Live from ETH Denver 2023! Gerbz talks with Mathieu Chanson, Partner at Very Early Ventures about crypto venture investing.
Very Early Ventures
Matt and his partners at Very Early Ventures met during college at ETH Zurich before leaving to work at Google, Maker DAO and in the VC world. In 2023, they came together to form their Switzerland based fund investing in pre-seed and seed stage Web3 companies primarily out of Europe.
Their investment thesis is two parts:
- Decentralized Infrastructure Protocols
- Real World Adoption
Decentralized Infrastructure
Decentralization is core to layer one protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, the layers on top are not (yet) as decentralized. Centralization can be benefit in the early stages because it allows faster building and scaling, but true crypto native projects should have a clear roadmap towards decentralization as they discover product market fit.
Decentralization is important for keeping a key feature of blockchains alive – composability.
“We don’t want to fall back into that Web2 world where anybody can just close down your APIs and shut down your business.” – Mathieu
Demand for decentralization won’t come from retail users, rather from the dApps and DAOs building on top.
Real World Adoption
The intersection of crypto and the real world has seen a lot of action lately. Banks issuing bonds on chain, Stripe enabling USDC payout over Polygon, brands like Starbucks an Adidas building NFT loyalty programs.
“Culture will adopt crypto.” – Mathieu
Portfolio Companies
Very early is also very early on their investment journey, but they’ve already invested some amazing startups working to delivery on their fund’s thesis. A few include:
- AlloyX – A decentralized liquid staking protocol for crypto loans to real world businesses.
- NFTfi – Use your NFTs to get a crypto loan.
- gateway.fm – Unbreakable web3 infrastructure that seamlessly scales with you.
- Diva – Ethereum liquid staking using distributed validators.
- Talisman – A better way to explore Web3.
- DebtDAO – Trustless & anonymous secured lending for financing cryptonative entities.
