Chelsea Cain Maclin remembers her early days at Bumble, a year or two after its founding, when a small team was working out of a downtown Austin apartment. These days, Bumble is listed on the Nasdaq, and Maclin is back again with a small team at her new startup as it takes on venture funding and prepares to launch its first major projects.
R Labs is a Web3 startup that aims to use blockchain technology to produce and market digital assets in the metaverse. The startup is part of a large wave of companies building for a decentralized iteration of the internet with transactions using cryptocurrencies and special digital tokens. But many of R Labs' primary objectives are real world ideas that aim to help solve societal problems in the U.S. and Canada.
Maclin co-founded R Labs earlier this year with Geeta Sankappanavar, who co-founded Grafton Asset Management, a major energy investment firm in Alberta, Canada, and is CEO of Akira Impact, an essential assets investment firm that supports UN Sustainable Development Goals.
"Most people don't know that Geeta comes from rural poverty in Brazil," Maclin said. "So she's personally and deeply committed to women, to marginalized communities, to sustainability, and, in this business, kind of represents the intersection of her for-profit and nonprofit life, and as a way to basically democratize wealth creation."
On June 28, R Labs announced it has raised about $5 million in pre-seed funding. While it didn’t list investors individually, it said they represent people associated with Softbank, AGF and Prodege. The startup has seven full-time employees and operates remotely, with Maclin serving as chief marketing officer in Austin, along with one other employee, and Sankappanavar and several others working in Canada.
Maclin wasn't quite ready to spell out the startup's first offering, beyond noting it will be an NFT with real world impact associated.
But she foreshadowed that R Labs plans to launch several Web3 initiatives in coming months where anyone can purchase virtual assets, such as an NFTs, and the proceeds will help fund real world impact projects that provide under-served communities with access to mental health, sustainable energy, education and other services.
R Labs' seed funding comes as crypto markets, as well as the broader startup and venture markets, have faltered, often leaving a trail of diminished investments and layoffs in their wake. It's been particularly turbulent for crypto investors.
"It's really a sad time for everyone who's either in or getting caught in the ripple effects," Maclin said. "I think people's lives, their physical and mental health is totally tied to financial health, and so it's scary for this to happen and I really feel for everyone that's experiencing it."
But she sees an upside, especially working with a team that has experience with the dot com bust, the housing crisis and other economic earthquakes.
"The companies that are darling in a bull market are oftentimes built in bear markets where there's turmoil, there's weakness, there's fear and vulnerability, and you have to build companies that are able to withstand and overcome that," she said. "So I think the correction is painful. But it's also a really good time for innovation."
Atop crypto and tech market challenges, women-led startups have faced limited access to venture funding forever. Even after major efforts to channel more dollars to female founders, only 2.3% of all the VC dollars flowing to startups in 2021 went to companies founded solely by women, and less than 15% went to companies with at least one woman co-founder, despite women-led startups having a better success rate.
Maclin said she was introduced to Sankappanavar about a year and a half ago by former Bumble Chief Brand Officer Alexandra Williamson, who later became one of R Labs' advisors.
"She knew that there was going to be some sparks flying from from a business chemistry perspective," Maclin said. "She was right."
They started with a long-term goal they both had in mind: creating a business that helps democratize wealth creation. They saw Web3 as the obvious route to take given that their initial NFT projects are likely to capture the attention of younger generations, many of whom are growing up with VR, AR, crypto and other digital assets as the norm.
"Ideally, we can live in a future state where every action in Web3 creates real physical outcomes that have purpose, whether that is within sustainability, within mental health, within inclusion or diversity," she said. "There's just so much opportunity to connect to build bridges between those two worlds, and we're really excited to do that."
And as they work on their initial projects with yet undisclosed beneficiaries, new social issues arise at a fast clip.
Maclin said that although R Labs is still a small team, the company already intends to take action in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, according to a Twitter thread from the company's account.
