I’m delighted to share that, as of today, I’ve joined Founders Fund as a Partner. I’ll be focused on a few things:
- Shaping the next decade of Founders Fund’s crypto strategy
- Identifying and supporting the next wave of transformative crypto companies and founders
- Engaging in general investing alongside the other Founders Fund partners while maintaining a strong focus on crypto
I want to walk through why I’m joining, why I believe it’s the best possible place for founders to raise funding for a crypto project, and share a few of my current thoughts on the crypto space.
Why I’m joining
Peter has been thinking about decentralized money since the 90s, when he explored launching a digital currency. In crypto as in so many industries, he saw what was going to come next before almost anyone else. Founders Fund has grown into arguably the best VC firm in the world, and to my mind the one most clearly aligned with the ethos and culture of crypto. Founders Fund’s mission has always been to back the bold visions of contrarian founders, with unparalleled conviction — which is what crypto is all about. The firm was built on the philosophy of being founder-first and founder-friendly (it’s literally in the name). In the crypto space, where there is inherent skepticism towards VCs, this spirit of genuine partnership is all the more critical to success.
For those reasons and many others, when the opportunity presented itself to work with what I think is the smartest groups of people in venture, I jumped at it. I want to spend my time focused on investing in, and supporting, the best companies and founders in crypto, and I believe that Founders Fund is the perfect platform to achieve this.
Why Founders Fund is the top choice to lead your next crypto round
At Founders Fund, we only invest in companies that we believe are among the best we’ve encountered that year — not just in crypto, but across all industries and geographies. We don’t have billions of dollars we *have* to deploy into crypto; we evaluate founders on an absolute basis across a variety of stages and sectors. This means that if Founders Fund invests in your company, we are telling you, the market, and top talent you want to attract that we believe your project is one of the world’s most promising startups.
Historically, crypto founders have felt the need to bring on a specialized, crypto-only investment fund alongside traditional VCs. However, by combining my expertise in crypto with the brand and generalized expertise of Founders Fund, I believe no firm is better positioned to lead the charge in funding and growing the next decade of crypto protocols and companies.
You no longer have to choose between traditional VC and crypto-native expertise and help. With Founders Fund you can get both.
How am I thinking about the crypto space?
My vision here is simple: crypto will serve as the infrastructure for transferring and storing value, much like how the internet provided a new infrastructure for creating and consuming information. At a high level, crypto enables financial transactions that exist natively on the internet, without relying upon gatekeeping institutions.
Because crypto transactions are processed by lines of code — not bank tellers or people in suits in Manhattan — they can happen 24/7, globally, without bank holidays or market hours or any of the analog frictions and limitations that exist in traditional finance.
This means crypto will form an important part of the software ecosystem on which societies and economies run. It doesn’t make sense for us to have a separate crypto fund, any more than it would for us to have a separate internet fund or a separate AI fund. Going forward, crypto will be an important part of our overall strategy.
To address skeptics who argue that crypto lacks practical use cases, I often point to payments in USDC — a simple, early but concrete use case that has tremendous utility today. USDC allows you to send anyone, anywhere in the world, digital dollars that they will receive in a matter of seconds on the Ethereum blockchain. I tend not to get into the merits of decentralized money/gold, the explosion of innovation in DeFi, the zero-knowledge proof space, gaming and NFTs, etc., but needless to say I am more bullish than I have ever been.
There have been significant paradigm shifts in the past few years compared to previous cycles. When I first started writing smart contracts, developer infrastructure was practically non-existent. It’s become so much easier to build smart contract-based systems now, compared to previous cycles, thanks largely to companies like Alchemy (whose Series A I led). Additionally, high transaction fees used to make it nearly impossible to build applications outside of trading. However, with solutions like Arbitrum and StarkWare (both of which I seeded), platforms like Ethereum have become more scalable, faster, and cheaper to use, enabling a much wider variety of applications going forward.
We’ve also witnessed the emergence of the first wave of decentralized consumer applications in crypto. These primarily focus on trading and improving the lives of traders, like decentralized exchange aggregators like 0x (Matcha) and 1inch Network and decentralized insurance protocols like Risk Harbor, all of which I’ve invested in. I think in the next cycle, we’ll see even more consumer applications building on top of the most recent wave of infrastructure.
I’m incredibly proud and energized to have had the opportunity to find and fund such incredible founders throughout my career, then watch them make tremendous contributions to our space. They are some of the best builders in crypto, and their inspiring work is what gets me out of bed every morning. I look forward to continuing the quest to find and empower the next generation of exceptional founders, and I am grateful to Founders Fund for the opportunity to do so.
Historically the best times to invest in crypto are when people are disillusioned with it. I believe this is one of those times. If you or someone you know is raising capital for a startup in crypto, or if you’re a VC looking to share deal flow together, feel free to DM me here or email me at joey@foundersfund.com.
P.S. We’re hiring an associate to work alongside me. If you think that could be you, reach out!
