Investments

Organizations

Cogitent Ventures is a fund aligned to the ethos of a community-first Defi NFT marketplace on NEAR Protocol.

Cogitent Ventures

Wayru

Unbanx

Good Ghosting

Founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz (known as "a16z") is a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, California that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. We are stage agnostic: We invest in seed to late-stage companies, and both consumer and enterprise technology companies. To date, a16z has raised $7.1B, across seven funds, including the $650M Bio funds.

a16z is defined by respect for the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial company building process; we know what it’s like to be in the founder’s shoes. The firm is led by general partners who are former founders/operators, CEOs, or CTOs of successful technology companies, and who have domain expertise ranging from biology to crypto to distributed systems to security to marketplaces to financial services.

We aim to connect entrepreneurs, investors, executives, engineers, academics, industry experts, and others in the technology ecosystem. We have built a network of experts including technical and executive talent; top media and marketing resources; Fortune 500/Global 2000 companies; as well as other technology decision makers, influencers, and key opinion leaders. a16z uses this network as part of our commitment to help our portfolio companies grow their business, so our operating teams provide entrepreneurs with access to expertise and insights across the entire spectrum of company building.

ANDREESSEN HOROWITZ

IDG Capital is a leading investment firm, focused on developing extraordinary companies through our expertise in private equity and venture capital, as well as real estate.

Founded in 1992, we were the first firm to bring foreign venture capital into China. Today we work with private equity and venture capital fund managers, investment advisors and business entities from around the world. Our limited partners include many internationally reputable investors, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, institutional investors, major charities, university endowments, family offices and business luminaries.

IDG Capital brings a powerful combination of global perspective and local experience to investment management. As long-term value investors, we are highly skilled at mobilizing global resources to address local needs, especially for Inbound and outbound opportunities in China and the rest of Asia. Our highly skilled team has an in-depth understanding of the Chinese market and enjoys close relationships with many influential business leaders.

IDG Capital

We believe we can only build the next generation of Pillar companies if we form a trusted partnership with founders of the companies we back. From our investment terms to the capabilities and support we provide, our mission is to align every step we take, every decision we make with the interests of entrepreneurs, right from the start.

As early-stage investors, many of our companies are ideas beginning to take flight; so we are investing in the people, the founders. We look for unstoppable founders who know how to blow through walls. Founders who rally people around their vision for the future and have the ability to create a swell of momentum around a market-transforming idea.

We co-founded Pillar with a group of 17 world-class executives, who have built some of the most substantial companies in Boston with a combined total of more than $30B in enterprise value. All are investors in our fund, and are active as hands-on advisors, mentors and board members to our entrepreneurs. An investment from Pillar is an investment from them.

Our partners are serial entrepreneurs with decades of operating experience in high-growth start-ups. We know what it’s like to build a team, a product, a community of customers. We know what it’s like to pour your time, energy and resources into scaling your company. That’s why we’re so committed to helping you align with the people and capabilities you need to win.

pillar

Dekrypt Capital is a leading investment firm focused on blockchain infrastructure, privacy-preserving technologies, and early-stage ventures. We invest in, mentor, and accelerate teams developing novel solutions to address the core issues of scalability, privacy, and interoperability for decentralized protocols and applications.

Dekrypt Capital

Hashed is the largest crypto assets fund, project accelerator and community builder based out in S. Korea and San Francisco. The firm was founded by serial entrepreneurs, company operators and systems engineers; passionate about enabling the global adoption of blockchain through education, acceleration and impact investments. Accelerating the global enablement of decentralized projects through impact investing and community building.

Hashed operates Hashed Lounge; a premier blockchain meetup group. Hashed Post; a cryptocurrency blog interviewing founders and thought leaders. And Hashed Night; a world-class conference, events and networking brand. The team is actively working towards defining what it means to be a fundamental technology and founder focused investment startup in the blockchain ecosystem.

Hashed

ZhenFund is a seed stage focused venture fund founded in 2011 by Bob Xu and Victor Wang, in collaboration with Sequoia Capital China.

ZhenFund

a16z crypto is a $300M venture fund that will invest in crypto companies and protocols. Our fund is designed to include the best features of traditional venture capital, updated to the modern crypto world:

We are long-term, patient investors. We’ve been investing in crypto assets for 5+ years. We’ve never sold any of those investments, and don’t plan to any time soon. We structured the a16z crypto fund to be able to hold investments for 10+ years.

We have an “all weather” fund. We plan to invest consistently over time, regardless of market conditions. If there is another “crypto winter,” we’ll keep investing aggressively.

We provide operational support to entrepreneurs. Our crypto investments have access to the same 80+ person a16z operating teams as do our non-crypto investments. Our operating teams have deep expertise in executive and technical recruiting, regulatory affairs, communications and marketing, and general startup management. We are responsible participants in the governance of companies and the governance of networks.

We are flexible with respect to stage, asset type, and geography. One reason we created a new fund is to have maximum flexibility. We invest at all stages, from early stage projects to fully developed later-stage networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. We’ll invest in traditional financial instruments like equity or convertible notes, and new instruments including the direct purchase of coins/tokens. Crypto is a global phenomenon, with great projects all around the world, and we’ll invest accordingly.

We are focused on non-speculative use cases. We want services powered by crypto protocols to be used by hundreds of millions and eventually billions of people. Crypto tokens are the native asset class of digital networks, but their value is driven by the underlying, practical uses cases.

a16z crypto

Benchmark is an early stage venture capital firm focused on social, mobile, local and cloud companies.  We believe that great entrepreneurs change the world for the better. Since its founding in 1995, Benchmark has invested in more than 250 early stage startups with a market value exceeding $100 billion.  Investments have included eBay, Juniper Networks, MySQL, OpenTable, Yelp, Inc., Zillow, Friendster, JAMDAT, Instagram, Hortonworks, Dropbox, Uber, Twitter, Zipcar, Asana, Quora, Gaikai, Demandforce and DOMO.  Benchmark has offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, California.

Benchmark

Kindred Ventures supports emerging founders and world-changing startups at the earliest of stages.

Founded by Steve Jang, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor based in San Francisco, California. Steve served as an early advisor and investor at Uber and was an early investor in Coinbase, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Virgin Hyperloop One. Steve is a co-founder at Out There Labs, a decentralized app studio, and previously was the founder of SoundTracking (acquired by Rhapsody) and co-creator of imeem (acquired by MySpace).

As a product-focused entrepreneur, Steve has served as a founder, executive, and board member at several technology startups from inception to acquisition. Most recently, he was an investor and board director at WillCall (acquired by Ticketfly/Pandora), and a co-founder and creator of SoundTracking, a social music recognition & discovery app, that was recognized by Apple as the Best iPhone Music App in the US in 2011 (acquired by Rhapsody International). Before that, he was the co-creator of imeem, the world's first on-demand ad-supported music streaming service which reached over 100 million monthly users before its acquisition by MySpace.

As an early-stage startup advisor, Steve has served as an early Advisor to Uber, the leading ride-sharing and transportation network, since its founding in 2009, and Advisor to Expa, a startup studio and incubator based in San Francisco and New York, since its inception in 2013.

Today, Steve invests in early stage startups in software, hardware, and retail/consumer brand sectors, from the Kindred Ventures fund.

Cogitent Ventures

Ethos of community-first on NEAR Protocol.