Robert Hackett
Robert Hackett 2018年4月6日
In the 1930s, Laurence Rockefeller began investing his oil-anointed inheritance in technology and aviation companies. Several decades later, in 1969, the grandson of John D. Rockefeller brought his siblings together to found Venrock, the family’s official venture capital arm. (“Venture” plus “Rockefeller” equals “Venrock.”) Today, long after multiplying its fortunes through prescient bets on then-upstarts, such as Intel and Apple, the firm is embarking on a new frontier: cryptocurrency.
David Pakman, a Venrock partner, dropped by Fortune’s offices to share news of a partnership the firm just struck. Venrock is teaming up with CoinFund, a Brooklyn-based cryptocurrency investor group, to help entrepreneurs build businesses based on blockchains, the hot distributed ledger technology that first came to prominence with the development of Bitcoin a decade ago. Pakman spoke to Fortune’s Jen Wieczner and Robert Hackett about the joint venture on the latest episode of Balancing The Ledger, a new show about the intersection of money and technology.
“We wanted to partner with this team that has been making investments and actually helping to architect a number of different crypto economies and crypto token-based projects,” Pakman said.
Venrock and CoinFund first met through their mutual investment in YouNow, a live video-streaming app maker that last year became, perhaps, the second well-established startup to pivot to crypto. In the fall, Fortune broke news that YouNow had decided to host an “initial coin offering,” or ICO, whose virtual tokens would form the basis of a new, and untested, business model.
Pakman, who counts investments in Nest and Dollar Shave Club among his plaudits, says he is not interested in short term profits, despite the speculation-driven volatility associated with cryptocurrencies. “There are a lot of crypto traders in the market. There are a lot of cryptocurrency hedge funds. This is different,” said Pakman, describing the collaboration. “In fact, to us, it looks a little bit more like venture capital.”
Founded three years ago, CoinFund has backed a number of prominent blockchain projects. This week it added CoinList, an AngelList spinout that aims to help companies undertake regulation-compliant ICOs, to its portfolio. One of CoinFund’s most prominent clients is Kik, the chat app maker, which last year became the first well-established startup to pull a crypto-pivot, preceding YouNow. In recent months, Telegram has attracted the most attention for its ongoing multibillion-dollar ICO.
Jake Brukhman, a CoinFund cofounder, said on a separate call with Fortune that he was excited to bolster New York’s crypto scene with the old-meets-new partnership. “We’ll be working closely with them to help mentor, advise, and support teams in the space,” said. “We’re trying to cultivate a unique synergy between teams as we see more experienced founders and more traditional tech startups taking up blockchain.”
Like many blockchain proponents, Pakman and Brukhman see tremendous opportunity in the potential for the technology to disintermediate middlemen. “Gatekeepers tend to charge rent or toll on users,” Pakman said on the show. “The benefit of the advent of crypto is that we have fewer gatekeepers.”
“Venture capital itself is effectively a gatekeeper industry and I’d actually like to see that undone,” Pakman said. “I don’t believe that a small group of people should make the decisions about which projects can raise some money and get off the ground.”
That’s the goal, anyway.
在20世纪30年代，劳伦斯洛克菲勒开始在技术和航空公司投资他受石油开采的遗产。几十年后，1969年，约翰·D·洛克菲勒的孙子带着他的兄弟姐妹一起找到了文罗克，官员家庭的风险投资部门。（“venture”加“rockefeller”等于“venrock。”）今天，不久后将其财富通过然后暴发户有先见之明的赌注，英特尔和苹果等公司走上了一个新的前沿：cryptocurrency。David Pakman，一个Venrock合伙人，下降了财富的办公室分享合伙企业新闻只是击中了。Venrock正在与coinfund，布鲁克林区的cryptocurrency投资者集团，帮助企业家建立基于blockchains企业，热分布的分类技术，成名前的十年比特币的发展。Pakman说，关于平衡的Ledger最新一集的合资企业财富的Jen Wieczner和Robert Hackett，对资金和技术的交叉的一个新的展览。“我们想跟这个团队已经作出的投资，实际上帮助建筑师不同的密码和加密的基于令牌的经济项目的合作伙伴，”Pakman说。Venrock和coinfund第一次见到通过相互投资你，视频直播的应用程序制造商，去年成为，或许，第二枢轴行之有效的启动密码。在秋天，打破了新闻，你有财富决定举办一个“初始硬币发行，“或ICO，其虚拟令牌会形式的基础上一个新的和未经考验的商业模式。Pakman，谁是鸟巢和Dollar Shave Club投资在他的喝彩，说他不是在短期利润感兴趣，尽管投机驱动的波动与cryptocurrencies。“市场上有很多密码交易员。有很多的cryptocurrency对冲基金。这是不同的，”Pakman说，描述协作。“事实上，对我们来说，它看起来有点像风险投资。”成立于三年前，coinfund支持一批杰出的blockchain项目。本周，CoinList说，一个AngelList分拆，旨在帮助企业进行合规ICOS，其投资组合。其中最突出的是coinfund’s客户Kik，聊天应用程序制造商，去年成为第一个成熟的启动拉一个加密的支点，前面的你。最近几个月，电报已经对其进行了数十亿美元的ICO最吸引眼球。Jake Brukhman，一个coinfund创始人，说在一个财富，他兴奋地与老遇到新的伙伴关系，支持新的york’s密码现场单独调用。“我们将与他们密切合作，帮助指导，咨询和支持在太空中的团队，”他说。“we’re努力培养团队之间的一种独特的协同作用，正如我们所看到的更丰富和更传统的科技初创企业的创始人以blockchain.”像许多blockchain的支持者，Pakman和brukhman看到为符合中间商的技术潜在的巨大机会。“把关人往往对用户收取租金或收费，”Pakman在节目中说。“密码出现的好处是，我们有更少的人。”“风险投资本身是一种有效的把关工我真的想看了，”Pakman说。“我不相信，一小群人应该决定哪些项目可以募集一些钱，离开地面。”that’s目标，无论如何。
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