About

ABOUT FORE PROTOCOL

Our world is people-powered, and centralized entities are increasingly utilizing people’s behavior and activity to problem-solve, predict outcomes, and generate revenue. But while the power of people has been realized, it is rarely rewarded. Until now. We've created a tokenized economy to incentivize the wisdom of the crowd to problem-solve at scale. In doing so, FORE Protocol utilizes a decentralized network of people to bridge the gap between the real-world and the blockchain: forming the foundation for web3 solutions that remove friction from real-world industries such as prediction markets, data oracles, financial auditors, and more. But we do not consider FORE Protocol to be a “blockchain project," rather a technology company that uses blockchain as the conduit to incentivize the wisdom of the crowd in an entirely trustless way, without the need for a centralized third party.

The team behind FORE Protocol is a group of executives hailing from a myriad of backgrounds, with a collective focus on building incentive models to bring real-world data to the blockchain. Over the past year, our team has grown from our three founders to over 20 people. In that time, one thing has remained constant: our values. We believe that if we focus on building a team with the right value system, we can iterate our way to success, build almost any product, and most importantly, we can build the necessary trust with our employees, partners, users, and community members. In order for us to build and scale, it's important that we think through, articulate, and reiterate how we want to operate collectively as a team – and how we want to scale that value system.

MEET THE TEAM

Merv Merzoug

CEO + Co-Founder

Merv has a deep history of leading, operating and investing in enterprises across their stages of evolution. Most recently, Merv worked as a private equity turnaround operating partner, where he led the successful restructuring of +$1B in distressed debt transactions. He has also successfully led startups from ideation to commercialization to exit. Merv comes from notable institutions such as Bridgewater Associates, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund), and SierraConstellation Partners. Merv attained his MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and is an avid Python developer.

Andres Soriano

COO + Co-Founder

Andrés has built, scaled and led large organizations for over 15 years. Most recently, Andrés was a senior executive for a Fortune 500 company where he led organizational strategy and operations. He was part of the team that pushed the company's expansion into several growth markets in Asia, acting as HR Director and interim CEO and managing several thousand employees as the company gained footholds in greenfield markets. Prior to his business career, Andres has completed several of the worlds most difficult ocean crossings and record breaking attempts, and the 2011/12 Volvo Ocean Round the World Race. Andrés earned his MBA and a Masters in Negotiations + Dispute Resolution as well as a Masters in Social Entrepreneurship from Pepperdine University.

Timothea Horwell

CMO + Co-Founder

With a decade specializing in marketing strategy within the fintech sector, Timothea’s current focus is building go-to-market strategies for web3 projects. Most recently as CMO of an exchange aggregator, Timothea led one of the most successful token sales of 2020: responsible for community growth, user acquisition, and partnerships. Her work helped place the company within the top 100 market cap projects within just a year, at a $2 billion ATH fully diluted market cap. Timothea continues to advise for a number of synergistic web3 projects across DeFi, GameFi, the metaverse, and NFTs.

Rick Van Der Knaap

Chief Finance Officer

Rick has worked for over 14 years in accounting and auditing, with the last 7 years spent at Deloitte. He has lead various multi-disciplinary teams serving a broad range of clients - performing financial audits and advising on their control environment, risk assessments and internal controls. Rick has strong analytical skills and obtained his Masters’ degree in Accounting & Auditing at Vrije Universiteit and is a Certified Public Accountant in the Netherlands.

James Woodruff

Chief Data Officer

With 8 years of experience in analytical roles, James has a blend of history in finance, healthcare, and technology. Most recently, James was on the founding team of a neo-bank, previously Lead Data Scientist for a benchmarking product in healthcare, with more distant analytical roles across SaaS and private equity. James attained a Bachelors of Art and of Science in Mathematics and Economics from Vanderbilt University.

Harry Clarke

Head of Creative Strategy

A decade as a tech-driven creative strategist, with a focus on driving growth + revenue. Harry has worked with DeFi predictions and trading protocols Polkamarkets + Orion Protocol to solidify their to-market creative strategies, focusing on optimizing UI/UX for UA. Previously, Harry founded the creative arm of Telefonica UK before deploying to Telefonica territories globally. Most recently, he helped launched digital creative agency Deviceful.

Stephen Duplessie

Marketing Advisor

Stephen is a co-founder and COO of Pangea Blockchain Fund. Since 2014, he has been involved in cryptocurrencies and blockchain. He was the Founder and CEO of Theorem Labs, a global leader in Web3.0 community building, which between 2016 and 2020 managed the marketing and rollout for more than 60 top Web3.0 projects such as WAX, CryptoKitties, Axie Infinity, and Bitcoin.com. Prior to Theorem, Stephen was an entrepreneur and a member of two Stanford StartX companies for class P17. Additionally, Stephen was formerly Head of Growth at a travel app where he substantially expanded their user-base. Stephen has a B.S. in Finance from the Tulane A. B. Freeman School of Business.

Simon Kruse

Chief Technical Advisor

Simon is a blockchain Founder & CTO with a proven track record of developing complex solutions and advising top projects within the space. He has a deep understanding of blockchain technology and its potential to transform a myriad of industries, and is passionate about using blockchain to solve issues arising due to centralization. Simon specializes in blockchain architecture and smart contract development.

Ignacio Soriano

Head of Dev Ops

For over a decade, Ignacio has focused on software research and development in defence and healthcare. Starting with a BS in Aerospace designing and building simulation, avionics and robotics solutions for Boeing Research and Technology delivering leading advances that have been fielded from the factory floor to unmanned aircraft and military hardware. Afterwards, he joined SentiAR a medical device startup, and as Lead Engineer helped bring the first AR assisted surgery to field of Cardiac Electrophysiology. With graduate studies in Mathematics and authoring a number of peer reviewed articles and patents in the fields of digital network communications, robotics, simulation, augmented reality and artificial intelligence, Ignacio has a breath of experience in both the heavily regulated industrial and fast-paced start-up environments, enabling him to provide system architecture and design consulting for a wide variety of businesses.