Quick take:
- Red Beard Ventures has raised $25 million in a funding round backed by Animoca Brands, SuperRare and A16z’s Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon.
- The company plans to use the funds in a new tokenomics accelerator Denarii Labs launched in collaboration with Horizon Labs Ventures.
- Red Beard seeks to support early-stage DeFi and blockchain gaming projects.
Red Beard Ventures has announced a $25 million funding round from Animoca Brands, SuperRare, and A16z’s Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon.
The web3 venture capital company said it will use the funds to support early-stage DeFi and web3 gaming projects, as well as, launch a tokenomics accelerator program in collaboration with Horizon Labs Ventures.
The program will grant successful applicants $100,000 each and is set to launch in the third quarter of 2023. Entrepreneurs will also receive other benefits like advisory services, weekly educational sessions, and mentorship.
Red Beard Ventures was founded by Drew Austin in 2019 through AngelList and has since gone on to invest in leading web3 companies and projects including NFT domains company Unstoppable Domains, Dapper Labs’ NFT project NBA Top Shot, Animoca Brands’ metaverse subsidiary The Sandbox, NFT Marketplace SuperRare, and NFT analytics and data services platform CryptoSlam, among others.
Red Beard Ventures claims to have invested more than $40 million across 192 portfolio companies.
According to Red Beard CEO Drew Austin, blockchain gaming and decentralised finance (DeFi) will be the key to onboarding masses to web3.
“I think it’s going to bring an exponentially greater audience than we’ve seen from NFTs and DeFi,” Austin told CoinDesk. “Those people are going to have expectations of better infrastructure, more scalable infrastructure, better user experiences, better on-ramping, interoperability across chains – there’s just a lot of stuff that still needs to be done.”
Austin who has been an avid digital art collector attributed his success as an investor to his interest in NFTs, DeFi and blockchain technology.
“I’m a collector, I’m a builder, and the fun thing is that I get to like see this space from so many different angles,” he said, adding that this has given him a unique competitive advantage.
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