Details
Jake Chervinsky is Chief Compliance Officer of Variant Fund, Chief Policy Officer of Blockchain Association, and former Compound General Counsel.
Work Experience
Investments
Relevance Person
Geoffrey Hayes
Geoffrey Hayes is the Founder and CTO at Compound. Formerly Engineering Manager at Postmates. Founder of Safe Shepherd. Engineer at Applied Predictive Technologies. University of Pennsylvania 2008.
Geoff Hamilton
Geoff is an Investment Research Partner at Variant, where he focuses primarily on DeFi. Prior to joining Variant, Geoff spent 15 years investing in private and public companies. During that time, helped start and grow five investment firms, including Askesis Capital, Dayah Capital, Sachem Head Capital Management, and Conatus Capital. Before that, Geoff worked at Bain Capital and Bain & Company and studied Economics at Harvard.
Alana Levin
Alana is an Investment Partner at Variant Fund. Her initial interest in crypto stemmed from a broader interest in public goods and financial regulatory policy– she spent a summer at the SEC and graduated summa cum laude with degrees in Finance & Public Policy from Wharton. Alana’s interest in crypto has since evolved to focus primarily on token design, governance structures, scaling costs, and privacy mechanics. She often writes about these concepts on her Substack, Back-of-the-Envelope, and on her Mirror profile. Prior to Variant, Alana worked as a consultant at BCG. In her free time, Alana enjoys running, writing, kayaking, and exploring old bookstores and cafés.
Li Jin
Li Jin is the co-founder of Variant Fund and the founder of Atelier Ventures. Prior to that, Li Jin was a partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Mason Nystrom
Mason is an Investment Partner at Variant. Prior to joining Variant, Mason was a Sr. Research Analyst at Messari focused on Web3 protocols and cryptoassets. Before Messari, Mason worked at ConsenSys as a Content Marketer focused on marketing strategy for ConsenSys and its portfolio companies. Mason first entered the crypto industry as an Analyst at Gatecoin, the first cryptocurrency exchange to list ether, Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency. Mason obtained his Master’s in Business Management at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Derek Walkush
Derek is an Investment Research Partner at Variant. He got interested in crypto in late 2020 around DeFi summer after conducting high level research on blockchain as an analyst in Georgetown’s student-run hedge fund. Looking to learn more about the space, Derek interned at Accolade Partners, which launched one of the first institutional crypto fund of funds. His interest and conviction only seemed to grow; he soon dove into the on-chain world and became a part-time contributor at Index Coop and AladdinDAO; he was recently elected to Aladdin’s research council where he pitches stable farming strategies. After teaching himself SQL and working as an analyst for a project finance startup, Derek began writing for Spencer’s newsletter, OurNetwork, applying his interest in data querying and fundamentals analysis. Realizing the generational opportunity in front of him, Derek left Georgetown to join the team full-time in June 2022. His primary research interests are on-chain data analytics and token distribution. In his free time, Derek enjoys working out (former D1 rower), 90s movies, cooking, and traveling.
Jesse Walden
Jesse Walden is the Founder, General Partner at Variant Fund. Jesse Walden was a partner on the a16z crypto investment team. Prior to joining, Jesse co-founded Mediachain Labs, the group that led open source development of Mediachain, a decentralized media attribution protocol for connecting creators to their audience directly through content. Mediachain Labs was acquired by Spotify in early 2017. Before Mediachain Labs, Jesse co-founded an artist management firm that leveraged technology in direct-to-fan distribution for Grammy-award winning artists, including Solange Knowles, Blood Orange, Majical Cloudz, and many more. Jesse holds a B.A. in Art History and Economics from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
Calvin Liu
Calvin Liu is the Chief Strategy Officer at EigenLayer, where he is building infrastructure to extend Ethereum's trust network to any distributed system. He is also an investor at Divergence Ventures, focusing on pre-seed crypto investments. Previously, he served as Strategy Lead at Compound Labs, where he helped build and deploy the Compound interest rate protocol. Calvin has also worked as a data analytics professional at Gusto and was the co-founder of Outpour, an iOS app that enabled users to write appreciative messages about their friends anonymously. He holds a degree in Economics from Harvard University.
Jack Gorman
Jack is the data scientist at Variant. In this role, he uses data analytics and modeling to help Variant and its portfolio founders make better data-driven decisions. Prior to Variant, Jack worked at Deloitte Consulting in its AI & Data Engineering practice focusing on big data, cloud computing, and AI applications. Jack has contributed to onchain data analytics and research for various protocols on platforms like Dune Analytics and Flipside Crypto. He is particularly interested in onchain identities and token distribution. Jack holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech. In his free time, Jack enjoys hiking, competing in triathlons, and reading.
Caleb Shough
Caleb Shough is the CFO & COO at Variant. Caleb has also served on the Community Board Director at Myriad Botanical Gardens from July 2018 to June 2020. Prior to that, they were a Senior Manager at BKD CPAs & Advisors from November 2017 to October 2021. Caleb started their career as a Senior Associate at BKD CPAs & Advisors from July 2012 to March 2017. Caleb also has experience in Technical Accounting Consulting Manager at RSM US LLP from April 2017 to October 2017. Caleb Shough has a B.A.A. in Accounting from Oklahoma Christian University, and is certified by IBM as an IBM Blockchain Foundation Developer, the Oklahoma Accountancy Board as a CPA, and DataCamp as an Intermediate R and Introduction to R programmer.