Landing Ellipsis Labs' First General Counsel Ahead of Critical Product Launch
Overview
In the summer of 2025, Ellipsis Labs needed their first General Counsel. The company had grown from a Solana-native trading team into a multi-product platform spanning a decentralized spot exchange, a blockchain, a token launch platform, and a prop automated market maker (AMM). The team planned to launch a new perpetuals exchange that could bring new users, more volume, and increased regulatory complexity and scrutiny. The company was profitable, well-funded, and scaling fast, but as the product surface area expanded and the regulatory environment evolved, the absence of a dedicated legal leader was becoming a strategic bottleneck. The product launch date was a few months away, increasing the sense of urgency to get this done quickly while keeping the bar very high.
Ellipsis had raised a combined $41M in Series A and A+ rounds from Paradigm and Haun Ventures, with notable angels including the CEOs of Solana Labs, Polygon Labs, Monad Labs, EigenLayer, and Helius. Co-founders Eugene Chen (MIT, Jane Street) and Jarry Xiao (Citadel, Solana Labs) had assembled an elite team of engineers from Stripe, Airbnb, and Akuna Capital.
The team had been evaluating candidates for several months and gotten close to landing a candidate - but ultimately, the right General Counsel proved elusive.
“We needed a GC who could sit in the room with our CEO and shape strategy. After trying to find that person ourselves for a couple of months and failing, we brought in Bull Moose. From day 1, they operated like they were part of the team. They quickly understood the search, were extremely responsive, and delivered. To this day, I haven’t experienced this caliber of partnership from a search firm.” — Brian Bishop, Head of Talent, Ellipsis Labs
Bull Moose was brought in to run the search end-to-end. We embedded directly into the company's workflows (Email, Slack, Ashby, and weekly syncs), operating as an extension of the team.
Challenge:
This wasn't a standard legal hire. Ellipsis needed a hands-on operator who was in the trenches executing, but could also be a strategic advisor to the CEO — balancing a risk-forward approach to accelerating the business while simultaneously holding their own and pushing back when appropriate. The ideal candidate could shape product architecture for legal defensibility, play offense and defense on regulation (SEC, CFTC, and emerging frameworks), and help position the business to scale aggressively through an evolving landscape. All of this would require a granular understanding of both traditional finance and DeFi, and how the tech, products, and legal frameworks interweave.
The ideal candidate needed deep legal expertise across corporate, regulatory, contract, and employment law, plus genuine comfort operating at a high-growth crypto startup where the legal function doesn't yet exist. The team has a strong, NYC-based in-person culture, and the GC would need to embrace that culture and champion it. They would also need to be a strong, succinct communicator who could hold their own with a technical, fast-moving founding team.
The candidate pool for this profile is small. The intersection of senior legal talent, crypto fluency, and startup operator mentality narrows it further. Most candidates who check all three boxes are well-compensated and not actively looking.
Approach:
We kicked off with a 90-minute in-person session with Eugene (CEO) and Brian (Head of Talent) on July 21st. Within three days, we had our first calibration batch in front of the team and were pressure-testing our sourcing thesis. Five of the first eight candidates passed from Brian's screen to Eugene's, which told us our targeting was sharp from the jump.
We ran a multi-channel sourcing strategy: aggressive cold outreach to over 200 candidates with tailored, multi-touch email sequences, combined with a parallel networking campaign across crypto lawyers, in-house counsel, and VC legal teams. The networking motion wasn't just about generating names, it was about building depth and conviction. When multiple people in the ecosystem independently point you toward the same person, that's the strongest signal a recruiter can get.
That's exactly what happened: the ultimately hired candidate, Hector Velez, was independently recommended by four separate people in our network during the search. On paper, Hector looked strong: a track-record in TradFi with Barclays, HSBC, and Wells Fargo before transitioning to crypto with Coinbase and Flowcarbon. He was based in NYC, preferred in-person cultures, and demonstrated a relentless work ethic. As an added bonus, he was a derivatives wonk; he loved markets and trading, especially exotic assets, and was incredibly passionate about them and excited at the prospect of building a perpetuals exchange. Hector had previously worked on Coinbase’s early perps product and saw the potential for a greenfield product built in Solana rails. He was a missionary that had found his next mission.
From first recruiter screen to signed offer, the process moved through a structured interview loop: Brian's screen, a CEO interview with Eugene, a screen with the VC lawyers, and an in-person final round. We maintained close coordination with Brian throughout: daily texts, rapid iteration on candidate profile and packaging, interview prep, and feedback loops. We kept Hector engaged through frequent, short check-ins (10–15 minutes) that maintained momentum without being overbearing.
When it came time to close, we helped Ellipsis Labs understand what it would take to close the deal, providing market intel and recommendations, which helped both sides come to agreement on terms within a day.
Throughout the search, we maintained strong backup candidates as insurance, giving both us and the client confidence to negotiate from a position of strength.
Results:
72 calendar days from kickoff to signed offer.
For context, the average time-to-fill for a General Counsel search at a venture-backed startup runs 90–120+ days. We closed this in 72.
Impact
In under 11 weeks, we helped Ellipsis Labs secure their founding General Counsel - a hire that will shape how the company navigates regulation, structures products, and scales its business through the next chapter of on-chain finance.
This engagement exemplifies our strength in:
Calibration speed — aligned on profile within days, not weeks, with a high pass-through rate from the first batch.
Network-driven conviction — the hired candidate surfaced through four independent referrals, giving us signal that's impossible to get from a job board.
Founder-speed execution — embedded access, daily coordination with the Head of Talent, and structured interview support compressed the timeline without cutting corners.
Offer Advising — provided guidance and recommendations for a founder-led offer process, yielding an agreement to terms within one day. Maintained a pipeline of strong backup candidates, enabling the client to close from a position of strength.
”We needed a GC who understood the regs, could operate in a startup environment, and could be a sounding board for us as founders. Bull Moose took the time to understand what we were looking for and brought us Hector. He's a great fit." — Eugene Chen, CEO, Ellipsis Labs
”From the first conversation, I could tell this was a different kind of job opportunity. Everyone involved in the search was in full sync. Bull Moose, Brian, Eugene, the VCs — everyone was on the same page, everyone was aligned and focused, and we could all see the massive opportunity and where this role fit in to that vision. It’s hand and glove; the right fit at the right time. That alignment, the level of technical talent, the market opportunity, the culture and vibe, and the great recruiting process made this an easy opportunity to jump at." — Hector Velez, General Counsel, Ellipsis Labs
