Brett Butler MBA FMVA®

Sales Director

Founder & CEO @ Brass Synergy — the vetted, talent ecosystem for Web3 professionals.

I’ll never forget the lemonade stand I ran when I was eight years old.

It only brought in $100…

But that hustle inspired me to try real estate, forex & stock trading

Ultimately allowing me to build a credit services company from 0 to $5M ARR.

And college? Graduated with a double major and double minor — but I was restless.

And with $5K in graduation money, I went all in on cryptocurrency—

And in 6 months, that investment multiplied to $250K.

I felt unstoppable, scaling a startup’s community to 50,000 and its market cap to over $100M.

But then it happened—

The founder did a rug pull; crashing the project, wiping out millions & turned my world upside down.

I had my Mike Tyson moment—realizing everyone’s got a plan ‘til they get punched in the mouth.

I had no choice but to keep going. So, I pivoted back to financial consulting, managing $50M.

But my entrepreneurial passion persisted.  

I went all in to find answers, and noticed something remarkable.

I connected with countless freelancers, professionals, & companies all who had a similar story.

Applying for countless roles to find out the company or role wasn’t legitimate.

Performing work and not getting paid or taking weeks to receive payment on freelancing platforms.

Or hiring someone only to receive late or poor quality work, costing much needed time and money

I knew there had to be a better way to network, transact, and source talent in a transparent way.

I just needed a sign and during my conversations I made a striking discovery.

Freelancers and Web3 users share a striking resemblance—

70% were millennials and Gen Z with similar age ranges, locations, and interests.

And when the world went remote, it was my cue that now was the time.

HireSphere AI was born—

An AI Powered, full automated, talent verification, recruitment, and workforce management platform with a global verified talent marketplace. 

A fusion of Web3, AI, and Blockchain revolutionizing how people hire and work 
→ Understanding what makes people top performers AND how to consistently validate those skills through robust interviews with deep people science
-> Creating digitally verifiable on-chain profiles to build trust & safety
-> Augmenting the process with AI to match talent with jobs, streamline hiring and verify history
-> Ultimately building the world's best verified global talent marketplace that supports fiat & crypto payments & rewards active members 

I started with a lemonade stand and a dream…

Now we have a global council of the world's best helping us.

And the best part is I’m just getting started.

Owner

• Serve as a consultant to educate individuals/businesses regarding Financial Wellness, Investment Due Diligence, Risk Management, and Financial Planning

• Services include Financial Goal Setting, Facilitating Education Webinars, 1 on 1 Conversations, Debt Management Strategies, Life Event Planning, and much more

• Assists startup clients with financial modeling beginning with identifying potential revenue drivers and assumptions to quantify those drivers.  Used information to create custom financial model for current/potential investors to secure additional capital.

• Currently working on my CFP designation (2023 estimated completion)

Brett Butler

My goal in life is to help people achieve sovereignty
(and to protect our planet)

That means different things at different stages of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
➤ For some, it’s the elevation of consciousness.
➤ For others, it’s feeding their family.

◇ After, managing billion-dollar transformation projects for FT100 and FT500 companies, 
◇ Helping launch tech unicorns, 
◇ And building my own startups, 
◇ I realized my greatest impact comes from connecting people to the capital, strategy, and structure needed to turn vision into reality.

𝗦𝗼 𝗜 𝗱𝗼 𝗮 𝗳𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀:

🔲 Chief Growth Officer @ FORUS 

A $200M impact fund and blockchain platform advancing financial inclusion and capital access across emerging markets. I lead global expansion, commercial strategy, and partnerships that align profitability with systemic change.


🔳 Investment Banking Managing Director @ Castle Placement 

Connecting founders with a global network of 110K institutional investors and 600K accredited investors, and structuring capital raises across venture, debt, and private equity markets. FINRA licenses 7 and 63.


🔲 Start-up Advisor @ Y42 

Guiding impact-driven founders on fundraising, go-to-market, and commercial strategy, with a focus on investor readiness, growth optimization, storytelling, and brand positioning.


▫️Previously, I founded startups in the climate and psychedelic spaces, worked in finance and strategy at Credit Suisse, JPMorgan, and Accenture, led corporate innovation projects and startup partnerships at Founders Intelligence, and served as Launcher and Managing Director at Crimson Education.

▪️To date, I have advised more than 100 companies on go-to-market, commercial optimization, growth strategy, and fundraising, helping founders scale sustainably from pre-seed to IPO.

▫️I hold a BA in Economics and Political Science from Columbia University and a PgD in Differential Psychology from the University of Edinburgh.

▪️Outside of business, I’m obsessed with the 4Ps of life: Psychics, Philosophy, Psychology and Psychedelics. I love traveling, fashion and photography. I’m a mixed-media visual artist, amateur bodybuilder, calisthenics and boxing enthusiast, and a former model represented by Elite.

I split my time between London, LA, SF, NYC, Rio de Janeiro, and Cape Town (so always somewhat jet lagged…)

Carina Cunha

Einstein figured this out. As a founder, you should too.
 
(And you don't need a 160-190 IQ for it.)
 
Founders waste months solving problems that don't exist.
 
⚠️ You add a feature because a prospect mentioned it once
⚠️ Build a dashboard no one asked for
⚠️ Create a pricing tier for a customer segment you haven't validated
 
Then six months later, 

you are maintaining complexity you can't monetize.
 
🧠 Einstein's entire method was elimination. 

He would strip a problem down until only the essential physics remained. Everything else was a distraction.
 
"Out of clutter, find simplicity," he said.
 
❌ Your product does not need 14 features. 
➡️ It needs the one thing customers will pay to make their problem go away.
 
❌ Your pitch does not need to cover every use case. 
➡️ It needs to answer: which pain point persists without this?
 
Einstein did not discover relativity by adding variables. His method was thought experiments that stripped problems to their essential physics.

He said, "Out of clutter, find simplicity"

So, stop confusing thoroughness with strategy. 

Investors don't fund encyclopedias.

They fund businesses.

(And yes, I do have a tattoo of E=MC2 😅😂🤓)

Investor & CGO @ FORUS • Investment Bank MD @ Castle Placement • Strategist & Board Advisor to Frontier & Impact Ventures • Keynote Speaker • FINRA Licenses 7, 63

Betrayal has a pattern.


I have watched founders be ghosted by:

👻 Investors who promised funding
👻 Partners who abandoned mid-launch
👻 Advisors who add no value

Every scar came from someone who claimed they believed in the vision.

And when people breach commitments, they avoid you. 

That silence is admission.

And the same people who ghosted you during your trough, come back in your peak.

⚡ They see your company growing. 
⚡ Your name being mentioned. 
⚡ Your posts gaining traction.

Suddenly they remember you exist.

⚠️ They casually send "Hey, been thinking about you"
⚠️ They comment on your posts
⚠️ They want to grab coffee and "catch up"

But leaving when pressure rises was not about your situation. 

They left over character.

➡️ Character is not a function of how many zeros you have in your bank account.

Once someone shows themselves there is no going back. 

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

It is official!!!

I never imagined I would be saying this.

I moved to Africa. Cape Town, to be specific.

I will have now lived on every continent besides Oceania and Antarctica.

(…and Antartica watch out 👀 working on a scientific expedition while camping on the ice sheets is on my bucket list...

so is crossing the North Pole by foot.

(yes… maybe there is something very wrong with me 🤫))

Jokes aside, almost 4 years ago, when I first spent time in South Africa (Cape Town and AfrikaBurn), I fell in love with:

⚡The city.
⚡The people.
⚡And the continent.

At the time, I had just started Satori, a psychedelic concierge, where I was hoping to change the world by changing people's minds.

It was an audacious project, and I fell on my face when psychedelic legalization did not move as planned and our little bubble imploded in 2023.

🐉 Since then, I have worked with hundreds of companies, always as an advisor.

Because while I cared about their mission to help, it did not consume me to the point that I wanted to dedicate my life to the cause.

➡️ Until I met Sonny Fisher, founder of FORUS - Global Digital Exchange.

The way that he approaches finance, fintech, commercial networks, entity structures, and listing and delisting companies is like watching Michelangelo create the Sistine Chapel in real time.

And FORUS' goal?

🐉 Nothing less than changing an entire continent's GDP while making traditional payment and banking obsolete.

I am so proud to be joining the team as Chief Growth Officer of FORUS Digital, and as a Co-Founder of FORUS Capital.

Stay tuned. Much more to come from down south 🇿🇦😘

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Brett Butler

Carina Cunha

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The Battle

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