Devin Finzer, an American entrepreneur and technology executive, is one of the founders and CEO of OpenSea, a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). His vision of creating a reliable and secure platform to trade NFTs and his dedication to the project has been pivotal to the success of OpenSea and the growth of the digital asset market.
Early Life
Finzer was born in 1990 at San Francisco. His mother is a physician, and his father is a software engineer. He earned a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Mathematics from Brown University in 2013.
In his junior year at Brown, he worked together with Dylan Field, who, by the way, is the Founder and CEO of Figma, to create CourseKick, a socially-oriented search engine for course registration that made it easy for students to pick their own class and see what other classmates were signing up for. CourseKick has had moderate success, with 20% of the Brown student body registering within two weeks of its launch.
While at university, he interned for many reputed companies like the Wikimedia Foundation, Flipboard, and Google Cloud Platform. After graduation, he worked for Pinterest as a software engineer where he led the Growth Team’s virality initiative.
Starting a Tech Start-Up
After two years with Pinterest, Finzer began his startup, Iris Labs. The company used to build a suite of mobile apps for revision testing. However, he worked for Iris Labs only for four months.
Later he started another company called Claimdog, a website that helps customers find unclaimed property and funds. But, the company was later acquired by Credit Karma, and he worked there as an engineering manager working on a new feature called Credit Karma Unclaimed Money.
Founding OpenSea
It was during his time at Credit Karma that he developed an interest for blockchain technology. Thus, he along with Alex Atallah developed WifiCoin, which offers tokens in exchange for sharing access to a wireless router, and pitched the concept to Y Combinator, who, fortunately, was on board with the idea.
Inspired by CryptoKitties, cartoonish virtual cats whose ownership records were digitally noted on the blockchain, the pair shifted their focus to the NTF market. In December 2017, they founded OpenSea. In November 2019 OpenSea raised around $2.1 million in venture capital. In 2021 the company became a unicorn by raising $23 million in venture capital in March and $100 million after four months. The company in 2022 raised $300 million, propelling the company valuation to be 13.3 billion.
Finzer was listed 19 on Forbes’s “NFTY 50” most influential individuals in the non-fungible token scene in July 2019.
Conclusion
The influence of Devin Finzer in the cryptocurrency community is undeniable. His innovation and ideas have managed to shape the way we deal with digital trading, and his work will be remembered by the community for many years.
