Tongtong Gong
Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Amberdata
Tongtong Gong is the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Amberdata, the company delivering digital assets data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets and decentralised finance (DeFi) – empowering financial institutions with data for trading, risk, analytics, compliance, reporting and research.
As a startup founder, Tongtong’s responsibilities frequently shift from one thing to another. “You have to be agile enough to gravitate to whatever needs your help the most, jump in and solve the problems you need to solve,” she says.
An engineer by trade with a degree in computer science, Tongtong started her career as a software developer focused on building data products.
“I spent over 15 years building data integration, data analytics and data products, and learned a tremendous amount about understanding related data. Often, one plus one is greater than two – so I learned the importance of deriving insightful information from data.”
Fast-forward to 2016 and 2017, and Tongtong’s interest in crypto assets, blockchain technology and smart contracts spiked. “I was finding myself looking for resources to soak up as much information as possible about this new technology and emerging industry,” she adds.
“When researching, what I found was a lack of interesting data analytics to help me understand beyond the white papers I was reading. You can read a white paper, but what’s really happening? There wasn’t much in the way of data insights available.”
This was the genesis for Tongtong to establish Amberdata, alongside fellow Co-founder Shawn Douglass.
“We felt there was a significant gap in the market to provide the much-needed tools and resources for people to understand what is happening with smart contracts and token economics,” says Tongtong. “We wanted to provide the insight for what is driving these transactions – that’s how Amberdata was started.”
Amberdata COO: The perfect role
Although Tongtong’s responsibilities shift with the immediate needs of the day, she admits she loves what she does.
“I subscribe to the phrase ‘Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life’, because my role at Amberdata really feels that way.
“I’m still learning to this day,” she adds, “whether it's about various protocols or new data insights. I love providing insightful data to our customers and that's where my comfort zone is. That's what I love to do.”
Becoming COO of Amberdata also provided Tongtong with the next step professionally, having hit a ceiling in her previous role as a VP engineer. “I didn’t know where to go from my last position,” she says.
“How do you come across the chasm from running an engineering team focused on data and backend processing, to understanding more about the product side of business, sales and operations?
Co-founding Amberdata proved the perfect next step for Tongtong, though. “Being a startup co-founder, there are so many jobs for you to do, and that gives you a great opportunity to expand your skill set and learn new things. For me, that’s the best part of the role.”
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