Bio

Link Daniel is a German-American artist, scientist and architect. He is the founder and early-stage investor of Network. Link graduated from the London School of Economics and is an alumni of Harvard University. In New York, he advised some of the world’s leading funds and was named a Young Scholar at the Institute for New Economic Thinking created by George Soros. At the Harvard Kennedy School, he co-founded a non-profit at the intersection of governance & technology and he also briefly worked at the United Nations. After graduate school, he joined the Thiel network and accelerated the growth of early-stage technology startups in California. At Stanford, he pursued independent research on cryptography, neuroscience and longevity. Link is a self-taught programmer and has degrees in financial history, political philosophy and economics.

Extended biography

I grew up playing all sorts of games, but virtual games had a lasting impact unlike any other. I played Magic the Gathering tournaments for many years and ended up trading my stack to finance my venture to America. I played strategy games on a regular basis in school in a tournament setting with other nerds. World of Warcraft was the final game that overtook my life at a time when I was outcast in my last two years of German schooling. I co-founded a virtual guild that turned into one of the most successful teams on German servers. I completed my Abitur, the highest qualification granted by university-preparatory schools in Germany, which helped me to earn a full scholarship for college. Before embarking to America, I was forced to complete a mandatory year-long alternative military service that I completed working at a refugee camp and local city hall. Eager to create, I taught myself computer programming and tormented by depressive mental loops, I learned about neuroscience. To complement my own learning, I studied for two Bachelor degrees simultaneously, a Bachelor of Arts in Political Philosophy & Economics from Saint Francis College in New York and a Bachelor of Science in Governance & Financial History from the London School of Economics & Political Science. I wrote my thesis on George Soros's framework of reflexivity in financial markets.

In between German school and American college, I became obsessed with financial markets. I deployed my own capital trading and investing into various different asset classes around the world. Ultimately, it allowed me to finance my American journey where I did not have a permanent right to work as an immigrant for almost ten years. During my freshmen year, I worked at a German investment firm as an investment associate and later interned at a day trading firm on Wall Street. While I studied in London, I worked for a foreign exchange broker and began doing research for my professor, who specialized in financial history. My career on Wall Street culminated with my role as an operative helping to launch a global macro boutique startup that provided geopolitical problem solving to a select multi-billion dollar group of clients such as Soros and Thiel. Through that role I also met Elon Musk in 2013, although never directly working for one of his startups and only doing little pro bono research for Tesla, he became one of my strongest influences in how I would shape my life.

Inspired by my childhood dream to star in Hollywood, I took acting classes on the side while living in New York and London and turned acting into a practical skill. As I was equally obsessed about movies as about markets, I continued to use film as a means to imagine the impossible and solve the many mazes that one has to solve as an immigrant to the United States.

I was named a Young Scholar by the Institute for New Economic Thinking created by George Soros upon completion of my undergraduate years and had a short stint at Columbia Business School. I entered a post-doc program at Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts & Sciences that I completed in less than two years. In my fellowship I offered a historical understanding of turning points in internet, society & markets, the dynamics of change and I tracked institutional changes in emerging African economies. I was in discussion to join Stanford University in some capacity, but due to my work on startups, I decided to continue independent research at Stanford while pursuing my dream of building a startup.

During my university days, I had started the Think Tank Society at LSE that fostered dialog amongst different stakeholders. While living in New York, I worked for the United Nations' Office for South-South Cooperation as a research consultant on a project for a short while researching trade and investment flows in that region. During graduate school, I helped to co-found The Future Society, a non-profit at the intersection of technology and governance at the Harvard Kennedy School, which is now advising the World Economic Forum.

A few months before completing graduate school, a principal from Thiel Capital invited me to join the Thiel network, not as a fellow, but as an entrepreneur to connect with other founders. I packed my bag without a job and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. My first gig was a short stint at ProtonMail, but I was too eager to launch a startup to stay long. In the ensuing years, I tinkered and experimented with many startup ideas and helped a YC startup as a product manager. I advised venture capital firms and build different communities. I also launched a podcast and authored a book.

In 2016, one of my best friends whom I met at a spiritual conference convinced me to explore crypto-economics deeper. I had learned about bitcoin through my professor in 2013. My friend had been an early leader in the space and started an investment firm that was spearheading open financial protocols. I became obsessed with how the technology could change the world and started a fund to invest into nascent projects. I had networked with many leaders of upcoming projects and built a community to connect different people in the industry. I also worked on different prototypes for a platform that would connect projects to different types of capital.

Inspired by my time as a virtual gamer and having built communities in the crypto space, I chose to become Link. When I also learned that a Chinese project stole my identity and raised capital in Singapore, it reinforced my decision to make Link part of my legal identity. Link also saved my life as it helped me to redefine my identity and begin a new life when I battled through the final days of my depression. The United States has legally recognized Link as part of my name. I began doing research on neuroscience and longevity. As I was preparing to leave America and Germany, it became more evident that I had to solve the infinite mental loops that I had been running since I left Germany. I focused on solving my depression and explored psychedelics as an avenue to explore the nature of the mind. I heavily practiced meditation as a more sustainable route to return to these alternative states of mind. I used the remaining of my funds to do independent research into the emerging field of brain computer interfaces. I learned that Elon Musk had started a brain computer startup called Neuralink. For the next two years, I spent time in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area exploring projects in neurosciences, and networked with people in the industry. As a result of my long journey into neurosciences and my specific focus on brain computer interfaces, I developed an obsession about dreams. I remembered how I used to lucid dream as a kid and re-learned how to lucid dream more regularly. I learned everything about the history and sciences of dreaming. Determined to liberate myself, I set out to explore the nature of the mind through dreams.