Build With Us

• Innovate on social decision and social finance models to build a true P2P business, with every kind of user, from huge conglomerates to individuals.
• Drive demand for downstream products that depend on deep-tech directly into the upstream enabling technologies that will deliver them, having real impact on our lives.
• Use really freaking cool tech and enjoy career advancement opportunities that exist nowhere else at a company that is designed to never stop being cool.

Our Mission

Before civilization invented money, it was difficult for people to specialize in one refined skill. Connecting value at longer ranges always makes new things possible. We will connect value that is nearly impossible to capture to billions of people who want it to be produced. We will do it globally.

Our mission is to connect demand for downstream value creation to upstream enabling technologies.

PrizeForge is our first step in achieving this mission. It's a production finance model. It sells upstream enabling technology directly, without the need for intervening products and business models. We organize the demand side of the market, turning crowdfunding upside down. We provide the enabling sales services that make transactions possible. We connect the demand for hard-to-capture downstream value directly with many creators of all shapes and sizes.

Our Software Platform

Our hardest problems are on the backend. We have cascading update and continuous aggregation problems typical of a social media platform. We handle money and anticipate typical e-commerce and compliance problems. Probabilistic behaviors are fundamental to the problems unique to our business. This drove our technology choices.

We are using Rust to implement as much as possible. Its strength on the server is enabling. Using it full-stack on the web client is simplifying. The ability to static embed on mobile and other clients may continue to deliver dividends. Take everything you expect about full-stack Typescript and just replace Typescript with Rust. It is more rote, depends on different workflows to expedite the feedback loop, but things run in nanoseconds without runtimes and the type system provides more guarantees.

We have two decades of convergent platform design evolution baked into our stack. Everything about it runs fast and adapts quickly. We are adopting enabling tools early to in-house the skills necessary to smoothly hit web scale at startup velocity.

Tools We Use

• NATS JetStream is a high-througput, low-latency, messaging and multi-model storage bus. We use it for messages, queues, and KV storage. It is very good at many things that RDBMSs are bad at.
• Cloud-Native Postgres for reliable ACID transactions, structured storage, and queries to satisfy the long tails of materializing views.
• Rust for the bulk of our code, including cross-platform API client generation for native mobile clients. When we build a service using rock-solid crates like tower, the result is every bit as capable as a purpose-built API gateway or database server.
  • Leptos for full-stack client SPAs with SSR serving initial page loads. Our reload time during development is about 3s.
  • Axum for tiny, fast web services with common middlewares from a shared crate.
• Nix to provision the development tools, to build our Rust programs into containers (via Crane), and to protect parts of our supply chains.
• K8s (on GKE) to provide our hardware and network infrastructure.

We are interested in other solutions like SurrealDB. Because all of our choices are already aimed at maximizing flexibility, using techniques like log replay and online dual-write migrations, we're always getting ready for whatever business evolution or technology migration opportunity develops.

Our Practices & Techniques

We follow a philosophy of minimal dispersion. All our stuff operates the same, looks the same, and can be worked on by almost anyone. Our onboarding experience is on track to be better than companies with 1000 engineers. We have a small set of techniques that cover our cases extremely well. Since we re-use things everywhere, we can invest in primitives that suit our needs.

• One Nix home manager module to get our general tools installed.
• Testing in production with feature flags and labelled data.
• Central API spec generates our models, protocols, and endpoints so that data model migration propagates everywhere by default.
• Event streams and eventual consistency with optimistic concurrency control.
• All repos use the same tools, dependency versions, build containers the same way, and depend on the same centralized common tools.

Based in Seoul

• 저흰 해외에도 서비스를 제공하기 때문에 영어를 자주 써요. 현지 인재를 채용하지만, 조직 문화는 꽤 자유로운 편입니다.
• Global-first products. International culture. Not Google, not Samsung. We are going our own way.
• Remote-first and visa opportunities well understood.

Available Roles and Responsibilities

• We aim to maintain a one-to-one ratio; one experienced team member for every junior team member.
• These listings are written for the experienced case, but if you can handle some of the responsibilities, you can take a shot.
• The compensation depends on what kind of relationship you want with the company, so continue reading below.
• All of the titles have variants that will be assigned and explained on a case-by-case basis. This is a startup. Roles and titles change fast.

API Engineer

Your chief concern is keeping our technology inventory flexible and productive. You keep us ready to pursue new business cases. You make our code and services buttery smooth to use, internally and externally.

• Design endpoints and payloads to faciliate graceful aging of clients, rapid onboarding of partners, and low incidence of breaking changes.
• Write macros and code generators to interpret central API definitions into client libraries, data models, protocol transformers, and endpoint handlers on multiple platforms.
• Leverage the type systems to provide guarantees automatically.
• Create tools and practices for encoding new business rules into the type system.
• Ensure our internal library crates are ergonomic, Rusty, and lead people in the right directions.
• Maintain the organization of our crates to balance trade-offs between development friction and straightforward re-use.

If your Rust skill is better than any of your infrastructure or skill at distributed systems, this is the best role. Pure Rust programmers will do really well at some of these responsibilities. A real API engineer will have experience handling API version changes and steering us away from friction before we even get to bad decisions.

At present we are in the phase where we duplicate code until the pattern is obvious and then de-duplicate it with macros. Things like ID generation, tokens, and common middlewares are finding their way into central crates for re-use and commonality. Type-states and new types prevent mixing.

Client Engineer

Your chief concern is getting features into our clients and getting data downstream to people who rely on the client. This role is most familiar with the UI and is well-integrated with our product team.

• Create a client for a new platforms, such as Android or iOS.
• Consume our API definitions to create your client code so that your client behavior derives from our central sources of truth.
• Secure the client against all plaintext communication or leakage of data through other applications.
• Implement tracing to enable the study of specific behaviors and workflows by product engineers.
• Implement bug reports to our backend to assist in canary rollouts of new features.
• Implement feature flagging to support our test-in-production strategy.
• Balance our cost of updating and version fragmentation, design for backwards compatability, such as delegating behaviors to the backend.
• Maintain the smooth development, build, and deployment of the client using centrally controlled, reproducible toolchains.

We are starting with a Leptos client. It is supposed to work, but not be pretty. You need to make it pretty, professional, and obviously trustworthy.

You may use a runtime system such as Tauri to target mobile via mobile web or use JNI and Objective C with native Rust bindings. The choice of tech is about speed to market first and purity of technology later.

The main decision we will hold you to is that our API definitions will live in one place. This is how we get changes onto the clients without face-timing every detail. Types communicate breaking changes. Test-data annotations mean debug builds just talk to the production cluster instead of some fake and under-maintained staging environment.

Dataflow Engineer

Your chief responsibility is data and systems in motion. You make sure that our payload are understood across migrations, that our systems come up and down as needed and are stable through such changes, that our systems are stable under load and that overall throughput and latency remain great.

• Design our consistency primitives of choice for common use cases and how they should be implemented with our tools.
• Design data model change migration procedures for internal protocols and databases.
• Deploy testing proxies and test runners. Isolate our test and production data so that we can fearlessly test in production.
• Build and deploy migration containers to drive our systems towards new data model states.
• Predict hot paths and materialize them, breaking services along their independent scaling needs.
• Re-use our test infrastructure to monitor the critical metrics, readiness, and correct behavior under dynamic cluster state.
• Design and test our backup procedures and their regular maintenance.
• Design our CI/CD procedures, taking responsibility for canary deployment.

We currently have a Kubernetes cluster that is probably deployed manually using Skopeo. We have NATs and Postgres serving queries. We have a few services with modest data bandwidth.

The early priorities will be boosting the speed of development with good test workflow support until speed of development drives other needs. Database engineers and people with significant experience in streaming systems should apply to this role.

Platform Integrity Engineer

Your cheif concern is that our systems are safe for users and protect the company. You know where we are exposed to risk, both through our technology and our business rules. You understand how to lower our risk and enable us to grow freely.

• Implement our perimeters, bulkheads, and front door designs, including how our clients talk to our web services and CDNs.
• Maintain the infrastructure setup procedures of our disaster recovery plans.
• Implement least privileges in places that maximize our ability to trust ourselves and be resiliant to employee mishaps.
• Detection and prevention of social attacks such as sock-puppet and entrainment attacks (our products invent this new form of attack).
• Data owner compliance such as providing for the deletion of data and retaining archives where legally required.
• Detection and prevention of fraud, money laundering, and other incidental uses of our services to transfer money illegally or for off-design purposes.
• Secure one-way logs, including audit logs, to assist in deterrance of criminal behavior within the company.

Handling money is extremely sensitive. Handling data about handling money is extremely sensitive. Above all, we need someone who understands threat modeling and can adapt security and compliance fundamentals to the unique behaviors presented by our products.

A lot of the work involves incidentally shoring up our engineering foundation, and we will try to focus you on infrastructure and network security that is coincidental to establishing a "mature" platform while moving at startup speed.

Product Engineer

This role is a potential fast track to Chief Product Officer (CPO), basically second to the CEO in terms of who is the best backup to lead the company. Your main concerns are extending successes of the product and eliminating weaknesses, prioritized by value, risk, and cost.

• Design new versions of our two core features, our social decision systems and our elastic funding systems.
• Guide the feature iteration towards achievable improvements on a short feedback cycle while steering away from dead ends.
• Find markets we can achieve success in with modest feature changes and execute the expansion into those verticals.
• Identify new services we can provide to handle more use cases within existing markets.
• Update our models and analytic optimums as we validate or invalidate our predictions by obtaining real data.

This role is also likely to feel very crowded out by the CEO. The onboarding will be very, very hands-on. The reward is, for someone with significant entrepreneurial inclination, having a significant hand in the direction of PrizeForge and future products. Serial-startup founders may feel most comfortable here.

Our Advantages

Of course when founding a company, since we have to work at that company, we want it to be the best company to work at. We are light on HR benefits but we have unique advantages of early phase.

Day One Revenue

Our first feature launch is a literal money raising machine. We will have revenue to grow with and live semi-comfortably with. When we perform at our jobs, anything is possible. We are not dependent on raising VC to do well. We have the opportunities that put you in control of your future.

We Use Cool Stuff

Our technology was chosen to be an investment in you as much as it was us. This protects your value proposition. We will do Rust web service backends like nobody has ever done them before. You can take that to the bank.

Remote-First & Flexible

Your relationship with your company should scale according to what you want to do. We may need more people. We will align those needs with the team at all times. Our pay is for outcomes, not stage performances or misery.

We will start remote-first because of necessisty. Those habits and capabilities we develop will remain in place becuase being places is good. This helps provide a lot of options to people, enabling us to have lives.

Available Compensation Terms

This is a startup. We can negotiate. Our situation changes fast. You can make it change.

• Co-founders: up to 25% equity for the perfect backup CEO-engineer who takes low-to-zero salary for the first few months in order to grow faster.

• Early hires: up to 5% equity for some risk and excellent skills & experience. Tell us your requirements. We will make offers as soon as our revenue allows.

Above all, if you believe in the mission enough to take risk alongside the founding team and have skills in the tools we use, we can make a place for you.

Co-Founders

Being a co-founder means being part of the soul of the company, one of the most trusted people, someone who makes it possible, someone who becomes one of the most valuable deputies for building the team, someone who can steady the boat through every difficulty.

We need people with game-changing skills, strong alignment with the mission, and a willingness to take risk alongside the other founders. Expect 5-25% equity offers depending on salary and skill levels. We will recruit more people like you, better than you, but they will join in part because of you.

There are still really cool problems ahead, ones that are worthy of the co-founder title. Great people can still have an outsized impact, far more than you might at just another job.

Early Hires

It's probably 3-6 months before we can hire at market rates. If we rush it, we will end up selling what would be your equity at significant discount to a VC in order to raise the capital to pay you a market rate salary. The VC won't even write code.

Nonetheless, not everyone can take those kinds of risk. We appreciate early interest and early skill investment in the tools we use. We will be able to pay above market rate to hire in the future and will happily do so in order to bring our vision to more people faster.

Email us your salary requirement and resume so we can get in touch when your risk level matches our revenue.

Our Hiring Process

Straight to the CEO. You will have one to two interviews, likely in the same week. You are expected to have some evidence of the necessary experience to hit the ground running. You can use some of our tools and can handle some of the responsibilities of some role or at least fill in somewhere.

We require clear proof of citizenship and identity. Do not fail a major background check later. Any past history of mishandling or misrepresenting funds is grounds for immediate dismissal. Criminal convictions and for-cause termination for anything related to financial crimes or fraud are grounds for dismissal. Sorry, Sam Bankmen-Fried.

The One-Year Cliff

All of our co-founder equity offers and employee (Restricted Stock Options) RSOs are subject to a one-year cliff (cliff-vesting). Vesting begins in one year and then proceeds monthly. If you are terminated or quit before one year, your RSOs and equity will usually be forfeited.

The practice is standard because only you know what you're thinking at the time of hiring and if you expect to perform well. We do not have time to verify people's claims. Gross misrepresentation or just plain mistakes will be obvious before a year. The cliff encourages personal responsibility.

We will remove guessing as much as possible. By default, everyone starts on probation for the first three months. If we think it's obvious that you belong on the team, we will provide explicit notice of this period ending early.

Nobody will be let go in the 3-12 months period without a clear cause that we communicate to the rest of the team. We will keep every agreement fair to everyone at all times, and we have the tools to do so.

The outcome is simple. The defualt is not that complex. People who do better will do better. Startups create opportunities for people to get ahead by out-performing their role, which attracts great people.

Reputational Constraints

The founding team is committed to making sure that everyone who contributes long-term value to this company celebrates together someday, at a minimum because they were treated fairly and we remained very cool.

That guarantee is the foundation of beinge able to do risky things efficiently and decisively. That is part of our true equity. We will protect it. It is the foundtation of being able to build a team. It is an irrevocable trust, a deposit, a bond on our coolness.

The founders have a lot of power. Reputational constraint are what ensure we use that power wisely and fairly on the long road to adopting mature systems with checks & balances. As our team gains experience, they become reputationally constrained and can share our responsibility.

Our Values

These values were created from experience. Each of them serves as a guide post that was uniquely crafted to suit our mission

Finite

Being finite means going first, not waiting for solutions to emerge when it is our mission and responsibility to create the paths forward.

What we are doing is new. We don't have a choice to wait for data from user metrics or customer focus groups. We have to use deduction and good judgement to evaluate risk. We have to initiate concrete solutions in situations that have only ever been abstract. That means we also have to be wrong at times. Fail fast and correct faster.

All of these things involve moving through a lack of definition. When uncertain situations arise, we have to face them and do things that will cause more facts to be revealed. Be courageous, audacious. Bias towards action. If there's no signal, just do something to get the ball rolling. That's being finite.

Positive

Being positive means securing sustainable, steady progress through quick wins that pay dividends, steadily compounding the efforts of ourselves and those around us.

It's tempting to tell ourselves that we have a deeper strategy when we pursue our obsessive impulses instead of quick wins nearby. However, those quick wins often amplify the wins of others. It shows respect to our co-workers. Consistently deliver things that move the ball forward.

There are at times unavoidable large tasks, but being positive means finding quick wins along the way and putting the quick wins first at each turn. Most succinctly, "put points on the board." The first things we do every day have to put each other ahead in order for the dividends of our cooperation to accrue.

Large

Being large means stepping back from what we're focused on to look around for bigger instances and generalized of what we're solving. Sometimes solving a small subset of a much larger problem delivers more value faster. Sometimes that incomplete solution is easier to implement than what we were focusing on.

Our products are designed to deliver value that scales well when delivered to billions of people. If we think small, we're missing the core parts of our mission. Even though we have intentionally designed for the large-scale, it is likely that we will have the features in hand do take on new markets with only slight tweaks to our formula.

Being large is also a time to be bold and creative. All we have to do is occasionally look around. What kind of world do we want to live in? How can our services play a role in that vision?