Asymmetry Ventures invests in scalable early-stage companies with exceptional defensibility.

Asymmetry Ventures

The Rise of Crypto Analytics and Big Data , a Crypto data analysis firm focused on securing services utilizing AI to protect the NFT Ecosystem, announced it has raised $3.6 million in a private round of funding led by Animoca Brands, including Coinbase Ventures, Capital, Polygon Studios, and others. The analytics and security products provide actionable NFT insights and help users get ahead of the NFT asset  curve with an AI-powered machine learning program. bitsCrunch Crypto.com bitsCrunch is based in Munich, Germany, and has a presence in India. bitsCrunch assists individuals in making NFT buying choices by allowing them to choose which NFTs to purchase. In the previous year, the firm claims to have grown its worldwide user base by more than 8X. Its goal is to protect the environment of the NFT. Animoca Brands, the round's main investor, is a significant participant in the gamification and blockchain industries, claiming to have a portfolio of over 150 investments in NFT-related businesses and decentralized initiatives. Animoca Brands is a  leader in gaming and blockchain with a portfolio of over 150 venture investments in NFT-related firms and decentralized initiatives that contribute to the open metaverse's and web 3 development. The additional financing will be used to grow the team, which will concentrate on protecting a number of well-known blockchains. Yat Siu, the Co-founder of Animoca Brands, said: With the increasing number of non-fungible digital assets in circulation and the rise in NFT marketplaces, bitsCrunch has the potential to contribute meaningfully to the safety and security of the emerging open metaverse. Understanding The Need for Big Data in Crypto Virtual currencies are quite popular these days, and trying to stay away from memecoins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu and stablecoins like Tether and Binance USD is difficult. However, as bitcoin becomes more popular, so do cryptocurrency crimes. The figure for crypto-based crimes more than doubled last year, reaching around US$14 billion in worldwide transactions, up from US$7.8 billion in 2020. While this increase in virtual currency crimes only accounts for 0.15 percent of all virtual currencies, it represents a 79 percent increase in fraud in this nascent market, even though cryptocurrency transactions have over quintupled (567 percent) in the last year, reaching US$15.8 trillion in 2021. Big Data is a very successful industry, with sales forecast to reach $203 billion by 2020. To put it another way, by 2030, the blockchain ledger's data might be valued up to 20% of the global Big Data market and earn up to $100 billion in yearly revenue. Blockchain-based big data tools help investors, governments, and enforcement agencies track trends and ensure compliance with international rules and regulations. Big Data and blockchain are a combination made in paradise. Today's real issue is who will be the first to develop the most appropriate and well-trained AI/machine learning model for use on top of blockchain-generated data layers that are distributed, transparent, and immutable. The company that does this will bring in a lot of money and make a lot of money. The aggregate value of the world's 50 biggest mineral mining businesses is over $700 billion. The value of blockchain-based big data mining systems will likely be in the hundreds of billions in the future. Catch all the breaking news, and Don’t forget to like the story! Image credits: and . Caden Tormey Shubham Dhage Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence, asking the right questions, and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The writer holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Solana and Cosmos. The writer has a vested interest in the story.

BitsCrunch Raises $3.6 Million from Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com Capital and Animoca Brands 

Hi Xinshu, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind IOSG Ventures? Ishan Pandey: I’m an entrepreneur turned investor in crypto. Co-founded two projects in the past, dabbled with quite different aspects in the crypto space, and having great fun so far. I launched the first sharding-enabled public chain Zilliqa and worked on various use cases that range from digital advertising to security token offering (STO). Xinshu Dong: Then I worked on Bitcoin mining and proof-of-stake (PoS) validation. Most recently, I joined IOSG Ventures last year to focus on investments. I had always been very curious about how investments work in general and in the crypto ecosystem in particular, so IOSG Ventures was a natural choice for me. It’s been great exposure working alongside the most innovative projects and ambitious founders daily. A bit more on IOSG Ventures. We are a community and research-driven venture fund focusing on early-stage blockchain and crypto projects. We see ourselves as a member of the community and engage on a weekly basis with them – sharing our research insights and market intelligence with them. As the fund and portfolio expand, we continue to remain connected to our founders, industry KOLs, academic researchers, crypto enthusiasts and investors to bring our value-add to portfolio companies. We invest significantly both in the infrastructure layer as well as applications, including being one of the largest investors of Near and Polkadot in Asia and one of the earliest investors from Asia in DeFi applications such as 1inch, Gelato and Centrifuge. The latest trend in handling projects seems to be a too-quick-too-soon model with no proper corporate structure led by arrogant entrepreneurs. How does this affect the long-term success rate in startup companies? Ishan Pandey: I think this is both a positive move and something that calls for concerns. Crypto provides a fast iterative platform for innovation and adoption. DeFi gained huge traction and completely revolutionized the way people deal with money and assets within just a few months. It’s amazing and hard to imagine something like this could happen outside of crypto. But on the other hand, we are really early and I’m not sure whether the current way that many projects operate will be sustainable in the long run. Xinshu Dong: For instance, anonymous teams are an interesting development in the spirit of decentralization. However, when a huge amount of money suddenly arrives, governance, accountability, and overseeing the treasury become crucial to protect all stakeholders’ interests in the ecosystem. There have been several high-profile incidents of exit scams, rug pulls, or money grabs, etc. You would almost certainly need some checks and balances, or even saviours, in those circumstances to prevent the projects from becoming completely obsolete. Some projects emerged stronger by decentralizing the project’s control and bringing value-add stakeholders, such as Sushiswap. I feel fundamentally these are things inevitable in the earliest stage of a new space where everything is really moving too quick, too soon. For projects to survive and thrive beyond the initial hype, we need to keep experimenting with and iterating different governance models. Overall, I think we just need to slow down a bit—longer vesting for tokens and even longer cliffs for all token holders. We are taking time to design a proper governance structure that suits the project from early on. Additionally, fundraising for the right reasons and carefully evaluating and selecting investors for long-term partnerships. These are some of the apparent aspects that all of us can consider. What policies should startups adopt to generate a robust structure in terms of handling projects that generally have a very short life cycle? Ishan Pandey: Well, we always look for long-term projects to invest in. I think with proper decentralized governance; we can see that projects can really outlive the initial period primarily driven by the founding teams. To achieve that, a few things matter: Xinshu Dong: 1) fair and widespread token distribution; 2)  design an inclusive governance structure with proper incentives; and 3) actively recruit community members to join the project in marketing, technical development and governance. How should new-age entrepreneurs upskill themselves to better manage a successful startup, especially in the ever-changing and ever-growing crypto space? Ishan Pandey: Very good question. I believe the skillsets required to potentially succeed in the crypto space are very different from those in more traditional entrepreneurship. There are 3 most important aspects that any new entrepreneurs in crypto should keep in mind – the speed of execution, avoiding working in silos and focusing on the community from Day 1. Xinshu Dong: For one, the pace is just vastly different. A day in crypto is at least a week in many other businesses. With COVID travel restrictions, largely instant and constant communications via Zoom etc., are the new norm, which further accelerates the speed to get things done. That’s why entrepreneurs must get up to speed and keep the focus on delivering. Secondly, avoiding reinventing the wheel has gotten to a new level. With open sourcing and composability among crypto projects, entrepreneurs need to be very aware of the space’s developments and leverage on other tools, APIs, and projects to build their own projects as much as possible. Working in silos is completely obsolete and will be considered incompetency. One last point I’d like to make is that the community is at least equally important, if not more. Crypto has brought almost all stakeholders into this broad concept of community, including your users, investors, liquidity providers, fans, researchers, etc. Gaining their sustained trust and confidence will keep the momentum going and ensure sufficient manpower, talents, and business development and financial resources for the projects’ long-term growth. What qualities do you look for in a ‘Founder’ or ‘Startups’ while investing in projects? Ishan Pandey: We want to see the clear value add to the ecosystem. It doesn’t have to be a completely new technology they’re building. In fact, a fork project with a clear new angle in servicing a particular type of users much better will give us more confidence than a project being built from scratch but doesn’t have a clear differentiation than existing ones. In more formal terms, this is about product-market fit, timing, initial traction, etc. Xinshu Dong: We also want to see a clear conviction from the founders. Crypto or not, building a startup is a hard battle to fight, which sometimes can be extremely challenging and tiring before achieving real successes. Founders need to have a strong will and get ready to fight the tough fight to get where they are headed. Also, different projects also require different perspectives in evaluating them. Equity deals place more emphasis on long-term value accrual, so the team is everything. Token deals are more susceptible to product-market fit and community sentiments. Overall, I think evaluating projects can’t be 100% scientific and it’s a mix of formal due diligence, track record, personal experience, and timing. How effective will decentralization be in fighting censorship? What are some challenges that decentralized governance might face in terms of regulatory and compliance mechanisms? Ishan Pandey: I think decentralization is the way to go in the fight against censorship. But having that alone isn’t enough. For instance, there’ll always be differing views even within a decentralized community regarding what would be censored (say, child pornography or so-called national security). But I’m sure despite these challenges, decentralization will be an infinitely better platform than autocratic censorship. Xinshu Dong: In terms of regulatory and compliance mechanisms, I believe this will just be one instance to manifest the disruptive nature of blockchain technology. I believe that those who can’t figure out what additional benefits blockchain brings to an organization than Cloud servers are putting blockchain in a box and thus missing the point. By all means, blockchain by nature is disruptive and will face lots of conflicts and challenges with regulation and compliance. The first immediate challenge is how to regulate crypto assets and transactions without stifling innovation, which is the more accessible part. The second challenge is how to analyze the impact of decentralized governance and organizations in terms of accountability, liability, fiduciary duty. This is the hard part and will affect almost every single aspect of laws and regulations as we know them. The third challenge will be before the first and second challenges are solved by solutions that make sense. What do we do as the crypto community? Elon Musk has openly endorsed the meme culture and has created quite the buzz around meme crypto Dogecoin. I recently read that you too have invested in Doge. How do you think this latest trend will affect the blockchain ecosystem? Ishan Pandey: I started to appreciate such movements, especially after WallStreetBets. There are just too many possibilities for how crypto will become mainstream, and public endorsement by influential figures such as Elon Musk and Mark Cuban is an effective channel. I think this will undoubtedly encourage more people to pay attention to blockchain or crypto, which in my view, is an all-positive move. Xinshu Dong: However, by no means we should focus on making new meme coins. Doge is good and perhaps good enough ;) What are your views on the recent developments in the crypto space, especially since this year has witnessed the crypto market attaining an all-time high primarily owing to the Bitcoin boom? Ishan Pandey: Among my friends, many of us actually are both encouraged and alerted by the fact that the market has been going up so quickly. We all need to make sure that we keep bringing new value to add to the space to remain relevant. I think if we believe eventually mainstream will adopt crypto, now is probably the best time to start working on new ideas for entrepreneurs. We are still early, but the clock is ticking. On the other hand, we will certainly have to exercise caution for investors as bubbles start to build up and focus on valuable long-term projects. Xinshu Dong: What, according to you, are the implications of the recent boom in DeFi? Further, what regulatory and technology challenges are still left to be addressed by the DeFi industry? Ishan Pandey: I think the first and foremost implication is the reaffirmation that adoption is key. DeFi witnessed one of the fastest growth in its volume and user base. How that was achieved or what kind of volume and users dominate, etc., are certainly important questions to ask, but not as important as the fact that they skyrocketed. We need more products that have a great product market fit to unlock blockchain’s huge potential gradually. Xinshu Dong: I don’t see real challenges with DeFi from the technology perspective. Some of the current issues, such as high gas fees, can be readily resolved by the adoption of layer 2s or other faster chains in the near future. The lack of clarity around its legal and regulatory front is certainly a challenge, and we will need to be ready to make swift adaptation as new regulations come along. What advice will you give to budding entrepreneurs who want to build applications for the cryptocurrency industry? Ishan Pandey: 1) Become a power user first and use different existing products at least for some time. 2) then, after sketching out an initial idea, validate it with people in the community, get their help, build prototypes and iterate quickly based on feedback. That’s the way to go for crypto products. 3) Money is everywhere. People who claim they can help you with marketing or community are everywhere. Choose your partners wisely. Check out their track record, get references from people they worked with, and compare between a few. 4) Please take enough incentive for yourselves as founders. That’s not just for the good of yourselves but also the long-term good of your projects. Xinshu Dong: What are some new trends and products that we should be on the lookout for in the DeFi space in 2021? Ishan Pandey: I think a lot of innovation will emerge, fewer at the grand scale, but more on refining existing mechanisms in lending/borrowing, automated marketing making, cross-product or cross-platform aggregation, as well as coming up with products offering more competitive rates. The infusion of DeFi into other blockchain applications such as games, collectables, and social networking, is also worth looking out for. Xinshu Dong: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence by asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The material does not constitute any investment, financial, or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc. The writer does not have any vested interest in the company.

"The Skills Required To Succeed In Crypto Are Different From Others" - Xinshu Dong of IOSG Ventures

John Vrionis is Managing Partner of Unusual Ventures , which he co-founded with Jyoti Bansal (founder of AppDynamics). Unusual Ventures is a new model for early stage venture investing and mentorship, and the solution for what John calls the seed funding gap . Prior to founding Unusual Ventures in May 2018, John was a General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, where he invested in several successful companies including Nimble Storage, DataStax, AppDynamics (acq: Cisco), Mulesoft (IPO; acq: Salesforce) Heptio (acq: VMware) and Nicira (acq: VMware). Davis Baer : What’s your background, and what are you working on? People often ask me how I ended up in Silicon Valley as the founder of . Here’s the short version: I grew up in a semi-rural town in Georgia and my dad was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when I was just a kid. It was tough for the entire family, especially my mom, who was overwhelmed by an angry teenager (me) and the lower middle class economic situation we found ourselves in. Convinced relieving financial stress was the biggest obstacle to happiness, I was determined to make something of my life. I poured myself into sports and school, and found both academic and athletic success. These successes ultimately opened the doors to college, where I played on the soccer team at Harvard and later, professionally. It’s important to note here that I didn’t find early success because I had a transcendent “gift” for sports or academics. It was mostly persistence and a relentless drive to overcome any obstacles which did it. In other words, I made it my mission to work as hard as I possibly could because this strategy produced some early positive results, and if I’m honest, it also numbed me from the sadness I felt about my dad’s illness and the impact MS had on my family. John Vrionis: Unusual Ventures After a few years playing professional soccer, I had to get a “real” job. I just wasn’t good enough to make a career out of the sport. I spent a year working for an investment bank, in part because it paid well, but I had zero control over the work that I did and quickly became miserable. I decided to go back to school for a Masters in computer science and worked for a corporate tech VC at the same time. Soon, however, I realized I knew nothing about business, so I tried going back to school again — business school this time. However, I didn’t get accepted to the school I wanted to attend (Stanford) and ended up joining a startup. The startup turned out to be a success and eventually I landed at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (they accepted me the second time — persistence, remember?), and then, my path took me to Lightspeed Venture Partners. I figured I would spend a year or two learning about venture capital from the inside and the emerging technologies building up around them. Instead, I fell in love with helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals in business and life, and remained there for 12 years. I learned the hard way that happiness has very little to do with personal finances, and that for me, joy comes from helping others in the hardest moments, working side by side with people who have similar values, and focusing on work I am most passionate about — i.e. early-stage entrepreneurship. Today, I’m part of team focused on redefining the early-stage VC market and giving founders a through , the seed-stage venture fund I with Jyoti Bansal last year. It’s been a remarkable journey so far — from recruiting the team and our non-profit LPs, to launching the firm and our in May, to the in August, and — most recently — , one of the smartest and most experienced growth and product experts in tech, to lead our Consumer practice as Partner in January. distinct advantage Unusual Ventures launched Get Ahead Platform Unusual Academy bringing on Andy Johns What types of companies do you invest in? We’re early-stage investors, which means that investment decisions center mostly on alignment with founders and their vision for a new product and category. When we invest, the exact path of how the company will proceed in terms of product strategy and go-to-market plans isn’t clear, but we have a shared belief in the opportunity and a passion to work closely together to chart the best course. We focus on companies that are in the enterprise and consumer technology sectors. Now that technology has become a strategic part of every industry, there are far more interesting and promising markets for tech startups than ever before, which means we’re seeing exciting pitches from all different types of industries. Today, our portfolio companies span enterprise software and infrastructure, DevOps tools and services, full-stack application solutions, fintech solutions, cybersecurity solutions, and now, with the addition of Andy Johns to the team, consumer applications. The shared DNA is the founders — we work with authentic, insightful, and determined founders who want to win big and have the humility to understand it takes a team to execute on the vision. What do you look for when making an investment? At the seed-stage, we are looking for people with proprietary insight — meaning they have experienced some personal pain, identified the root cause, sought out a solution, and hacked one together themselves because it mattered deeply to them. Mind you, founders with this type of origin story don’t always go on to create successful companies, but just about every breakout company that has ever existed starts from this basic premise. We are not interested in people who start a company with the primary goal of making money. That said, let me be clear — we are venture capitalists, so obviously money matters to us and it is our job to create outsized investment returns. But money can’t be the primary driver for a founder. We’ve seen that before and we know it doesn’t work. Passion, drive, and personal experience — that’s what we want in founders. So, we work with people who would pursue their idea with or without money because it matters that much to them. The other big traits we look for in founders are curiosity, the capability to learn quickly, and storytelling ability. On the first two, we want to see an insatiable willingness and desire to dive in and absorb new things. We also look for an unusual combination of confidence and humility. Essentially, we want founders that believe they have what it takes to beat all the odds, but have a hunger to learn something from people who have been on a similar journey at an earlier point in time. Third is storytelling — the reality is to be a great founder, you have to be a good storyteller. There are plenty of people out there with great ideas, but the ones who truly set themselves apart are those with the best stories to communicate and inspire others to believe in what they are creating. Stories are powerful because they go right to the very core of human nature. Founders with exceptional storytelling ability can hire better talent, land more customers, and can always find people to invest in them and their idea. What’s your advice for entrepreneurs looking to get funded? Find investors who specialize in investing in companies at your stage. For example, when raising Seed or Series A capital, beware of investors who describe themselves as “stage-agnostic.” That’s more or less another way of saying, “We can give you money, but what we are really doing is buying optionality, so in the case where you succeed, we can write you a big check and then we can afford to spend time with you.” With billions of dollars to deploy, these large funds simply can’t dedicate the time or provide the specialized support an early-stage company needs. Worse yet, if you do take their money and they don’t sign on to lead your next funding round, it sends a clear signal to every other investor in the market that your business is not worth their time. Investors love to tell founders to “focus” and yet, ironically, many are trying to claim they are world class at investing at every stage. At Unusual, we think founders deserve better. The best investors can make a profound difference in helping founders turn an early insight into a real business. That’s because they have 10,000+ hours of experience working through the unavoidable challenges entrepreneurs face in the early stages of their company, such as finding early customers and building a repeatable sales process, articulating the value proposition and messaging, recruiting top talent, fundraising, and the list goes on. Ultimately, it’s a matter of information asymmetry. Great investors have seen it all dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. It’s NOT to say that investors should be prescriptive — they definitely should not be because every founder’s journey is different. However, all of those experiences give good investors an advantage in terms of knowledge, and it means they have likely amassed a deep network of resources and support from which they can draw. What are the biggest challenges / obstacles that you see founders facing that they must overcome? It’s a long list, but if I have to choose, I’d say it’s team and focus. Team always comes first. That’s because hiring a great team at the seed-stage is both exceptionally challenging exceptionally critical to the success of your business. In fact, for many investors, your ability to hire great talent tells them nearly everything they need to know about your business, as I recently explained in . and a Hacker Noon article with my advice for early-stage hiring From a business execution standpoint, focus is where almost everyone screws up today. To raise money, founders have to present a BIG vision and plan, but the story told to investors is not the one customers care about, nor does it lead to a feasible go-to-market strategy. Too many founders make the mistake of trying to tackle too much with product and go-to-market plan 1.0. As a result, they end up selling a platform vs a specific solution tied to a bite-sized problem. Not wanting to give up on the grand vision, but lacking the resources to deliver a best in class solution for more than one use case, many startups run out of money before hitting the essential early milestone of evangelical customers. Early success in a startup isn’t physics hard, it is dieting hard. Having the discipline to build and market certain things — that is the hardest part. not If you weren’t an investor, what would you be doing? For me, meaningful relationships are what matter most in life. Helping people achieve their goals in business and/or life is the most fulfilling thing that anyone can do. It turns out I have a passion to help entrepreneurs build businesses, and a belief that the venture capital industry needs to continue to innovate and improve on many dimensions — so that’s my part to play. In other words, there is truly nothing else I’d rather be doing. In fact, that’s why I partnered with Jyoti to launch Unusual Ventures in the first place, where the goal isn’t simply investing in companies to make money. We’ve created Unusual to redefine seed-stage venture capital, improve the model, and provide an unprecedented level of service and support to early-stage founders. We were in the fortunate position to design everything about Unusual as the first principals and we decided to push the boundaries on several dimensions. For instance, instead of raising funds from the usual suspects — sovereign wealth funds, wealthy individuals with family offices, and so on — we work almost exclusively with “unusual” LPs, such as historically black colleges and universities, foundations, endowments, public children’s hospitals, and other causes that are typically boxed out of the massive wealth creation that takes place in Silicon Valley. Anything else you want to share? Silicon Valley is awash in venture capital — much of which comes from sovereign wealth funds of questionable origins. According to an from The Wall Street Journal, Saudi Arabia is now the single largest source of funding for tech companies in the US. October report The implications of this trend are troubling — as — and founders should be paying much closer attention. Why? Because they are in the best position to change it. The only way we will see greater transparency in VC is if founders take a stand and start asking for it. Otherwise, this growing problem just becomes another news cycle. I wrote about in TechCrunch recently This interview is brought to you by , a tool to schedule and automatically repeat your posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business OneUp

VC Interview: John Vrionis of Unusual Ventures

363 Stories To Learn About Investing

The early-stage venture market serves as a critical catalyst for innovation and economic growth. However, despite its importance, this market has long been characterized by information asymmetry, where investors possess more knowledge and bargaining power than entrepreneurs. face hurdles in securing fair valuations, as negotiation power often tilts toward the investor. Moreover, entrepreneurs struggle to present their vision in the context of wider industry standards due to the lack of accessible data, impeding their ability to attract capital and make informed decisions. Startups Over the past two years, we’ve seen valuations scream to and crash to . A combination of COVID-related irrationality and historically low interest rates highlighted the lack of discipline and diligence in early-stage investment. These swings in price have squandered a vast amount of capital; an immense opportunity cost for entrepreneurship which has been particularly brutal for the overlooked and underfunded. record highs new lows The need to address this vulnerability is clear, and the foundation of this change has to be greater transparency on deal terms and market activity. The Value of Transparency: Transparency is almost always an objective worth pursuing, though there are a number of very specific ways in which it would benefit the early-stage fundraising market: Access to accurate and comprehensive data on revenue growth and valuation benchmarks empowers entrepreneurs to make data-driven decisions. Startups can evaluate their performance objectively, identify areas for improvement, and strategize accordingly. Investors, armed with reliable data, can make more informed investment decisions and allocate resources effectively, enhancing the overall efficiency of the early-stage venture market. Enabling Informed Decision-Making: Data transparency promotes fairness by reducing information asymmetry. Entrepreneurs and investors can enter negotiations armed with reliable benchmarks, creating a more equitable environment for deal structuring. Fair valuations are crucial for startups to attract the right capital, preserve founder equity, and foster a healthier investment ecosystem. Leveling the Playing Field: Transparent data empowers entrepreneurs to demonstrate the potential of their ventures. Startups can showcase their growth trajectory and milestones, highlighting their value proposition to investors. This not only enhances their chances of securing funding but also promotes a culture of risk-taking and innovation. Greater transparency fosters investor confidence, as they can assess a startup's potential in a more objective manner, stimulating greater investments in groundbreaking ideas. Encouraging Risk-Taking and Innovation: Building a Transparent Early-Stage Venture Market: Greater visibility on valuation and market data for startup investment is a vital step toward establishing a fairer and more effective fundraising ecosystem. For these reasons, we developed Equidam’s , a suite of benchmarking tools which complement our standard for startup valuation. Valuation Delta™ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yStVbOu9Ze8&ab_channel=Equidam&embedable=true Daniel Faloppa, Equidam CEO, walks you through the Valuation Delta™ Through these benchmarks, founders can - for the first time - get a view of how their company compares to their peers across a number of metrics including valuation, round size, projected revenue growth, and EBITDA margin. By providing a more complete picture of the startup, investors and founders can more easily align on their vision for the future, and set deal terms that work for all sides. Transparency Leads to Fairness: Greater data transparency in early-stage investment has the potential to revolutionize how we fund innovation. By providing entrepreneurs with reliable benchmarks on revenue growth and valuations, startups can make informed decisions, attract fair investments, and face less uncertainty around future fundraising. Simultaneously, investors benefit from enhanced visibility, promoting a more efficient allocation of capital to companies that are truly innovative. Through standardized reporting, open methodology, and investor education, we can establish a fairer and more innovation-friendly early-stage venture market that propels economic growth and nurtures the next generation of groundbreaking startups.

Benchmarking Startup Valuation, for Fairer Funding of Innovation

Benchmarking Startup Valuation, para una financiación más justa de la innovación

Benchmarking Startup Valuation, pour un financement plus juste de l'innovation

नवाचार की उचित फंडिंग के लिए बेंचमार्किंग स्टार्टअप वैल्यूएशन

イノベーションへのより公平な資金提供のためのスタートアップ評価のベンチマーク

Benchmarking Startup Valuation, para um financiamento mais justo da inovação

Định giá khởi nghiệp theo điểm chuẩn, để tài trợ đổi mới công bằng hơn

对初创企业估值进行基准测试，以更公平地资助创新

Hi Harjyot, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind ? Ishan Pandey: Human Protocol I have spent the last decade working as technical lead across quite a few projects, primarily focused on utilizing AI in the finance & distributed computing domain. I also founded two successful ventures, building infrastructure to tackle misinformation, bias, and privacy issues. With that kind of background, HUMAN Protocol was the natural choice for me Harjyot Singh: HUMAN Protocol began with the idea of taking the technology and crowdsourcing capability of hCaptcha, a partner application and putting them on-chain. But once we achieved this with one type of task – namely, the labelling of images – we began exploring how the exact mechanisms could tokenize any type of task and what future of work that could make possible. The gig economy is growing. Microwork is increasing. The ways we work are changing, and HUMAN Protocol (" ") provides a new infrastructure to meet that change. All work tokenized, automatically (and securely) parcelled out to global workforces, verified, and rewarded. Protocol Please tell us a little bit about the protocol and its underlying technology to support decentralized job markets. Ishan Pandey: The Protocol is a permissionless software to facilitate the exchange of human work, knowledge, and contribution. More generally, it is a trustless layer that sits on top of existing blockchains within which any type of work can be represented, verified, and rewarded. This creates new decentralized job markets. Job markets in which there is no intermediary control, as can be seen on freelancing platforms such as Upwork, or crowdsourcing solutions such as MTurk. Harjyot Singh: Workers are free to access the work that suits them, and which fits their unique background and knowledge. Projects are free to access pools of global workers to complete small or big jobs, or gather the necessary responses to build comprehensive datasets and make informed decisions. Key to Protocol is the trustlessness inherent to blockchain technology. By building a system in which the primary exchanges are automated, guaranteed by software, we paradoxically enable both workers and projects to have greater trust in the job markets built on top. Trust that their contribution will be valued and remunerated, and trust that work will be completed to a project’s desired specifications. DeFi’s emergence has been considered by regulators as posing a risk to the traditional financial system. However, a substantial number of participants deemed DeFi participation to offer better risk-adjusted benefits than typical banking or investment services. What are your views on this supposition? Ishan Pandey: In fact, I think we’re starting to see the opposite; regulators in the West have begun to embrace DeFi. It’s rapidly evolving – which is most apparent in the increase of commodities trading on DeFi – and traditional banking will naturally need a few more years to catch up. Harjyot Singh: Regulatory pressure is an instinctive reaction to something new. Especially something that comes from the outside. This will change with time and new solutions that help create a middle ground. While the benefits of DeFi are obvious, the space still needs to find a way to pair with traditional banking, which several projects are actively working on and it’s the same with the Protocol: you can’t change how the world works overnight. It’s about gradually introducing new and better solutions that complement existing ones. China has been actively cracking down on cryptocurrency trade and mining since May 2021, causing a tremendous blow to cryptocurrency exchanges, mining companies, and investors. What are the global implications of this intense regulatory measure? Ishan Pandey: There will always be peaks and troughs. Bans, or talk of them, are common but rarely amount to much. You can see how meme-worthy these recent bans by China have become. The history of cryptocurrency is a tug and war between fear of change and awareness of its inevitability. That will continue to be the case for corporations and governments, but less so over time. In the case of China specifically, we see a lot of contribution from the Chinese community. Harjyot Singh: The recent rise of “metaverse” refers to a new paradigm that has piqued everyone’s interest within the crypto space. Can you elaborate on this fairly new concept that has emerged within this ecosystem? Ishan Pandey: Metaverse, like blockchain technology, isn’t a new concept, but the mainstream attention on it is. Two things are happening: new technologies such as blockchain are making the metaverse a possibility, and recent societal shifts are making it desirable, if not inevitable. Harjyot Singh: The pandemic specifically has opened up space for edge solutions to relocate to the center stage. As the ways we work, socialize, and live change, so must the ways we interact and connect. Increasingly, companies will look to blockchain technology to enter this space and be part of the new paradigm; one in which intermediaries do not yield all the power, but rather help manage the digital and dynamic relationships between distributed parties. The parent organization of Facebook, Meta, is seeking deeper compatibility with blockchain technology. Do you think we are fast approaching mass adoption of Blockchain technology across all sectors? Ishan Pandey: As we’ve already mentioned, yes: the mass adoption of blockchain technology is fast approaching. The dynamics of our world are changing. Blockchain provides a solution to a problem that has only really recently become apparent to most people. Companies and governments will naturally want to get ahead of this and establish their first-mover position. Harjyot Singh: That said, there’s more exciting things happening in the blockchain space than Facebook; the WhatsApp currency Novi has received little interest. That's why companies like Meta, Facebook and WhatsApp are looking to capitalize on the momentum that’s already been built. HP & Dell tried to capitalize on Web 2.0 but weren’t key to its success. It’ll be the same story here. I am interested in how companies from developing nations are building blockchain-based infrastructure and products that are getting mass adoption in their locale. Interest from big-name technology companies may legitimize the technology in the eyes of a few, but the train towards mass adoption has already left the station, so to speak. What new trends are we going to witness within the crypto ecosystem, especially in the post-covid-19 era? Ishan Pandey: With the increasing capability of Layer-1s, more attention will switch to solutions that deliver real-world use cases and usability. That’s what we’re excited about with the Protocol; it’s already one of the most used blockchain technologies in terms of users interacting with supported applications, operating across multiple L1s, and we’ve only really just begun our mission to bring the world’s work on-chain. With the worst of the pandemic behind us, there’s now an opportunity to bring blockchain-based solutions to the mainstream and realize new ways of working, exchanging, and generally interacting that reflect our post-Covid needs. Harjyot Singh: Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence, asking the right questions, and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions.

How the adoption of blockchain technology will evolve: an Interview with Harjyot Singh

Cake DeFi launches a $100 Million Venture Arm , a Singapore-based DeFi platform that provides decentralized financial services and apps available to everyone, has announced the creation of its venture-capital arm, which will invest US$100 million in the tech ecosystem. Cake DeFi Ventures (CDV) will invest in Web3, metaverse, NFT, gaming, esports, and fintech firms to provide synergistic value to Cake’s core business. CDV  is based in Singapore and will search for global investment possibilities in companies all around the globe. Cake DeFi Julian Hosp, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cake DeFi, said: By launching Cake DeFi Ventures, we strive towards bringing cryptocurrency and blockchain capabilities to the world. With Cake's current status as Singapore's and Southeast Asia's fastest-growing platform, projects which we invest in can expect to receive strong support scaling globally. Cake DeFi co-founders Dr Julian Hosp, CEO, and U-Zyn Chua, CTO, lead CDV. Dr Hosp is a seasoned blockchain entrepreneur who is generally considered a top influencer in the crypto and blockchain field, having over one million followers across all of his platforms. By 2025, he wants a billion people to be aware of and comprehend blockchain technology. U-Zyn has been designing and developing decentralized systems for over a decade as a blockchain engineer, enthusiast, and investor. They founded cake DeFi as the world’s top investment platform for DeFi and other up-and-coming alternative assets based in Singapore. Cake DeFi will provide substantial assistance to CDV portfolio firms. They will have access to various Cake products, connections, users, resources, and knowledge in the global blockchain market. Last year, Cake gave out more than $230 million in prizes to its subscribers, and it expects to pay out more than $400 million in 2022. Cake allows users to gain cash flow from their digital asset investments via features like lending, staking, and liquidity mining. What is Liquidity Mining? On-chain activity has exploded as a result of the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) rise in 2021. VCs are investing billions of dollars in the digital assets industry. The volume on DEX can compete with the volume on controlled exchanges such as Binance, FTX, Coinbase and Gate.io. According to reports, DeFi protocols are expected to be worth around 15 billion USD by December 2020. New sorts of items are increasingly entering the ecosystem. One of the core technologies in the present DeFi ecosystem is liquidity pools. They’re used in automated market makers (AMM), borrow-lend protocols, yield farming, synthetic assets, on-chain insurance, and blockchain gaming, to name a few examples. A liquidity pool is essentially a sizeable digital programmable pool of money deposited in a smart contract. They allow for decentralized trading of virtual assets, lending, and yield production through liquidity mining among other things. Smart contracts now fuel practically every aspect of DeFi and will most likely continue to do so in the future. Catch all the breaking news, and Don’t forget to like the story! Image credits: and . David Holifield Artyom Korshunov Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence, asking the right questions, and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The writer holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Solana and Cosmos. The writer has been commissioned to write this story and thus has a vested interest in the companies/products mentioned above.

Cake DeFi Launches New Corporate Venture Arm with $100 Million to Invest in Web 3 Ecosystem

Ignite tournaments a play-to-earn esports startup raises funding has raised $10 million in funding from key investors to develop the world's first mobile play-to-earn ("P2E") esports tournament and broadcasting platform. A $3 million seed round headed by Yield Guild Games and Ascensive Assets, with participation from Mechanism Capital, Arca Funds, Skyvision Capital, and several funds and angel investors, was completed in December 2021, resulting in a total of $10 million raised. Ignite Tournaments Animoca Brands, Infinity Ventures Crypto, and Moon Holdings Fund led a $7 million strategic round in February 2022. These new investors have decades of expertise in both conventional and blockchain gaming. Brian Lu, Founding Partner at Infinity Venture Crypto, said: Krystal and I were both competitive gamers, ranked #1 globally in different MZ games—I became the Emperor in Game of War, and Krystal was the #1 defensive “trap” player in Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire. It’s clear to me as both a former competitive gamer and VC investor that Ignite Tournaments will completely transform competitive mobile gaming. I am co-leading this round because I want to see Ignite Tournaments add that immense value to all games worldwide; to both IVC’s game portfolio and beyond. Genesis Block Ventures, SevenX Ventures, Longhash Ventures, ROK Capital, Huobi Ventures, Akatsuki, MH Carnegie, D1 Ventures, Ghaf Capital, and Morningstar Ventures are among the other strategic investors. Angel investors included Jeffrey "Jiho" Zirlin, co-founder of Axie Infinity, and Looren Roosendaal, co-founder of Ember Sword and PlanetQuest. Through its capacity to transform any pre-existing mobile game into a play-to-earn game, Ignite Tournaments' platform combines conventional gaming with web 3.0. By making P2E event organisation tools available to players all across the globe, their concept would alter the esports business and decrease the entrance barrier. Payments are made in bitcoin and NFTs, staked for more incentives. Web 3.0 infrastructure is also being developed to increase esports rewards. What is eSports? A multi-billion dollar industry? The world of organised, competitive video gaming is known as eSports. In games like Fortnite, League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Overwatch, and Madden NFL, players from various leagues or teams compete against one other. Millions of fans across the globe watch and follow these gamers, whether they attend live events, watch on TV, or follow them online. Viewers may watch their favourite gamers play in real-time on streaming platforms like Twitch, and this is often where popular players grow their following bases. As difficult as it may be for fans of conventional sports leagues such as the NFL or the NBA to believe, eSports operates similarly at its top levels. In reality, the NBA conducted a draught in April to prepare for the debut of its upcoming eSports league, which will be based on the basketball-themed NBA 2K game series. During the draught, 102 professional eSports players were chosen, with all fanfare and fanfare usually reserved for players on the court. This is a valuable industry, not just for gamers but also for marketers and video game developers. The event in Jacksonville included Madden 19, a game from the long-running EA Madden franchise. The EA Madden Franchise has sold over 130 million copies and generated over $4 billion in revenue since its beginning over three decades ago. Like conventional athletes, eSports players may earn a lot of money: Millions of dollars in prize money may be won in tournaments, and the winning teams' players are usually shared evenly. That means the best players in the world may easily make seven figures in a year. Ticket purchases for these contests help teams and event organisers as well. What was the name of the 2017 League of Legends tournament? Ticket sales brought in $5.5 million. Following the incident, EA Sports cancelled the subsequent three Madden Classic qualifying events to examine safety standards for contestants and spectators, according to a press statement. eSports will continue developing as a business — and leisure — for the foreseeable future, based on the statistics and the inevitable cultural trend. By the end of 2018, 1.6 billion individuals, or more than a fifth of the world's population, will have some awareness of eSports. Give it some time if you haven't heard anything about eSports. It is unavoidable that it expand worldwide and culturally. Catch all the breaking news, and Don’t forget to like the story! Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence, asking the right questions, and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The writer holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Solana and Cosmos. The writer has a vested interest in the story.

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