head in the clouds
I’ve noticed a direct correlation between my willingness to write introspectively and my physical distance from the ground.
Part of me figures it’s because for these few hours I spend in the air, I have the liberty of being truly distraction-free. The irony isn’t lost on me — only when my physical and digital agency are constrained do I experience the freedom to think clearest.
In a similar vein, being amongst the clouds affords a new perspective. Seeing my point of origin – including the relationships I’ve built in it, the memories I’ve made in it, the fires I’ve fought in it – reduced to a tiny speck on the horizon is a stark reminder that there is indeed more to life than the little bubble I’d called home, even when the little bubble in question is New York City. When I can barely make out the trees, all there’s left to see is the forest.
Another part of me, the part that inspired this piece, knows that every expedition calls into question the concept of home. Who/what I’m leaving behind & who/what I’m traveling towards both tug at me as I continually amass datapoints to answer the question: where do I belong?
From Pasadena to Berkeley to San Francisco, and now to New York, my journey has been shaped by countless hands lifting me up along the way. Each city has offered not just a place to reside, but also a community of mentors and friends who believed in my potential before I recognized it myself.
If you’re reading this, thank you. I’m writing this as an update to my investors – those who have invested in me their time, energy, wisdom, mentorship, and more. You took bets on me, lit the way for me, opened doors for me.
Here’s what I’ve found on the other side.
catching up
It’s been a while since I’ve put pen to paper, and a bit has changed since. Since the start of 2025, I temporarily withdrew from Berkeley and started a new chapter at a new company (Allium) in a new industry (crypto / data infrastructure) in a new function (Product Marketing / Growth / GTM / Partnerships / Data Writing) in a new city (New York). I’ve joined a new gym, live in a new apartment, spend my days and nights with (mostly) new people. All of these facets, in my opinion, constitute my “home” at present.
At the time of writing, I’ve lived in New York for about two and a half months. Quite frankly, it still doesn’t feel real – every day I wake up in a city I used to dream of living in, and every day I play to win in an office with immense slope / impact / stakes.
I’m incredibly thankful that I took this leap. It’s afforded me to explore so much, not just of what kind of culture and influence my environment can offer me, but also of what kind of energy and impact I can offer in return.
berkeley —> new york
“What brings you to New York?”
The short answer is work, the long answer begins with where I came from.
berkeley —>
I first had the idea to take a gap semester in late 2024, during the Fall of my Junior year. My attendance at lectures was so sparse that my appearances were jokingly celebrated as a special occasion, and my classmates and I would GPT our way through months of coursework – waiting until only a week or two before exams to begin learning material organically. Despite all of this, my performance was decent – my GPA has never fallen below 3.9.
This was wonderfully fun. I used the spare time to visit Hawaii, go backpacking, and accumulate stories to tell. But as someone who had originally attended school to optimize for growth & learning and someone who grows with experience & learns by doing, it was clear that I’d have to relax the constraint of being enrolled.
I always knew that an eight-semester undergrad was unnecessary. I also knew that I’d only get one undergrad – and the friends, flexibility, and freedom associated with it – so I was reluctant to graduate early. So, given that Berkeley doesn’t formally offer gap semesters, I withdrew.
(Spoiler alert: I’ve already been re-admitted for Fall 2025.)
I think I made the right decision. As I’ll share later, the intellectual stimulation I derive from my current role far exceeds what another semester at Berkeley would have offered. The problems I’m solving are far more meaningful/substantive, and I attack them with a degree of intent that I’d never apply to problem sets. In fact, just to keep up with the pace of this absolute rocketship of a startup, I’ve had to push myself to new limits. This is wonderful for two reasons:
I recalled my long-lost ability to work hard.
When I return, I’m going to be very intentional about how I spend my remaining time in university.
—> new york
For the past ~3 months and the next ~4, I’ve been living in downtown Manhattan. Looking at the axes of breadth, depth, and speed:
Breadth
There’s undoubtedly more diversity here – not only in the distribution of occupations and career paths (there are folks here who aren’t in FAANG 🤯), but also in people’s stories and personas. I’ve met an amateur boxer, a board game creator, a competitive bodybuilder, a guy who procures pieces for Brunello Cucinelli, a friend group that coordinates monthly 500-participant game nights, some freshmen superheating metals in their frat house to build semiconductors, and other cool characters.
We laugh about how homogenous the Bay Area is – for example, the archetype of the tech bro who raves / hikes / climbs / listens to Huberman (yes, I’m aware I just described myself). In contrast, there isn’t an archetype of analogous notoriety that I can assign to those I’ve met in New York. Sure, there are still those in high finance and tech, but they don’t by any means appear to be a majority of the populace. I’m finding this to be very refreshing.
Depth
In any group – mixers, run clubs, my neighbors at the coffee shop this morning – I am almost always the youngest. I just turned 21, an age that earns me “old man” status in Berkeley but “baby” status in New York. This isn’t a new feeling per se (once upon a time, I was one of the three youngest employees at Salesforce), but it is incredibly enriching to surround myself with those who are further ahead in life. Their hindsight becomes my foresight, helping me to calibrate my path as I walk it.
Speed
New York is fast. It’s by far the fastest city I’ve lived in, which I hypothesize is due to a uniquely intense desire to win. Folks here optimize for wealth and power, in the way SF optimizes for creation & QoL and LA optimizes for fame. Now, this is by no means an original perspective. But it is fairly fascinating to introspect on how I’m changing in response to my environment.
In the past few months, I’ve found that I move with a far greater sense of urgency. It surely helps that the past few months have helped to crystallize my view of my destination – all that’s left is the journey itself, and I’m inclined to speedrun it. I’m still calibrating to find out if the pace I’m moving is sustainable, but there’s no doubt that I’m dreaming bigger, thinking longer-term, and wanting it that much more.
allium
“What do you do for work?”
50% of the time, answering “I work in crypto” will immediately kill the conversation. And I get it. Blockchain, like many other derivatives of fintech, is a space that’s intricate, gatekept, and volatile. For as far as I can see, I'll be peeling back the many layers of the onion that is decentralized finance.
In short, Allium provides data to crypto enterprises and institutions. We build analytics tooling, operational infrastructure, and more for folks like Coinbase and Stripe. The industry’s most famous stablecoin resource, Visa’s Onchain Analytics Dashboard, was built alongside us. The world’s largest memecoin wallet, Phantom, runs on our APIs. Bloomberg and other top finance firms use our data to power their reports.
I thought it was insane that such a small team built a platform so vital to the industry. And then I met the team. Every day, I work alongside some of the brightest, most formidable operators I have ever shared office space with. The engineers straight up conjure new products on a daily basis, the data scientists make the work I did at Salesforce look like child’s play, and the GTM folks ring the sales gong so often that I’ve become almost desensitized to five-figure deals. I think one of the coolest phenomena I’ve observed is how they approach their work and iterate on it as a craft rather than merely a means to an extrinsic payoff.
It has been awesome to grow in their company.
As for me – I initially joined to help market and position the product, though my role has since expanded well beyond that. I’m building visualizations to write reports, vibe-coding technical docs, forging partnerships with folks like Google, Snowflake, AWS, and occasionally hopping on calls to help educate prospects about the platform.
My goal has always been to build and scale products that help operators 10x their productivity, to create experiences that fundamentally elevate entire workflows. I doubt young Marcus would have ever imagined a future in crypto, but at Allium, that's precisely what we do.
contrary
At the beginning of 2024, I formally learned of venture capital for the first time. By the end of it, I had joined a fund: Contrary.
Contrary is a talent and research-driven investment firm, and I’m now a Senior Research Fellow. In this role, I:
Write research memos on breakout SaaS startups (currently working on Mercor).
Analyze early-stage winners & their business model, growth motions, and other inner workings.
Report on macro-level industry-wide trends across my specialized sectors.
Subscribers of Day 76 know that I’ve always found joy in breaking down companies I admire and sharing my analyses in writing. Now get to do the same thing – for a 100,000-subscriber investor newsletter of a venture capital fund.
From what I’ve seen, Contrary attracts operators who are incredibly spikey in their respective niches. My two closest friends in the fellowship are leaps and bounds more educated about defense/geopolitics and semiconductors/nanofabrication than anyone else my age.
As for my spike? I’d say credit card gaming for now (I have 12 cards, 500k+ points, and 800+ FICO for those whom I have yet to give the spiel to), though I’m still exploring :)
closing thoughts
This piece is a part of my commitment to creating more than I consume. I hope you enjoyed the read – if you did, feel free to subscribe to my Substack for more. Perhaps I’ll do one of these for Q2.
If you’re in NY or SF, let me know! Otherwise, hope to see you soon :)
Take care,
Marcus
so tough
🫶🫶