Jim Nguyen

Pretty excited about this one - a team with a remarkable track record across top DeFi protocols, propelled by a clear & effective go to market strategy. The result? Over $300 million in TVL and $2 billion in trading volume within just a few short months. ___________________________ As Blast was gearing up for its launch, the market was flooded with over a dozen different spot and perpetual DEXes seeking funding. At the time, Blast had already achieved over $2 billion in TVL and we anticipated they would launch various mainnet incentives to maintain liquidity within the protocol. Our aim was to identify the team most capable of capturing the majority of mindshare and swap volume from the $2 billion+ of captive liquidity in the ~3 months leading up to the Blast token generation event (TGE). Consequently, we engaged in several discussions and reviewed numerous pitches to better understand how the DEX competition might unfold. We were particularly impressed by the Thruster team and their strategy to attract early attention and liquidity through focused partnerships and integrations. ___________________________ At Futureproof, we invest our own capital, which can sometimes be seen as a limitation in the venture capital space. We do not write overly large checks and cannot invest in all the deals that come our way. However, this constraint sharpens our investment focus. Ultimately, it leads us to invest in those we believe are best positioned to dominate their respective niches, rather than just securing a competitive position. High conviction, high hit rate... betting on the fastest horse. Thruster is exactly that - winning, growing and showing zero signs of slowing down. We can't wait to support them as they staff up and double down on their winning formula to integrate Thruster products and liquidity into other top protocols across DeFi, NFTFi and beyond.

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Insightful look into bioplatform strategy, and what it takes to raise a Series A from my partner, Omri Amirav-Drory: https://lnkd.in/dFv7GbF6

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Another interesting post from Andreessen Horowitz Web3 team rationalizing the need for Crypto/Blockchain regulations. Christian Catalini co-founder of Lightspark, a Blockchain based payments infrastructure company and head of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab writes: "When regulation arrives too late, policymakers push the best innovators out by failing to provide them with clarity. That’s what is happening in the United States with crypto, and it comes at the risk of the country squandering its lead. It also, ironically, helps projects that are comfortable breaking the law, as we have seen with the FTX scandal. The excuse, at least from the SEC, is that rules written in 1933 and a framework for financial markets designed when we relied on open outcry trading, physical stock certificates, and prices rolled out on ticker tape do not need any updating." He goes on to argue that interoperability is key to disrupting large embedded intermediaries in the financial system and across the web. "Interoperability fixes this. Imagine a world where you can send and receive messages irrespective of the messaging app you use. Same with sending and receiving money, reading updates from your social or news feed, finding the right product or service, or interacting with an AI agent. On a truly interoperable network, consumers and businesses have actual leverage against intermediaries because they can port their business elsewhere without having to rebuild their audience, social graph, or customer base. Developers also won’t worry about their platform becoming a competitor overnight. By injecting interoperability into our digital interactions, open protocols unravel the advantage tech companies have established over the last decades and force them to compete again. This, in turn, drives the type of innovation that helped the United States lead in the early days of the internet." https://lnkd.in/gRUibqtq #Blockchain #Decentralization #Interoperability #FrontierTechnology

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Scaling Investor Outreach: How We're Using AI to Personalize VC Fundraising at Scale As a General Partner at Vibe Capital, I'm always looking for innovative ways to connect with potential investors and grow our fund. Recently, I developed an AI-driven system that's revolutionizing our approach to investor outreach. (Tentative name: Vibey) I'd like to share how we're using cutting-edge technology to build stronger relationships in the VC world. Our challenge was clear: how do we personalize communication with hundreds of potential Limited Partners (LPs) while maintaining efficiency? The solution came in the form of a three-part automated pipeline: 1. Smart Contact Categorization: First, I created a script that taps into the power of AI (specifically, the Claude model) to analyze our vast network of contacts. It combs through our email history, categorizing each contact as a potential LP, a referral source, or other. This crucial step allows us to focus our efforts where they matter most. 2. AI-Powered Personalized Emails: Next, I developed a system that generates highly personalized emails for each potential LP. These aren't your typical templated messages. Our AI crafts unique emails that reference recent interactions, highlight Vibe Capital's latest portfolio successes, and even extend invitations to exclusive events in San Francisco. It's personalization at a scale that would be impossible to achieve manually. 3. Streamlined Email Delivery: Finally, I automated the sending process. This script handles the technical aspects of delivering emails via Gmail's API, carefully managing rate limits and potential errors. It ensures our personalized messages reach investors' inboxes efficiently and reliably. The results are...TBD. We just sent out the emails today! That said, we're now able to reach out to a much larger pool of potential investors with messages that feel personal and relevant. It's allowing us to build and maintain investor relationships more effectively than ever before, which is crucial as we approach our next fund close in Q3 2024. But beyond the immediate benefits, this project represents something bigger. It's about embracing technology to enhance the human touch in our relationships. We're using AI to create more meaningful connections, to start real conversations. As we continue to refine this system, I'm excited about its potential to reshape how we approach investor relations in the VC world. It's a perfect example of how AI can be a powerful tool in building the relationships that drive our industry forward. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this approach. How do you see AI shaping the future of VC and investor relations? #VentureCapital #AI #InvestorRelations #Innovation #TechInnovation #Fundraising #AIinVC #InvestmentStrategy #DigitalTransformation #VCInsights #FutureOfInvesting #PersonalizedOutreach #InvestorEngagement #AIApplications # #ScalableSolutions #InvestmentTech #NextGenVC #Vibecap

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We've mapped the 250 most relevant early-stage startups within the European data ecosystem! 🚀 Our coverage spans categories like Data Collection, Storage, Integration, Security & Privacy, and Platform. Discover how these startups are leveraging AI 🧠, the most active sectors 👩‍💻👨‍💻, and key funding trends 🏦. Don't miss the simple table listing all the companies! 😀 #AI #Europeanstartups #MMCresearch #vcfunding Advika Jalan

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New post: The big stack game of LLM poker https://lnkd.in/d5mfqgwk I’m sure you read David Cahn’s excellent and provocative piece "AI's $600B Question", in which he argues that, given NVDIA’s projected Q4 2024 revenue run rate of $150B, the amount of AI revenue required to payback the enormous investment being made into NVDIA each year plus the electricity to power GPUs to train and run large language models is now $600B, and we are at least $500B in the hole on that payback. The numbers are certainly staggering… and are just going to get bigger. Unless the scaling hypothesis falters, this is a contest now of “not blinking first”. If you’re a big stack player like META, MSFT, GOOG, or any of the foundation model pure plays, you have no choice but to go all in — the prize and power of “winning” is too great. If you blink, you are left empty handed, watching someone else count your chips. It’s likely hundreds of billions will be destroyed, and trillions earned. For all of us in the startup ecosystem, among many things, it’s going to create a rolling thunder of AI opportunities. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/d5mfqgwk

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Vishal Sachdev highlights the strategic integration of open source and proprietary tech in architecting tech stacks, developer ecosystems and resulting business models. The world class companies effectively balance value commoditization in open source and value capture in proprietary tech. This is the strategic challenge for companies operating in #blockchain and #AI. I believe those who operate at the intersection of blockchain *and* AI stand to win this strategic battle...

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It's been just over 3 years since we announced Patron and our Fund 1. A lot has changed in both the startup ecosystem as well as the venture capital ecosystem in that time. 2021 was a year that saw an explosion of companies raising venture capital funding, and a record number of new venture capital firms raising initial funds. Even then it seemed clear that the venture market was bifurcating - you either needed to be a large multi-stage fund with the ability to lead rounds from Series A to pre-IPO, or you needed to go early and specialize at the pre-seed and seed rounds. The emerging manager ecosystem seemed to coalesce around the latter, and we were no different at Patron as we strived to build a leading seed-focused firm investing in the future of consumer. We were fortunate to have a handful of peers who were one fund ahead of us, managers like Rick Zullo at Equal Ventures and Nico Wittenborn at Adjacent were two of note who were generous with time and insights as we were first getting started. It was also clear that there was a market forming around the idea of organizing the emerging manager ecosystem and creating a stronger bridge connecting new managers with LPs interested in investing in them. I was glad to join my peers the last few weeks at 2 incredible events focusing precisely on this part of the venture world - the EMC Summit organized by the Equal Ventures team, and the RAISE Global Summit. The EMC Summit continues to be one of my favorite industry events I make time to attend each year in New York. It is the real life event built around an amazing online community which lives in Slack and has connected me with 100+ fellow founding GPs of emerging firms. It is the best opportunity to reconnect with peers and to share experiences, learnings, and ideas with people who are going through very similar experiences. It's also a great way to hear from and connect into larger institutional LPs who have been somewhat active in investing in emerging managers in recent years. That said, we haven't ever met any Patron institutional LPs there so my focus has always been spending time with my peers. This was the first time we've been accepted to participate in the RAISE Global Summit, and I had the privilege to share Patron's story with the attendees of the conference. Unlike the EMC Summit which feels more centered on the emerging managers themselves, Raise feels much more focused on being an LP centric event, with the aim of helping a broad array of LPs ranging from large institutions to individual family office investors learn about new managers. Given that we had recently raised and announced our Fund 2, it was nice to focus more on sharing about how positioning and focus as a firm, and less on actually trying to fundraise. We hope to continue to be an active part of the emerging manager community and ecosystem. We've certainly learned a lot in the last 3 years and hope that we can start to share more of these learnings as fund founders.

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📰 Solo VCs are rising in popularity once again. This means only one General Partner is leading the firm, versus multiples. 💔 Why? There are GP breakups going on all around us after partnerships have been tested by the market for years now. The bar to co-found a venture firm with a partner is very high. Those GPs that thought they might graft another one on in the short term to share the load are stopping in their tracks to deeply consider those implications. 🌱 Many are opting to bring in more junior talent and grow them into Partner roles instead. It’ll take time and capital to be able to do that as the firm grows. Talked to 3 diff GPs about this at dinner last night and we’re all leaning toward that approach in our short and long term planning. 💡 FYI - this is just an observation of the moment we’re in. There are plenty of firms thriving with full partnerships as well as solo GPs. But it’s worth calling out that new partnerships are particularly risky right now, especially if the partners haven’t worked with each other for a long time.

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Coming soon on Aug 1: "Transformation to a Fresh Tomorrow." This is theme of our 3rd Annual Web3 Investor Day, as we welcome the innovators and investors convening in Chicago for these discussions around the next generation Internet. Our theme reflects the optimism, determination and commitment investors and innovators have solidified off the depths of the bear markets to drive success in the bull markets. Broader investor optimism suggests that fresh institutional funds into Web3 across both tokens and equity may endure.  Across adoption metrics, customer interest and developer activity, Web3 seems to have normalized. It’s refreshing to see the transformation and next evolution of Web3 and it’s refreshing to meet many of you on August 1.  And yet, even with the improved optimism from last year, there still remain open questions in the development and adoption of our next generation Internet:  1. the balance of speculative versus productive investor capital in this current cycle 2. the productive role of liquid trading capital in fostering Web3 innovation 3. the attractiveness of venture investments in follow on financings 4. the role of policy and regulation that may enhance innovation 5. the continued developer activity to improve the underlying infrastructure 6. other Web3 recovery characteristics in target customer use cases. We remain committed to navigating regulatory shifts, fostering investor optimism, and building the customer use cases for Web3.  Physical spaces enhance our innovation conversations.  In person relationships foster our collaboration.  Relationships drive breakthrough innovations.  Reach out to Rizza Torres at Decasonic if you would like to join us! #web3investorday #web3 #venturecapital

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An INTJ Fund conversation with Sofie Marien (Co-Founder + CTO of NoMi). NoMi aims to be the Duolingo for self-help. NoMi was in A16Z GAMES SPEEDRUN's recent cohort and backed by Jorge Mazel (previously Chief Product Officer at Duolingo). Sofie is an award-winning mobile developer and marketer with over eleven years experience in games at PlayStation and Hasbro.  She's worked on multiple top-charting games including Horizon Zero Dawn and Monopoly. She's now taking her experience to turn relatable Gen-Z experiences into playable games. I think a lot of people simply need more repetitions in order to learn how to deal with social situations. In the future, I can see people simulating everything from tough conversations to dates in game like experiences. What's a social situation you wished you could have simulated in a game as practice? Want to make friends with people like Sofie? Apply to join the INTJ Fund community - https://lnkd.in/g9tcUZVg #selfhelp #mentalhealth #gaming #INTJFund #INTJ #A16Z #INTJwomen #womeninstem

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Interesting concept to rename rounds by milestones. But "Series Client Expansion Extension" just doesn't have the same ring to it 😋 . Maybe we can start incorporating it into a descriptor to add context, "Series Seed Extension: client expansion." #startups #venturecapital

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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with notable X personality Trung Phan about the evolving social media landscape, and how to tame the mayhem and pandemonium of X. https://lnkd.in/dVHMzbui

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The latest update from the research team at Primal Capital explains the importance of wallets in the Web3 ecosystem and highlights the evolution of solutions in the market today. These solutions provide greater utility compared to the original Web3 wallets, which was simply to safeguard assets from centralized platforms.

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Very interesting data on the creator economy funding rebound from Kaya Yurieff and The Information. Funding for the segment is up for the first time in 2 years! As with most parts of the tech/venture ecosystem, the category was grossly overfunded during the hype of 2020-2022. Most people wrote off the whole sector, but now it's coming back. Personally, I think the lack of performance from the early hype was a fundamental misunderstanding by investors of where the value would accrue in the sector. However, as with all innovative technologies, the sector is following the Gartner hype cycle and emerging from the trough of disillusionment and into the slope of enlightenment. After the early hype, investors now have more data to understand where value is created in this important part of the economy, and they're putting their dollars behind that. Interesting to see that in Q1 music and creator brands dominated as opposed to platforms where most of the money went early on. That said, it's too soon to tell if this will continue as this data can be skewed by big rounds like the $100m investment into Dude Perfect which fell into this category. I'd imagine #ai will follow this exact same curve, just a few years later!

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David Yi (Ethos VC) a.k.a "The VC who hates most VCs" on his Personal Journey and Perspective on Growth:  "As an eight-time founder with two exits, I've seen the landscape from multiple angles. It's not about being a hero but about building a team, learning, and evolving. Whether it's in education or tech, the journey is about adapting and finding your path, not just in Korea but globally." https://lnkd.in/gVduV3MQ #startupswithseoul Chang (CK) Kim

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GPTZero has skyrocketed to profitability within 18 months, raking in millions. With 500% ARR growth in six months and user growth from 1 million to 4 million in a year. While many AI-detection companies struggle with accuracy, GPTZero excels, leveraging vast data and advanced LLM models using the latest open-source tools. Initially celebrated for helping teachers spot AI-generated student work, GPTZero's clientele now includes government agencies, grant writers, hiring managers, and AI training data labelers. One founder noted, "We have a big data advantage with millions of examples of human versus AI-generated text," proving the quality of data fed into AI models is crucial. https://lnkd.in/gREnQ2ps #ai #sustainabledevelopmenttechnology #emergingtechnology

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Sharing a sanitized version of the mu ventures Q2 q'ly LP update. Included musings: 👉 SEOs shrinking impact, and the rise of LLMO (large language model optimization) 👉 examples of the Commerce AI application layer coming to life 👉 a modern fund strategy that accepts companies require less capital, time, and people to trigger the power law 👉 Mu's guide to investing in AI 👉 all 30 companies in the Mu-niverse (and several others we admire) Founders, VCs, LPs - if you like how we think and suspect we can partner, hit us up! https://lnkd.in/dTJ2zjav

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