About the HackerNoon Podcast and Planet Internet

Utsav Jaiswal graduated from India's top dental college and decided to become a writer instead - much to the disappointment of his very Indian parents. Soon, he was writing about bitcoin for bitcoin. He also helped a few businesses build robust decentralized technical architectures. At Hacker Noon, Utsav serves as the VP of Business Development and Blockchain Editor. Now, he obsesses over sales pitches, nerds over email copies, and fixates over furthering decentralization.

Amy Tom is an Editor and the Podcast Host at Hacker Noon. She studied digital marketing, and she later worked in IT Security, Business, Copywriting, and more. When she isn’t editing or writing, you’ll probably find her obsessing about a new podcast, in the middle of a 2-hour power walk, or in a travel/scuba diving-based daydream. She will talk techie to you all day about data, security, device lifecycle, and all the business considerations that come along with it.

Hang is the Business Analyst at Hacker Noon, where she works on general operational, administrative, and financial activities. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Financial Mathematics and Business Management (with a minor in Spanish). In her free time, she reads, watches videos on Youtube and saves memes from the Internet.

Limarc Ambalina is the VP of Growth at Hacker Noon, interested in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and video games. He began his career as a clickbait writer for various Valnet publications but quickly transitioned into video game journalism. After moving to Tokyo in 2016, he became a prominent writer in the Japanese anime and pop culture beats. As a tech writer, he interviews developers in the machine learning and virtual reality industries and helps promote interesting studies and innovative technologies.

Linh Dao Smooke makes sure the light is on at Hacker Noon. Since she joined full-time in 2017, Hacker Noon’s traffic, revenue and team quality accelerated and grew many folds. Previously, she was head of Asia Marketing at Minerva Project ($100M in funding). Linh also founded the first creativity camp in Vietnam, CKP, which continues to empower Viet students 9 years in. Her experience in education has been instrumental in how Hacker Noon onboards, nurtures, and serves its community of writers and sponsors.

Natasha Nel is Hacker Noon's Managing Editor. She graduated from the University of Cape Town in 2012 with a postgrad degree in journalism and political sciences, and her subsequent work experience in both reporting and content marketing strategy have earned her the incomparable honor of being Hacker Noon's go-to "words person". Natasha's startup resume spans the media and publication; online education; wellness; cannabis; and blockchain industries.

Richard Kubina is a full-stack developer at Hacker Noon. He comes from a background of manufacturing where he orchestrated various pieces of hardware to build things on assembly lines while collecting data to make charts and graphs with. He likes databases, voxels, pixels, and sounds a lot. CSS not so much.

David Smooke is the leader of Hacker Noon. He grew the company from startup marketing agency (ArtMap Inc) into a publishing and software company (Hacker Noon). He begins his every morning by reviewing the best Hacker Noon story submissions from all around the internet.

Guy is a 17-year-old software engineer and student from Scotland and South Africa, heading to the University of Edinburgh to pursue a degree in Computer Science! When he's not being a nerd and staring at code all day, he enjoys reading, drinking, and building stuff, he documents his journey through all of this on https://torbet.co and https://twitter.com/guytorbet

Kien Dao has worked for Hacker Noon since June 2018 as a Community Manager and Special Projects Intern and was promoted to Brand Executive as of September 2018. He is in charge of designing branding logos, promoting images for various projects and campaigns and communicating with the Hacker Noon community. Kien has a website https://kientdao.wixsite.com/kiendao where he shows his love for graphic design, videography, and photography.