team of outliers
Paul Hsu
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
SUPERPOWERS: PRODUCT AND GROWTH
Paul Hsu is CEO and Founder of Decasonic, the venture and digital assets fund building blockchain innovation. His experience as both an early stage tech investor and operator enable him to partner with outlier founders to accelerate product market fit and systematically scale start-ups.
Paul’s curiosity and conviction in disruptive technology dates back to the dawn of the Internet: first, as a venture investor on Sand Hill Road, then as a senior executive at pre-IPO mobile, social and gaming companies, and today as a founder and investor in blockchain.
Paul's work at Zynga, a leading social gaming developer, focused on products and growth initiatives tied to in-game virtual economies and other digital assets. After Zynga’s IPO, beginning in 2013, he expanded this expertise into investing in blockchain technology.
During the course of his career, Paul has held senior leadership positions at technology companies in Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Chicago and New York City where his expertise in product and growth helped stabilize and systematically scale these companies during periods of exponential growth.
Paul's early career included early stage venture investing at NeoCarta Ventures, a $300M fund based in Silicon Valley. Paul joined as a founding team member and was a key investment professional in the investment, advisory and management activities of the fund.
Paul holds a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University, where his studies concentrated on economics, math, statistics and international politics. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude.
Allister Lam
Chief Technology Officer and Venture Partner
SUPERPOWERS: TECH AND PROTOTYPES
Allister is a technologist in big data, cloud and blockchain. In 2021, after 21 years in engineering leadership at DoubleClick/Google, Allister joined the founding team at Decasonic, a venture and digital assets fund building blockchain innovation. Allister is passionate about enabling entrepreneurs to innovate and accelerate engineering success.
As CTO and Venture Partner at Decasonic, Allister leads strategic technological vision, technical due diligence and engineering advisory. As leader of Decasonic Labs, Allister’s mission is to transform blockchain concepts into world class solutions at unprecedented speed.
The majority of Allister's career has been as an engineering leader. Allister is an engineering veteran and formerly in sales engineering on AdTech and Cloud Computing. He has been responsible for spinning up multiple engineering teams on cutting edge technologies such as BigQuery, Dataflow, Kubernetes and Airflow. Allister pioneered Big Data in AdTech. He was responsible for the success of DoubleClick/Google’s Data Transfer files which revolutionized the industry’s pixel based ads logs analysis. Allister was heavily involved in the development of BigQuery/Dremel, the genesis of Big Data. Allister has advised Google Ventures and Google Capital on numerous deals within and outside of AdTech. Allister has led teams on prototyping technologies focused on rapid scaling. Allister has led multiple security and malware detection projects.
As a Technical Leader and Sales Engineer, Allister has sold and implemented the top Fortune 500 companies both on Google and DoubleClick Cloud technologies. Allister founded DoubleClick Professional Services and has led multiple worldwide technical teams. Allister contributed to various published research studies, whitepapers and patents. Allister was an early employee of DoubleClick starting in 2000 and joined Google through acquisition in 2008. Before DoubleClick, Allister was at a startup, Runtime, which created content management systems.
Allister holds computer science and economics degrees from Columbia and Yale. Allister’s work-ethic comes from his immigrant parents who fought their way to deliver the American Dream to their children. Allister is deeply grateful and wishes to pay that forward to all. Allister is an avid disc golfer, electric bicyclist, electric skateboarder, skier, snowboarder and chess player. Allister is a Taoist and practices Tai Chi Chuan and deeply believes in balance as philosophy for life.
Cami Darling
Head of Marketing
SUPERPOWERS: EXECUTION AND MARKETING
Cami Darling leads marketing and community at Decasonic, the venture and digital assets fund building blockchain innovation.
Previously of CPG ecommerce in the beauty industry, Cami aims to help bridge the gap between web3 and the mainstream. Cami is also host of the Blockchain for the Billions podcast where she sits down for inspiring conversations with founders in web3.
With a thesis that culture influences technology and technology transforms culture, Cami has pioneered impactful initiatives in the local ecosystem including co-founding Chicago’s largest web3 conference, Web3 Investor Day, as well as quarterly event series, Ladies Who Launch.
Danny Pantuso
Venture Investor
SUPERPOWERS: FOUNDER EMPATHY AND PRODUCT
Danny is committed to helping founders make the critical leap from zero to one by leveraging his experience building web2 products from the ground up. Decasonic as a whole takes a product-first approach to seed investing, with the goal of helping founders find product market fit in web3 and providing tangible blueprints for delivering breakthrough technology to the mainstream. Danny is interested in AI-powered web3, web3 gaming, web3 social, web 2.5, interoperable experiences, IoT, real-world assets, and international adoption.
Danny studied design thinking at the D.School at Stanford, where he learned about entrepreneurship and technical innovation. Danny honed his product skills in Iceland and led two development teams at Iceland's largest travel marketplace before moving to Chicago to help take Fubo Sportsbook from an 8-man operation to 80. He was the first product manager at the company and built their product practices and MVP sportsbook from scratch.
Danny is always open to chatting with founders, and if someone is building in the web3 space, he would love to hear from them.
Lauren Tierney
Venture Investor
SUPERPOWERS: NARRATIVE AND SUPER-CONNECTING
Lauren has conducted hundreds of interviews with other founders to understand their path to success. They have recognized that this journey is never a straight-line rocket ship, and the firm places great emphasis on meeting founders where they are and leading with empathy. They believe that comprehending a founder's unique journey, challenges, and vision is fundamental to helping them succeed.
By meeting them at their level, actively listening to their stories, and empathizing with their journey, Lauren can provide better support to develop a powerful and authentic narrative that will propel their business forward. Lauren, with a background in storytelling, is enthusiastic to help founders in these critical areas that offer high returns for their businesses.
Lauren is dedicated to providing guidance and assistance, meeting founders where they are, and ultimately helping them achieve their goals.