The team I want to have dinner with

A few weeks before I joined Natural, I read an interesting article on X. The main idea: LLMs are dismantling the moats that made vertical software historically defensible, but not all of them.

The moats collapsing are the ones you might expect: learned interfaces, custom workflows, the “we made public data searchable” layer. The moats that hold are the durable ones: proprietary data that can’t be scraped, regulatory lock-in (HIPAA doesn’t care about LLMs), and transaction embedding.

I started thinking about what companies will be around in 5 years, 10 years, 50 years. Some rely on high-quality, real-world interaction, like Superpower (the health company I worked at previously). Others lean on unbeatable distribution, like Amazon. And others build the infrastructure that makes it simpler for everyone else to build.

Natural is building payment rails for agents. Not an interface on top of existing infrastructure. Not a point solution for a singular problem in the stack. The entire set of rails themselves.

But that’s not why I joined.

Ivella

I've known two of Natural's co-founders, Kahlil and Eric, for most of my life. We met in elementary school. Eric and I grew up down the street from each other. So when they proposed I join them again to work on agentic payments, I had to listen. I say “again” because we’ve done this before.

Years ago, I joined Ivella as the founding engineer. When I think back on that time now, a few years removed, the memories I have are unrelated to code. I remember the team dinners, not just with Kahlil and Eric, but with our other teammates too—people I genuinely loved spending time with. The long nights in the office that didn’t feel so long because we loved the work. The collective rush when we hit 100 transactions/day for the first time. The day-to-day life that was exciting and intense.

Ivella didn’t turn into a massive company. I wish it had. But I learned that building something from nothing with people you trust is genuinely one of the most enjoyable and satisfying experiences.

What I'm after

Before joining, I spent weeks thinking about what I was really optimizing for. I thought a lot about what, years from now, I’d be happiest that I prioritized in my 20s and 30s. Legacy? Not really. Money? A plus, but not everything. Growth? Important, but not the top priority.

When I dug to the root, the answer was simpler than any of those things. I wanted to come home at the end of the day and feel what I felt at Ivella - like the work was fun. Not fun in spite of it being hard, but fun because it was hard. I worked alongside people I trusted and genuinely enjoyed being around. We had the type of fun that sits somewhere in between type 1 and type 2 fun. The type of fun that involves a lot of stress and intensity, but is simultaneously enjoyable. Type 1.5 fun.

The other half of the equation for me was competition. I recall the first time I felt deeply competitive. I was a long distance runner on a competitive high school team and wanted to win more than anything. Since then, I’ve sought out the feeling of intense competition in different parts of my life and career. Fitness is still one place I find it; it’s an environment where it’s me today versus me yesterday.

I genuinely cannot do my best work if I don’t feel like I’m pushing myself physically. Those aren’t separate tracks. When I talked with Kahlil and Eric about Natural’s culture, I learned that performance (intensity and competitiveness) aren’t nice-to-haves—they’re requirements. In that sense, it’s a performance culture in the truest sense: the fun and competition exist in unison.

At an early stage company, each person has an outsized impact on whether it succeeds or fails. I wanted that pressure. And I wanted to wear a lot of hats, the way I did at Ivella. Writing code, thinking about product, talking to customers, and debating go-to-market. You learn an enormous amount just by being close to the work.

The team

Natural’s other co-founder, Walt, and I had dinner early in the process. I was struck by Walt’s range. In one conversation, he moved smoothly between product strategy, go-to-market, technical architecture, and compliance as connected pieces of one puzzle. We had a great conversation about a tension I found really interesting: money movement demands precision and deliberateness, but building product in the world of AI demands speed and iteration. How do you do both well?

After dinner with Walt, I joined the team for their first ever offsite to see it for myself. By the first night, I knew it was a fit. We all had dinner together, and it clicked. I found the balance between fun and intensity that I was looking for.

Most importantly, though, there was one quality I needed to feel from every person there…that each of them desperately wanted Natural to win. Not in a polite, professional way, but in a maniacal, obsessive way. It was clear by dinner on that first night that no one was just along for the ride.

Why I joined

I could rationalize this decision a dozen ways. The market is massive. The infrastructure thesis is airtight. The timing is right. The talent density is high.

All of that is true. But when I strip it all away, the reason is simpler.

I joined Natural to be on a team that wants to win, and that I genuinely enjoy eating dinner with.

If that resonates, join us at /careers.