Nick Ducoff Signs On as G20 Venture Partner, focused on Web3
Building a deeper bench of crypto expertise, deal flow, and support.
Hi everyone. I’m Nick Ducoff and I’m the newest member of the G20 team. I recently joined as a Venture Partner, to source and support web3 deals in a part-time role as they begin to raise and deploy their fourth fund.
Why Me?
I consider myself a resident of the internet. I was on IRC and BBS using dial-up as a kid, hosting LAN parties and sharing music on Napster in college, and built a Facebook clone in grad school. I practiced venture capital law in the aughts, working on deals like the acquisition of the non-core Myspace assets from Intermix Media after its acquisition by News Corporation’s Fox Interactive Media division. Entrepreneurship looked easy (that’s a joke) so I left my comfortable Big Law job in 2010 to co-found my first startup which Tim Draper invested in, and was later acquired by CSC — now DXC Technologies. After that, I moved to Boston near where my wife is from and started working out of Techstars in Kendall Square thanks to the generosity of Katie Rae. I thought I wanted to be a VC so met with many of the investors in town at the time — Fred Destin, Eric Paley, Rob Go, Kent Bennett — but I had more startups in me. I got into edtech, joining the early days at Boundless, then leading new ventures at Northeastern University, before starting another company, Edmit, in 2017, which was acquired in April 2021. I’m an operator with a foundation in venture.
Why Web3?
At Boundless, after work one day in 2014, I watched Aaron White mint Ethereum. Coinbase was still in its infancy and to buy and hold crypto you needed to set up a wallet on your computer. I began buying some Bitcoin and Ethereum and trying to get my head around the implications of blockchain, digital currency, and EVM. Fast forward to 2018 and Dave Balter started a club to buy altcoins, which were mooning in the ICO boom. I’d invest in anything Dave did, and Flipside Crypto was born (they recently raised $50 million on a $350 million valuation). Around the same time, my Infochimps co-founders were building a multi-sig wallet for Bitcoin, which I also invested in. Unchained Capital raised $25 million from NYDIG last year and is well on its way to becoming the standard for secure Bitcoin custody. I set up my MetaMask in March 2018 and have been doing degen things since then, claiming my stoic.eth ENS handle in the spring of last year. All this is to say that I’ve been tinkering with crypto and web3 on nights and weekends for almost a decade — and it gives me the same energy and excitement that IRC, BBS and LAN did in my youth. I’ve been angel investing across the space, supporting web3 startups in education (Buildspace), infrastructure (Mailchain), marketplaces (Catalog), and protocols (BitGreen) (I’ve also invested outside of Web3, in businesses including Panorama Education, Crayon, and Hologram.)
The combination of my legal and entrepreneurial background gives me a unique perspective on the space, where seeming arcana and legalese buried in governance docs can have a huge impact on a business’ ability to create value, and an investors ability to participate.
I’m now excited to level up my web3 investing as part of G20.
Why G20?
Aaron White not only introduced me to crypto, but also to Mike Troiano. Mike gave his classic positioning workshop to us at Boundless, helping clarify our messaging, which led to us owning Google search results and reaching over 4 million students monthly. I stayed in touch with Mike over the years, and he’s always generously shared feedback and wisdom — often things I needed to hear but didn’t necessarily want to, which is the kind of advice founders need but many investors shy away from giving. I was never fortunate enough to have Mike or G20 on my cap table but their “human scale” model resonated with me, and when I shared with Matt Walsh that a decade after I originally sought to become an investor, I was ready this time, he mentioned that G20 was moving more seriously into crypto. I got lunch with Mike the next day and joined the team within weeks after getting to know Bob, Bill, and Aimee. A few months back, G20 made the shift to Web3 official.
We’ll be announcing more investments soon, including one I was excited to bring to the team. If you’re building something in the Web3 space, let’s talk about how we can help grow your community with smart money, great storytelling, and the right connections. You can find me here, on Twitter, Linkedin, and Discord.
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