A new micro fund is being launched in the Triangle — and it’s targeting crypto, blockchain and other technologies some think will power the next phase of the internet.
The new firm, dubbed Layer 1 Ventures, focuses on startups in what’s called the “Web3” — a decentralized concept where the internet would be powered by blockchain technology and not major companies.
It’s the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Ryan Bethencourt.
Bethencourt is a Triangle transplant, having recently moved to the region along with his companies, including Wild Earth, a vegan dog food company that made it to “Shark Tank.” Bethencourt and his wife, Mariliis Holm, chose the Triangle for their previous micro fund, Sustainable Food Ventures. The firm, which invests in food startups, has been a big success, Bethencourt said, even investing in five local firms.
But that doesn’t mean he was itching to pull the trigger on another venture. Bethencourt said it started with just interest. Bethencourt was obsessed with crypto — so much so that he started a Web3 Triangle meetup to find others who shared the obsession. The group, which meets every other week, grew to more than 100 members. And Bethencourt saw an opportunity.
“We have built a pretty big community and one of the biggest challenges here … there are plenty of talented tech people, basically founders, and they don’t have access to capital,” he said. He pointed to the growing opportunity brought about by tech firms such as IBM (NYSE: IBM), Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) — all attracting talented technologists who Bethencourt sees as potential founders.
So he decided to do the same thing he did with food startups — create a micro venture capital firm. The firm, which just consists of Bethencourt, will utilize the Angel List platform and target pre-seed and seed-stage Web3 companies.
Bethencourt sees it as enabling the future.
“We’re transitioning from Web2 to Web3, where people own their own data,” he said. “How do we accelerate that?”
Right now, it’s a rolling fund, at about $3 million. Bethencourt says he envisions investing between $50,000 and $200,000 per company.
For Bethencourt, crypto is a passion. He was never interested in the financial side — “I’m a scientist,” he said.
“But when I started to see the potential for the cultural layer behind crypto … that really awakened me,” he said, pointing to things like NFTs — nonfungible tokens, the term given to non-interchangeable data stored on a blockchain. Basically they give files such as photos and videos provenance, Bethencourt said.
“We are literally at the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
He explains it as the Mona Lisa, the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting, hanging. Why is it so much more valuable than a computer-printed copy? Because it has provenance, its history tracked from its origin.
“In the past in the digital space, you couldn’t tell which one was the original,” he said. “Now with blockchain you can do that, you can create the value of a digital asset.”
Graphics are just the beginning, Bethencourt said. His goal? To fund the companies that will get it to the next level, he said.
