Lauren Graham is the founder and CEO of The Degency, a premier full-stack digital marketing, growth, and strategy agency focused on web3, blockchain and future technologies.

Ms. Graham started her career while attending New York University, where she launched her first venture-backed company, Baro, a peer-to-peer renting mobile app. Through raising capital for Baro, she was asked to join the investment committee at New York based VC firm, Scout Ventures.

While at Scout, Ms. Graham saw a gap in the industry - early stage entrepreneurs were in need of skilled, experienced marketers. And so, she founded and launched the digital marketing agency Expandery, focused on growth and marketing for early stage, primarily series A and B, companies. Expandery saw success right away and soon grew to be a multi-million dollar agency with a client roster ranging from Fortune 500 companies to top-tier private B2B SaaS companies. Expandery saw multiple acquisitions of clients, directly attributed to their growth, notably to Nike, Akamai Technologies and Meltwater.

In 2019, Ms. Graham moved from New York City to San Juan, Puerto Rico in order to seek new opportunities for growing Expandery. There, she was exposed to the world of web3 and blockchain and was poached by a top quantitative cryptocurrency hedge fund ($100m AUM) to be their Chief Marketing Officer. She accepted the role, and with her team, built an innovative mobile app where retail investors could invest cryptocurrency and have real-time views on the performance of their investment.

Through marketing this app (the ultimate challenge given the legal red-tape surrounding the blockchain industry), Ms. Graham raised $40 million in a matter of 4 months. From this experience, she was immersed in the world of blockchain and web3 technology, where she again saw a gap in the industry to build a digital marketing agency focused on web3, and so The Degency was born. Over the past two years, The Degency has become a go-to for those in the web3 space, and is completely referral based. Currently, they are expanding their offerings to include full-service branding, design, and development.

During the time of working at the fund and on The Degency, Ms. Graham was also helping to build another full-stack marketing agency, Opascope, which recently acquired her first agency, Expandery. Opascope currently has over $300m total client market cap and nearly $1b in ad spend. While she works on The Degency most of her time, Opascope retains her as a Senior Consultant. Most recently, she has started a new venture, a beauty and wellness brand focused on natural and sustainable products.

She holds a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) in Sustainable Business Development and Entrepreneurship with minors in both Environmental Science and Animal Rights Law.