A new Web3 startup with Cincinnati ties has raised millions in fresh funding as it looks to make its mark in the fast-growing digital wallet space.
Narval, co-led by University of Cincinnati, Kroger, GE and Cloverleaf alum Matt Schoch, announced a $4 million seed round in July led by BlockTower, a Miami-based digital-asset investment firm. The startup plays in the Web3 space, a new stage of the internet driven by the decentralized cryptocurrency-related technology blockchain.
Fabric and Frst, both European-based venture capital firms, also participated after joining in the company’s previously unannounced pre-seed round, along with a host of new investors:
- a16z’s Crypto Startup School, an accelerator that Narval participated in earlier this year;
- Cherry Crypto, a Germany-based Web3 first-check fund;
- Motier Ventures, a family office based in France;
- Bpifrance, a private banking company.
Strategic angel investors also joined the round, including:
- Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of multibillion-dollar Web3 firm Polygon;
- Seb Borget, co-founder of the Sandbox, a decentralized metaverse, a virtual world where players can create, play, own, govern and monetize their experiences;
- Fred Montagnon, co-founder of Arianee, a Web3 solutions platform for brands.
Narval, which is building a platform that allows organizations to securely use complex digital assets like NFTs in the Web3 space, will use the funds to grow its team. Schoch said they’ve hired a couple of engineers and a designer this year to boost its total employee count to seven.
The raise will also fuel product development.
Narval is currently in a closed beta phase, testing its platform on a limited set of users. Schoch said the company is playing in a “very hot and competitive part of the industry," even as public interest surrounding Web3 has waned and AI has stolen the show.
“We were in a very bubbly bull market for a while. The hype has died down – but the technology hasn't,” Schoch said. “I’m very bullish. I've seen massive increases in builders going into the space and interesting technology and new applications being developed. I see that only accelerating, and when the mainstream perception shifts back, we’ll be ready for it.”
Narval formally launched last spring. Schoch said he met his fellow co-founder and company CEO Greg Jessner on Twitter.
The two have hashed out the original concept over the past year. Jessner lives in the Paris region, where the company is officially headquartered, but the Narval team is fully distributed. Schoch largely works out of Union Hall in Over-the-Rhine.
Schoch said he decided to make the jump from his most recent gig at Cloverleaf because of his overall interest in the Web3 space.
He first joined the downtown-based startup, which offers automated coaching services, in 2018 as employee No. 1 and spent four years as its chief technology officer.
He’s also logged stints at Kroger and GE and was part of the Soundstr team that went through the Brandery in 2014. Soundstr, which developed a technology to help businesses pay music license fees, was acquired in 2018 by entertainment tech company VNUE.
Narval specifically is building a usage platform for Web3 wallets. The idea is for organizations to manage and use all of their digital assets, so they’re not “sitting idly in a vault,” Schoch said.
Web3 is built on the idea of a better Internet, driven by blockchain, which is best known as the mechanism that makes bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies available. It can also store data and software code that can self-execute under certain conditions.
As organizations increasingly need to use digital assets, they need to provide delegated access, Schoch said. That ranges from internal teams and individuals – just like a company provides an email account, people could also get access to company wallet account – to third parties, like marketing agencies.
“We started around the idea of helping organizations and people put NFTs to use in the Web3 space. People didn't have the tools that let them use them securely. Over time we evolved into more of a full crypto wallet governance platform, and it’s more than just NFT's,” Schoch said. “People have digital property, and how can we enable them to use it more securely and put it to use.”
He said Narval hopes to go to market in the next six months. Revenue wise, it’s considering starting with a software-as-a-service, or SaaS, model.
Overall it’s a market to watch, he added.
"We're early in the lifecycle of the industry, and lots of things like NFT's feel like a toy at first," he said. "But that's how a lot of game-changing technologies start. Over time, it moves from a niche, where it seemingly looks like a joke, and then disrupts everything.”
