Hey, Iโ€™m Daniel, and I usually go by Olshansky ๐Ÿ‘‹

๐Ÿ“„ Resume / CV โ€” the one-pager if youโ€™re in a hurry.

My Mission

Enable every human being to achieve their full potential. Starting with myself.

Capital, focus, motivation, plasticity, time, alignment โ€” whatever the constraint, everyone should get a real shot at their ceiling if they want it.

Where did I work?

Engineering and research across social, AR, autonomous vehicles, crypto, and construction. None of it has (yet) moved the needle on a global scale โ€” I treat it all as setup for whatโ€™s next.

  • 2010โ€“2014: University of Toronto โ€” Engineering Science; Nฮจ 1T4
  • 2014โ€“2015: Twitter โ€” Mobile; shipped things like Gif Search. Learned how big corps operate.
  • 2016โ€“2020: Magic Leap โ€” Shareable digital worlds for cross-reality. Learned politics, premature capital, and how to ship hard tech.
  • 2020โ€“2022: Waymo โ€” Data science infra for Planner Eval. Built intuition around AI/ML and how the sharpest people think.
  • 2021โ€“2022: GetSoils โ€” Construction soil marketplace. Learned how hard old industries are to sell into.
  • 2022โ€“2025: Pocket Network (Grove Labs) โ€” Led a small team and a large ecosystem building a decentralized data/API access network. Learned EQ > IQ in leadership.
  • 2025: Agentic Payments โ€” Building rails for AI agents to transact: discover, pay, tip, and settle on behalf of humans and other agents.
  • 2025โ€“Present: AI ร— Construction โ€” Applying AI to the construction industry beyond basic automation and data management.

Mantras I live by

  1. Anything can be learnt and mastered with enough time, effort and focus.
  2. Figure out what you want-to do vs what you want-to want-to do. Now do it.
  3. Learn your limit, push to it, raise it. Repeat.
  4. Live so your future self inspires your present self.
  5. Expertise is the toolbox; experience is knowing which tool to use.
  6. Generational impact, kind to the people around you.
  7. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
  8. Patience with results. Impatience with action.

What drives me?

Lifelong learner ๐Ÿง‘โ€๐ŸŽ“ chasing generational impact. Founders and enduring brands inspire me; I want to do the same for future generations.

How: human relationships, the right people, the right environment, technical breakthroughs, operational excellence, and the discipline to occasionally rest.

Where am I from?

Born in ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡บ Moscow, grew up in ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ฑ, formative years in ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ, career in ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ. North American Russian Jew. I connect with people and ideas, not geographies.

What do I believe is very important?

The mind-body connection. Training, eating, thinking, and working intuitively is more powerful than most people believe.

Weaknesses Iโ€™m still working on: burnout, impatience, high standards, EQ, and somewhere-on-the-spectrum ADHD.

What bothers me most: laziness, incompetence, lack of appreciation, lack of humility.

Who inspires me?

Rahul Goel (NordSpace) shows me daily that thereโ€™s no ceiling on what one person can do.

Dinner with anyone alive: Peter Thiel, for the contrarian thinking. A month working with anyone: Elon Musk, to see real intensity.

Others I learn from regularly:

  • Dharmesh Shah โ€” Hacker
  • Tobias Lรผtke โ€” Builder
  • John Carmack โ€” Legend
  • Andrej Karpathy โ€” Clearest thinker
  • Vitalik Buterin โ€” Weirdest thinker
  • Ilya Sutskever โ€” Monk at heart
  • Mitchell Hashimoto โ€” Friendliest OSS dev
  • Naval Ravikant โ€” First-principles philosopher-investor
  • Simon Willison โ€” Best RSS feed on the internet
  • Stephen Wolfram โ€” Modern polymath
  • Edward Thorp โ€” Mathematician, investor, blackjack pioneer
  • Richard Feynman โ€” Physicist, teacher, storyteller

Not pedestals โ€” flawed humans who carved unique paths and created enduring value.

What do I do in my spare time?

Gym ๐Ÿ‹๐Ÿฝ, outdoors ๐Ÿฅพ, reading & writing ๐Ÿ“šโœ๏ธ, tinkering ๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ’ป, calls & walks ๐Ÿ“ž๐Ÿšถ, long dinners ๐Ÿฝ, occasional networking ๐Ÿค, movies & TV.

Want more of: improv ๐ŸŽญ, comedy clubs ๐ŸŽค, new physical skills ๐Ÿคน, podcasting ๐ŸŽ™, reflecting ๐Ÿ“, meditating ๐Ÿง˜, executing on the next big idea โšก.

Some of my favorite quotes

“Humans over machines.”

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the future.”

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

“The future is already here, but just not evenly distributed.”

โ€œMost people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.โ€ โ€” Bill Gates

Links & Resources

Interesting Content

Writing

Social

Reach Out

I don’t like “quick calls” (here’s why). I love voice notes โ€” send one on WhatsApp or email olshansky.daniel@gmail.com.

Always down to meet in person โ€” coffee, dinner, or a hike.

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