NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–MetaWeb Ventures, a global venture capital firm focused on pre-seed and seed investments in crypto startups, today announced the launch of its first fund (“Fund I” or the “Fund”), with total capital commitments of $30 million . LPs in the fund include NEAR Foundation, Sequoia China, Dragonfly Capital, GSR Markets, Octopus Network, SevenX, Mentha Partners, as well as notable entrepreneurs such as NEAR’s co-founder Illia Polosukhin, Matrix China’s co-founder Bo Shao, Alchemy Pay’s founder Shawn Shi, Dodo’s co-founder Mark Wang, and more.
MetaWeb is focused on supporting developers and researchers who are building the future of Web3. The fund has been operating in stealth mode for the past few months and has already invested in 33 start-ups. Most notably, MetaWeb invested in Orderly, Niche, CornerstoneDAO, Sender Wallet, Kino and Play3.
Web3 technology will change the Internet permanently
MetaWeb is led by crypto veterans Amos Zhang and Dani Osorio. Amos is a serial entrepreneur who has run startups in blockchain and SaaS with several successful exits. Before joining MetaWeb, Amos ran Global Marketing and was GM for Asia at NEAR Protocol. Dani has spent over 15 years on high-growth start-ups; before joining MetaWeb she co-founded an NFT Infrastructure startup, led the Developer Ecosystem at NEAR Protocol, and was a Director at Infura/Consensys. She volunteers as content manager at the crypto festival EthDenver, as well as sits on the boards of SporkDAO and CypherPunk Guild.
MetaWeb aims to create outsized returns by investing in highly innovative projects and builders that can unlock the mainstream adoption of blockchain for billions of users.
“We founded MetaWeb to support future Web3 leaders who will disrupt the world through blockchain. As former entrepreneurs, we will work side by side with the entrepreneurs throughout their journey,” said Amos Zhang, Managing Partner of MetaWeb Ventures.
The entire MetaWeb team is deeply embedded in the blockchain developer ecosystem and is able to support founders in the earliest stages. The fund will primarily invest in the verticals decentralized social media, DeFi, games, infrastructure and DAO. A second fund (“Fund II”) will follow in 2023.
“At its core, MetaWeb is unique in that we are all builders who also invest – we have direct access to early stage projects, as we can provide a very special kind of support to our founders,” said Dani Osorio, Partner at MetaWeb Ventures.
With deep domain expertise in both blockchain technology and the NEAR protocol, MetaWeb was created as NEAR’s first ecosystem fund. That vision aligned with a multi-chain future, so MetaWeb began investing in the best platforms and applications across additional protocols, including Ethereum, Aurora, Cosmos and more.
Today, MetaWeb Ventures has a team of 9 in New York, Denver, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hong Kong and Lisbon. This is the first venture fund.
