Coinbase Hires New VP of Business to Fill Emilie Choi’s Shoes

Coinbase just announced they’re hiring Dan Yoo as VP of business and data, replacing the crypto exchange’s COO Emilie Choi, who was promoted to the role back in May following the departure of the president and chief operating officer, Asiff Hirji.

In his new role, Yoo’s top priorities include improving customer support and helping Coinbase, which also runs an institutional platform, scale up.

Yoo most recently served as a member board of directors at Care.com, the largest babysitting platform in the US. He also spent three years as Chief Operating Officer at personal finance startup NerdWallet. Prior to NerdWallet, Dan was Vice President of Business Operations and Analytics at LinkedIn from 2009 to 2014.

Yoo also co-founded ReliaQuote, one of the first online term insurance brokerages, which was acquired by Fiserv. He began his career in investment banking in Merrill Lynch's Technology Investment Banking Group and later at Epoch Partners.

Yoo will fill Choi’s shoes

Yoo was bullish about the appointment, telling Coindesk that at Linkedin, he was on a similar team and helped be the connective tissue for the organization. “With the hypergrowth at Coinbase, I hope to use my experience of scaling teams and getting them to work effectively together,” he said.

Yoo had worked with Choi at LinkedIn when she was the ‎mergers and acquisitions boss at the professional network.‎ In May, Choi was elevated from the company’s vice president of business, data and international operations to take over as chief operating officer.

Hirji’s exit followed the recent departure from Coinbase of Timothy Plakas, who was running Coinbase’s OTC trading desk. Adam White, the fifth employee of Coinbase, joining the firm in 2013, also departed in October and instead landed at ICE-backed cryptocurrency exchange, Bakkt.

Coinbase’s policy officer, Michael Lempres, also resigned in October from his newly-created role and parted ways with the company after two years.

The newly-appointed COO was hired in March 2018 as the new president of Corporate and Business Development to spearhead Coinbase’s acquisition initiatives. Choi joined the crypto Unicorn after working for more than eight years at LinkedIn, where she also served as LinkedIn’s Vice President of Corporate Development.

In his new role, Yoo’s top priorities include improving customer support and helping Coinbase, which also runs an institutional platform, scale up.