I lead Product at Cross River, the atypical FinTech bank powering money movement and lending as a service for Stripe, Coinbase, Revolut, Plaid, etc. I focus on growth, transformation and turnaround, and post-merger integration.

I’ve worked in both startups and large companies, and was a founder. As the first hire at Oasis Labs, I built a privacy layer for AI, raised $45M (a16z, Accel, etc), and scaled it to a $2B smart contract platform. I’ve built b2b products at Google, led new initiatives at American Express, and launched consumer products at P&G. I boostrapped an advertising agency to $1M/y in revenues.

As an angel investor, I’ve backed 20+ companies, including AtoB, Decisionly, Gumroad, Cobre, DolarApp, Spot2, focusing on founders tackling complex, large markets. I help with problem definition, zero-to-one scaling, and introductions.

I hold an engineering degree and an MBA from UC Berkeley, where I also founded Berkeley StEP, a pre-accelerator that’s launched 150+ startups with a 10% funding rate.

I live in Greenwich Village, NY. I am often in SF and Rome. I like hosting people, crypto and programmable money, complex problems to solve, the sea, djing and playing the piano.

Let’s connect if I can help.

SOME THINGS I BELIEVE

  • Our role on this planet is to advance things
    • Humans have evolved for 300K years—every step forward matters
    • Whether for 5 or 5 billion, impact scales exponentially anyway
  • Reality always wins
    • The game is about leveling up as fast as possible
    • Learn by copying or feedback
    • The faster you collide with reality, the faster you learn
  • Technology and knowledge drive evolution
    • Experimentation, launching, and scaling are cheaper than ever
    • Picking the right problem is probably very important
    • Execution, not capital, is the limiting factor
  • Quality of decisions matters
    • I graduated top of my class, but only after a failed startup
    • Plan, team, execution: get one wrong, survive months; get all wrong, and you become obsessed with decision quality
  • Objectives bring people together
    • Truth-seeking conversations are easier said than done
    • Life is a multivariate optimization problem - understanding motivations goes a long way, and it’s rarely about just finding the truth
    • Learn to expand opportunities and find common ground early
  • Rational optimism helps
    • Enthusiasm for the challenge often drives the best work
    • Optimism to start, realism during, optimism to finish
    • Results come from effort and method, not genetics
  • Connecting the dots, building, and selling are the skills of our generation
    • Data and technology cut through noise
    • Nothing is happening for the first time, but most things won’t be exactly the same
    • Mission clarity, fluid tactics, critical path, focus: these win
    • The first 80% of a project is as important as the second 20% 80%
  • Critical thinking empowers individuals
    • Lack of expertise should rarely be a showstopper
    • Adapting to change and controlling what you can tends to work better
    • I prefer thinking about the range of possibilities over what's conventional
    • Feedback helps, but your barber will always say you need a haircut
  • Objective alignment is critical
    • In small orgs, hyper focus
    • In large orgs, self-reinforcing systems
  • Micromanagement is as harmful as misalignment
    • Great managers define outcomes and obstacles early
    • The priority is to address obstacles before they become evident
    • Cultures of approval kill accountability. Let excellence lead
  • Principles
    • Accountability matters
    • Family and close friends come first
    • Play nice, but win
    • Learn daily: 1.01^365 = 37

You can email me: luca.cosentino50 at gmail.com

SOMETIMES I WRITE