Day jobs
I'm building a new company called Parallel, evolving the web as it should exist for AI.
I started my career at McKinsey in San Francisco, focusing on payments, growth strategy for marketplace tech companies, and technology research at the McKinsey Global Institute (including reports here and here). I had the privilge to work with with some of the most interesting companies of our time and build many slides in the process.
Later, I joined Chime, where I drove our strategy and commercial relationships with our bank partners, led our savings product, and worked with investors and policymakers.
In my late teens, I interned at SeatGeek and worked at Kleverbeast, a (now defunct) no-code web startup.
I'm also a Fellow at The Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, where I think and write about progress.
Side tinkerings
I've always had a passion for side projects that bridge art, data, and tech:
- Ran a semi-successful music blog in the pre-streaming era
- Produced documentary films
- Helped launch The Pudding, a data-driven, visual publication
- Collaborated with PhDs to analyze creativity in art using image recognition on 62,000 paintings.
- Used web scraping and NLP to analyze MBTI profiles of unicorn founders for a VC
More recently, I've been working on The Paradox of Progress, a personal research project that might always be a work in progress. The Leaning Tower of Progress is an essay published in The Hedgehog Review, meant to be a seed to the broader thesis. Sporadically, I also publish essays here.
Domains of interest
Areas where I’m an inch deep, but deeply curious.
- Progress & Prosperity.
- Quantum Physics.
- The Banking System & Narrow Banking.
- "Great Questions."
- Mycelium and its Entanglements.
- Beginner’s Mind.
A few things I believe
- Think T-shaped: look wide, to understand deep
- Go slow, to go fast
- Explore // Exploit
- Pay attention to the in-between
- Nurture your seeds of curiosity and creativity, they often shape you more than you think
- Cultivate your own spirit and live an "original life"
Reach me
E: traversnisbet [at] gmail [dot] com
T: @travers00