Joseph Lubin’s Ethereum design studio, ConsenSys has decided to jump directly in the Blockchain venture capital ecosystem by setting up a dedicated venture investment arm. The new division, ConsenSys Ventures, would invest both in equity of Blockchain startups and in emerging cryptocurrencies.
The company has hired Kavita Gupta as Founding Managing Partner to run the arm. Kavita comes with an interesting impact-investing background given her stints with the Google’s parent company Alphabet’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt’s Schmidt Family Foundation, International Finance Corporation and the World Bank.
ConsenSys Ventures is looking to get started with investing the initial $50 mln corpus in Ethereum startups at the typical Seed stage. The investments sizes are expected to be in the range of $250,000 and $1 mln, and the company intends to raise more capital from outside investors subsequently.
Kavita Gupta stated:
“Blockchain technologies have lowered the cost of monetary transactions in the developing world, and could be used by refugees to store credible identity records.”
Investment frenzy in Blockchain startups
With the advent of Initial Coin Offerings, we have seen an investment frenzy in Blockchain startups where these token sales have surpassed the VC investments for 2017.
This has also resulted in a strong interest in the Venture Capital space where we are seeing dedicated Blockchain investment vehicles being setup to ride on the high return wave.
ConsenSys Ventures will have to deal with some of the more established players in the Blockchain VC space such as Pantera Capital, Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, Adam Draper’s Boost VC, Blockchain Capital and Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures.
One thing is for sure; we will only see more and more investments pouring in this space with the intent to boost their returns manifold.