Our Mission
Delivering the benefits of Decentralized networks; with a better way to build
Web3’s killer app is a peer-to-peer internet of trust. Most people haven’t experienced a decentralized network solving a problem outside of economics, leading to the misconception that Web3 is merely speculative finance with technical rails.
We are changing that.
We’re Solving “find your friends in the crowd” to ignite a virtuous flywheel
Totem Grid was founded on a thesis developed over six years to solve a specific, big problem—one you’ve almost certainly experienced. Every decision in our technical and business roadmap is focused squarely on delivering a game-changing product to music festivals, for the festival-goers. The solution happens to generalize quite well.
Our name, Totem Grid, is inspired by the Festival Totem, which festival-goers use to find their friends when communication networks fail due to congestion. Even when communications are working, using text messages and phone calls to find your friends in a crowd sucks compared to using Totems.
Totem Grid digitizes the festival totem with local, offline-first communication and map-localization networks so that people can stay connected in a mobile application with chat and hyper-accurate location to find each other and things at the event on a map and in AR.
Totem Grid is the killer application Web3 has been waiting for, collectively.
The Master Plan, in a nutshell
Build a constrained use case MVP with minimal messaging and location features, launching at festivals and concerts.
2. Scale that MVP and user base into a decentralized physical infrastructure (DePin) network & flagship app with robust social features and location services.
3. Scale that network and experience into sports stadiums, business conferences and trade-shows.
4. Scale that network into a global network providing edge communications and location services for rural areas, airplanes and beyond.
Our Team
Jeremy Mundell
Founding Partner
Jeremy is a recruiting and business development leader with a vision to solve a problem at festivals using the latest breakthroughs in decentralized networks. An autodidact, Jeremy developed extraordinary expertise in building world-class applied sciences teams while playing foundational roles at Facebook AI, Aurora Innovation, Protocol Labs, and Eigenlayer.
Building upon his expertise and connections, his mission is to "connect the network” and bring Totem Grid to life as a service that benefits humanity, solves a problem for himself, and redefines what’s possible with recruiting as a side effect.
Garett Nell
Founding Partner
Garett is an entrepreneur and multi-disciplinary business leader with engineering and product roots. At heart, he is a builder and connector who loves to create. In the beginning, he built with Legos. Then he discovered software and wrote applications to connect people, help them communicate, and have fun online.
His professional experiences and expertise are broad and deep spanning leadership roles at Meta, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Most recently, he founded and led the Value Share business unit at Flow.life, an early-stage real estate startup. He’s passionate about advancing equitable and humane technology and the power of human-centric networks.
Ryan Betts
Founding Contributor
Ryan is a zero-to-one design and product leader who sweats the UX of data, security and safety. His 20 year career has spanned frontier tech (Proxxi, Fission), developer experiences (W3C, Adobe, PhoneGap), and service delivery, from backstage through to polished customer touch points (AT&T). He loves making a tough problem look easy.
A systems-thinker at heart, Ryan’s engineering and business counterparts often joke that he’s “just a designer.” His contributions to UCAN, WNFS and IPVM (Fission, Protocol Labs) and web3 wallet standards (CASA, WalletUncon) have helped shape local-first and self-sovereign experiences from the protocol up.
He brings a unique perspective to Totem Grid, having lived the challenges of music festivals as both a participant and performer.
Alf Watt
Founding Contributor
Alf is a hands-on engineering leader with over a decade of expertise in Wireless Networking & iOS/Mac applications, with experience leading end-to-end development in both zero-to-one apps for startups and large enterprise systems with Apple, Mapbox, and Lucid Motors.
Alf cut his teeth in a decentralized network as the founder of Masu Networks. He has long seen the potential of these technologies as utility networks, believes an edge-first internet is the future, and is motivated by the moral elements of scaling these systems.
Jared Hector
Founding Contributor
Jared is a full-stack web developer drawing upon a Stanford computer science, psychology, and music background to deliver well-polished and consumer-conscious experiences and applications. He poseses a blend of leadership skills, ability to critically think beyond the present, and the ability to bring people and ideas together. He strives to create applications that hit the ground running by never approaching user experience blindly. Viewnify, a recent React project he developed and managed.
John Goldschmidt
Founding Contributor
As two‑time founder who now leads Partnerships at Outlier Ventures, John has spent the past decade extracting clarity from early‑stage chaos. He’s guided dozens of Web3 startups through capital raises, enterprise negotiations, and go‑to‑market pivots, blending sharp product‑market‑fit instincts with a community builder’s touch. Equal parts strategist and operator, he distills complex tech into stories decision‑makers understand, then backs it up with revenue models and operating rhythms that scale.
At Totem Grid, John channels that experience into three priorities: securing the capital that fuels our flywheel, forging festival‑to‑Fortune 500 alliances that expand our reach, and embedding sales‑ops discipline across the collective. Whether he’s structuring a an innovative capital strategy, refining messaging, or opening doors, he’s driven by the same goal: placing p2p tech, community, and unforgettable live experiences on the same vibrant stage.
Sergi Rene Vicente
Founding Contributor
Sergi is a seasoned R&D blockchain engineer and future internet innovator specializing in peer-to-peer (P2P) networking, Named Data Networking (NDN), Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN), blockchain technologies, and beyond. With extensive experience bridging academia and industry, Sergi co-founded DataHop.network, where he architected the foundational networking backend technology well suited to Totem Grid's infrastructure.
His work is marked by a proven track record in software engineering, mobile computing research, and the development of decentralized systems designed to enhance connectivity and data exchange. Sergi holds a Ph.D. from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and previously contributed to groundbreaking research at University College London (UCL).
Based between London and Barcelona, Sergi continues pushing the boundaries of future internet technologies, driving innovation in decentralized networking solutions vital to Totem Grid's mission.
Robert Brown
Founding Contributor
Robert is a seasoned instructional designer and systems thinker with a background spanning deep tech and enterprise learning platforms. At Aurora Innovation, he contributed to instructional design for products in cutting-edge applied sciences, and at Workday, he spearheaded the company’s learning management systems product—authoring foundational content and setting best practices for scalable, high-impact training.
At Totem Grid, Robert is leading the development of instructional materials to support our groundbreaking adaptation of the Firm Protocol for Holacracy-based self-management. His work is helping us translate complex governance models into intuitive, actionable learning pathways that empower teams to operate with trust, autonomy, and clarity.
Brian Ginsburg
Founding Contributor
Brian is a senior software engineer. He is expert in the IPFS ecosystem with recent key roles in building decentralized protocols at Fission and Lilypad.
Brian is passionate about building a better internet for humanity with deep interest in advancing privacy and security online.
Franck Rougier
Founding Contributor
Franck Rougier is a seasoned entrepreneur, systems thinker, and hardware innovator with a deep passion for building elegant, real-world technology. He founded Kirio, a Seattle-based IoT company, to bring smart home and energy management systems to the construction industry—designing and deploying both the hardware and software stack from the ground up.
At Totem Grid, Franck brings his unique blend of engineering precision and entrepreneurial creativity to help us bridge the physical and digital worlds through our custom DePIN hardware for live events. He also lends his hard-earned startup wisdom to help guide Totem Grid’s successful launch and long-term growth.
Franck holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Brooklyn Polytechnic University and a Master’s in Sensor-Based Robotics and Controls from NYU. His career spans supply-chain systems, fintech, full-stack product development, and deep 0-1 startup building
Todd Blocksom
Founding Contributor
Todd is a seasoned product and program leader with 20+ years of experience shaping breakthrough consumer technologies, including impactful roles at Apple and Google.
With deep expertise across UX design, mobile applications, data analytics, and AI/ML, he thrives at the intersection of complex systems and seamless user experiences.
At Totem Grid, Todd brings his passion for building intuitive, human-centered technology to the live events space — fusing product leadership with his lifelong love of music and drumming. He’s helping us deliver a network experience that feels magical, empowering, and designed for real-world connection.
Equally at home aligning cross-functional teams around clear OKRs or jamming in a late-night studio session, Todd is driven by curiosity, creativity, and a commitment to building the kind of internet (and world) we all want to live in.
Chris Cowan
Founding Contributor
Chris is a seasoned consultant and leadership development expert who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a Doctorate in Human and Organizational Learning from The George Washington University.
After witnessing the limitations of traditional leadership development approaches—many of which failed to address entrenched power structures—Chris joined HolacracyOne to help pioneer more adaptive and equitable systems of work, driven by a deep commitment to transforming how organizations operate.He has worked with a wide range of commercial, nonprofit, and governmental clients to evolve their management practices, and has taught graduate courses in leadership at both Harvard University and Georgetown University.
At Totem Grid, Chris is helping shape the next generation of self-management infrastructure—integrating governance, trust, and coordination into the core of building human-centered networks. He’s passionate about working on things that matter and is excited to be co-creating a better way to build.
Timothy Brandt
Founding Contributor
Tim is Passionate iOS Developer with 10+ years experience leading key projects for Snapchat, Moonware, and Apple. Tim has a love for innovation, and expertise in crafting location-based social networking apps, augmented reality experiences and immersive audio features.
He thrives on transforming ideas into reality and building innovative mobile solutions and is particularly excited about bringing his original vision for NeonAR to life with the Totem Grid Network.
Our Advisors
Will Scott
Technology Advisor
Will is an engineering leader, applied scientist, and startup advisor with interest & expertise in the frontiers of networking, security, and privacy. After receiving his PhD from the UW, Will blazed a trail across Google & Oasis Labs before becoming an instrumental leader on the team developing IPFS and related technologies in the Protocol Labs Network.
Will believes that Internet access should not be hampered by explicit censorship from government and corporate entities, by integrity failures in online services, and by services that are not yet implemented.
Marta Geater
Governance Advisor
Marta is a seasoned Leader in Web3 Community Governance & Incentive Design, Open Source Ecosystems, and Team Leadership. Recognized for her public speaking and mentoring, Marta has received accolades such as “Most Influential Person in Blockchain” and “Coindesk’s Top 100 People in Blockchain.”
She’s a key member of the W3C Blockchain Community Group and a former Chair of the Sovrin Technical Governing Board. Her background includes serving as the Director of Web3 Strategy at ConsenSys and currently as the Executive Director at FIDL—Filecoin Incentive Design Labs. With a Ph.D. in Computer Security and Privacy, Marta has helped enterprises and startups navigate AI, quantum computing, and blockchain, understanding their transformative impacts.
Her career spans The Linux Foundation, Hyperledger, Balancer Labs, Blockstream, Deutsche Telekom, and Apple and consulting with startups like Totem Grid. Marta believes in the potential of Totem Grid’s Collective framework, which, while experimental, is likely to be the right way to build a company.
Julien Boedec
GTM, Partnerships & BD Advisor
Julien is a seasoned entrepreneurial leader and advisor with expertise in all phases of GTM. Julien has led the areas of BD, Partnerships, and Community growth for Boost, Optimism, Uber, and LinkedIn at the company level. An entrepreneur and founder from Paris now living in Silicon Valley, he is passionate about tech, startups, and partnerships.
An engineer by training and experienced as a technical founder, Julien enjoys prototyping new ideas and making breakthroughs like Totem Grid come alive.
Joao Fiadeiro
Product Advisor
Joao is a seasoned product and engineering leader with expertise in translating new technologies into practical applications. Joao has proven ability to build and lead scrappy teams to rally around a strong thesis and ship products in emerging technologies with leaders in AI (Google Research, Netflix) and Web3 (Protocol Labs, Jump Trading), while always remaining data-driven to the core.
Joao is passionate about live music and DJs as a hobby; he is motivated by the dream of one day using the Network himself.
The internet needs networks that prioritize privacy and transparency, which users can trust through openly verifiable systems and community ownership.
There is a massive, unsolved problem at live events with hundreds of millions of potential users and billions of dollars in potential revenue in festivals alone.
This problem is an ideal application for new breakthroughs in decentralized networks.
By solving the problem in this way, we will tangibly demonstrate the utility-value of web3 networks, transforming their global perception.
We can build a transparently operated social network that is privacy-preserving, censorship-resistant, and completely funded by utility revenues.
We are playing an infinitely positive sum game
We Believe:
Our Development Collective is structured as an internet-native-company fusing Holacracy’s self management operating system using firm.org as a foundational software to operate upon. While innovative, our structure is just a new combination of existing great ideas in a complimentary pattern that equips startups with a better way to build distributed teams. We are moving the needle on transparency and trust while improving our operational efficiency, collaboration, and decision-making systems.
By blending the best elements of Holacracies, DAOs, and startups, we’ve created a structure where the complementary components amplify one another in a system designed to evolve as we do. This design ensures that every team member is not only part of the process but an empowered owner in the decisions that matter most to them. It retains speed in local decisions, enhances group decisions with quadradic voting, provides automation & efficiency, improves company records, and sets a new standard for operational trust and transparency.
Delivering on our mission holds the potential for global impact. Decentralized communications resilient to censorship, surveillance, and interruptions will improve safety and privacy and ensure people remain connected, informed, and empowered. We are committed to accelerating the adoption of an internet where digital human rights and personal data sovereignty become daily standards.
Our Values:
1) Operate with Transparency and Trust 2) Deliver Excellent Service 3) Make Valuable Connections 4) Practice Decentralization 5) Balance Kaizen with Ikigai