An open letter from our CEO

Hey there, I’m Lisa (or more commonly known by my handle as Cookiedeck).

I wanted to write this as we’ve met people who are curious about the founding team’s capabilities, and that’s perfectly normal.

So I’m going to be really upfront and transparent here by stating that:

• Both JK (who functions as our CTO) and I do not hail from ivy league schools
• We have not worked at any major game publishers or FAANG company (or maybe MAANG would be a better acronym now that Facebook has become Meta?)

Does this scare you?

Or if you’re the sort who spends 6 seconds looking for such things on a resume, we probably aren’t the right fit and you’re better off investing in another project. No hard feelings.

But if you’re the sort who looks beyond the superficial — if you think that working at a Fortune 500 isn’t representative of one’s capabilities, or if you believe in what a scrappy underdog who has skin in the game can achieve, I’d like you to read on.

Not talking about a job application here, but the stakes have always been high (therefore skin in the game) for us

Both JK and I have spent close to a decade working in various start-ups. Bootstrapping was the norm because cashflow was always tight. Find the cheapest and fastest way to do things. Don’t know something? Learn it on your own — quickly.

There were always fires to put out. A client escalation, unreasonable delay of payments, a new resignation with no one trained to take over. I was from the digital services space, but I’ve functioned as:

• B2B Sales Consultant
• Client Account Manager / Strategist
• Recruiter
• People Operations Manager
• Business Operations Manager
• Legal Counsel
• Financial Controller
• Project Manager
• Community Manager
• Copywriter
• Graphic Designer

To be honest, I’ve reached a stage where I no longer know what to write on my resume. If you’ve worked in start-ups, this is something you’re probably familiar with.

Many of the companies I’ve worked with are either from “unsexy” industries or are not internationally recognised. But society has certain expectations, so here you go — these are just some of the more well-known companies I’ve worked with: Harley-Davidson, Herbalife Nutrition, Krispy Kreme, and Kohler.

Like me, JK has worked with multiple start-ups over the past decade, bootstrapping and wearing multiple hats. Coming from a theoretical science background, he became a 100% self-taught full-stack software engineer, and went on to lead and train other engineers. Some of the more well-known companies he has worked with include Superdry, Estée Lauder Companies, and British Council.

He also started getting involved in the world of modding, private servers, and secondary markets for in-game items many years back — creating custom maps for WarCraft 3, custom gears and levels for Diablo II, and hosting his own private Ragnarok server with custom mods.

I’ve known JK since our university days, and there’s no other CTO that I’d rather work with.

The start of our Web3 journey

JK and I became Web3 builders in July 2021. As a bootstrapped two-man team, we:

• Launched our first project (Timeleap Finance)
• Designed our unique Buyback-and-Make tokenomics, an innovation in the space when everyone was burning tokens (something that didn’t make sense to us)
• Built a self-sustaining vaulting system using Buyback-and-Make
• Designed and built a product (which we called Wormholes) to improve the efficiency of smart contracts for yield farmers

In October 2021, Timeleap Finance held about $1 million in TVL with barely any marketing.

On the side, JK and I always had another project that we’ve wanted to work on, which was to publish a co-written trilogy.

Working on Timeleap Finance, along with the rise of GameFi, led us to an opportunity to weave our narrative into a web3 game — and our journey with Timeleap Industries started in November 2021.

Since then, we’ve:

• Raised our initial funding — Huge appreciation for our early backers Ferrum Network and Synapse Network who believed in us
• Dealt with international law and incorporation
• Concretized partnerships and onboarded new gaming talent who are experts in their field
• Went through multiple iterations for our economic model (yeah, we’re serious about building a sustainable Web3 economy)
• Worked on the core game mechanics and game logic (all the “brain work” has been done in-house)

If you’re keen to read more about what we’ve been up to, head over to this Medium article.

To sum things up

The vision for Timeleap Industries is to make web3 games accessible, fun, and memorable for everyone — and I love it.

I’ve always been a fan of narrative-driven games and multiplayer RPGs (yes, I was one of those grinders who was so close to level 99 for multiple skills in the old school version of Runescape lol), and being able to push boundaries and solve issues plagued by GameFi — all while working with talented people? I’ve never been more excited about bringing a business to life than I am about this one.

I’m fully aware that building a game isn’t easy — and it shouldn’t be. Heck, if anyone said building a game was easy, I’ll be really skeptical about the quality of the end product.

But if no one ever did anything for the first time and we’re all waiting for someone who has “done it before”, mankind certainly wouldn’t have made as much progress as we did.

And we have made actual progress with Timeleap Industries.

We’ve learned (and are learning every day), bootstrapped, and found the right people to work with. I mean, check out some of the in-game snippets I just received from our devs. If this doesn’t look awesome I don’t know what does.

But you know what? Let me end off this piece before I get carried away (and I can talk about what we’re building for hours on end).

If you’re reading this article, you’re likely to be curious about the founding team’s background, and wondering if we’re the right people for you to invest in.

It’s quite simple, really. If you’re looking for founders who list numerous big shot brand names in their Twitter bio, we’re not the right fit for you. But if you’re looking for founders who:

• Know how to bootstrap while getting shit done (and have been doing so for the past decade),
• Have proven their passion for game building by making actual progress,
• Have the grit and know-how to tide through the crazy challenges of a start-up, and
• Truly have skin in the game and are committed enough to invest their personal funds,

then I think we’re a good fit for one another — and I’d love for you to join us on on this journey.

Lisa (Cookiedeck), Co-founder & CEO