# TOKEN2049 - The War Chests of Ecosystem Funds

- Channel: [TOKEN2049](https://streameth.org/token2049)
- Date: 2019-10-09
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-0u2GwEFtqlo
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u2GwEFtqlo

## Transcript

I'm going to be taking control of the moderation role for the next 30 minutes so you're all in safe hands for those of you who don't know me my name is Shane Kehoe I'm the co-founder of sv k crypto svk crypto is a community driven venture capital firm based out of the fine city of London but it's not about me our svk crypto it's actually about the audience you guys giving value to the audience and also insight how ecosystems funds view the markets today's panel is entitled the war chest of eco-system funds and as you can see we have a wonderful lineup of talent minds and money I have Tiffany from ontology global capital Toni from neo global capital Brian from block one and I met from Amer go building a global Cardno aka for you and me the guys with all the money so here's how this is going to go down I need three things from you by way of an introduction your name what you do and who you do it for and you all have approximately 60 seconds to get through that let's kick it off with Tiffany hi guys my name is tiffany lea from ontology global capital we are a venture capital fund under ontology and we invest exclusively in blockchain and crypto projects our mission is really to support the development of blockchain technology worldwide and to really drive real adoption of business applications within the entire ecosystem and a little bit about myself I come from a traditional VC background have been investing in a lot of internet high-growth projects since 2016 and I've been was ontology global capital from the start hi my name is Brian Miller I'm with block 1 cos VC team I'm based here in Hong Kong a little bit about me as I come from a PE background previously in New York City been in Hong Kong for the past year block ones estc team specializes in investing in companies that are building in on the eso es Iowa software or expanding the EOS community all right my name is Manmeet Singh I am the CFO and CIO at mergo I'm ergo is a commercial venture arm for the Cardinal ecosystem we have a very basic remit we focus on two objectives one increased adoption of Cardno and to driving value to Ada holders so everything that we do has to fit one or two of those objectives at least we have offices in Japan in Singapore and the u.s. in India and we're expanding to other regions and countries as well hi this is Tony cool I'm the funny partner from new global capital so ongc is doing is Singapore incorporated spine venture capital fund and we managed to funds one is ecosystem fund for new one is financial driven funds you know previously ours from banking industry so I was doing buyout fund so I find cell banks and you know for many many years and I found it's pretty boring that's why I'm coming to creative space this one I'll say misunderstanding about NGC said we do manage ecosystems for new but we're actually helping many other portfolio companies to develop and grow the ecosystem as well you know including ontology issue and and as in many projects sitting downstairs have have guests some of my wise as well so we've kind of multi chain ecosystem fun okay perfect so here's what's gonna go down if I hear you rambling I might cut you off if I hear you talking nonsense I'm probably gonna cut you off but if I see the audience losing interest I'm damn right I'm gonna cut you off keep it on point add value and let's get right down to business in fact it's gonna be quite hard to stay in the game so what strengths do your ecosystem funds actually play maybe we're gonna kick it off with you Tony yeah as I said it's more like multigon fun so it's really depends on which in all the strategy is and we keep specify wise which is all we can do co-investment together with pen so I think one strengths we have they said it's very adaptive right so different change we have different strategy in different region you cannot have one one strategy fits all hunting you cannot be you know I'm the next publisher for the world I don't think that true everyone had these trends I think we are pretty clear about that and we have a terror strategy for each projects Tiffany what one strengths that your fund actually plays sure with our close relationship with ontology and our close ties you know the projects that we invest in we provide catered incubation support depending on the particular needs of the project whether that is technical assistance that's BD that's you know future fundraise or marketing it really depends on what the strengths and the weakness of our portfolio project and we connect them to the right people and to the right resources Brian from block one what's your strengths that your phone plays sure I think our strength is definitely how we decentralize the money as you know we have five different funds set up around the world those satellite funds are able to reach expanded networks and so that reach we have through those five funds whether it's galaxy digital spk crypto in London we're able to get those tap into those networks and provide those resources when they come back to block one and they want to sit down with our dev Relations team are able to help build up those projects and get them up and running faster gotcha all right so somewhat I guess maybe a little bit differently we're not actually structured as a fund a merger was there from the genesis of the Carano project and the concept so the way our the way the card on a project is structured you know we have IO HK that's building out the protocol we have a mergo that's doing the commercial and venture side of things at the business angle to it and that we have the foundation that's leading sort of a decentralized you know governance structure on top of all this because we've been there from the beginning it's not like we're a separate fund structure that's only there to invest in these projects we are intimately linked with the foundation with IOH K we work very tightly together we know where the protocol is headed what's coming up what's not and that in turn allows us to sort of think of areas and applications and industries and so on where we think we can have some sort of impact so then we work very tightly within our ecosystem to actually identify the right kinds of projects that again go back to the basic two principles increase the adoption of car down and drive value data holders I think communication and also having that view is very important when building this because we're such an early stages it's so nascent and I think also the guys are blocked won't do a very good job from really damn bottom Bottoms Up approach and top-down Brian with the considerable funds you have raised today where are you most focusing capital allocation and most importantly why sure um so I think capital right now is being spent a lot into gaming gaming is an early adopter market place there's a lot of the gamers who are looking to build using blockchain whether it's a collectible or non fungible token those are definitely areas that there's going to be a lot of increase in utilization over the next few months we've already made a couple of investments through the funds and companies like mythical games or high fidelity those teams are led by leaders and so I think that we've identified some strong leaders in the gaming space who've done it before industry and now they're looking to implement blockchain solutions to take them to the next step Tony what about yourself you've raised considerable funds where are you most focusing your capital allocation and why yes I think there's some commonalities among us right as in these scenes were focused on two two areas one is called digital economy including games and other digital economy including Buddhist videos right you know digital content is one key focus another thing we're focusing on financial services which is either itself relevant to crypto or you know which is relevant to the additional financial markers by using blockchain as a tool so these are the key are focusing fast or the moment each ecosystem presents he'll here has a challenge the challenge also being an opportunity and an SDK we love an opportunity each protocol has so many benefits to a wide variety of industries how do you help support the projects you deploy capital into and maybe I'll start with my met it may not be structured like a fund but how do you have support for the projects that you invest into and on almost cross-collateralized and help each project out and help themselves by doing so sure okay so if the project for instance is leveraging the Cardinal protocol at this point or early near future and so on then we have not only our own entire tech team that can actually help the developers there to integrate protocol as well as help them develop beyond just integration of the protocol across their entire tech stack in terms of you know building a business out of it see what what I think a lot of people end up forgetting is you can integrate a protocol but then at the end of the day there's still an entire business to be built out of it you know I've got 20 plus years of doing nothing but building businesses investing in early-stage companies spend 15 years in China for in Japan now based out of Singapore I am from India so you know this market this ecosystem and so on we have tremendous access understanding and a network with and then we've gone ahead and also built an entire sort of network similar to the strengths we have here both in Europe as well as in the US so we're working with them in very similar fashion it's a very sort of active VC would who's taken an active passionate interest in actually building the entire business we're not looking at it purely as a tech play use my tech here's a check right that's that's very far from our looking yeah so everything so before we even accept or let's say before we invest in a project I admire might spend a few months with the team actually sort of working with them and understanding them and getting to know what they're actually building how they're going about it to figure out what are all the elements where we can come in and genuinely add value beyond the check the check is the easiest part I think for for all of us it's actually getting those businesses up because what we need in the entire space right now is actual adult I totally agree FS BK crypto capital allocation is only one very small part of it it's about the community if you want to have adoption you have to have that community layer a Brian a block one and how do you help and support projects that you deploy capital into sure I think the EOS communities like ever-growing and so that's been a great component for us that we have a lot of meetups and a lot of engagement events that were able to work one-on-one with these projects so as you know we did the u.s. global hackathon we hit five continents in six months and from there we were able to bring our tech team Dan and Brendan and the other leaders of our company and bring them to places that normally they wouldn't get the exposure to and so this is two kids coming from a garage building a great project and they're able to sit down with Dan and Brendan and hashed their idea and some of those teams actually went on the finale that we did in Cape Town and we're still working on making investments and we we saw the value early on after the first event here in Hong Kong where we had over 300 people and we realized that we shouldn't let all these projects not go to delivery so we actually read read devised a project called hack launch where we are first checking the door for these companies so these are real projects start off with a hackathon teams came together and we want to make sure that this actually gets delivered and so I think that's a big change from traditional VC investing where it's just a check this is nurturing from the start and getting them growing can we can we see that to continue can we see a schedule of hackathons maybe next year I know you're very busy building out and continuing to upgrade the ESI oh I know that you were on a journey all the way around the world and you didn't stop for for several months is it something that you want to do again this year you think will be next year for the global hackathon yeah there's a there's obviously we're doing to plan that out and our marketing team is pretty busy trying to figure out how they can make sure to engage everyone who did it's the first time right Tiffany what about yourself how do you help and support the projects that you deploy capital into sure so if you look at the ontology global capital team we all have come from a traditional VC space or we have entrepreneurial experiences in the past so I agree with everyone here that writing the track is very easy it is what you do after that what we can offer them is like on the technical side we leverage really on ontology and our other portfolios to match and provide them and help them grow the ecosystem together and that may include digital identity layer 2 solutions you know security audit etc and etc and as a fund itself we also do a lot of row shows so we started our own show this February where we went to Harvard and also San Francisco give me our portfolio a lot of exposure and help them to attract the right talent and make the right choice yeah I agree with all all your points and I think each of the panel attack it from a slightly different area depending on your skill set but all very valid in the recent bear market have you seen any pullback in terms of developer engagement our new projects being built in your ecosystem Tony I think the answer is years they're a sub I'll say a pullback but in a good way meaning that we are focusing on things that work right you know used to be some industry which let's say very heavy linked to the physical prisoners industry are not maybe easy for poaching to be adopted we probably cut back on that we're going to mode for either industry to focus on from the aspect we are kind of rationalizing but I met in the recent bear market have you seen any pullback in terms of developer engagement or new projects with regards to your ecosystem maybe not necessarily card ah no because it's early stages but I'd like to kind of get your feel on where we out what regards the market versus the tech bill that no I I mean I haven't experienced any sort of pulled back in terms of new projects coming up or you know entrepreneurs being excited about the space and blockchain and trying to figure out how they can solve certain problems or and prizes looking at developing solutions leveraging blockchain I haven't seen that what I what I have seen is an enforcement now in this bear market for both entrepreneurs and enterprises to think more deeply about exactly what value you can extract you know it's not gonna solve world hunger and world peace immediately therefore what exact value you're looking to extract out of it and to come up with you know business plans and pitch decks and whatever have you where you've actually thought about the business and not just thought about how quickly can I sell a whitepaper narrative get a cash grab you know let's somewhere flip and move on with my life so quality can't I think overall has improved there's still a bunch of the scamsters and so on but overall the quality is improved but I haven't seen fallback in quantity i've svk crypto we really do love a bear market and it probably comes from my time working at a hedge fund i love to buy when everyone else is selling and i feel that especially over the last few days here our token to zero for nine and hong kong blockchain week and the amount of quality people and quality projects that i've met and has really been outstanding it's been wonderful to see that not that i don't necessarily want to meet all projects it's just refreshing at this time last year we were just bombarded with projects and we didn't invest in any project that we met here last year and it's funny to say that 99.9 percent of those projects I haven't seen here this year so a real thing of flight to quality and I love a bear market because you can actually network build relationships and make great investments unbelievable valuation so we really drive in this type of this type of market Brian and in your case have you seen any pullback and developer engagement on new projects with regards to the LCC no I think if anything it's definitely a heads-down build phase so it's been the way for us for the past six seven months where we see teams usually coming from traditional market places or a traditional developing and they're now they're looking at blockchain and implementing implementing it for like a reason that makes sense on a commercial level so a lot of times they're looking to implement blockchain to remove a pain point or speed of a process and it's been exciting for us because now we're seeing businesses that normally you wouldn't identify as being a blockchain solution or using a blockchain solution is definitely embracing it now we're definitely behind the scenes I've always said that blockchain should fade into the background where you should be using adapt on your phone or in applications any App Store you're buying and you don't know that it's blockchain rather you know that it's secure it's fast transaction times and you're able to scavenge perón see so I think building that trust between peer to peer x' is what's most important and what's been missing from traditional environments so I wouldn't say there's been a decline at all in the developers I would say there's actually an increase in developers that weren't originally part of the blockchain space I heard someone talking before I came in that there was a lot of projects migrating over from etherium to eos it's interesting what you can hear in the corridor is an event like this and whoever is looking after the twitter handle feel free to quote me on that and I don't know that a person's name but if I find out I'll let you know what about yourself sure it's just to add a bit to Brian's point that I do agree that instead of a pro bag we actually see more interest coming from the development community and from ontology we as the public auction are providing more and more support for these developers and these projects for example we're coming out with our incentive program at the end of the quarter and we also have lending and borrowing programs that are coming out and trying to provide some financial support to help these projects and help these developers get their project started when deploying capital into the space where do you see the most value being accrued is it with equity are as a token investment maybe you'll start off on that Tiffany sure I think there's definitely a clear trend towards more equity investment everything was very simple before last year a two-pager staff and then token was transferred and that was it but right now we definitely see more interest in equity especially with a lot of reverse I SEOs they already have a very clear business model and if they have a revenue stream that is very important for investors to share part of that you know revenue or future profit right what about you sure so block 1zc program as well as the satellite funds all make equity investments those equity investments we see are very important because we invest we've made investments from early stage seed companies all the way up to series D so such as an investment in high fidelity led by Phil rosedale's that's a company that's in a large growth phase they they've already done several rounds of fundraising and we're looking to expand their offices in Seattle and bring out more people but then also on the converse side of that we have very early-stage companies where it's an idea it's two people who've come together they started building their team they just need that initial capital injection to start their business so we feel that equity investments allow us to invest across the full spectrum and help teams at all different levels get to delivery and that yourself sir yeah so if we're talking about early-stage businesses then I am taking that same early-stage risk as any VC or anybody else out there so I you know I my interest and everything has to be fully aligned with the founders and that comes out of the equity now if we're talking about more mature businesses more mature teams or those that already have a well-developed business model or something that now they're looking at scaling further in those scenarios it might not necessarily have to be equity but it would have to be some form a security token or a security that is linked you know my rewards are linked to the economic performance of the business absolutely perform so absolutely so we are proponents of the sto wave or whatever you want to call it but yeah lots of steps to figure out and let's get to my last question because I can see that our time is almost coming to an end and it's a really important question let's look towards the future we love the future and I speak a grip though in your view what does it hold and how is your ecosystem prepared what are you all doing today for the future of tomorrow maybe you'll kick it off tell me as you know just summarizing one world was just adoption now if you are thinking about business less than a hundred million even billion people are using blockchain doesn't matter which n is not using I don't think this industry have a future right so we should all work together to have a global option as much as possible doesn't matter vision is on that's what is your future looking like how is your ecosystem prepared what are you doing today for the future of tomorrow so sure so apart from our you know regular sort of investment kind of business I mean we recently launched two other things so we launched an accelerator program starting in New York called D lab and this is in partnership with SOS V which is a five hundred fifty million dollar fund of funds that literally just does accelerators all over the world and this is a blockchain focused accelerator where we're not even a hundred percent forcing anybody hey you got to do you got a build on car down o2 come into it we're trying to seed and work actively with early-stage entrepreneurs who are genuine leveraging blockchain and could be building something you know the next big unicorn Sam simultaneously as an investor one of the biggest challenges we faced is even after you write the check the first question I don't know you guys feel but the first question that everybody asks is okay now I need this talent and that talent I don't know where to find it so a few weeks ago we just launched an education program in India which is also blockchain agnostic we're gonna be training about 2,500 students in the first 12 months in partnerships with several hundred universities in India on blockchain skills and bringing them into the ecosystem for everybody right so these are two I guess two plays from our end to kind of build that adoption down the road for the entire ecosystem knowledge I think everyone in the room will agree we've got a lot of respect for that going right back to the grassroots and getting children getting kids getting students involved and looking at it from a blockchain agnostic I think it benefits all Brian the future what does it look like what are you doing today for the future of tomorrow sure I would definitely say that our focus for the future is that I think we all agree that mass adoption is what everyone is looking for and we know that in order to have mass adoption you have to have mass utilization so we need to make sure that the qisas and the extra add-ons to the network are there so when a company's building a great solution to do ticketing or to do car rentals that they have a kyc provider that they have an onboarding for Fiat to crypto they have an off-boarding of crypto defi so all those extra components don't need to be built by every team we don't need their application so rather we're looking to make sure that we are investing behind those great components to add ons on to the network and on to the dap so we know that we need to make a full ecosystem and so when that full ecosystem is built you're able to have those great products and so that's taking definitely a page out of other people's Rule books from the from years past and how you build an ecosystem whether it's a web browser or something that we know that we need to have those add-ons or we're not going to have a great ecosystem so the rails have been laid we built the blockchain that community's taking it and the next thing you need to do is have the end users everyone here and everyone at home actually using those depths and so we know in order to get there we have to keep building the components onto the system very interesting Tiffany I'll keep it very simple we think it's very important at this time to really settle down attract good talent build product and also invest in good project that will help you grow the entire blockchain ecosystem you know it's wonderful to hear each of you talk with your own initiatives and when you look at them they're actually all quite quite different but all very important and I think by having a combination of that it's the only way that we are going to do something today for tomorrow's future so maybe you'll all join me in thanking our wonderful panel that executed so well thank you so much a big round of applause for all the panelists for today thank you so much