venturecapital

Spent 5 years in VC (both crypto and non-crypto consumer) here. 

AMA about it and I will be brutally honest :)

Working toward a more self-sovereign, creative, kind internet. Husband. Dad. ❤️ nature, games, ‘puters, death metal. FC OG | FID442 chriskurdziel.com

Founder @ Artichoke Capital, web3 venture | former consumer operator, PE investor & lawyer | www.artichoke.capital | shawnwlim.twitter

Early stage - preseed/seed/A tho rarely lead checks 

Still too early re DPI but a few nice ~10x markups that are still doing their thing

What stage did you invest at and how many investments that you consider wins (ie dpi) over those 5 years?

Just to be honest. The farther a co gets in a fund’s pipeline the more “good reasons” should be included but in reality every fund has a different and imperfect process. Unfortunately for bigger partnerships a lot can be just people stuff (competing interests within a fund, etc)

what do you think is important for a good “pass” email to include?

chief intern @uncutsapp & uncutsxyz.twitter

there are web3 native VCs who are turned off by web2.5. but tbh i think many are not well acquainted with consumer investing. to build something at massive modern web scale it has to be low friction and very good ux. there are simply too many other good options out there for peoples time

I heard that web2.5 approach is something VCs don't like

is it true?

cofounder itm.studio, a crm for the experience economy. tech at pleasr.org. 

prev. mirror.xyz, withotis.com, gemini.com, kickstarter.com, betaworks.com. 



good q! i think it all has to do with how the crypto relates to the core consumer use cases. 

using FC as the example, it isnt just twitter all over, its the ability for other clients, frames, channels, true protocol. using warpcast is still relatively low friction and shows these benefits (to investors AND users)

advice for first time founder building a mainstream consumer product with crypto in the background? how do you communicate your vision while keeping the crypto-ness of it to solely the infra layer but not making it the thing itself?

lol. Easiest (and most boring) answer would be so many insane valuations pre product or with very little relative diligence to the round size - I think craziest was like a few hundred million token FDV out of the gate (2019) before there was anything concrete built

what is ur all time "only in crypto" moment as a VC.

Just A Girl & Her Cryptos 💙 GLOOM Enjoyoooor 👽 Gloomer /gloomtoken - FID: 20147.

Many investments fail (most of the portfolio is a 0 or 1-2x) so by nature the ones that work have to be significant wins that drive the performance of the whole portfolio. So every investment needs that potential

Another question….. what type of return are VCs expecting? What’s the minimum 10x 25x - unrealistic to think each investment is going to be a unicorn 🦄

No. I think it is mostly a function of what matters for the company at a particular moment in time and the narrative around that. Anything else is overkill and should be left in an appendix for a conversation/diligence

Is there a template you provide for pitch decks or a format you prefer? While there are tons of resources, each one is slightly different so I’m not seeing any consistency in the expected format. 😩

• depin in the sky /spacecoin 
• prime coxswain /koda
• network state /subwork • angel n' lp in few funds
• yangwao.twitter •

Honestly the best deals I have done were not competitive and have just been conviction early in founders that are awesome. But a lot of that is a function of check size. With smaller checks and conviction it’s easier to make a deal happen