WEB2 Executive Joins Paradigm as EIR: What Changes Will This Bring?
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WEB2 Executive Joins Paradigm as EIR: What Changes Will This Bring?
After 6-12 months, Andrew Huang will embark on a new Web3 journey as an entrepreneur, bringing something different.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insights
Written by: 0xmin TechFlow
On September 27, Andrew Huang, a Quill engineer and MIT graduate, announced he was joining Paradigm as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR).
In his post, Andrew Huang detailed his personal journey—how did he fall into the crypto rabbit hole from Web2?
Below is his first-person account:
"For the first seven years of my career, I was deeply immersed in Web2, working across infrastructure, product, and company building.
First at Wish, I built core infrastructure for a large-scale e-commerce application handling billions in GMV and hundreds of millions of users. Then at Quill (a messaging app), as the first engineer, I led both product and engineering from the earliest stages of the company. Through scaling Wish and Quill, I learned that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whether you're building a company or an infrastructure system, supporting a growing business is all about anticipating tail risks and being incredibly proactive—while also leaving flexibility within the system to allow iteration, new products, and enhanced features.
After Quill was acquired by Twitter at the end of 2021, cryptocurrency became an inescapable intellectual virus for me. What excites me about Web3 is that it offers a fundamentally new paradigm—a shared, composable foundation. This shared computational layer enables a vast array of new applications and captivates me because of its profound implications for the future of coordination.
The arc of technology has always been one of Moore's Law and compound optimization. Our computers get faster, our food gets delivered more conveniently, and the world’s knowledge is available at our fingertips with a single click.
Crypto represents an inflection point along this arc. Computation isn’t fast, databases are slower, and the tech is harder to use. Yet, for the first time, it provides a platform where people can innovate and coordinate freely, co-creating natively digital worlds.
All of this has captivated me—I’m ready to begin something new.
I'm particularly excited to explore the intersection of Web2 and Web3, where I can best leverage my experience in infrastructure and company building. While we’ve seen a surge in crypto-native startups, there remains a lack of companies bringing Web2-scale development techniques into Web3. I believe the right infrastructure could dramatically accelerate innovation and adoption across the entire crypto ecosystem.
To help realize these ambitions, I’ll be joining Paradigm as an EIR. I can't think of a better group of thoughtful, hardworking individuals to start this journey with. Special thanks to Georgios, Mizbani, Charlie, Sudhanshu, and Matt for spending time with me and encouraging me on this new adventure."
For those in the crypto world, EIR is a relatively unfamiliar concept—at least this appears to be the first time a major crypto VC has brought on an EIR. However, in traditional Silicon Valley venture circles, Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIRs) are quite common. These individuals are typically successful founders or senior executives who join a venture firm without fully transitioning into investing roles. Instead, they remain somewhere between investor, founder, and professional manager.
For VCs, EIRs play a crucial role—they act as the VC’s eyes. Since most EIRs come from successful entrepreneurial or executive backgrounds, they bring real-world operational experience and deep domain expertise that pure investors may lack. They also serve as the VC’s nose, sniffing out promising new ideas and sharing them with the firm. A successful EIR can help a VC identify the right investment opportunities.
However, the EIR role is transitional and short-term, typically lasting 6–12 months, designed to help entrepreneurs find their next move while working within a VC environment.
As an EIR, you gain access—as a consultant—to leaders of numerous startups and industry VCs, receive a generous salary, assist in sourcing new projects or conducting due diligence, and when a compelling idea emerges, you might even be appointed CEO of the new venture. It’s an ideal role for accomplished former founders, managers, CEOs, or CTOs who are between jobs.
Therefore, for an EIR, the ideal outcome is ultimately becoming CEO or CTO of a promising, well-funded company.
For a top-tier global crypto VC like Paradigm, high-quality projects naturally come knocking. Yet the broader Web3 ecosystem faces significant growth challenges: How can it break through to mainstream adoption? How can it achieve user scale comparable to Web2?
In our view, Web3’s future development will require leveraging certain growth and engineering practices from Web2. Andrew Huang could become a vital bridge, driving innovation and change. As he said: "I’m especially excited to explore the intersection of Web2 and Web3. While we’ve seen an explosion of crypto-native startups, there’s been a lack of companies bringing Web2-scale development techniques into Web3. I believe the right infrastructure could dramatically accelerate innovation and adoption across the entire cryptocurrency space."
We speculate that within 6–12 months, Andrew Huang will embark on a new Web3 venture as a founder—and bring something truly different.
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