At last, the full promise of crypto networks is coming alive
Since the early days, crypto has had four core promises: 1) Enabling trust at scale. Transactions are executed by code, rather than a single gatekeeper like a bank or other financial middleman. 2) Permissionless innovation. Crypto’s open source nature enables anybody to build on top of existing code. 3) A decentralized governance model. Power rests […]
Announcing our investment in Cape Privacy, a privacy platform for collaborative data science and machine learning
Today, one of our newest portfolio companies, Cape Privacy, announced their seed fundraise in conjunction with the public launch of their privacy platform. You can read more details about the launch here. We co-led the seed round with our friends at boldstart ventures with participation from Haystack, Radical, and Faktory Ventures. Privacy and machine learning […]
Announcing our investment in Opyn, a decentralized options marketplace
We are very excited to announce our investment in Opyn, a decentralized options marketplace. If you invest in ETH (or just follow it), you’re used to prices going up and down. Opyn lets you protect your DeFi deposits and hedge ETH risk. The platform allows you to purchase put and call options on the price […]
Announcing our investment in DemandStar, a marketplace for government procurement
Today we’re excited to announce that we led DemandStar’s $2m seed round. The Seattle-based company provides an online marketplace for business-to-government commerce – it connects local and national suppliers with government procurement officers. It should come as no surprise that government procurement is riddled with inefficiency. $1.5 trillion is spent in the local government procurement […]
B2B Marketplaces Revisited
Twenty years ago – in the midst of the Web 1.0 boom – expectations were high for B2B (product) marketplaces. The assumption was that online platforms would completely automate all supplier-customer transactions including retailing, wholesaling, and procurement. Yet today, the world of B2B marketplaces still lags far behind its B2C counterpart. Alibaba is an exception. […]