Kirill Gertman was born in north-eastern Ukraine when it was still a part of the USSR. His family left after the fall of Communism and eventually settled in Canada. His dad got him interested in computers when he was working on mainframes with punch card programming. While programming didn't appeal to him, the design aspect of making web sites and making games was his first foray into the industry. After a stint in fin tech, he realized the opportunity crypto afforded came from the money aspect that's inherent in blockchains like Ethereum. Last year he co-founded Conduit, a decentralized finance platform that allows users to plug into higher yielding assets all in one place.