# David Gabeau

> Founder and CEO of Tapestry. Previously engineer at Snap and Lyft, analyst at Union Square Ventures. Based in New York.

## About

David Gabeau is a founder and software engineer in New York. He dropped out of NYU, learned to code, and worked as a quality engineer at Snap and Lyft before each went public. He then joined Union Square Ventures as an analyst, focused on early-stage crypto, climate, and education companies. He founded Tapestry, a permissionless social graph protocol on Solana, and is now looking for a role at the frontier of AI.

## Projects

- [Tapestry](https://usetapestry.dev): A permissionless social graph protocol for onchain applications. Backed by Union Square Ventures, Redpoint, Slow Ventures, Fabric Ventures, Stellation, and Harlem Capital. Tapestry lets any application read and write to a shared social graph on Solana without permission from a platform.
- [Zumi](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zumi-chat-dress-up/id6751237911): An AI companion app built on Tapestry with 160,000+ users. Focused on persistent AI companionship and long-term relationships.
- [Primitives](https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/25/primitives-crypto-wallet-social-network-snapchat-startup/): A platform for collecting digital art and building community around on-chain objects. 500,000+ NFTs minted.
- [SSE](https://sse.gg): A trading platform for Solana memecoins and emerging tokens. $50M in volume.
- [AI Atlas NYC](https://aiatlas.nyc): A nightly-rebuilt market map of New York's early-stage AI ecosystem. An agent scrapes funding announcements, LinkedIn signals, and founder activity, re-clusters the map, and publishes a new version each morning. Data is served via a public REST API.

## Writing

- [Introducing Zumi 2.0](https://blog.usetapestry.dev/p/introducing-zumi-20) (2025)
- [Tapestry's Plan to Scale Solana Social](https://blog.usetapestry.dev) (2024)
- [Your Social Graph Should Be Yours](https://blog.usetapestry.dev) (2024)
- [Tokenized Natural Assets](https://www.usv.com/writing/2021/04/tokenized-natural-assets/) — Union Square Ventures (2021)
- [Augmented Reality NFTs](https://www.usv.com/writing/2020/06/augmented-reality-nfts/) — Union Square Ventures (2020)
- [Synchronous Entertainment](https://www.usv.com/writing/2020/03/sychronous-entertainment/) — Union Square Ventures (2020)

## Talks

- [Your Social Graph Should Be Yours](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFefW3mSNs0) — Solana Accelerate, 2025
- [Open Protocols vs. Platforms](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrsgGZ0hNAotICPG3UXfN_5RD2mwv_CUS) — FarCon NYC, 2025
- [Tapestry and Social Primitives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQNFChe5hCM&t=91s) — Solana Boston, 2024
- [Making Sense of SocialFi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ssv49TzYXg) — Touch Grass Podcast, 2025

## Links

- Website: https://davidgabeau.com
- Newsletter: https://blog.usetapestry.dev (14,000+ subscribers)
- X / Twitter: https://x.com/dgabeau
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgabeau/
- GitHub: https://github.com/dgabeau