Crypto Frontiers: Investor Strategies for the Next Wave - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024

thank you all so much for coming out for today's panel my name is Irene I am a venture partner at banc cap crypto I've been building the space for several years most recently as head of strategy at layer zero Labs I've had the pleasure of of working with uh an Neil's fund Deli but through this panel will'll be talking about each of these funds also just more the craft of VC as it's specific to crypto Venture so to kick it off I'd love for each of you to give a brief introduction to your fund also your specific mandate within the fund we'll start with you sure hey guys my name is AKA um I'm a head of Investments for Maelstrom which is the family office of Arthur Hayes uh pretty pretty standard family office mandate make money great uh I'm Franklin B General partner at Penta capital a little bit about Penta we've been investing in blockchain and crypto since 2013 launched their First Institutional Bitcoin Fund in the US and from there uh We've grown a portfolio of venture and early stage token Investments of around 2 uh 40 plus uh so a lot of the early leaders and things like stable coins exchanges defi um we continue to invest we manage about uh $4.5 billion dollar today uh for myself personally I I spent a lot of time on Defi and infrastructure uh and have also LED most of our gaming Investments very cool hey everyone uh my name is Anil I'm the CEO of Deli digital we have three main arms research Ventures and Labs obviously today we'll be talking mostly about Ventures um on the Venture side it's all prop cap so we get a lot of flexibility we do liquid and private but mostly lean private um and you know we're kind of very flexible in what we invest in I think one thing that people often take for granted about Venture and and understanding it is that different fund structures actually then translate into very different approaches to Deals what's attractive what's not and what is actually fund returning each of you guys have slightly different structures there's a hybrid Fund in the mix a liquid fund only privates early stage could you talk a little bit about how your specific fund size and structure actually translates into deals in this cycle that may or may not be a fit yeah I'm happy to go first um you know I think for us we really feel like the full spectrum of opportunities uh within just crypto as an asset class blockchain as a technology is how we want to approach the space right I mean when we talk to LPS and institutional investors often times where they're coming to us from is hey I am excited about where blockchain technology is going I don't have a strong view on whether I should be in liquid tokens or Venture and I don't know the best way to sort of set up my portfolio I just want a great active manager who's going to figure it out for me and so that's the way we've really designed uh our last Venture style fund um built for the next 10 years same thing we're doing for our next fund to which we're launching in 2025 and so what that fund has is Venture Equity early stage bets in things that are building on top of blockchain or facilitating access to crypto assets uh it has early stage tokens where we get to uh in at their early stages and help bootstrap some of these early protocols and networks uh it has liquid tokens where we still see a lot of great opportunities things that look like they're still at the seed or series a stage uh but because a token is so important to uh the success of what they're building they're already out in the liquid markets uh and then finally on top of all that we actually have a new bucket that we've just built out over the last 12 months and that we're adding to our next fund which is what we call special opportunities and these are things that just don't fit into any of the buckets it's just the nature of navigating the unknown in crypto uh and so that includes things like um our investment in the ton ecosystem and um salana um backing bitwise on their launch of the Bitcoin ETF um things that don't fit any of those buckets but because of how we're set up within the ecosystem we get to bring those kinds of opportunities um to our partners how about about you uh OT at at melstrom originally a family office how do you guys think about what is actually fund returning in interesting for you guys yeah I think um so Maelstrom is a is structured as a family office so we don't have any outside LPS no outside investors and um as a result we have a lot of flexibility with the Mandate there's a lot of different things we can do in terms of structuring deals um so often you know a lot of our deals are pre-sale Investments in very early stage companies but there'll be times where we also invest in uh like an annuity a stream of um Revenue royalties associated with um a project that we might help out in an advisory capacity um we can also do things in the liquid markets uh We've we've also done a lot of secondaries where we've bought stakes from other investors um I think uh the flexible mandate also allows us to to feel no pressure to deploy because we don't have any investors you know who are kind of waiting for the money in 5 years um Arthur is waiting for his money but he's he's bullish on this sector for the next you know decade Century so um we we kind of uh we only invest in deals when we feel like we find good quality stuff and uh at the moment you know for example we're slowing down a little bit anything you want to add there yeah I'd say um deli's in like a similar Camp um just cuz we you know it's our own money and the way that uh Deli structured is pretty unique essentially we we have these three divisions so what we call like the hive mind um essentially you get this an analytical perspective via research the Builder's mindset via labs and then the investors's mindset VI adventures and so the way the only ways people can invest in the deli fund is basically working at one of these three divisions um so because of that everyone's incentivized to kind of bring deals and Alpha from kind of like every perspective and every kind of walk of the space so this leads to you know uh very similar like a lot of unique different opportunities um at all stages of the life cycle you actually bring up an interesting point around building funds that offer different uh value ad to portfolio companies I often get asked by Founders is it just commoditized Capital am I effectively just choosing which VC I I like the most and how should I build my cap table how do you guys think about this is is your fund selling commoditized capital or what actually differentiates having melstrom Deli or panta on the cap table yeah I can I maybe start um yeah it's something that we thought a lot about when we first started um our main objective was actually being the most value out Fund in crypto and we spent a lot of resources and we quickly realized that um the bar was very low right um so so a lot of funds weren't doing much other than being capital and for most projects it's kind of okay you know they can kind of Reach Out get intros and everything like that and kind of handle most of that themselves um at Deli we've kind of structured it uh you know we obviously do have this big like Consulting advising uh division where we do a lot of token design we have a big design decision that does like you know ux and branding for a lot of protocols um and then on the lab side we have a lot of Builders who you know if we do really uh feel like the need will help kind of like build certain protocols or ecosystems out for you know Investments that you know uh we're really bullish on and excited about so you know it's definitely been something that we're we've always been focused on and I think over time what we've seen is a lot of funds that are launching nowadays kind of are way more brutally honest and you know don't try and pretend that they are value ad just say hey we're just capital and you know what um a lot of project seem to be okay with that interesting you too yeah I think we see it similarly that where you know like like the crypto industry has evolved in early days like you said um there was a time where VC funds were some 50% Bitcoin ethereum and then you know kind of allocating almost like index funds um nowadays funds have to specialize and um you're starting to see that you know like their their funds are Focus just on Salon deals or funds that Focus just on high throughput chains that for in our case um we like to we do a lot of defi stuff we also do some infrastructure stuff but what makes us unique is that we help with storytelling because that's what Arthur is good at um in you know in kind of highbrow ways and through his essays as well as in kind of Neanderthal ways and in the fun ways that he tweets um so I think you know our our mandate is to yes make money but also to help tell stories and be part of those stories so I think that's why um portfolio companies come to us and and like working with us Franklin pant's first fund was a Bitcoin fund I I think in 2013 or 2014 and now you guys are on fund four fun four yeah fun four um you guys could have just stayed with with Bitcoin and some people could argue that if a fund never Ventures into trying to catch Founders at the early stages their returns would be far higher across the the board on average VCS don't actually return why is it that you guys wanted to expand into uh early stage protocols yeah I think for us um you know I think there's such a bigger opportunity um to actually just leverage blockchain um and you know we could have just said hey Bitcoin is the best idea that we have but we had more ideas and you know I think the energy and creativity from Founders just kind of forces you into that position where um you know I think there's kind of a bunch of things that still need to happen um for us to realize the full potential um of blockchain and crypto you know we kind of put it into three categories uh the first one is around gateways you know Bitcoin could have just done its thing for a long time and stayed pretty flat but by opening up new Bridges and new ways to onboard uh people onto uh crypto Financial rails uh that's really opened up the opportunity for Bitcoin to serve as a means of payment uh for ethereum to really enable a whole um Universe of application development uh and then from there really to become a much more scalable platform for for uh creativity and so you know early stage protocols for us um is just a Natural Evolution where um you know we want to see um experimentation uh and you know we know that there are some things that are really unique about what blockchains can offer um you know Global 247 uh rails uh decentralized marketplaces um empowering creators uh to really own their entire stack and know their fate applying those into different vertical and different Industries to us is a multi-billion doll opportunity it's massive asymmetric upside and so when we think about the nature of venture that's exactly what we should be playing for right um and to your to your last question too of how we think about um you know why Founders should partner with us right it's not just because we were early it's also because you know we've learned a lot from those 11 years from multiple Bull and bare Market cycles and all those Battle Scars are really just to the benefit of our Founders so you know the few things that we think really matter to building a great company building a great ecosystem are really just around three key areas it's Talent it's go to market and it's research so we've built ourselves around those things and we try to really walk the walk right uh one thing we put out was um something that we've kind of internally called uh our proof of work system for a long time uh and that is literally a Tracker of every single thing that we are helping our founders with so over the past two years it's been something like almost 2,000 introductions to potential customers and partners it's uh a ton of uh Talent referrals uh and so you know being able to go back to a found and say look you chose us as your partner these are our kpis this is exactly what we're doing for you hold us accountable and hopefully five years from now you can say and really point at the numbers and say this is where panta helped us so you know we're trying to be more public about it now because we've got this great data uh but really we just want to continue it for the next 10 years supporting Founders I think plays a very important role in the outcomes of of certain projects I can tested that having been on on the protocol side and now on the Venture side I think another important aspect of venture is actually returning the fund like making money and so often times people see XYZ fund raise $1 billion and that's incredibly exciting and also a lot of pressure you now have to actually return 1 billion plus and so my question for you guys is what is actually fund returning right now what have you learned from the last few Cycles in the case of panta you guys have had multiple funds so you have legitimate learnings on the books you guys are on fun two or fun three I believe though you've been in the space for a long time and then aat Arthur of course has uh wisdom from the earliest days and and you've been there to bootstrap this fund what's fund returning right now yeah do have some thoughts here I I think um one one key way to make sure that your fund returns is creative structuring kind of what we were talking about earlier um so for example sometimes um there are deals where you know we we believe in the project we believe the project and the protocol will make money now the question is will the token will value actually cruit to the token and that to in a timely fashion within our cycle and if we feel like we need insurance against that sometimes we negotiate things uh that are kind of borrowed from like the chaotic world of lower Middle Market private Equity or traditional VC um such things like cash flow sweeps or um you know royalties on revenues um things like that where there are additional insurance policies against the token not occurring value quickly enough uh before the cycle ends so I think uh structuring is one thing that a lot of Crypt BCS I'm you're starting to see more of it and I think we Founders are going to see Crypt BCS asking for more on that front in the future yeah if I had to boil down how we think about it today I would say it's four words it's doubling down on winners that's how you truly return a fund and truly realize I think the ultimately you know the value of your conviction um and um the Partnerships that you have with your LPS so what does that mean well number one you've got to pick winners and that's not easy uh but I think it's an important thing to keep in mind is when you're investing in the early stages you need to pick teams that really have that ceiling of being able to be the winner in their sector in their thesis uh in what they're building and what they're solving for uh because if really what you're look if really the alternative um that you're doing is picking a sector and picking a thesis and being okay with a top three a top five uh Team then you're really losing the massive upside that comes from being really the the market leader and so every time I think we're talking to a team and we're figuring out hey do we have conviction that they can go and win the whole thing that needs to be there on day one the second piece is actually seeing your winners win right what does it mean when what does it look like really when a team is starting to win right are they gaining real traction when you talk to customers that they really love and need the product um when you talk to developers why are they choosing to build in that particular ecosystem over another is it for Grants is it for the free money um is it for the free attention or is it because they can build something that they can't build anywhere else right and so pulling the signal out of all of that noise out of conferences like this is the real challenge to be able to say okay they are winning and so when you see that that's when you can focus on that inflection point double down and say look let's give you the real rocket fuel to go and take over uh and really truly kind of push to the next level and that all goes back into fund returns right if you can go from the seed stage where the hit rate is really low the survival rate is really low the upside can be massive and then go to the series a stage and say okay well now we're actually starting to see where the winners are there's still a ton of asymmetric upside but now we can really choose and we can really double down and be high conviction um on where we're investing that's how you get from you know sort of that 1X to 3x you know kind of hoping uh for that to hopefully that 10 to 15x that um you want to do for for your funds yeah and I'd say like um you know at Dela we're very like thesis driven obviously uh very focused on the research very coming up like coming up with exactly what we're investing in and why we think this will you know have a lasting impact there are a lot of things that we see that you know we think will you know pump go up but you know especially with as VCS you have you know years unlocked so you want to make sure that you are investing in exactly what you're saying like the you know market leader that's going to have staying power so it's something that um you know in your negotiations and talking to the team really questioning their assumptions because I think a lot of teams especially right now um are very focused on just building a narrative and not really Building Products I think um you know working with teams that are very focused on more so products that you know will have narratives rather than backwards is really important Yeah a different fund structure would lend itself much better to projects that pump and then crash not Venture and and sometimes you see funds I think that that ride those waves as well um another observation of mine having been on both sides is that the projects which at least I consider to be enduring and then also the projects I consider to be less so could often be determined as such based off of some of the qualities of the founding team uh it's very hard to diligence Founders in the earliest stages sometimes you get to meet them in person if you're lucky some time it's just a few calls maybe you meet them at a conference like this across each of your guys' verticals or areas of Interest maybe there's a thematic interest I heard one of you guys say deepin earlier one of you guys say defi what are those signs of of the right DNA fit and how do you actually diligence for that yeah I'd say like for us um you know at Deli we have around you know a little under 100 people across the three divisions so we have a lot of people um built with different subject matter expertise in kind of every sector um so what's cool is like if we are talking to a founder and they're able to teach you know who we consider a subject matter expert within Deli something that's kind of like a huge signal um two I think you know crypto is obviously you know getting bigger about you know every every day but it is still a very like small space right um so it's very easy to kind of get referrals and um you know know who's work with who and seeing who's kind of like has that you know animal kind of like founder mode mentality um so I think that's uh that's a really key key part but also like at Deli we're um probably one of the slower funds as far as like um our investment Cycles go so you know we always have at least a two week um kind of period which I know you know in traditional Venture is you know short but obviously when it's a bull market these Cycles go you know to days um but the way that it usually works is you know our Ventures team who obviously have an incentive to you know get the deal passed will bring in the deal kind of like educate the partners myself um and know the team uh as a whole on it and then we to we bring the founder in and basically the research team who has really no incentive um to get that P um other than you know just making sure that the fund that they're invested in M makes money will kind of like pick apart um that founder and that team so it becomes kind of like a internal debate um and you know sometimes Founders you know can't stand that ground and you know when they do is uh usually a bullish sign interesting you too anything else you want to add yeah I mean I I think understanding Founders is the whole game right I mean you could not spend too much time on diligence in a Founder ever right and really just spending time with them understanding how they think it's just so important because um ultimately they're the leaders they're the ones you're betting on uh and so the way I've kind of developed my own thinking around founder DNA what's the right fit um you know what is each kind of vertical within crypto call for uh the best way is probably to just talk about it through examples right so you know if you're building an exchange what are you building right you're building an engine to go and really just onboard thousands hopefully millions of of consumers and that takes an army so can this founder build an army can this founder operationalize an army uh and get them to all move in One Direction right I mean you can look at Brian Armstrong you can look at Jesse Powell as kind of models of this I really think of um Danielle vogul who's the CEO of bitso MH uh you know which is really the leading exchange for crypto Assets in Latin America right I mean they're dominant in Mexico they're entering Brazil Argentina Colombia and so when you meet someone like him you get to understand okay this person is obsessed with the customer right they're not looking he's not looking to clone coinbase he's looking to understand what people on the ground actually want so when you go to bso's website you see hey this doesn't look anything like coinbase M and that's because there's a real understanding of okay what are the products people actually want and how do we meet them he's a strong point of view inform time with us exactly but that's different from like a protocol right that's building for developers building a community and hopefully has you know a ton of technical rigor behind it so you might be looking for someone who's got that strong technical background but then also has the EQ and kind of that Visionary kind of DNA that can get a community to sort of come together uh but still be really credible with developers uh and so you know the kind of DNA and and market and product fit is is really something we we think about a lot um you know when you get it wrong it's it's really hard to fix uh and when you get it right it just feels feels right from day one all the way to when they're a massive success founder market fit is essential and it's why I also if I were selecting a cap table would want to ensure that my investors who are actually value ad are high EQ themselves because then they can better understand the the markets and different personalities involved in in moving business forward in a particular category and I I think for myself when I was hiring at ler I often included in a JD uh like bonus points if you've had experience playing a high performance sport or in a high pressure environment like a highfrequency trading firm um I've spent the first half of my life training to be a professional athlete and so I sometimes look for uh the traits that you otherwise would see in the very best athletes which include emotion regulation self-awareness uh like extreme intensity and desire to improve things like this uh but across different categories there are other uh types of things like ability to hire great Engineers if you're the founder of uh like a high throughput chain something like that um anything you want to add there oot yeah I mean I would Echo the point on passion and motivation but the one thing I would say that matters most to us and I assume also you guys is integrity um there's so many parts of the business that are impacted by the founders integrity and that's hiring that's dealing with future investors it's dealing with our customers security exploits there's also almost no governance in a crypto company typically uh from a legal standpoint so um Integrity is definitely everything it's also I think a huge Advantage for both Founders and investors how much they can decompress the time they get to diligence you as a person so there are some funds who have gotten to know Founders over six years like they just ran into each other on the street in San Francisco or they have built companies together in in Hong Kong so when the time comes and they have a product in their fundraising for it that Integrity check is already there when it's compressed around 3 days in a bull market like you said and you usually have a two- we process it that's where mistakes start start to happen I think and uh I'm curious for you guys over the last year and a half some people said we had a bull market some people said it's just like a a local Bowl what was that like investing in that environment did you guys have to bend the strategies you normally employ to stay competitive or did you learn anything new from some mistakes that were made yeah for yeah go ahead yeah I mean you know I think in the in the depths of um the bare Market or sort of the post FTX post Silicon Valley Bank kind of Crisis year of Crisis that we had I think the challenge was really to look back at the history of of crypto markets and say look this is the time to invest like these are the these are the times when the best investments are made so in practice what does that look like it looks like dragging yourself out of bed even though you aren't feeling great about the market and saying look let's go to work you just got liquidated last night let's invest not us but maybe others uh but yeah I mean it would really was a ton of Devastation a ton of uh crisis management uh with Founders and putting out fires uh but in the middle of all of that is really just looking into the different corners of the crypto ecosystem and saying okay who's still building what's interesting uh and you know that's always been the case where great Builders don't care what's really happening um uh in the broader markets because they're laser focus on a problem and solving it uh and so for us you know one of the things that's been really special about that period is we've been able to be what I think of as sort of like the investor of of Last Resort almost because you know we saw this exit of you know these growth stage uh crossover hedge funds like uh well won't say specific names but you can probably think of them that have left the space um and that's given us an opportunity to really be active on the secondaries markets right you know they're exiting they're letting go of their positions that we think are true winners we think are going to be massive in 10 years and so we get to come in and say look um we have a vision for where this company is going we want to be a part of it and we get to pick up the pieces really of that partnership that they had uh and uh you know become you know in the case of something like bitso uh we're now the largest shareholder of bitso uh that we built up over that past year because we're excited about what's happening in Latin America right and that something that only became possible uh during that kind of time of Crisis so there was some waiting and leaping towards an opportunity when the markets were down I'm curious from you two how did your funds handle the frenzy of this local bull market and I can say personally even when I was still on the protocol operator side the the deal flow was suffocating it was overwhelming and it took a lot of discipline I think from a lot of my founder sorry from a lot of my VC friends to not just sign docy signs straight from telegram how do you guys handle that i' Echo a lot of these thoughts where I think bare Market investing is like way easier obviously um and you know especially for us we're very deep in the space we're you know constantly on the pulse so we never really do leave like some of the investors you know do so it's always easier to have that conviction I say in bull market um both sides yes investing is really hard but also you know working with Founders is actually um just as hard as especially in you know the frenzy we saw earlier this year where it mostly around meme coins right I think um you know we had a lot of Founders that we were backing for years like um you know goo and stuff like that that have been building for years and then see people you know get rich off like a dog with hat you know um uh in like a few weeks right um so I think that like uh teconomy was very kind of like interesting to navigate and working with Founders on that as far as investing yeah like I think um you know Deli is not you know um solid to it either like we definely you know are get trigger happy during a bowl two and like our minds kind of expand and say yeah everything you know this is up only forever um so yeah they're definitely deals that we like ape in the bull but um I think you know having that minimum twoe process definitely has helped us uh in the past of you know straying away from some Duds yeah and how about you guys with a family office Bandit you don't have to necessarily run through more bureaucracy internally yeah how did you guys invest during that time yeah uh so we we started investing during a bare Market kind of it was the end of 2022 um was when we started doing deals but we picked up a lot of our investments in like the first half of 23 and as things picked up from there valuation started shooting up we um decided to keep valuation discipline so you know if a f if a project comes um to us and says hey you know we've got an idea it's worth $40 million or we have a project that's like got we've got a prototype that's worth $200 million in terms of FTV um with some exceptions generally our stance was it's probably not worth that um and uh we almost never uh paid the full price so we'd always negotiate down because you know the logic was if you're going to throw a crazy number at us we're going to throw one back at you so we stuck to that and uh are happy that we did as we're coming up on time I am curious to hear across your investing uh careers perhaps what you were doing before as well uh you bootstrap a new fund and then for you to being veterans perhaps fundraising for new funds what are the key hard one lessons meaning um not from a Twitter thread but you know learned through an investment that exited or or something that didn't that you're taking with you for the next 12 months a hard one lesson yeah I mean I I think for us it's been operational rigor has been one real lesson from called the post FTX period um you know it was a really dark period for the industry but I think one of the worst things about it was just the collateral damage to a lot of startups um that ultimately weren't thinking about counterparty risk custodial risk weren't thinking about how to take care of their balance sheet and the runway that they had worked so hard to build uh and so you know one thing we took away from that is we actually need to share a lot of the knowledge and process that we have for ourselves as a fund uh and really share that freely with all of our Founders and whether they're in our portfolio or not um but really to say look this is not the kind of thing that should uh force a startup to fail fail because the market wasn't there fail because you didn't build the perfect product uh but don't fail because you chose the wrong place to store your money uh and uh just interact with with counterparties um and so you know we built out a really good playbook for that just really saying hey look this is how we do things this is how we recommend you do things how you manage your treasury um how you manage even you know your when in the cases where you need to do something on Exchange how you manage your time on Exchange like literally get that down to 10 seconds there's no reason you should have funds and anywhere else besides an account that you control and that's how we manage our fund that's why you know we were able to kind of Dodge a lot of the the impact uh and hopefully that protects everybody else the other piece too is just resiliency like that week when we saw silvergate signature Silicon Valley Bank all go down it was a really um I would say heartbreaking time that people were worrying about how to pay their employees because of things totally out of their control but also really validating for us because we had spent so much time talking to every single bank that could be possibly friendly to crypto companies because we saw in the previous years every once in a while a Founder would call us up and say hey I woke up on a Monday morning and got frozen out of my bank accounts what do I do now and so we started just doing this thing where you know that week when all that went down we had five banks to call literally um that minute to say hey look we're ready for you guys now we have 20 30 40 companies that need to move their money somewhere else so that they can pay their employees and so that preparation to just say hey look there's no such thing as too much paranoia um is hopefully going to help people um just succeed at a higher rate I can so appreciate the many hard one lessons from all of us that week that FTX collapsed and the uh the wreckage that it left I remember exactly where I was when I first saw the sort of rumors of a collapse on Twitter how about you an Neil you have many years under your belt what is the hard one lesson you're taking with you over the next year definitely yeah I'd say like the other side of that is just as important like unwavering conviction in the space right um I think for you know a lot of people right now they I think crypto is like really good at constantly thinking about all the negative catalysts that are coming up um and I think what people crypto is really bad at is expecting the positive surprises that happen right so you know at Deli for example we were really close to the axi team for years obviously helped design the token uh work with them um and you know even in our models and kind of like our bullish thesis like um basically our most bullish case for axi in the year of 2021 when it was like the year of axi their worst day was more better than the her most bullish case wow so even us who were the closest to the team working with them day in and day out um we under you know uh expected kind of like the positive externalities um and I think you know a lot of people in the space constantly will say you know when is crypto ever going to deliver anything you know um what are we working for what are we doing Etc I think it like really underappreciate what we've already built which is like these you know a parallel Financial system that you know basically allows you an option outside of governments right and I think that alone is like kind of crazy to me um and what's amazing is you know people you know constantly say crypto is early and of course it is but I really think that the internet that itself is you know early and it's in infant stages so when you kind of take a step back and think about you know I I think all you know all of us on this panel are going to be here for decades to come um we have no like you know um thoughts of leaving or anything like that and I think you know when you're on crypto Twitter Doom scrolling and everything like that it's like really helpful to kind of take a step back go touch some grass and realize that this is going to take a while but you know what we're working on is super important I love that aot uh yeah biggest lesson so melstrom is a pretty new fun we've been around for like a year and a halfish and um when when we started it was basically Arthur and me and now we have a team of six and I think what we've learned in that initial phase is that our fund is basically it's our money times are the quality of our people and um I think uh you know who you bring into the team and who you allow to associate with your brand um and uh you know who who interfaces with every single counterparty that you your business deals with is uh everything especially in these early stages where we don't have a brand we didn't have a brand when we started it was just you know when we mentioned Maelstrom at conferences no one had heard of it and um we're we're getting there we're building a brand but it's it's because of the quality of our people I think that we made it this far thank you for that we have about two minutes left uh for each of you what is your wishlist project wish list founder if there was a project or a problem you really wanted someone to tackle what would that be yeah I'd say like you know one intersection that all three divisions Deli is very focused on right now is um Ai and crypto um and we really think that you know AI is obviously in its like earliest stages and we think it's really important that um you know we use we think crypto and AI are kind of like a perfect marriage and both kind of like need each other to um not be kept by You Know The Gatekeepers and it B basically become exactly what web 2 came became with so you know on the lab side we just launched an accelerator with near so we're building um and helping build a lot of these projects the Venture side we've invested in a lot of uh projects as well on the research side um you know we've dropped a lot of great reports um you know shout out pondering I know he's somewhere over here too um and I think basically that's an intersection we're super excited about another intersection I'd say is like you know gaming has been something that we're always bullish on we've you know we were just talking about that as well um we always knew it was going to take long and obviously it's you know I think a lot of people on crypto Twitter expected not to ever come back or anything like that I'm really excited for the next I'd say 9 to 12 months I think you're going to see a lot of these games that you know uh you know funds like ours invested in back in 2021 2022 actually come to Market and all it takes is one or two to onboard millions of people in the crypto um so yeah I'm really excited about uh you know both of those and then deep in probably an area that I'd say Deli definitely isn't you know as deep as i' want us to be in but it's definitely an area that we're really excited about and we're very curious about so any Founders and any of those areas um feel free to reach out on Twitter wonderful very briefly you two uh dream project problem to solve for a Founder yeah I would say two problems one is that the total market cap of uh crypto today is 2 trillion uh there's $500 trillion of assets um still sitting offchain to on board so we need to do that and we need to grow the pie uh so anybody working on that problem I'd love to chat with uh the second is on the consumer side anyone building something that can get people to spend 60 Minutes a week on chain something I want to learn about fantastic okay um I'd like to see the first uh buyout of a traditional um entity in in an old world industry so for example um in like the farming sector I'd love to see the blockchain organize a bunch of small farmers to acquire a large corporate farmer stuff like that from in the Old World Industries amazing thank you through so much this was wonderful and thank you all for listening