With over $1b invested in bitcoin firms and much more within the general blockchain ecosystem, many entrepreneurs, from experienced to aspiring and anywhere in between are looking at this technology and saying “How can I use this?” Just as importantly, they’re asking “How do I get my blockchain project funded”. While the fundraising craze for Bitcoin startups of 2014 may have subsided, the hype right now is just as intense in both the enterprise and the venture capitalist world is around blockchain technology . That being said, I have recently spoken with three blockchain venture capital veterans about blockchain investments.
Having raised $760k for Bitwage , I’ve developed relationships with a number of investors in the venture capital world. I sat down with Alyse Killeen, a venture capitalist with dozens of investments under her belt, including those made as one of the very earliest venture capitalists to invest in blockchain and bitcoin startups, to get her thoughts on investment within the space. Picture Of Alyse Killeen Killeen explains that there is a big difference when assessing Bitcoin and public blockchain companies Market dynamics are different due to regulation and the way that companies must interact with various third parties they are dependent upon. For instance, if you launch a social networking app, you can do so fairly autonomously, not beholden to independent parties for critical data, access to key gateways (other than the iOS App Store or Google Play Store, to which access is well defined), or the pace of development of a core underlying technology. Blockchain companies on the other hand have both development dependencies and barriers as a result of regulation. The pace of a blockchain company’s growth has to match with the pace of the third parties it’s dependent upon, and others general understanding of Bitcoin and […]
