Zach Herbert

He has said his first job, at an Apple store, shaped his focus on ease of use.⁠[1]

By his own account he studied mechanical engineering at Boston University and left Harvard Business School’s MBA program after his first year.⁠[2]

He has said a college friend introduced him to bitcoin in 2013 and that he bought his first bitcoin on CoinbaseCoinbaseCoinbase is a U.S. operator of crypto asset trading platforms, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, whose listed parent is Coinbase Global, Inc.; it went public through a direct listing on Nasdaq (ticker COIN) in April 2021 and joined the S&P 500 in May 2025. It provides crypto trading, custody, staking, and stablecoin-related services, launched USDC with Circle, develops the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, and acquired the crypto options exchange Deribit in 2025; its venture investing operates as Coinbase Ventures.Open the full entry for $20.⁠[1]

He has said that hardware wallets were only just emerging at the time and that he used the Armory software wallet.⁠[3]

He has said that in 2015 he started HODL Hardware, selling Ledger and Trezor hardware wallets on the OpenBazaar marketplace.⁠[1]

In 2020 he co-founded the Boston-based Foundation Devices with Ken Carpenter and Jacob Johnston; that year he also wrote a blog series titled “Falling out of Love with Apple.”⁠[3]

The company was launched in spring 2020; its products include the Passport hardware wallet and the Envoy mobile app.⁠[4]

In March 2021 he described Foundation as building “open devices for a sovereign internet powered by Bitcoin.”⁠[5]

In March 2022 Foundation launched Passport Batch 2 at a pre-order price of $199; Herbert said “sovereignty and privacy are more important than ever.”⁠[6]

In December 2022 Foundation Devices announced a $7 million seed round led by Polychain CapitalPolychain CapitalPolychain Capital is a digital asset investment firm founded in 2016 by Olaf Carlson-Wee and headquartered in San Francisco. Its business covers actively managed blockchain asset portfolios and investments in related companies, with public investments spanning base networks, cryptography, on-chain finance, payments, data and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry, with Greenfield CapitalGreenfield CapitalGreenfield Capital (formerly Greenfield One) is a crypto investment firm headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, founded in 2018 by Sebastian Blum and Jascha Samadi; its early investments include Celo, NEAR and 1inch. It has invested in Safe since 2022, and in October 2026 it filed a supervisory complaint with the Swiss Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations over the governance of the Safe Ecosystem Foundation.Open the full entry and Lightning Ventures participating.⁠[4]

In May 2026 Foundation raised $6.4 million in a round led by Fulgur Ventures and launched Passport Prime, billed as “Human Authority Hardware” and priced from $349. Herbert argued that AI agents create a new key-management problem and that authorization should move to independent hardware with a verifiable display and operating system.⁠[7]

Arche Capital also took part, bringing the company’s total funding to $16.5 million.⁠[8]

In September 2026 Foundation released a beta of Legacy Mode, letting Ledger users enter their existing recovery phrase on Passport Prime and keep using Ethereum and Solana wallets such as Rabby and Phantom without moving their coins.⁠[9]

He said, “Asking them to move every asset and relearn everything is a real barrier.”⁠[10]

Late on October 25, 2026, U.S. time, Foundation disclosed that attackers had used compromised Cloudflare API keys to send phishing emails from its official domains. Herbert said they breached some backend systems through a flaw in a self-hosted app, later named as Cal.com, wrote “I’m very sorry,” and promised a detailed report.⁠[11]

The phishing emails warned of a fake urgent device recall, claiming a supplier had tampered with display modules. Herbert said the attackers had likely accessed the customer support inbox and that “Passport devices are safe and secure.” The company said it cut off the attackers’ ability to send email within 10 minutes of the first user reports.⁠[12]

The company later counted more than 23,000 phishing attempts. About 5,600 mailing addresses and 5,200 phone numbers, with names and emails, sat in systems the attackers could reach, though it could not say all were accessed; ShopifyShopifyShopify is a commerce software company that originated in Ottawa, Canada, providing merchants with tools for online stores, physical retail, payments, orders and inventory management. The business began with Snowdevil, an online snowboard store founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke and others, and the standalone e-commerce platform launched in 2006. The company went public in 2015 and now trades under the ticker SHOP on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange.Open the full entry order details since May may also have been exposed. It said funds on Passport were safe, found no evidence that devices or private keys were compromised, and was rotating all keys.⁠[13]

He was previously chief operating officer at Nebulous and Obelisk, overseeing the design, production and distribution of about $26 million worth of ASIC miners.⁠[14]