Welcoming Marc Andreessen and Gokul Rajaram to the Coinbase Boardroom

By Brian Armstrong, CEO and Co-Founder

As Coinbase continues on its path to growing the cryptoeconomy and creating an open financial system for the world, we’ll look to leaders and experts from a range of fields to help guide us. Of primary importance is our Board of Directors. We look to our Board members and Observers to draw from their areas of expertise to counsel us on everything from product development to world-class governance practices.

Today I’m excited to announce the addition of two new industry leaders to Coinbase’s Boardroom: Marc Andreessen, co-founder and operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the world’s leading venture capital firms joins as a Board Observer, and Gokul Rajaram, an executive at DoorDash, has joined as a Board Director at the designation of the DFJ Growth Fund and Series C shareholders. Both bring a wealth of experience that we’ll put to use to the benefit of the company, our customers and the broader community.

Marc Andreessen has a storied history in Silicon Valley and was an early believer in the potential of crypto. As far back as 2014, he penned a seminal op-ed in The New York Times that introduced many to Bitcoin for the first time. Recently, his “It’s Time to Build” blog, written in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, has become a rallying cry for engineers and innovators around the world. An innovator and creator, he is one of the few to pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people and one of even fewer to establish multiple billion-dollar companies. Marc co-created the highly influential Mosaic internet browser and co-founded Netscape. He also co-founded Loudcloud, which as Opsware, sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. He later served on the Board of Hewlett-Packard from 2008 to 2018. In 2009, with cofounder Ben Horowitz, Marc founded Andreessen Horowitz, one of the world’s premier venture capital firms.

Gokul Rajaram has served on the executive team at DoorDash since November 2019, after Doordash acquired Square’s food delivery business, Caviar. Prior to DoorDash, he worked as the Product Engineering Lead from July 2013 to October 2019 at Square, where he led several product development teams and served on Square’s executive team. Prior to Square, he served as Product Director of Ads from August 2010 to July 2013 at Facebook, where he helped Facebook transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business. Gokul has served as a Director of Pinterest (PINS) since February 2020, The Trade Desk (TTD) since May 2018 and Course Hero since June 2008.

With Marc and Gokul joining our Boardroom, two longtime Board contributors will be transitioning out. Chris Dixon has contributed to Board and Executive Leadership meetings in an Observer capacity for seven years. He was one of the earliest investors in crypto and in Coinbase, and his guidance has helped shape Coinbase into the company that it is today. We look forward to continuing to benefit from his insights on the cryptocurrency industry as it continues to grow.

Additionally, Barry Schuler will step off as the Series C Director, but we will still benefit from Barry’s continuing contributions as a Board Observer. Having seen the early days of the internet, Barry has been a great visionary in cryptocurrency, and for Coinbase. His operational experience running one of the largest early internet companies has been incredibly valuable as we’ve grown.

The company sincerely thanks both Chris and Barry for their past and continuing contributions to Coinbase and wishes them well as they share their knowledge and insight with the next generation of innovators, builders and technology pioneers. Both of them have been a major contributor to Coinbase’s success.

Welcoming Marc Andreessen and Gokul Rajaram to the Coinbase Boardroom was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.