Quick take:
- Vessel Capital has emerged from stealth with a $55 million venture fund.
- The Web3-focused venture capital firm said it will invest in blockchain infrastructure and applications.
- The company has been investing $10 million per year according to co-founder Mirza Uddin.
Vessel Capital has emerged from stealth with a $55 million venture fund to invest in Web3 startups. The Web3-focused venture fund has been investing $10 million annually according to co-founder Mirza Uddin.
According to Uddin, Vessel primarily invests in Web3 startups building infrastructure and apps. While in stealth, it invested in projects including decentralised finance infrastructure startups Injective Labs and Burnt, as well as the layer-1 blockchain platform Omni.
Vessel co-founder Eric Chen serves as the CEO of Injective, while Uddin is the head of business development. On the other hand, Anthony Anzalone, also co-founder of Vessel is a co-founder at Burnt. Burnt previously wanted to launch its own NFT marketplace according to TechCrunch.
Their positions in these companies demonstrate Vessel’s investment strategy, which seeks to not only fund but also help founders on the ground as they scale their projects.
“On a high level, we really wanted to build a new type of venture fund,” Uddin said. “A lot of giant funds are getting raises, but the VCs themselves don’t have a lot of skin in the game when it comes to using their own capital.”
According to Uddin, their background as founders gives Vessel an advantage that some VCs that have invested in the Web3 space do not have.
“Oftentimes, [venture capital firms] don’t have expertise in the things they’re investing in,” he said, adding that also an investor may understand the meaning of DeFi unless they “are in the trenches going through the process,” it is difficult to comprehend fully.
“The world has enough VCs, but what’s actually missing is actual guidance and advice. Most times you’ll get a nice check, a pretty logo on your website, but other than that VCs don’t help much aside from intros from time to time,” added Uddin.
According to Uddin, Vessel is not really to scale its target portfolio of opportunities by investing “left and right,” but rather looks to support founders.
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