Announcing our investment in Kobalt, a security as a service company
We are very excited to announce our investment in Kobalt, a new security as a service company. Security is increasingly on everybody’s mind, with several high profile, large scale hacks over the past few years. Here at Version One, we had our own unfortunate incident (and learning experience) only a few weeks ago. Yet while […]
Announcing our investment in Guesser, the easiest way to engage with prediction markets
We are extremely excited to announce our investment in Guesser, the easiest way to engage with Augur prediction markets. Among all the crypto opportunities, we are most excited about crypto native opportunities – and prediction markets are clearly native. We spent some time with Augur right after it launched (you can read about that initial […]
What exactly is a managed marketplace?
Over the past few years, the term “managed marketplace” has become so widely used that Bill Gurley from Benchmark recently tweeted that it is not clear to him what the difference is between a “managed marketplace” and a “true marketplace.” I think this is an important discussion to have and I am trying to develop […]
Where is the value in tokens?
Crypto / blockchain has always been as much of a business model innovation as a technical innovation… Technical innovation: running a decentralized ledger / platform at scale Business model innovation: issuing tokens to give users / participants in the platform a stake in the project By issuing crypto tokens, platforms gave early users an incentive […]
The increased risk profile of start-ups
Start-ups, by definition, are risky. But traditionally, start-ups have looked for the least risky position in the value chain. And for many, this is being a platform. Successful platforms build an ecosystem of contributors that create content for the platform. Or, they build a marketplace where sellers decide which products might sell or not. In […]