venturecapital

Has VC investing moved more towards investing in ecosystems than companies?

Independent, original thoughts. Onchain interests. Investor, entrepreneur, best-selling author. Cultur3. MetaCartel Ventures DAO. Opinions are my own.

Wild West Native, building Chones and nurturing the Infinite Garden  /chones she/her

https://icebreaker.xyz/borrowlucid.eth

Sometimes yeah, but not at other times. Take the difference between buying into a network's/protocol's token versus equity of the company that is developing products/services including, but not limited to, the protocol. Investing in the token is investing in an ecosystem; investing in equity is investing in a company

Interesting thinking. I'm thinking of ecosystems separate from a firm, and at a level of analysis above the firm. A single ecosystem contains many firms, but a single firm doesn't contain multiple ecosystems. E.g. ecosystems are accelerators, geographic areas (Silicon Valley), or Web3 protocols, not just "stakeholders"

Okay, this makes sense.  But, if a company can get themselves loyal customers, who do things like wear costumes to parties, or or buy offshoot merch to brand things, like their car or canteen, is that an ecosystem? Or is an ecosystem more like building use cases for the protocol?