Our mission is to steward the most useful decentralized platform that empowers anyone to create digitally scarce things people love.

Naveen founded Sparkart, his digital agency, when he was 19. He got involved in the entertainment industry by cold calling Linkin Park prior to the release of their best-selling album Hybrid Theory. Naveen and the Sparkart team went on to run all online marketing efforts for Linkin Park from albums Hybrid Theory (2000) through Minutes to Midnight (2007), and then did the same for The Killers, Bon Jovi, Carrie Underwood, Slipknot, Tim McGraw, Lil Wayne, and dozens more. Angel investor with 30+ investments, Y Combinator alumnus (Winter 2014), deep experience in both ticketing (over $50 million tickets sold) and blockchain (early Monero miner).

Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni is a member of the Monero Core Team, the stewards of the Monero Project, and is also the lead maintainer of the Monero and Monero Core projects. Over the past year, 177 developers contributed new code to Monero, making it one of the largest open-source teams in the world, and a top 2 percent project on Open Hub. Monero is a top 15 cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $3.2 billion¹.

Cayle has several years' experience in the cryptocurrency space, having left Coinbase in 2018 shortly before joining the TariLabs team in South Africa. He brings this experience as well as ten years of process design and optimization expertise to bear on executing on the Tari vision. Cayle now lives in Portugal and is an independent contractor. He continues to contribute to Tari and was the originator of TariScript, which introduced Bitcoin-like scripting capabilities for the Mimblewimble protocol.

Karim is a product designer and has worked with a wide range of startups across many industries and top design agencies from around the world. Karim has a passion for analyzing complex and interesting problems and solving them in a process where beautiful aesthetics and functionality exist in harmony. He has lots of experience wearing many design hats throughout his career from UI,UX, IA, Interaction design and prototyping. Karim is an active learner and always working on improving efficiencies throughout his tools and process.

Mike has a BSc(Hons) in Computer Science. He has been involved in a number of start ups, loves programming and is always involved in creating something in his spare time.

Stan co-founded a software development agency and has 10 years of experience writing software for enterprise and startups from around the world. He has a passion for creating quality systems at scale. He is excited by blockchain, cryptography and related technologies. He joined Tari to contribute in this space. In his spare time he enjoys mountain biking, travel, gardening and playing tabletop games with friends.

Natasha is a goal driven, enthusiastic individual who thrives under pressure. She's sharp minded, always eager to experience new things and gain new skills. Tash comes from a QA background and has worked for some heavy hitters including eNCA and FNB.

Schalk has a PhD in computer engineering and worked on a diverse amount of projects before joining Tari. These include but not limited to communication, simulation, ETL and control systems. He has always had a passion for solving technical challenges and implementing them. He also has a great like for history and believe we can learn a lot from it. In his free time you can perhaps find him in front of his PC, not looking at code.

Hansie Odendaal studied engineering and worked in diverse industries before joining Tari, including space, defence, information technology and nuclear. Software development has always been close at heart and quality deliverables are a passion. He developed career strengths and interests in systems engineering, technical project management, nuclear software engineering, software engineering, modelling & simulation and technical documentation⁴. Continuous technical challenges make him feel alive. He is a fervent student and practitioner of the art of karate, the perfect de-stressing agent! Hansie enjoys spending time with his daughters, close family and friends. He can also relax doing nothing.

Jonathan grew up as a boarding school boy out in rural KwaZulu Natal and has spent the rest of his life moving closer and closer to the modern world. After Jonathan received his Bachelor of Laws from the University of Cape Town, he was employed at Norton Rose Fulbright in Johannesburg where he was retained in the Tax Department. While there, he began dabbling in the cryptocurrency space and began assisting clients from all over the globe expand their crypto-businesses into South Africa. Now, he’s a bit more selective as to who gets his advice.

Qualified in Public Relations and Finance, Kim started her career in the hotel industry. She is also working towards her CIS qualification. With a wealth of experience as a Recruitment Consultant, it goes without saying that she is a people person. Kim recently decided it was time to take on another challenge, as Office Manager and is currently rocking it as Executive Assistant to Riccardo Spagni, but when she isn’t organizing Fluffypony’s life she enjoys spending time outdoors and sports.

Anziska is Tari’s QA department. The whole department. She will not rest until every bug is found. Which means very little rest for the dev team, and that’s okay. She’s also rumoured to be a fantastic cook, but that’s all hearsay at this point.

Qualified as a Chartered Accountant in December 2009 after completing his articles at Deloitte. Post articles, he gained experience as a financial manager for a brief period, after which he joined Absa Capital and later Nedbank Corporate as a Credit Manager. He left the banking sector to follow his passion for business and up until joining Tari Labs, he has been working as a financial consultant, primarily focused on assisting start-ups financial management duties. Over his career, he has been exposed to a variety of industries such as construction, mining, manufacturing, steel and banking, and thus brings an array of skills to the team.

Keith has been involved in the startup life for the last 15 years, he has a passion for building new products in all walks of technology. He has launched and run products in the forex, finance, medical, insurance and tracking spaces. The journey into cryptocurrency is the natural path when you are chasing the technological dragon. In his free time he does martial arts or takes long leisurely motorbike rides out to the countryside.

Lee dabbles with Linux servers, CI/CD pipelines and TCP/IP router configurations. He is well-versed in the arcane art of bash scripting. Basically no-one else knows what the hell he is up to.

Shan likes to add pazzaz¹ to everything, often saying all she does for a living is “build cool things and make ‘em pretty”. After years of being in the digital agency world, she’s not sure how she landed up in office full of PhD holders, but she’s glad to be here at Tari. She also has two cats² she loves dearly.

Louis is a seasoned operator with deep experience providing strategic counsel to high-growth technology companies and ensuring clear visibility into current and future legal landscapes. Before working with Tari, Louis oversaw West Coast operations as General Manager of The Meet Group. Prior to that, he served as SVP Legal and Corporate Development at if(we), where he led the company’s successful acquisition by The Meet Group in 2017. Louis began his career as a corporate associate with Dewey Ballantine LLP working on M&A and securities offerings, and is a graduate of Wesleyan University (B.A.) and Columbia Law School (J.D.), where he served as an Editor of the Columbia Law Review.