Zachary Bond

Vision, Concept and Budget:

• Ideated and defined the startup's core concept, vision, focusing on turning trash into a currency
• Conducted market research to identify opportunities, target customers, and competitive landscape
• Set a budget of $30,000 (personal funds) to get this idea's product to market and generating some revenue

Early Sketches and Wireframes:

• Created initial sketches, low-fidelity wireframes in Figma to ideate on the initial MVP features
• Conducted user testing to gather feedback, iterating on the first designs

User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) Design:

• Designed higher fidelity prototypes, tested with users, and refined the designs for the MVP
• Launched the MVP to a test audience, gathering insights for further refinement

Team Leadership and Collaboration:

• Interviewed, hired and managed a passionate team of senior engineers
• Encouraged us having fun meetings with clear goals. Had discussions about all details that would drive product development and success

Data Management Designs

• Lead the designing and development of our backend "Admin Dashboard". Constructed this in a way to ensure we could efficiently manage, update and store data

Marketing and Customer Engagement:

• Crafted compelling content and visuals that connected with people through humor and the brand's mission
• Connected with customers and partners to gather product/marketing feedback at all stages, driving continuous improvement user engagement metrics

Metrics and Impact:

• In 60 days, users of our app have removed roughly 4,850 pieces of litter from the environment
• On average, users save $4 at checkout using our app. At 202 total redemptions thus far, we've saved our user base $808*.
• To date, I've personally put $32,200 into getting the product to where it is right now.

Data Handling and Analysis:

• Collected, cleaned, and preprocessed exchange price data, segregating into training/validation/testing sets
• Conducted exploratory data analysis (EDA), identifying patterns and engineering features for trading signals

Model Development and Optimization:

• Experimented with algorithms such as LightGBM, Random Forest, and Neural Networks; optimized hyperparameters and implemented cross-validation
• Developed a backtesting framework and tested various trading strategies, ensuring robustness against overfitting

Live Trading Implementation:

• Integrated predictive models into a live trading bot (Kraken's REST API), handling real-time data ingestion, trade execution, and portfolio management
• Added comprehensive error handling, logging, and monitoring for stable operation

Risk Management and Compliance:

• Designed risk management rules and ensured adherence to exchange regulations

Performance Monitoring and Adaptation:

• Continuously assessed bot's performance, tuning parameters, and updating the model to adapt to market changes
• Thoroughly documented the development process, maintaining detailed records of model iterations and changes

Achievements and Impact:

• Successfully launched a trading bot achieving 60% directional accuracy and positive ROI
• Acquired hands-on learning experience, leading to aspirations for scaling to larger volumes and more assets.