In cryptocurrencies, is it winner takes all?
The original thesis for cryptocurrencies was that it would be a winner-takes-all game due to the strong network effects around mining. And Bitcoin’s first few years seemed to prove this thesis true. Its share of the total market cap for cryptocurrencies was as high as 90% and was still holding at 80% at the beginning […]
Meet Our Latest Investment – Citizen Hex, an Ethereum Liquidity Company
It has been no secret that we have been actively researching and pursuing blockchain companies, particularly those in the Ethereum ecosystem. A few months ago, I wrote that 2017 could finally be the year when cryptocurrencies start delivering on the huge potential that many have been predicting for a long time. Bitcoin, and the underlying […]
Will Initial Coin Offerings Fund the Future?
One innovation we have seen in Blockchain has been the rise of app coins as a way to monetize protocols and open source projects. Most launches were through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), basically crowdfunded app coin sales. And boy, has it taken off! In 2017 alone, ICOs raised more than $100 million in 15 deals. Cosmos […]
How to combat negative investor sentiment? Use your customer references
Sometimes there’s a disconnect between investor sentiment and the product’s value. The same thing happens in the market: good companies can have a lower stock price due to public sentiment and market factors outside of their control. Not every start-up can play in a vertical that’s an investor darling. For example, you may be in […]
Can a sinking start-up reaccelerate growth?
Conventional wisdom, at least in VC land, is that no start-up sees a reacceleration of growth. Once the growth curve starts heading down, it only sees a downward slope. This is partly due to the law of big numbers: a bigger denominator makes it harder and harder to keep up year-over-year growth rates. Things get […]