Portal Ventures raises $75M for pre-seed crypto fund

As a seasoned crypto investor with a knack for spotting promising pre-seed Web3 startups, I find the recent announcement of Portal Ventures’ second fund raising $75 million to be quite intriguing. The backing from industry heavyweights like Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, along with the involvement of funds of funds, adds credibility to this venture firm based in New York City.

Portal Ventures has successfully completed the launch of its second investment fund, gathering a total of $75 million to support early-stage Web3 businesses.

As an analyst, I am privileged to work with a fund that boasts significant support from esteemed investors like Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon from a16z, as well as contributions from funds of funds such as Accolade Partners, Theta Capital, and CrossLayer Capital. These partnerships underscore the confidence they have in our investment strategies and vision.

This venture company, located in New York City, boasts about investing in crypto startups prior to the creation of any white paper or presentation materials. As per Crunchbase, their investment portfolio encompasses companies such as Plume Network, which specializes in tokenizing real-world assets, and Arch, a platform for crypto lending.

As reported by a representative from Portal, this investment fund focuses on backing just one founder within each specific category, placing significant importance on businesses that prioritize Bitcoin’s programmability, decentralized infrastructures (DePIN), and those that maximize extractable value (MEV).

Over the last few months, multiple investment firms have disclosed plans to gather funds for projects centered around blockchain startups. In April, Paradigm aimed to amass $850 million for a new fund, which would be their largest since the $2.5 billion fund they created in 2021. Notable investments by Paradigm in this sector include Coinbase, Fireblocks, Blast, Optimism, Uniswap, and FTX.

In April, Pantera Capital sought investments totaling $1 billion for a diverse fund encompassing various blockchain-related assets. Meanwhile, Dragonfly Capital announced in September their intention to gather $500 million for their fourth cryptocurrency investment fund, which focuses on nurturing early-stage startups.

In Q3 of 2024, despite a drop by 20% in overall investment compared to previous quarters, an impressive $2.4 billion was still raised through 478 deals. This shows that early-stage funding within the crypto sector remains robust. Data from Galaxy Research indicates that 85% of the capital invested in crypto startups during this period went towards angel, pre-seed and seed rounds.

So far this year, venture capitalists have poured around $8 billion into cryptocurrency startups. This pace suggests that we might either equal or even slightly exceed the total investment from 2023 in this area, primarily due to a high volume of early-stage funding.

2024-11-14 21:33

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