Vladimir Velmeshev
The pandemic has disrupted businesses all around the globe but also opened up many new opportunities. What challenges do you face while managing a startup in such a volatile atmosphere, and how did you solve those challenges?
I predominantly make investment decisions for innovative startups leveraging blockchain technology. The recent disruption we are witnessing in our workflow is virtual investment meetings. Following the pandemic and successive lockdowns, travels were paused. In-person meetings were difficult, so we all had to resort to online collaboration tools to continue engaging with entrepreneurs.
Even global summits and conferences turned to virtual crypto conferences. Before COVID-19, these conferences were usually held in person. They are integral to our networking exercise, where we met our peers and gained awareness of new technology trends. It was usually a week-long event where we immersed ourselves in the crypto world. The pandemic had put a damper on that for a while. Although the conferences resumed again in September 2021, crypto world-con is not just limited by physical venues today. Virtual crypto conferences are as prevalent in our circuit.
What are some critical areas you look at while identifying a company you want to invest in?
It is a pretty standard metric; you have two major parts: the team and the product on the one hand, and trend and market conditions on the other. All these metrics must be in sync with one another to make the product fit for the market and become trending at the same time. From an investment and trend point of view, our initial investment thesis always focuses on the blockchain infrastructure at the layer one blockchains. It is very important to see what base the project is built on, and if that fits the ongoing trend, market condition, and our investment thesis.
“Helping some of the projects or building out pieces of the products can help gain a deeper level of understanding of where the technology is moving in the industry.”
We also talk to the founders, understand their backgrounds, and gain knowledge about their previous projects. We want to ensure it’s not a money grab and that the founders are serious about the project. They need to have a business-oriented skill set in the startup domain along with their technical capabilities.
Do you want to talk about any recent investment that you have made?
One of our investments was for a project called Celestia. They came up with a different approach toward blockchain: the modular blockchain approach. This approach separated the execution and data availability layers to create a faster infrastructure at the consensus layer. Hence, the modular system can tackle scalability issues and cross-chain compatibility as its execution layers are geared toward using cryptography tools.
This technology can help tie all different chains altogether, allowing the future infrastructure to be built on top of the base layer of blockchain and leverage the most optimal infrastructure layer below, based on their needs.
Celestia has entered their last rounds at relatively high valuations. We want to be part of ecosystems like this and see them grow and succeed.
We are also looking into the projects like z casing, Aptos, SUI suite, and other evolving ecosystems. Aptos and SUI suite came out of Facebook’s Diem project. They use a new and interesting smart contract programming language called Move. These projects will be interesting challenges to some of the existing layers like Solana.
What would you advise your peers in the investment space?
The advice and the bar that I’m setting for myself is to learn continuously, and have a deeper understanding of technology. I think of it as a deep rabbit hole with no bottom. I believe helping some of the projects or building out pieces of the products can help gain a deeper level of understanding of where the technology is moving in the industry. So, do not follow the crowd; have a bit of a vision and work around achieving that vision.
