The Solar-Bitcoin Convergence
I’ve spent the majority of the last decade working in two fields: solar energy and cryptocurrency. At first blush, these may seem pretty different. In my mind, however, they have a lot in common and are converging by the day. Both are based on principles of decentralization. Both are disrupting antiquated, opaque industries with large […]
The Energy Revolution is (Finally) Here
It’s been exciting to see so much renewed investor interest in climate tech and clean energy startups. As Peter Thiel documented in detail, the last wave of late 2000s cleantech VC excitement ended in a trough of despair as many of the more well-funded companies went bust (with the notable exception of a few big […]
Announcing our investment in Uniswap, the leading decentralized crypto exchange
We are very pleased to announce our investment in Uniswap, the leading decentralized crypto exchange. We participated in the $11m Series A raise, alongside our friends at a16z, USV and Paradigm. Exchanges have been the most important piece of infrastructure when it comes to building out crypto networks. The first generation of exchanges were centralized […]
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 […]
An update on Version One’s thesis: backing mission-driven founders
Technology changes. The startup market evolves, and so do we as VCs. Over the past few months, we’ve reflected on our journey over the past decade, who we are and what we invest in. We’ve quietly made changes to our website. And here’s the official unveiling, with a quick synopsis of our new messaging and […]