Why we built Icebreaker

Why we built Icebreaker

Why we built Icebreaker

Why we built Icebreaker

Icebreaker is the world’s first open professional network where you meet exceptional people.  

Unlike alternatives, Icebreaker is built to enable professionals to seamlessly traverse their entire trusted network, wherever those people are, instead of being limited to just a single platform.

On existing networking platforms, users are the product. Attention, content, and access to our own data are optimized and monetized by third parties.  With Icebreaker, identity and data are user-controlled and composable. Any professional can create a hypernetwork out of their existing networks to see their entire extended network and how best to reach them. The goal is to offer a supertool that elevates the signal from the noise.

What does open mean?

What does open mean?

What does open mean?

What does open mean?

At Icebreaker, we believe a better internet is possible and are committed to building it.

Our digital lives, identities, and networks do not belong solely in a handful of closed systems that don't integrate with each other. In the future internet, companies will differentiate by providing a product that people want, not by locking people into their platforms.

That’s why Icebreaker is dedicated to building an open platform, where anyone can bring their existing data with them when they use Icebreaker, and take their data with them if they leave.

Openness manifests in a variety of ways, with permissionlessness at the core. Developers don't need an API key to interact with the data that people have chosen to make public on their Icebreaker profiles. Anyone should be able to build on Icebreaker's identity platform, even if they are direct competitors.

If you are a professional interested in owning your own network, we invite you to join us.

If you are a hiring manager or recruiter looking to supercharge your warm intro capabilities, check out Teams.

If you are a developer, explore our Developer Hub, or reach out with questions.

Founding team

Founding team

Founding team

Dan Stone

Dan Stone

Dan Stone

Dan Stone

Co-Founder, Product

Dan has spent his career across startups and big companies building data products from 0 to 1 to $10B ARR at the intersection of analytics, AI/ML, and privacy.  As Group Product Manager at Google Analytics, he built Google’s most sophisticated personalized marketing and cross-identity measurement products. Prior to co-founding Icebreaker, he served as Group Product Manager for Consumer Trading at Coinbase.  He holds a BS in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Jack Dillé

Jack Dillé

Jack Dillé

Jack Dillé

Co-Founder, Design

Prior to working in crypto, Jack spent the majority of his career at Google as a UX designer and manager, where he shaped digital experiences for billions of users across Google Shopping, YouTube, and Google Meet, earning four design patents during his seven year tenure.  In 2021, he co-founded NFT fractionalization startup SZNS, funded by Dragonfly Capital and Framework Ventures. He holds a BA in Humanities with an emphasis in Tech, Arts, & Media from University of Colorado Boulder.

Neil Hickey

Neil Hickey

Neil Hickey

Neil Hickey

Engineering

Neil joins Icebreaker from Nasdaq Verafin where he led cloud architecture. Previously, he held engineering and leadership roles at American Express, AWS, MakerBot, and Perch Digital building everything from hardware-software integrations to highly regulated distributed systems with extreme performance requirements. Beyond startups and financial infrastructure, Neil has a passion for experiential technology, having executed projection-based installations for artists like Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and Jamie XX, plus organizations including FIFA, Exploratorium, and the United Nations. With nearly 30 years at the intersection of cutting-edge tech and real-world problems, he's now excited to build a world-class engineering organization as CTO while architecting the trust infrastructure for the web.

Eli Perelman

Eli Perelman

Eli Perelman

Eli Perelman

Engineering

Eli joins Icebreaker with over 20 years of engineering experience, specializing in creating production-ready applications and enhancing teams through UI/UX architecture, tooling, and developer experience. Prior to joining Icebreaker, he worked at Coinbase, Mozilla, and other technology companies, where he managed key frontend initiatives for multiple web and mobile applications, leading teams from technical design through implementation. Eli specializes in frontend engineering and is a recognized open source contributor with over 200 million downloads. Eli holds a BS in Information Technology from Western Governors University.

Alan Snyder

Alan Snyder

Alan Snyder

Alan Snyder

Engineering

Alan joins Icebreaker with over 30 years of engineering experience, specializing in backend architecture and data infrastructure for large enterprises. Alan built and scaled several products at Dell EMC and Bloomberg, working on large-scale database tuning, encryption services, and data integrations.  Prior to joining Icebreaker, he was a Senior Engineer at Coinbase, where he helped build Coinbase's NFT Marketplace and USDC products.  He recently joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to advance the use of Linked Open Data on the internet. Alan holds a BS in Computer Science from Marist College.