Why Being a Devin Finzer Kleiner Perkins Fellow Actually Mattered
Honestly, if you look at the resume of the guy who built the world's biggest NFT marketplace, it looks like a curated list of Silicon Valley "greatest hits." Google. Pinterest. Y Combinator. But there is one specific line that people often skim over: Devin Finzer Kleiner Perkins Fellow.
Back in 2012, before NFTs were even a glimmer in a developer's eye, Devin Finzer was part of the inaugural class of a fellowship that basically became a secret factory for future tech giants. It wasn't just a summer internship. It was an entry into a very specific kind of elite ecosystem.
Most people know Devin for OpenSea. They know the multi-billion dollar valuations and the headlines about the "NFT winter." But if you want to understand how he actually built that machine, you have to look at the training ground he shared with people like Dylan Field, the founder of Figma.
The 2012 Cohort: Not Your Average Interns
The Kleiner Perkins Fellowship program started in 2012. It was KPCB’s way of hoarding the top 1% of engineering talent. Devin was a junior at Brown University at the time, studying Computer Science and Mathematics.
He didn't just get a job; he was hand-picked.
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During that summer, Devin was placed at Flipboard. If you remember 2012, Flipboard was the "it" startup. It was the peak of the iPad revolution. Working there meant you weren't just fixing bugs; you were figuring out how people would consume content on the "new internet."
What happened behind the scenes
While at Flipboard as a fellow, Devin was surrounded by a peer group that is, frankly, ridiculous in hindsight.
- He was already collaborating with Dylan Field (who would go on to build Figma).
- He was seeing how venture capital actually worked from the inside of a portfolio company.
- He was learning the "Growth" playbook—the same one he later applied at Pinterest and then at his own startups.
It’s easy to think of these fellowships as just something to put on a LinkedIn profile. But for Devin, it was the first time he saw how to scale a product that millions of people actually use. That’s a specific skill. You don't learn it in a classroom at Brown; you learn it by watching Flipboard struggle with server loads and user retention in real-time.
The Bridge Between Brown University and OpenSea
Before the fellowship, Devin was already a bit of a builder. He’d created CourseKick with Dylan Field. It was a social search engine for university courses that basically took over Brown’s campus—20% of the student body signed up in two weeks.
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But the Devin Finzer Kleiner Perkins Fellow experience gave that "scrappy student" energy some professional polish.
The Career Path that Followed:
- Google Cloud Platform: An internship that taught him infrastructure.
- Pinterest: A software engineering role on the growth team.
- Claimdog: His first real "exit." He built a personal finance app and sold it to Credit Karma.
When he finally landed on the idea for OpenSea in late 2017, he wasn't a "crypto bro" coming out of nowhere. He was a product-focused engineer who had been groomed by the best VC firm in the world.
What Most People Get Wrong About This Connection
There’s a misconception that these fellowships are just for "nerds who code."
Actually, the Kleiner Perkins program is about product intuition.
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When Devin and his co-founder Alex Atallah first pitched WifiCoin to Y Combinator, it wasn't quite right. But because of his background—partly shaped by that fellowship year—Devin had the "pivot reflex." When CryptoKitties launched, he didn't just see a game. He saw a brand new asset class.
He understood that if people were going to own digital items, they needed a place to trade them that felt as professional as the apps he worked on at Flipboard and Pinterest.
Real Actionable Insights for Aspiring Fellows
If you’re looking at the Devin Finzer Kleiner Perkins Fellow path as a blueprint for your own career, don't just focus on the "big names." Focus on the network and the specific technical problems.
- Don't ignore the peer group. Devin's relationship with Dylan Field started in college and was cemented in the high-pressure environment of Silicon Valley fellowships. Your future co-founder is probably sitting in the same Zoom call or lab as you right now.
- Prioritize "Growth" roles. Devin worked on growth at Pinterest. OpenSea succeeded because it knew how to acquire users when the tech was still clunky. If you're an engineer, learn the marketing side. It’s a superpower.
- The "Pivot" is a skill. OpenSea wasn't the first idea. It was the correct idea after a failed one. The fellowship environment teaches you how to fail fast without losing your momentum.
The reality? Being a Kleiner Perkins Fellow didn't make Devin Finzer a billionaire. But it did put him in the room where he could see the future before everyone else did. It gave him the framework to take a "toy" like a digital cat and turn it into a multi-billion dollar industry.
To follow this path, start by looking into the current KP Fellows Program cycles—they usually open applications in September. Whether you want to build the next OpenSea or the next Figma, the "who you know" is just as important as the "what you code."