William Mougayar

Mougayar is a graduate of the University of Washington and the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, and attended the graduate commerce school of the University of British Columbia.⁠[1]

He spent 14 years in senior sales and marketing management at Hewlett-Packard, followed by 10 years as an independent management consultant and three years as global vice president of corporate marketing at CognizantCognizantCognizant (Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation) is a Nasdaq-listed information technology services and consulting company headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey. Most of its employees are in India, and it is one of the major applicants for U.S. H-1B visas; in 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor suspended it from the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program, citing an investigation into visa fraud.Open the full entry; he also held a senior position at AberdeenGroup and was founding chairman of CommerceNet Canada in the early years of the internet.⁠[2][1]

He started and raised money for three companies, Engagio, Eqentia and CYBERManagement, two of which were sold.⁠[2]

In 1997 Mougayar published Opening Digital Markets (McGraw-Hill) and The Business Internet and Intranets (Harvard Business School Press).⁠[2]

In May 2016 Wiley published Mougayar’s book The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology, which has been translated into 10 languages.⁠[2][1]

The book’s author biography listed his roles at the time: general partner at Virtual Capital Ventures, an early-stage venture firm in Toronto; board member of OB1, developer of the OpenBazaar open-source protocol for peer-to-peer commerce; special board advisor to the Ethereum Foundation; member of the OMERS VenturesOMERS VenturesOMERS Ventures is the venture capital platform of Canadian pension organization OMERS. Launched in 2011 and co-founded by John Ruffolo and Peter Carrescia, it invests in early-stage technology companies and has backed Shopify, DuckDuckGo and Crunchbase. It lists offices in Toronto and New York. Laura Lenz was appointed Managing Director and Head of Ventures in September 2026.Open the full entry board of advisors; advisory board member of Coin CenterCoin CenterCoin Center is a nonprofit cryptocurrency policy research and advocacy organization founded in 2014 and based in Washington, D.C. Co-founded by Jerry Brito and Robin Weisman, it works on digital assets, financial privacy and software developers’ rights through research, policy education, regulatory comments and litigation.Open the full entry; board advisor to Bloq; founder of Startup Management; and Techstars mentor.⁠[2]

On May 9, 2016, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry released the a16z Podcast episode “a16z Podcast: Banking on the Blockchain,” featuring Mougayar as author of The Business Blockchain. The episode described the bitcoin blockchain as resting on two features, being a peer-to-peer network and one that “unbundles trust,” and Mougayar compared its development with that of the early internet.⁠[3]

The discussion also covered how banks might avoid the innovator’s dilemma, noting that “the worst place to develop a new business model is from within your existing business model,” as well as what banks might become and which new services and startups the technology could enable. The episode was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on January 1, 2019, as “a16z Podcast | Banking on the Blockchain.”⁠[3][4]

In August 2018 Mougayar joined the board of directors of the Kin Ecosystem Foundation, a Canada-based nonprofit governing the Kin cryptocurrency used in the Kik messenger app, advising on the Kin Rewards Engine, membership and security. He said he had been involved with the project since its early stages in 2017. He was then described as founder of The Token Summit, manager of the cryptocurrency index fund WMX, and an adviser or board member at OpenBazaar, Coin Center, Steem, Stratumn, Cofound.it and Bloq.⁠[5]

From November 2020 to January 2023 he was executive chairman of the Kin Foundation.⁠[1]

Mougayar lists his early investments as including Dapper Labs, Blockstack, EthereumEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry, Filecoin, Kin, OpenBazaar, More Markets, Cardinal, Mirror (now Paragraph) and Roll.⁠[1]

Personal website: https://wmougayar.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/wmougayar (opens in a new window).⁠[1]