Joining Index Ventures
I am happy to share that I recently joined Index Ventures in London. It’s an honour to complement Index’s interdisciplinary, highly specialised team with its exceptionally nice human touch and intellectually curious partners. I cover everything around blockchain technologies, decentralised data networks and digital assets — an emerging economy I deeply care about.
The sector is highly experimental not only from a technical standpoint but also with regard to how economic incentives and governance mechanisms are defined in decentralised networks. It comes with its own natively digital assets, new business models, operational challenges and regulatory uncertainties. The most interdisciplinary VC teams are likely to succeed in adapting to these paradigm shifts quickly. That is what excites me most about joining Index.
Venture capital is a product for entrepreneurs. This principle also applies to the crypto economy. After having worked with many founders in the space, I realised the increasing demand for highly specialised, sophisticated, institutional investors adding value besides offering a long term and stable capital commitment. Open source crypto projects have different needs than conventional businesses which could be served by investors. Instead of structuring equity financing rounds investors might create best practices for ICO processes and token distribution schemes. Instead of securing follow on financings they might focus on getting crypto economics and treasury management right. Setting up board procedures might become less important than designing strong and upgradeable governance mechanisms for the whole network — sophisticated and experienced investors might be helpful to that regard. Attracting top tier open source (developer) talent and keeping it engaged with the network in an open source environment might become much more impactful than hiring key employees and scaling companies.
I am very much looking forward to contribute to a future of open data, democratisation of privacy and decentralised markets.
