Case study
UCLA Bitcoin Bruins and the Anderson Bitcoin Summit
Founding a Bitcoin organization inside a business school, and convening its inaugural summit of roughly 200 people from almost nothing.
Context
I came to UCLA Anderson for an MBA already about eight years into Bitcoin. I expected to find a few fellow travelers. Instead I found a campus that treated the whole thing as a curiosity, and a handful of students who were quietly serious about it with nowhere to meet.
The possibility I saw
The curiosity was there; it just had no room to gather in. A business school is full of people evaluating what to bet their careers on. Giving the serious ones a place to convene felt both easy and overdue.
What I built, and my role
I founded Bitcoin Bruins as a student organization and built its flagship, the Anderson Bitcoin Summit, an annual event that pulled builders and investors from outside onto campus. I was the founder and lead organizer.
What happened
The organization took. In May 2025 we ran the inaugural Anderson Bitcoin Summit, roughly 200 people in one room, which meant coordinating speakers, sponsors, attendees, volunteers, university stakeholders, and outside organizations into a single day. A business school is full of people deciding what to bet their careers on. For one day, Bitcoin was on that list, on campus, in the open.
What it taught me
This is where I learned that gatherings, not content, were the thing I was actually good at building. Belonging comes before product. That lesson runs straight through everything I have built since.
What came next
It proved that gatherings, not content, were the thing I was actually good at building, and that has shaped every project since.
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