Employee Spotlight #14: Paul Karpenko, Founding Engineer At Pillar

Paul Karpenko is a founding engineer at Pillar — a platform that connects creators, brands, and fans — where he oversees user experience and frontend engineering. He was previously at Isobar, a global digital agency in Chicago, and LA startups Gridspace and Q&A Venice. He was born in Belarus and grew up in Boston. Karpenko received a BS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a minor in Cinema Studies. Since moving to Los Angeles, he's pursued his professional career building digital products and his passion for filmmaking.

Pillar Founding Engineer Paul Karpenko.

Frederick Daso: What was your journey to becoming the founding engineer at Pillar?

Paul Karpenko: When I moved to LA, I was still working for a big digital agency in Chicago called Isobar. I moved here because I fell in love with the SoCal climate and culture, and it was also great to work remotely (before it was cool). But I knew I couldn't stay at my Chicago job if I wanted to establish myself here.

I left my corporate agency job at Isobar in 2018 to pursue startups. Before joining Pillar, I spent time at Gridspace (a speech AI company) and Troy Carter's Q&A, where I built the first frontend for Venice, Troy's technology platform for music labels and artists. By the time I connected with Michael and Faisal at Pillar in 2021, I'd built up the experience to connect some of the corporate practices I learned at Isobar with the fast pace demands of a startup. Plus, my music industry experience helped me contextualize the creators' needs using Pillar.?

Daso: There's a lot of conventional career advice about being a successful founding engineer, but are there any unorthodox lessons that you've learned through experience or been taught through mentorship that more of your fellow engineers should know?

Karpenko: A lot of conventional advice is good: be ready to pivot, don't get precious about your work because everything may change, and practice self-care. I'd add that, on the emotional side, startups can be very stressful, so learning to manage your stress is a great skill to develop. Also, if you're highly logical, develop your empathy. If you're highly empathetic, develop your logic. You will need both more often than you think. And finally, nurture your network. None of us make it on our own, and your success will depend on the quality of your relationships.?

Daso: What's the toughest project (professionally or personally) that you worked on as a founding engineer or in general? What were the most important lessons you learned from that project?

Karpenko: I'll mention a creative project because it was a unique experience. I'm a filmmaker, and I made a 6-episode online show in 2014 called Re-Election about an election day stuck in a time loop. We shot a 12-minute pilot episode, then ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for another five episodes. It was very grueling and so much fun. I directed all the episodes myself and did at least part of every other job on that project — writing, producing, editing, casting, location scouting, etc.

There's a lot of overlap between putting together a digital product and a film project. To use a very nerdy analogy, a screenplay is just code that's compiled by a film production team. The best scripts are precise and provide clear instructions for every part of the production system: actors, set designers, musicians, the director, the cinematographer, and even the prop department. And just as compiled code generates an interactive experience for its users, a film comes together from its disparate parts to create an emotional experience for its viewers. It's pretty dope.

I've always loved cinema and filmmaking, so I'll take any chance to make stuff. It took an initial eighteen months to finish the six episodes, and I was able to run the show on Amazon Prime in 2018.

Daso: Who are some of the most inspirational people you've gotten to work with during your career in tech??

Karpenko: I worked with a great leader at Isobar named Dave Meeker, who was excellent at inspiring people through his drive and enthusiasm. We worked on a couple of projects to glean insights from smartphone data. Not surprisingly, he's now focusing on spatial computing and the Metaverse — working with the MIT Media Lab. Dave taught me how a strong vision could drive a team.

At Q&A, I had the honor of working on Venice with Troy Carter, a music mogul and now a tech mogul. He and Suzy Ryoo strive for the highest level of execution in everything they do, making working on Venicey exciting. Troy has an amazing motto: "thoughts become things," — which is simple but manages to connect the effort we put toward developing our internal world with the impact we have on the external world. It's a powerful idea, and it's very true: the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your work.

I've also had the pleasure of working extensively with Jessica Lam, an entrepreneur and software architect who has been a friend since college. She advised us at Pillar and contributed to our backend architecture. Jessica is a world-class systems thinker and one of the best coders I've ever worked with. I'm glad some of her DNA is in Pillar's systems.

Daso: How would you define your company's culture, and how does it create an environment where you can do your best work?

Karpenko: Pillar's culture is open, collaborative, and meritocratic. I read somewhere that if you're not over-communicating in a startup, you're probably under-communicating, and I agree. We do a good job keeping in sync even with a half-remote team. We record our meetings to maintain transparency and have a strong written culture. Like any startup, we move quickly, which can be stressful, but that makes what we do so exciting.

Pillar is also special because we have a very multicultural team. I was born in Belarus, and we have teammates representing the USA, Romania, Afghanistan, Finland, China, Hong Kong, India, South Africa, Argentina, and others. We love the multifaceted perspective we're able to take because of this. The creator economy is a cultural economy, so having a broad cultural perspective is deeply valuable.?

Daso: What are the most important skills you've had to develop in your job, and what specific projects or assignments did you work to develop each core skill?

Karpenko: The obvious technical skills like coding, debugging, and design are important, but those skills are always applied in the service of a human being — the user. Building user empathy is a critical skill to develop. We do this at Pillar through user interviews, observing sessions, and using Pillar ourselves as much as possible. It can be hard to hear users' frustrations with something you've built and not take it personally, so learning to take critique is valuable, too. It's the best way to grow.

Daso:?What's one interesting (non-work related) thing that more people should know about you?

Karpenko: In recent years, my filmmaking projects have branched into deepfakes and animated NFTs. As a multimedia artist, I've made a few satirical videos of deepfaked Trump and Zuckerberg (the latter came out better). I recently commissioned my first NFT, which you may see soon. I also run a Burning Man camp, so I'm always thinking about cool projects or installations to bring out to the desert. My favorite artist right now is Refik Anadol, who does enormous light projection installations of patterns created by artificial intelligence models. He calls them "Machine Hallucinations," and they're incredible. I would love to bring a (much smaller) version of that to Burning Man.

Daso:?What's something you want to accomplish in your career that you haven't yet? What motivates you to get there?

Karpenko: I love the idea of bridging tech and entertainment. The "creator economy" is an exciting space, but it's still early. We don't know the final form the Metaverse will take, but we can be sure it's going to get a little weird which I'm excited about. I hope we can bridge the gap between not just creators, brands, and fans — but tech and media as well. For instance, I would love for us to tell stories through Pillar!

Narrative is the most powerful way to convey meaning, and our mission at Pillar is to help creators communicate their passion in a meaningful way. It's not a coincidence that we started with streamers and gamers as our first users. Those groups of creators already live on the boundary between tech and media, and we love that.

Regardless of where the meta winds of change take us, there will always be creative people doing things they love for their fans, and there will always be brands looking for great creators. Pillar was founded not just to build a product but to create a community and a network. We're building the tools to make that a reality, so that's what I'm focused on right now. And once the metaverse truly arrives, Pillar will be ready.?