What’s next for Science Blockchain
As we begin 2018, we wanted to reach out with some commentary around our fundraise this past Fall, as well as what’s next.
As you know, Science itself has a notable history of seeing and cultivating emerging commercial success early, even when that success has non-traditional beginnings — thanks to co-founding or investing in more than 70 companies over the past seven years.
When you try to see around corners, of course, you also want to make sure you are not too far around the bend. It was this calibrated sense of “what’s next” that led us to push into blockchain in 2017 — certainly not the start of applied blockchain technology, but in our view, very far from the end of blockchain’s first cycle of commercial development.
Since when we invest, we do it in many cases fully alongside other founders — and participate not just as a source of funds, but also advice and other resources — it made sense to us to create a blockchain-focused incubation fund using the increasingly standard Initial Coin Offering mechanism, with a twist: we’d offer a true securities token, appropriately architected with US securities regulation in mind. Our goal was to allow participants in our ICO to benefit from access to a stream of new tokens from the portfolio companies we incubated.
Thanks to all of you, we’re well on our way to pursuing that goal. At $12.3 million, with your help, we effected one of the first securities-grade ICO’s for one of the first blockchain incubation funds. And we’re pleased that in the face of some inevitable uncertainties in the still-new blockchain market, we raised a fund comparable in size to some of our traditional funds, which helped launch and exit companies like Dollar Shave Club and HelloSociety. So, we appreciate your willingness to help us — and the blockchain community — continue to thrive and develop.
Since that raise, Science Blockchain has hardly been standing still — building relationships with and making investments in some of the most exciting companies in crypto. Among other initiatives, we’ve:
Partnered with identity-protection firm Civic, to help portfolio companies apply a proven, blockchain-based identity platform to token sales as well as login protocols; Partnered with TaaS, the first-ever tokenized closed-end fund dedicated to crypto-assets, in order to share investing expertise as well as jointly source possible portfolio companies; Received a grant from BLOCKv, the blockchain-focused developer platform, to help its portfolio companies speed up applying their technologies to actual business purposes and results; and Formally launched our first portfolio company, SpringRole, which uses blockchain to improve the benefits of professional reputation for recruiting and retention.
Across all of these activities, there remains a common thread: we believe that blockchain is the next major platform for innovation and a foundational technology — that it has the ability to change the way both business and social structures work. We also continue to believe that many of the companies in which we invest — and those with which we partner — will have long entrepreneurial journeys ahead of them. So as we look to the future and other companies we are considering, we’ll continue to focus on the following:
Blockchain-based businesses that have clear, fundamental connections between the obvious security and transparency attributes of distributed ledger technology and a business case that will sustain itself through scaling and competition; Entrepreneurs who think long-term, and understand the work that goes into building appropriate legal, technical and operational structures and controls — not just the effort that goes into disrupting an existing way of doing business; and Keeping our investors informed about progress around our focus on helping these entrepreneurs and these companies become the next software giants. It’s been an interesting and productive five months — and, as any good incubator does, we understand that on our timescale, that’s incredibly short. That said, we’ll continue to move at the pace necessary to capture the tremendous value we see in the space. We’ll keep you updated through both email and Telegram and during 2018 and we’ll further refine our process for communicating with you.
In the meantime, thank you again and we hope you enjoy a successful start to your year.
Sincerely,
The Science Blockchain Team
