Vladimir Velmeshev
How has the startup funding space transitioned in recent years?
As we focus on early-stage investments in the crypto and blockchain space, we have witnessed how the niche matured over the years. Investment in the crypto space transitioned from a bunch of enthusiasts investing in preferred family and friends’ projects to getting more institutionalized with serious players.
As more and more investors are pouring in, they need to prove their value and maintain the value proposition to gain access to high-quality projects. This change in the investing paradigm has transitioned the space in recent years.
What does your overall investment process look like?
The developing crypto investment space is offering more data points, but as we are still in a bear market, we spend a lot of time conducting technical due diligence to ensure the products are fundamentally sound.
At the conceptual level, we see if the product is relevant, market-fit, and has a large-scale potential. We invest only if an actual product is in place and not just ideas, and check if there are products already built on similar minimum viable product (MVP) features.
“As more and more investors are pouring in, they need to prove their value and maintain the value proposition to gain access to high-quality projects.”
From a business standpoint, we give utmost importance to the client’s team capability, and the founder’s backgrounds, and ensure they have product shipping capacity to understand product handling. The teams are analyzed based on how they handle customers and how they structure funding rounds and capitalization tables.
Once our research team finds a qualified project, we administer the entire deal flow pipeline, through every stage—from arranging calls and having conversations to building closure. This is important as we focus on building our value proposition and scaling our funding operations than engaging in short-term projects.
Even while investing, we follow a holistic approach. In addition to supporting the project with cost and investment, we are actively involved on the technical side as well. Our in-house engineers help projects with technical audits, and our partnered security auditing firms help clients with exchange listings, picking the right strategy, and negotiating a better deal with market makers. Our internal team of mathematicians and economists looks at various economic parameters and ensures the client has a sustainable model.
What are some of the factors that you take in hand to ensure successful investments?
We ensure everything goes smoothly per schedule by overseeing the work, internal research, legal checks, and financial controls. Working with the financial controller is key in ensuring the records are sound. If we have liquid assets under management, we constantly oversee the liquid portfolio management to drive decisions around that.
What is your piece of advice to your peers and beginners in the industry?
People should have their investment thesis. Rather than investing in everything they think is good, investors must build a narrative and choose projects that fit into it.
Equally important is quality. Investors should not compromise on quality in any part of the process, be it research, due diligence, or internal processes.
Lastly, there are no shortcuts to success. Keep grinding, strive for the best, and continue building projects that will last for a long time.
