Gym Class (IRL Studios Inc)

Gym Class is the #1 most popular sports experience in virtual reality, and the #1 best rated experience overall on the Meta Quest.

download: oculus.com/experiences/quest/3661420607275144
follow along: tiktok.com/@gymclassvr
more info: gymclassvr.com

Co-Founder

Twitter

Product lead for the Home Timeline, Twitter's largest surface. Our teams support hundreds of millions of daily customers through full-stack investments in the product design of the Home tab, Tweet personalization through ML ranking and modeling, and systems to help Home scale to 1B daily customers. We also drive smaller features like Lists and Bookmarks.

Additionally, I’ve helped spin up a squad exploring Web3 at Twitter, beginning with NFT Profile Picture verification.

Group Product Manager, Home

Coinbase

Our team shifted Coinbase's core consumer product strategy from a sole focus on speculation, to becoming your primary financial account. We shipped a new bundle of financial services, using crypto as a differentiating technology, including save (1.25% on USD Coin), send (scaling global P2P payments), withdraw (instant push withdrawals to your checking account), spend (Coinbase rewards debit card), onramp (budget for instant buy and send), and track (new Coinbase portfolio). This has now begun to diversify the company's revenue streams.

Product, Consumer

Product, Developer Platform

Blockspring

- 2018: Acquired by Coinbase.
- 2014: Funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, SV Angel.

Launched the world's first serverless computing developer platform. We enabled 100k developers to deploy scripts as scalable APIs in seconds - without needing to manage servers on AWS. Grew an exceptional team of ~13 engineers and product.

Once AWS, GCloud, and Azure bundled serverless compute into their platforms, team shifted product (keeping same name). Blockspring now helps small businesses and merchants integrate APIs into their productivity tools without any code - useful for report automation, lead generation, and building dynamic landing pages. It is recognized by Gartner, wired, BI, and Techcrunch for API data management.

Cofounder, CEO

Outpost Kitchens

Outpost was one of the first 'ghost kitchen' services in the US. We operated 4 fully-staffed kitchens in Chicago that cooked and assembled delivery orders for popular fast casual restaurants - enabling restaurant owners to scale operations without borrowing capital from the bank.

We partnered with all major platforms (GrubHub, UberEats, Doordash, Caviar, Postmates, Delivery.com, Groupon), developed software to route and confirm orders, measure and ensure food quality, handle inventory and cost management, and launched branded mealkits for restaurant customers. Grew an excellent operational team.

Outpost shut down in 2017 right before 'ghost kitchens' became cool :). Unfortunately, the economics only worked at that time if you own the real estate (eg become a smarter landlord) or if you own the customer relationship (eg UberEats, Deliveroo, etc). this may be different now.

Cofounder

Mission Measurement

Advised executive teams (CXO and VP level) at Disney, Unilever, Coca Cola, McDonald's on corporate growth strategy. Led teams of 4-6 analysts, and reported to our director of corporate practice.

Specialized in:
- User research. We'd identify important functional, emotional, and social value drivers through primary research (eg home visits, store visits, focus groups).
- Demand modeling. Utilized secondary research, surveys, and modeling to understand current brand positioning within industry, important of value drivers, as well as revenue impact on changes in positioning.
- Concept prototyping and testing. Developed product concepts, tested with customers, and sized revenue impact.
- Organizational change. Establish shared vision across an executive team by building consensus frameworks, strategy, and opportunities.
- Team development. Worked with analysts to learn methods, execute on projects, and get to the next level within organization.

Favorite experiences:
- Helped set 'north star' for leadership team. Identified significant latent growth opportunity, led to low-calorie meal offerings and motivated calorie counts on domestic menu boards.
- Home visits to families in Indonesia (lowest economic deciles) to understand product's fit in their lives and identify new growth opportunities.

Also worked with select social sector clients like Skoll Foundation and Education Pioneers on developing outcomes frameworks.

Engagement Manager

ZS Associates

Advised global pharmaceutical and medical device leaders, as well as early stage biotechnology firms, on sales operations and marketing.

Drove top-line revenue growth the following quantitative analyses:
- Segmentation
- Targeting
- Sales and medical affairs organization design and sizing
- Revenue forecasting
- Broader go-to-market strategy.

Worked with clients like GE Healthcare, Abbott, Pfizer, Takeda, alnd more on domestic and international (Shanghai) projects.

tldr - I spent a lot of time in excel, sas, and vba.

Analyst

Gym Class continues to grow staff this year! 

Work with a top, high velocity, ambitious team in social gaming. DM to fast track process for these roles:

Lead Backend Engineering - https://lnkd.in/gBFCXJ4F

Lead Animation Engineering - https://lnkd.in/grzG2fkU

Gameplay Engineering roles also open for folks with bar raising multiplayer VR experience. https://lnkd.in/gStqVysg

All remote, competitive comp, equity, benefits, career growth opportunities.

Paul Katsen

Open article: Lead - Backend Engineering at Gym Class - by IRL Studios | Y Combinator by ycombinator.com

Lead - Backend Engineering at Gym Class - by IRL Studios | Y Combinator

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