I've spent twenty years being early to the technologies that became the future.
Founder, operator, product builder. Early to crypto, AI, and robotics. Top-10% national sales award at ADP, youngest and only woman on SAP's govt enterprise software team, and now cofounder and CEO of Arithmancy.
Lisa Cheng · Cofounder & CEO, Arithmancy
ABOUT
Who is Lisa Cheng?
Twenty years, three shifts, one job.
I've spent twenty years being early to technologies before they were investable. Crypto in 2013. AI in 2024. Robotics now. Each time I've played the same role: the person in the room where the decision actually gets made.
I learned to be that person the hard way. In 2001 I was building MySpace pages and teaching myself HTML. In 2007 I wrote the LSAT on a whim. In 2009 I went into software sales. I won a top-10% national sales award at ADP, then SAP recruited me as the youngest, and only, woman on the state and local govt enterprise software team. That's where I learned the thing that runs everything I build now: revenue happens in a room, with a person, who has to trust you.
I learned governance the hard way too. In my early twenties I cofounded a company called Vanbex. A 2019 civil action named me. No charges were ever laid, and it settled in 2022 with no finding of liability. I was young, and I made governance mistakes, and I own them. That lesson now runs Arithmancy: evidence over narrative, measured and audited from first principles.
The three shifts, on one line each:
Crypto 2013. I read the Bitcoin whitepaper, found a bounty on bitcointalk, completed it, and was hired by the first company to do an ICO.
AI 2024. I joined an AI company as a blockchain architect and subject-matter expert.
Robotics 2026. I own go-to-market, partnerships, and the demand test that decides what we sell.
Arithmancy measures the gap between a robot's simulation and its hardware.
Every robotics team trusts a simulation it has never audited. The simulator tells the policy exactly where every object is. The real robot has to act on whatever its sensors can reconstruct, and that's never perfect. So the policy clears in simulation and misses on the arm, weeks later, in front of a customer.
We built the instrument that measures where a simulation diverges from the hardware it claims to represent, and names the defect before it costs a robot. On its first run it caught two.
One was a collision-mask bug. A policy recorded 92 out of 100 successful grasps, then collapsed to zero the moment the simulator's actual settings were honored. The other was a divergence between engines. We replayed one episode's identical 4,250-step control stream through classic MuJoCo and MuJoCo-Warp, and the final object position came out 68.7 millimeters apart. Held in one. Never lifted in the other. The simulator never noticed. The robot would.
Lisa's experience
Let's Work Together
1
Current: Co-Founder and CEO of Arithmancy
We measure where a robot's simulation diverges from its hardware.
2
Enterprise software sales, ADP and SAP
Top-10% national sales award at ADP. Youngest and only woman on SAP's state and local govt enterprise software team. This is where I learned that revenue happens in a room, with a person, who has to trust you.
3
Blockchain architect and subject-matter expert, Surge (Catalyte)
An AI company. I came in as the domain expert.
4
Communications lead, Ethereum Foundation.
Homestead v1 release
5
Early blockchain founder
I founded Vanbex in 2013 and cofounded Loosh AI. For the full, documented story of Vanbex, read my Statement & FAQ.
6
Emerging tech operator since 2013
Early Bitcoin, the first ICO, MEV, WallStreetBets marketing and ops.
WRITINGS
Things I have read or I am currently reading
My Big Theory of Everything (TOE)
Thomas Campbell
Hard Problem and Free Will: an informational-theoretical approach
Giacomo Maura D'ariano and Fredreico Faggin
Journeys out of the Body
Robert Monroe
Recent Written Words
REACH OUT
Let’s Talk
