Adam Goldberg's path into venture was unusual from the start: he studied math at UC Berkeley starting at 13, worked as a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as a mathematician for the Department of Defense, then moved through computer science and product management—including as the first product hire at Rubrik—before becoming the youngest-ever partner at Lightspeed and later co-founding Standard Crypto. That background shapes how he invests today: he judges founders by their rate of learning rather than their starting point, tests crypto ideas by asking whether they'd still make sense if you swapped blockchain for a regular database, and looks for projects with real communities and productive assets rather than pure collectibles.