ICO Entrepreneur “Still Have To Figure Out How To Deliver A Company”
ConsenSys is a blockchain venture production studio. Their global team is building an ecosystem of consumer-centric products and enterprise solutions using blockchain technologies, primarily Ethereum.
In September of this year, ConsenSys Media announced their new project — Balanc3 — a ConsenSys formation — has been working in stealth for over a year to build out a blockchain-based accounting platform. They have brought together leaders in both the accounting and blockchain industries to inform the design of their product. The resulting technology is a user-friendly bridge between the token world and traditional accounting systems.
ConsenSys has announced a $50 million venture fund for startups working with blockchain technology. Named ConsenSys Ventures, the new fund is being led by investment specialist Kavita Gupta. Explaining the fund to Axios, Gupta stated that initial coin offerings (ICOs), the blockchain funding method that has swept the investment landscape this year, still have a lot to learn from traditional venture capital.
According to CoinDesk data, by June 2017, ICOs had surpassed early-stage VC funding.
Yet, despite the impressive figures, Gupta stated:
“There is still value to due diligence and even if two PhD kids have sold tokens based on a brilliant white paper, they still have to figure out how to deliver a company. That’s not necessarily something they have experience doing.”
Kavita Gupta is a recipient of UN social finance innovator award in 2015 for being an integral part of the founding green bond team at The World Bank. At ConsenSys, Kavita heads the unique VC-hedge fund, investing in next-generation blockchain technologies revolutionizing our current systems. Previously she has been running over $250M fund aligned with UN SDGs infusing capital in technologies providing first time or low-cost access around the world. She has set up innovative investment funds across East Africa, Middle East, South Asia and recently in the US for past 16 years through World Bank, IFC, McKinsey and The Schmidt Family office. She founded and headed World Bank’s first innovation fund in 2010. She is on the board and advisor of various accelerators and foundations across the world like google accelerator social track, MIT Solve (Sr. Advisor), Vatican’s Right Now foundation for impact investments, Mandela foundation etc. She is an MIT and Media lab alum.
Gupta will attend the Blockchain Connect Conference in San Francisco on Jan. 26, 2018.
Click here to learn more about Ether and Kavita Gupta.
