CoinFund Announces New Early-Stage $300M Web3 Venture Fund

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  • Complements CoinFund’s existing and successful strategies
  • CoinFund remains bullish in the face of challenging market conditions and has continued to demonstrate its steadfast commitment to companies defining web3
  • Announces the addition of Einar Braathen from Accel to the CoinFund Venture Investing Team
  • New institutional partners are a testament to CoinFund’s track record in delivering results for institutional and private clients since 2015 and through multiple industry cycles.

CoinFund, a leading web3 and crypto focused investment firm and registered investment adviser, is delighted to announce the launch of CoinFund Ventures I (“Ventures I” or the “Fund”), their new $300M early-stage venture capital fund, backed by a combination of sophisticated institutional investors, family offices, and cryptonative founders. Ventures I seeks to back the most ambitious founders across blockchain sub-sectors demonstrating early traction and large potential market sizes. The launch of Ventures I demonstrates CoinFund’s conviction that web3 is an enormous and important architectural transition impacting the future of the internet, financial services and intellectual property, and their belief that web3’s evolution will continue to progress through all market cycles.

Over the last ten years, catalyzed by the invention of the blockchain, web3 has emerged as one of the most exciting and meaningful software architectural innovations, spawning thousands of companies and decentralized networks aiming to build a more equitable, and open internet. Ventures I seeks to invest in the most important companies both facilitating and benefitting from this transition.

A number of current CoinFund seed stage portfolio companies are preparing to raise Series A funding and wish to maintain the support and partnership of CoinFund’s cryptonative investing team and its “founders first” philosophy. In addition to making early-stage, venture-scale investments in existing portfolio companies , Ventures I will seek to partner with new and ambitious founding teams.

After seven years of investing, company building, and community involvement, CoinFund and its team of more than 30 professionals are competitively positioned in the web3 investing space. With Ventures I, CoinFund can deepen its support of companies that have demonstrated early traction as they accelerate through their next phase of growth and benefit from the synergies and experience of CoinFund’s broader portfolio of 100+ remarkable teams.

Ventures I will be led by David Pakman, Managing Partner and Head of Venture Investing at CoinFund, who said, “Tech entrepreneurs and venture investors are taught to look for architectural transitions that disrupt past models and create new ground for companies to build enormous value. In my 30 years in tech, I have never seen a bigger opportunity than crypto and web3. Web3 entrepreneurs clearly appreciate cryptonative investing teams as helpful allies, and we look forward to working with ambitious and driven entrepreneurs to build a permissionless, decentralized and community-owned internet, rewire the global financial system, and unlock enormous value for intellectual property.”

Mr. Pakman joined CoinFund after 13 years with venture capital firm Venrock, where he led many successful investments in crypto, consumer, and enterprise companies. A former three time entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of “hands on”company building, he currently serves on the Board of Directors of web3 companies Dapper Labs and Rarible. Mr. Pakman chose to move to CoinFund in 2021 to cement his growing commitment to the future of web3 and will now lead the newly launched venture fund. He’ll be supported by an experienced, world class cryptonative investing and research team, as well as CoinFund founder and CEO, Jake Brukhman, Head of Liquid Investments and Managing Partner Seth Ginns, and CIO and Managing Partner, Alex Felix, who said, “We began working closely with David in 2017 based on our shared passion for web3 coupled with a strong commitment to founders and long-term vision. Since that time, we’ve built a strong relationship and cultivated a collaborative, entrepreneur-centric culture. This culminated in David joining the firm last year.”

Following Mr. Pakman in making the leap from traditional venture investing to crypto is Einar Braathen, who recently joined CoinFund from leading technology investment firm Accel where he championed their investment in Sky Mavis. Prior to that, he also worked with General Catalyst and Mosaic Ventures. He now joins the CoinFund team to focus on early-stage venture investments with emphasis on both consumer and enterprise companies poised to achieve mass adoption.

Mr. Braathen is the latest in a series of senior hires for CoinFund, with the firm having announced the appointment of Margaret Gabriel as its Head of Talent in early June. Ms. Gabriel’s appointment is part of CoinFund’s strategic mission to drive diverse, world class talent acquisition and differentiated professional development for CoinFund and its portfolio companies.

CoinFund is proud to welcome some of the world’s most sophisticated limited partners into Ventures I, including Teacher Retirement System of Texas, Adams Street Partners, a global leader in private markets with more than $50 billion under management, StepStone Group, the $134 billion global private markets investing firm, and Accolade Partners a fund of funds specializing in technology and blockchain-focused venture capital and growth equity investments and Theta Capital Management, one of the largest and earliest investors dedicated to investing in crypto native venture funds. In addition, many of the Partners of Venrock continue their partnership with CoinFund as limited partners in Ventures I.

Some prominent individuals in web3 took this opportunity to share their views as founders of CoinFund portfolio companies:

“CoinFund understands the challenges and complexities of running institutional infrastructure in a multichain world,” said Konstantin Richter, CEO and founder of Blockdaemon. “We value their cryptonative culture and look forward to collaborating with their team as we continue to grow.”

“As a founder, I value the cryptonative culture at CoinFund. We appreciate that they have been a part of web3 communities since 2015” said Roham Gharegozlou, CEO and Co-Founder of Dapper Labs (also an investor in CoinFund funds).

“The work of CoinFund’s President Chris Perkins has been extremely valuable as we seek the appropriate regulatory framework to continue our exchange’s tremendous growth.” said Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO and founder of FTX

The launch of Ventures I demonstrates CoinFund’s positive view on the opportunity for value creation from building and investing in crypto infrastructure as web3 adoption materializes. The firm is proud to continue supporting and growing what it believes are the most promising projects and talent throughout these challenging market conditions and beyond.

CoinFund is a web3 and crypto focused investment firm and registered investment adviser founded in 2015 with the goal of shaping the global transition to web3. The firm invests in seed, venture and liquid opportunities within the blockchain sector with a focus on digital assets, decentralization technologies, and key enabling infrastructure. The CoinFund team has studied and supported the development of the blockchain space from the inception of the first decentralized networks, and come from diverse backgrounds in investing, engineering, law, and decentralized protocols. For more information, including a list of portfolio companies, please visit our website at coinfund.io.

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