

  1. Member at the grant comittee (part of a 165M GBP grant program) for a top layer 1 blockchain (2.3B GBP market cap)
  2. Created the official tool for the top layer 1 blockchain (2.3B GBP market cap) to deploy altcoins on the blockchain (equivalent of Ethereum’s ERC-20), adopted by the official foundation and is part of the official organization in github
  3. Created a design for a decentralized DAO voting gas-less (free) system. This conforms to a “Request for Projects” made by the layer-1 blockchain foundation, asking to build no-code DAO solutions. Adopted externally by one of the NFT projects in the blockchain.

Thank you for your time and assistance!

1 Like
2

You mandatory evidence is not sufficient. You were invited as a mentor to a Hackathon, have you started mentoring? Generally, for all your evidence it is not clear what evidence you are putting forward to back your claim of leadership, innovation and impact.

2 Likes
3

Thank you for your feedback, @Francisca_Chiedu. I’ll try to make it more clear hopefully:

You were invited as a mentor to a Hackathon, have you started mentoring?

The first hackathon of which took place in September, I mentored groups and acted as a judge (the hackathon organizers will provide a letter that attests to that, stating sum of prizes etc).

The second hackathon has not taken place yet, I was given an official ask by the organizers to participate, and I can provide their request to participate.

Generally, for all your evidence it is not clear what evidence you are putting forward to back your claim of leadership, innovation and impact.

Will state the evidence for each:

Mandatory

  1. Accepted to two US big tech companies as a senior engineer (accepted offer at one of these), evidence of offer letters / contracts / stock. Total compensation was 2.5x compared to average in my country and 3.5x compared to UK (acording to indeed)
  • Offer letter from both companies with amounts and value of bonuses and stock
  • Contract from the company I worked with amounts, value of bonuses and stock
  • Averge software engineer salary in the UK and Israel (from indeed, glassdoor etc)
  1. Technical co-founder at a B2C startup that raised 1.65M GBP from a well-known VC, accepted to a top US accelerator with a 1-2% acceptance rate.
    - The startup was accepted to the US accelerator mid 2017 (so over 5 years), but the company operated until 2019. Is it acceptable to present evidence regarding the accelerator since it’s important to explain the company trajectory?
  • Acceptance letter to the accelerator
  • Excerpt from accelerator site showing acceptance rate
  • Contract from VC with investment sum
  • Cap table from a due diligience showing my stake at the company
  • Git repos showing I’m the major contributor to code
  1. Evidence of current employment contract at a blockchain startup, demonstrating total compensation over 3.3x the average in my country and over 4x UK for software engineers.
  • Contract stating salary and bonuses worth
  • Averge software engineer salary in the UK and Israel (from indeed, glassdoor etc)
  • Evidence of company’s crypto market cap
  1. Invited to participate as a mentor and a judge in 2 hackathons that award 180K GBP in total. (One of them is taking place Q1 2023). These hackathons are part of an effort to attract developers to a prominent layer-1 blockchain project (2.3B market cap)
  • Letter from the first hackathon organizers acknowledging my participance and mentorship during the hackathon, as well as sum of prizes
  • Excerpt from website showing my role at the hackathon
  • Invite from the second hackathon, asking my to participate as mentor/judge
  • PR with sum of prizes in the second hackathon
  • Evidence of the blockchain market cap, traction, accounts number

OC1

  1. First engineer (principal) at a startup which raised a seed of 5M GBP (previously successful founders who exited for 85M GBP) and has created a product that generates autonmous API tests for Kubernetes environments. Was responsible for core backend architecture and development, recruiting the initial R&D team.
    - The startup (after I left) extracted a core portion of the product to an open source offering which has 7.5K github stars.
    - What I’m not sure here is about demonstrating taking part in this. I can probably get a letter from one of the co-founders and also show my employment contract, but I don’t have commits in the open source repo, for example.
  • Employment contract - salary + stock value
  • PRs about previous exits of founders
  • PRs linking company to the open source project
  • PRs and github excerpts of the open source project demonstrating popularity
  1. Co-wrote the design spec, and wrote implementation for a decentralized blockchain smart contract source code verification system. The implementation was adopted by that blockchain (2.3B market cap) official foundation and integrated to the leading blockchain explorer.
  • Show I’m mentioned as co-author in the spec
  • Architecture diagram for the project
  • Blogpost with PR on the project
  • Screenshot demonstrating the project having been integrated to one of the main block explorers in that blockchain
  • Github repo demonstrating I’m the major contributor to the solution implementation
  • Screenshot showing the major wallet in that blockchain adopted the project as main tool
  • Evidence of the blockchain market cap, traction, accounts number
  1. As part of work in a US big-tech company, wrote a critical privacy module that was required in order to launch a large-scale project. The privacy module was novel in that it integrated with the core company’s infrastructure without sharing any personaly identifiable information (PII) data back to it.
  • That project had lots of PR, but the company shut it down a few months after launch
  • As I cannot demonstrate my work (closed source), the evidence here would be a reference letter from a colleague who was my tech lead and is more senior
  • PR on the project I worked on
  • Excerpt from employment contract, stating I was part of the company
  • Letter from a staff software engineer who was my tech lead and can state the innovation of the project and my contribution to it

OC3

  1. Member at the grant comittee (part of a 165M GBP grant program) for a top layer 1 blockchain (2.3B GBP market cap)
  • A letter stating being asked to participate in the comittee
  • PRs about the grant program and its total grant size
  • A letter of a grant comittee resolution with my signature
  • Evidence of the blockchain market cap, traction, accounts number
  1. Created the official tool for the top layer 1 blockchain (2.3B GBP market cap) to deploy altcoins on the blockchain (equivalent of Ethereum’s ERC-20), adopted by the official foundation and is part of the official organization in github
  • Demonstrating the github repo having been adopted to the official blockchain organization, and me being the major contributor to it
  • PRs about the tool
  • Demonstrate the tool being adopted officially as a subdomain in the blockchain’s official domain
  • Demonstrating the tool’s branding as an official tool (screenshot compared to other official tools visuals)
  • Evidence of the blockchain market cap, traction, accounts number
  1. Created a design for a decentralized DAO voting gas-less (free) system. This conforms to a “Request for Projects” made by the layer-1 blockchain foundation, asking to build no-code DAO solutions. Adopted externally by one of the NFT projects in the blockchain.
  • Show white paper for which I’m a co-author
  • Show announcement on adoption of the mentioned solution with a prominent DAO/NFT project on the mentioned blockchain
  • Show comparison to other DAO voting solutions and why they are either centralized or cost money-per-vote
  • Evidence of the blockchain market cap, traction, accounts number
  • Show official request from the blockchain fundation for building DAO tools
4

Hello, sha_ya!

I have looked through the evidences you plan to provide for OC1. They way you described them it is not clear how they prove that the solutions you developed are innovative. Could you please elaborate on that? You mentioned the novelty of the privacy module but there is no such info for the solutions 1 and 2.

1 Like
5

Thank you @Linda for your feedback!

No. 1 - There are two novelties:

  1. The only solution at the time (I think even today) to seamlessly record traffic in Kubernetes workloads (pods), by using an injection method that’s known as “sidecar”.
  2. Using the output of the recorded traffic to generate a service map of the APIs used according to the traffic, and also generating API tests automatically accordingly.

No. 2 - The novelty is that the current standard for smart contract source code verification is currently centralized (that’s the case with Ethereum, for example, where the source code is managed by the leading block explorer, Etherscan). The system I was a co-designer for and implemented is a decentralized solution, meaning that instead of a centralized entity owning or able to censor certain source codes for smart contracts, any party can become a source code verifier and the sources are publicly available and do not belong to a centralized entity.

6

@sha_ya This is good that the solutions are indeed innovative. Just make sure you explain their innovativeness to Tech Nation the way you explained to me and even in a more detailed way. For you it is obvious that products are pioneering but for Tech Nation it is not, as they can not be experts in every field. Don’t forget to explain field-specific abbreviations you use, as they most likely be unfamiliar to the officers. It is important to explicitly indicate how your solutions are innovative compared with the ones available on the market.

1 Like
7

Thank you, that’s excellent feedback. I was thinking to include at the top of each evidence (on top of screenshots and links) a written paragraph by me that gives context and explanation.

May I ask what is your view on the rest of the application (MC, OC3, LOR)?

8

@sha_ya It is great to have an intro to each document but it would be not enough if there will be no external proof of the innovation. Anyone can say that the product is new. Are there any articles that call the product innovative? The OC1 is usually the hardest to prove this is why you should focus on providing clear proof.

Just one more idea regarding the structure of the evidence documents. You could build each document as a case study to make it easier to understand the challenge and the solution.

Also for the documents where you show history of earnings don’t forget to use the info from the websites like glassdoor as a benchmark to prove that your salary level is exceptional/significantly above average.

9

What do you want to prove with the evidence # 2 in MC (Technical co-founder at a B2C startup…)? How does it highlight your leadership?

10

@sha_ya Regarding OC3 it is not very clear from the info you provided how you prove the impact to the company/the field. You mentioned “Evidence of the blockchain market cap, traction, accounts number” almost everywhere and it is not clear if the figures are going to be different for each evidence or not. E.g. if we take “DAO voting gas-less (free) system”: are you going to show how the figures improved after this solution was integrated (before and after) or just general figures?

11

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback, @Linda.

It is great to have an intro to each document but it would be not enough if there will be no external proof of the innovation. Anyone can say that the product is new. Are there any articles that call the product innovative? The OC1 is usually the hardest to prove this is why you should focus on providing clear proof.

I’ll give this more thought as there are no PRs stating innovation directly. I can explain the technological landscape that existed prior to the existence of the solutions I’ve worked on, and the problem they came to solve.

Also for the documents where you show history of earnings don’t forget to use the info from the websites like glassdoor as a benchmark to prove that your salary level is exceptional/significantly above average.

Definitely, I will provide comparisons both to my home country and the UK.

What do you want to prove with the evidence # 2 in MC (Technical co-founder at a B2C startup…)? How does it highlight your leadership?

My company raised a seed 1.6M GBP round from a VC and went through a top US accelerator program (the round was closed almost 5 years ago and the accelerator ended a bit more than 5 years ago, so I’m not sure if I can only state the fundraising. The reason I’m stating this is because the accelerator gives important context to show that the company (closed in 2019) did find some success). Also, from the Technation guide:

You must provide evidence of any commercially successful established businesses, share ownership or businesses dissolved in the last 5 years where you have been a founder or senior executive.

So, what I’m trying to prove here is that I did foundational technical work for my company (showing git statistics on the company’s repos, for example), as a co-founder for a company that raised non-negligible VC money. Can proof of entrepreneurship be viewed as leadership?

Regarding OC3 it is not very clear from the info you provided how you prove the impact to the company/the field. You mentioned “Evidence of the blockchain market cap, traction, accounts number” almost everywhere and it is not clear if the figures are going to be different for each evidence or not.

What I’m trying to prove here is that the blockchain itself is substantial (traction, market cap) and that I’ve done impactful contributions to it in numerous ways, so the figures will be the same for each evidence as they provide context on why that blockchain is a large one, though I will provide more figures specific for each the evidence.

E.g. if we take “DAO voting gas-less (free) system”: are you going to show how the figures improved after this solution was integrated (before and after) or just general figures?

The project is still in implementation, so this will show mainly a white paper that was chosen to be integrated in one of the projects, and a request from the blockchain foundation to provide such a solution, so I can prove ownership of the solution design and its importance and relevancy to the blockchain field.

12

Your mandatory criteria is mostly about your earning. Are you the owner of the startup? How does evidence of a company you worked partivipating in an accelerator demonstrate your leadership.

Generally you are focussing a lot on your high earnings which is not really sufficient. For the mentorship the sector.

13

Thank you for your feedback, @Francisca_Chiedu

Your mandatory criteria is mostly about your earning. Are you the owner of the startup? How does evidence of a company you worked partivipating in an accelerator demonstrate your leadership.

Yes, I was an equal co-founder with a major stake in the startup. I agree that having merely worked at a startup that took place in an accelerator may not demonstrate that, but in this case:

  1. I was in charge of the majority of the development and product work, based on which the company (co-owned by me) was accepted to a world-class accelerator with 1-2% acceptance rate
  2. The work I did was also the foundation for raising 1.6M GBP from a widely-known VC.

Generally you are focussing a lot on your high earnings which is not really sufficient.

I will consider how to make the application more balanced, thank you.

For the mentorship the sector.

Can you elaborate on what you mean here, please?

14

Received my endorsement today (2 weeks since submission).

Ended up submitting:

Letters

  1. Former co-founder of a US startup that exited for 1B USD to US big-tech.
  2. A startup CEO that exited to US big-tech successfully (400M GBP). Worked with me between 2003-2011, but is familiar with my work since then and has advised me on building my startup and the career moves that followed.
  3. A CTO for a blockchain startup that raised 80M GBP in an ICO and has close familiarity with my work.

Evidence

Mandatory

  1. Salary - Accepted to two US big tech companies as a senior engineer (accepted offer at one of these), with evidence of offer letters/contracts / stock. Total compensation was 2.5x compared to average in my country and 3.5x compared to the UK, according to indeed.
  2. Technical judge at two blockchain hackathons that award 180K GBP in total.
  3. Letter inviting me to participate as a technical grants committee member in a leading blockchain hackathon
  4. Recommendation letter from the leading blockchain foundation CEO

Optional - Innovation (OC1)

  1. Technical co-founder at a b2c startup that raised 1.6M GBP and participated in a top US accelerator, created an innovative way of communicating using media.
  2. Wrote the design spec and implementation for a decentralized blockchain smart contract source code verification system. The implementation was adopted by that blockchain (2.3B market cap) official foundation and integrated in all leading blockchain explorers.
  3. Created a design for a decentralized DAO voting gas-less (free) system. This conforms to a “Request for Projects” made by the layer-1 blockchain foundation, asking to build no-code DAO solutions. Adopted externally by one of the NFT projects in the blockchain.

Optional - Contributions (OC3)

  1. My work at FAANG on a privacy project (only launched as a pilot), accompanied by a letter from the tech lead stating impact of my work.
  2. Created the official tool for the top layer 1 blockchain (2.3B GBP market cap) to deploy tokens on the blockchain (equivalent of Ethereum’s ERC-20), adopted by the official foundation and is part of the official organization in github
  3. First engineer (principal) at a startup which raised a seed of 5M GBP (previously successful founders who exited for 85M GBP)
  • The startup (after I left) extracted a core portion of the product to an open source offering which has 7.5K github stars.
  • Attached a letter from the co-founder stating my involvement in the product that was later open-sourced
4 Likes
15

Congrats on your endorsement. Talent or promise?

1 Like
16

Submitted and endorsed as talent

1 Like