Biography:Derick David

Short description: Filipino journalist for Forbes

Derick David is a Filipino journalist and designer. He is a contributor for Forbes Digital Assets and the former founding designer for Rain. He first gained recognition writing stories on Medium that went viral, including one about Elon Musk that was featured by Youtuber, Lew Later. In 2018, he worked for Adriano Farano, a Webby Award winner and Knight Fellow at Stanford University designing for journalism. He also worked as a layout designer for Iowa State Daily. David was born in the Philippines and raised in Bologna, Italy. He speaks fluent Italian.

Early life and education

David was born in Santo Tomas, Philippines and he moved to Bologna, Italy at age 14. In 2016, David passed the Italian state exam and received his Maturità diploma in corporate economics and commerce. Few months later, he became one of the youngest to receive a scholarship to attend Apple's Developer Academy in Naples, Italy to learn about design and app development. After the program, he decided to continue his studies in the United States where he majored in Computer Science at Iowa State University. He later dropped due to the pandemic. David stated that reading Steve Jobs' biography, watching The Social Network, and getting into Apple caused him to become more interested with technology and design.

Career

Between 2018 to 2020, David started working as a user experience designer on several journalism projects founded by Knight Fellow, Adriano Farano. One of these is Pactio, which was a crowdfunding platform designed for independent journalists. Pactio was incubated by StartX and received funding from Lenfest Institute. David eventually assumed the role of design chief working with journalists from Stanford University and Washington Post.

While David was in college, he also worked for Iowa State Daily as a newspaperlayout designer, where he believed he developed his curiosity in journalism. He also cofounded a long-distance carpooling app that won a pitch competition.

During the pandemic, he had written multiple stories on Medium about Elon Musk, Silicon Valley, and AI that went viral, including one mentioned by Youtuber, Lew Later in one of his videos. He's one of the few creators on Medium who reached the 1,000,000 views mark.

In 2021, he started Hikre School, to teach foundational design and app development to Filipino students. Few months later, he led a batch of students to win more than $40,000 in awards from their projects.

In January 2022, he became the founding designer of Coinbooks, a Y Combinator company that raised $3.2 million. David later joined Rain, a crypto company based in New York City that successfully raised $6 million in funding. At Rain, he was part of core team responsible for building a software that processed more than $500,000 in deposits and more than 5000 transactions globally while in private beta.

David is also known for the branding behind Pane Vivo, an organic bread company in Paris, France that was featured in Washington Post.

He was selected to be a contributor for Forbes Digital Assets to cover Web3 and fintech applications, which enabled him to participate in panels organized by blockchain companies like Yield Guild Games and INX.