A couple of weeks have passed since Token2049 and I can more soberly express my opinion about this event.
I represented the V3V Ventures fund and therefore I had the opportunity to communicate with a lot of startups, sometimes in scheduled meetings, and also a lot of spontaneous conversations along the way.
I attended a couple of pre-parties and after-parties, some open and some private. Overall, it was a fun opportunity to chat in person with a lot of people I had only known online, have a drink and discuss some things, but overall it was a huge chaotic crowd, and while I liked a lot of the people personally, most of their projects left much to be desired. It created such an internal dissonance.
It was especially fun in The Secret Room, where experienced degens mixed with the clubgoers and go-go dancers, simultaneously discussing forks and staking.
Also, I met some guys from the Telegram community, channel owners, gaming projects, etc.
So, I think the Telegram ecosystem is developing, but there is a question of whether Telegram will be able to get out of the sandbox ex-Soviet Union space. Now we are seeing that in the US only people with right wing ideology use it, probably because they have been banned from all other places.
Of course, Indian and African users are very active on the platform, but only time will tell if a project must succeed in the West to become successful worldwide.
After analyzing more than 50 crypto projects together with live communication with founders, I can draw several conclusions:
1)80% are shit built on the cheap
But their founders want to show these as great deals.
It is especially funny when a project is 4+ years old, and has no GitHub code (but they said it is open source), no user base, just promises, and they want to persuade everybody that it’s a rocket.
2)15% good ideas
Sometimes with some problems, but overall their main disadvantage (from the VC side) is that they are greatly overvalued:
For example, one team only had a white paper, but the guys had no previous experience in startups and crypto at all. It was a very interesting idea related to ETH restaking. However, they valued themselves with a 40m$ cap and wanted to raise 2m$.
So, the risk with those kinds of projects is very high and we decided not to proceed with them.
3) 5% winners
I would say they don’t need investments at all, because smarter VCs already picked them up.
Projects like these with experienced founders are worth their weight in gold 🙂
However, we have something to offer besides money to these winners, as we have deep expertise in crypto marketing and enough experience to turn a startup into a successful company.
In the end, we chose a few interesting projects, which I will probably discuss here in the future to show why I think they will succeed.
I represented the V3V Ventures fund and therefore I had the opportunity to communicate with a lot of startups, sometimes in scheduled meetings, and also a lot of spontaneous conversations along the way.
I attended a couple of pre-parties and after-parties, some open and some private. Overall, it was a fun opportunity to chat in person with a lot of people I had only known online, have a drink and discuss some things, but overall it was a huge chaotic crowd, and while I liked a lot of the people personally, most of their projects left much to be desired. It created such an internal dissonance.
It was especially fun in The Secret Room, where experienced degens mixed with the clubgoers and go-go dancers, simultaneously discussing forks and staking.
Also, I met some guys from the Telegram community, channel owners, gaming projects, etc.
So, I think the Telegram ecosystem is developing, but there is a question of whether Telegram will be able to get out of the sandbox ex-Soviet Union space. Now we are seeing that in the US only people with right wing ideology use it, probably because they have been banned from all other places.
Of course, Indian and African users are very active on the platform, but only time will tell if a project must succeed in the West to become successful worldwide.
After analyzing more than 50 crypto projects together with live communication with founders, I can draw several conclusions:
1)80% are shit built on the cheap
But their founders want to show these as great deals.
It is especially funny when a project is 4+ years old, and has no GitHub code (but they said it is open source), no user base, just promises, and they want to persuade everybody that it’s a rocket.
2)15% good ideas
Sometimes with some problems, but overall their main disadvantage (from the VC side) is that they are greatly overvalued:
For example, one team only had a white paper, but the guys had no previous experience in startups and crypto at all. It was a very interesting idea related to ETH restaking. However, they valued themselves with a 40m$ cap and wanted to raise 2m$.
So, the risk with those kinds of projects is very high and we decided not to proceed with them.
3) 5% winners
I would say they don’t need investments at all, because smarter VCs already picked them up.
Projects like these with experienced founders are worth their weight in gold 🙂
However, we have something to offer besides money to these winners, as we have deep expertise in crypto marketing and enough experience to turn a startup into a successful company.
In the end, we chose a few interesting projects, which I will probably discuss here in the future to show why I think they will succeed.