drew austin / red beard ventures

Fabri Cara: I don't think the blockchain was built for us. I don't think it was built for us as users. I think that it was built for AI agents and we were in the test phase. We are the beta of what blockchain's really meant to be.

And I think it's meant to provide infrastructure for agents to become economic actors in the world. The next billion users of the internet are not gonna be human. gonna be agents. Hot take season 4-6, Drew Austin, founding partner of Redbeard Venture, I think I guess you can tell where he got that from, very impressive collection of collectibles behind him, but even more impressive is that the thesis he just laid out is one he's been carrying for years, long before the rest of the world started catching on to it.

Samu, tell us more about this one. Fund 2 is his bet on the world. the one where agents are the real users of the internet and the infrastructure gets built around and for them. Let's get into this.

Drew, welcome to the slice pod. Thanks for joining us. You've been building companies since you were 19 years old, never had a real job and you bought your first Bitcoin in a parking lot in 2013. By the time most people had even heard of the word crypto, you'd already lived through versions of it.

I want to understand how someone builds that kind of conviction. Now you're running Redbeard Ventures out in Connecticut. But let's start at the way beginning, growing up, what were you into and what did you want to be when you were older? Thank you for having me.

This is going a lot of fun. The thing I think that when it comes to mine, when you ask that question is I've always been like a collector of things. can even see like in my background, I collected cards and figures and autographs and art. And the idea of collectibles has been something that has just been from five years old on.

I just remember early in my life, the idea of collecting things and rarity and scarcity. ownership, that concept connected with me. I think that's one component. The other component is I've been an entrepreneur my whole life since I was 19 years old.

So my first business was started when I was in college. The idea of ownership and teams and distributed contributions and equity. Those are concepts that I had to think about at a young age. Whereas most people don't think of equity.

was just not a conversation for them because they went and got a job and that job paid them a salary. And that's what they thought about. My first company was a concierge service for college kids was based having a website where people were using credit card and depositing money into their account. We're ordering food from delivery and I had delivery drivers working for us and my freshman year floor was my driver's and I had like a bunch of people that worked in the office and all of that.

And we got an office in the Whitman School of Management in Syracuse. First it was an attic and then they found out that we were building businesses and I was an entrepreneurship major and they brought us in. But all that kind of being said between those three points of like connections to like being frontier technology and all of these different pieces coming together. When I saw Bitcoin and I saw the understanding of a digital first society, a digital first currency, the idea that like, This was a global currency.

always felt that like the world was shrinking due to technology anyway, and that these like fake geographical lines almost only exist because of politics and religion and race and ridiculous things that like really don't have any impact on the specific technology itself. So fast forward, I think like two years after that, I started looking into what are digital collectibles. They were called colored coins back then before they were called NFTs. I just got really fascinated with the idea that like, what is a certificate of authenticity on the blockchain or what is a digital collectible, what does scarcity mean in a digital world?

And then fast forward, I came across SuperRare, which was the first digital art marketplace. And I started buying art, like real art that I liked, but I still own to this day. In like 2018, 2019, I was running an HR tech software company at the time. During Christmas that year, I bought everybody digital art.

Everyone's like, I don't want this. How do I do with digital art? In that moment where you gave everyone this thing that you're really excited about, but Nobody had the reaction that you were hoping for. Nobody really got it.

How do you know whether that disinterest is actually telling you something or whether it's actually the signal that you're waiting for? To me, that's the signal of it being early. And that's what makes it exciting is the fact that you're catching something before everybody else really understands what is happening and where we're headed. I think that's what ultimately made me gravitate towards venture capital in the long run is because I've been looking at the world this way.

I've always seen things and where we're headed. And that's how my brain works. And it's a gift and a curse. Sometimes you're just too early.

Like when we were building Google Glass, it was like, we saw the future. To me, I'm more bullish on glasses today than I were 12 years ago. I think they're to be a massive part of this next wave of technology that's coming, but it was just too early. But so there's a double-edged sword.

You see the future, but you also need to consider timing. for me, it's like, there's two signals. There's one, it's like the interesting, smart, curious people that want to know about it more. The people that are scared or rebel or don't want to look at it.

That's the other signal that you're early. those two combined are really exciting and valuable. And for those periods where crypto blew up in everyone's faces, a lot of people who were early believers walked away from it. And you didn't.

What kept you going? I don't know. I think about that a lot. I think that my thesis for crypto was that we are and were early.

to what it was. The user experience wasn't right yet. The consumer application wasn't right yet. If you gave up on the internet being a useful tool when we were just building the rails of telecom, then you would have like, I guess in the back of my mind, it's like that meme where the guy is digging and one guy quits and the gold is about two feet in front of him and the other guy keeps digging and you know, he's ultimately getting to the gold and it's like.

I just felt enough conviction to be like, there is too much opportunity here and it makes too much sense to live as we continue to become more and more of a digital society. How are we not going to have a global digital financial system? And then that with the fact that in the past, I'd say about two to three years and my experience with AI. I've been saying the same thing that like now is finally coming to fruition, which is I don't think the blockchain was built for us.

I don't think it was built for us as users. I think that it was built for AI agents and we were in the test case. We are the beta. of what blockchain is really meant to be.

And I think it's meant to provide infrastructure for agents to become economic actors in the world. The next billion users of the internet are not going to be human. They're going to be agents. That's my foundational thesis for Fund 2 really for us is that I want to invest in that world and all the economic infrastructure that's needed.

And that's an exciting world to plan. There's a lot to do. Let's talk about it. In 2021, I know you launched a syndicate on AngelList.

Yeah, that's I got started. How did that happen so fast? And was getting into venture always something that you thought about? I always wanted to get into venture because I am just a curious person and I love new technology.

So I gravitated towards it. But I never really had the chance because I was a builder and like building and I couldn't stop seeing opportunities. Every time I stopped something within days, I'm working on the next thing. I just knew what I wanted to work on next.

And then while I was selling Wade and Wendy, I was already working on. My syndicate in the background, I was doing that during the exit process and part of my exit process was I was going to find all my team jobs, but I was not going to continue working. I was exiting personally. was up till two, three in the morning every night on crypto.

And then I wake up in the morning and sell HR software. And I was like, I just can't do this anymore. As I was selling that company, I was getting really deeper and deeper into web three, into crypto, just as a user. Cause I was buying NFTs and getting into NBA top shot and getting into Zen run.

And, and I decided I wanted to start moving into venture as my next gig. I've been the operator for so long and I was like so tired of working on one idea. had too many things I was interested in across frontier technology. wasn't even just blockchain.

It was like AI, robotics, space, all these different sports, all these different things I was so interested in investing in and being a part of. I've never really had an actual job. And I was like, how do I break into venture capital? Well, I don't come from a finance background.

I don't have any investing, real material investing background. So I just said, let me start a syndicate, start finding deals and things that I'm finding exciting. I to people and connect the dots. And I kind of took off.

just didn't know. I never knew the full power of the syndicate, but I just hustled and just like do what I do. I built it as a startup. I attracted a couple of people to come work on it with me after I did it myself and they came and worked on it for Carrie and there was no income, but I also had my exit and I had some compensation from the exit.

At the time we're finding some of the more exciting companies, especially in the web three space. Like when these were really competitive deals, I feel like I was battling. I was like, Zed run. was like up till two.

in the morning every night with the guys from Australia. This was probably the first real main web three breakout game. And to this day, I think it's probably the biggest, more successful in terms of revenue for sure, or at least one of them. And everyone was competing to get in that game.

And I ended up connecting Andreessen and TCG. I'm a syndicate, like Redbeard Ventures Syndicate. And like, we're bringing this whole deal together. It was really an interesting experience.

I remember for NBA Top Shot and Dapper Labs, like... I was competing with Gary Vee and like Shaq and I ended up getting squeezed in for a half a million because I was such a real user and I understood the business and product at a deep level. They like felt like I brought something unique, same with Zed and same with SuperRare. And SuperRare happened to be my first investment ever on the platform because that's what brought me into Web3.

So like I started doing Sandbox and then like Genies and like all these companies that like at the time was like the hottest thing you could possibly get into and they were hard to get into. I just learned a lot through that period. learn a lot of good things. You learn a lot of bad things.

Like you learn a lot of skill. And like now between the syndicate experience and fund one experience, like I can reflect back and be like, Holy shit. There's a lot of learnings in there. I was never taught venture capital.

I never worked in a fund. The only way I was going to learn was from networks, from mentors, and then from work and being in the fire. It's been what five years since we started the syndicate. We've done 250 investments.

We've deployed probably 75 to a hundred million in capital and SPDs. We have 9,000. accredited investors between Echo now, which has become a really big part of our strategy and then Angelist. And I have a team of people that work on it as venture partners or operators or whatever it might be.

And we get a lot of deal. It's like a top of funnel of our community, basically, which has been really nice. It's kind of been the springboard for everything else we do. Yeah.

I like the unique recipe that brought you here. I think that's fascinating. And honestly, what's gotten you so far to be this successful with it. I'm curious, why did you decide to turn it into a font?

When was that? moment where you decided that this should become something with the real portfolio construction with LPs behind it. Yeah, so there's a few components. The first one is like syndicates don't.

pay salary, there's no income, it's just carry. And at some point, you gotta have an income and have a job. Like I was getting married and I had my first kid and you just need like a more, there's some level of stability. I've built a brand, I built a reputation.

I wanna be able to commit to more important deals and be able to know that I can write a check without having to sell every syndicate angel on it, because there's the times where you see something that others don't. And unfortunately, you can't invest in it just because others don't. So like the hardest part about syndicates is like really the translation between why you like this deal and why they should like this deal. That's a very hard bridge to cross and communicate.

And there were many deals that we just couldn't get done because maybe they were too deep tech or whatever it might be. There was a point where it's like, okay, well, we need to have capital to commit so that we can be more effective and have a better process. And I also wanted to build a team and really start to build a bigger organization. And honestly, from day one, there's this new concept that everyone's been talking about of firm over fund.

And I've been a believer of the firm over fund model since day one. I think when you think about it as a firm over fund, that's when you start to see compounding results. Yeah. And the way that you're thinking about it as well, it's like you're building tools that let you compound into what you're really good at, which the Denarii Labs.

let's talk about that. What were you noticing 18 months into fund one that made you think about Denarii Labs and actually build it? So between the syndicate. And the tons of deals we were doing there.

And then the fund, now that we were deploying capital, the fund, at that point, I probably did like 50 to a hundred blockchain companies of investments. And there was a consistent pattern I kept coming across, was one, like didn't matter what type of founder or company it was, whether it was like a company that was doing DeFi, AI or gaming. didn't really matter whatever kind of infrastructure, whatever it was. The one constant was they had really no idea what to do about launching a token.

Cause that. No matter how experienced they were in their craft, launching and designing a token was something they're probably either going to do for the first time or maybe the second. And there just wasn't a ton of information or knowledge or know-how on how to do a token. All of a sudden I'm seeing 50 of these and I'm working on the white papers and tokenomics and meeting market makers and OTC desks and exchange and understanding the process for getting listed on exchanges.

And I was just like, you know what, like, why aren't we operationalizing this skill? Like why don't these resources in this network? The other part of it was like, you start to learn very quickly that like, you know, we raised $25 million fund, which is a very healthy first fund, but it's still 2 % management fees. That's not a lot of money.

It's like, you can maybe hire one person too with legal and accounting and all the stuff that you need and the admin and all of that stuff. like, you can't really build a team. And I guess like part of me in my whole life has always been like, I want to build a team. want to figure something out, learn it, find what the skill is that's needed to do it better than I am, delegate it to that person and move on to the next capability.

That's how I think. I was like, you know, I can't support the portfolio the way I want. can't diligence the way I want. I want it to be able to do more than I was even capable of.

You're learning this as you go as a fund. I had a team, but I was the founding GP. So it was very, you just start to learn really what the capabilities are of a fund that's needed. And so Denari came together because I see a pattern with tokenomics side of things that's needed.

It would be really interesting and valuable to build a team of experts around tokens, especially because that's our asset class that we're investing in very often. So that was one component that allowed me to build that team. The second component was that a lot of the companies that we either invested in or were networked with, just because of the nature of the crypto cycle happened to be infrastructure. That's just where we are in the whole crypto journey.

It's a lot of info and not a lot of apps yet. The number one customer in crypto is, I said, you know, what are these infrastructure companies, they need builders. So I said, well, how can we help these companies? Because again, I'm always thinking from an entrepreneur perspective, like what did I need as a VC?

What did I need as a founder? That's the way I think about everything. it's like, what did I need? needed, like when I was early stage and didn't have much capital, if I didn't have to hire these expensive experts to be able to come in and help him with tokenomics, but I can use investors or I can use resource, whatever that might be, that would be an advantage.

I already became this consulting team and accelerator manager team. RBV is the investor. The companies are getting early stage capital, plus all this knowledge and resources. And the chains are getting a BD engine because they're seeing lots of new companies through our evangelism and efforts.

education that became like the real foundation for Denari was just this idea of like acceleration as part of our our model. And I think it's a really powerful model for crypto, especially because like in crypto, get equity and token, which gives it another path for liquidity and you're getting a much more attractive terms, which because we're really putting in the sweat and work into it and helping them design it. And that's the other major part of it is like coming in at the design phase, I think is really important in crypto because I just think you can start to help them navigate some of the or things that you're going to run into as best as you can.

In crypto, it's usually like when the world goes down, everything goes down. There's really no stopping it. But at the very least, you can be more strategic about how you structure things. So those are some of the learning experiences that you take.

And I felt like if we can have those skills at the very least, even as a fund, now that I have these people on my team, if it's a competitive deal on the venture side, and I have these people as part of our resources, we're going to be very competitive. If it's us and my resources versus another guy who wants to write a check. I think will be more valuable to their cap table. So that's what we really did.

That's what we built. I know you mentioned when we spoke previously, you had about 900 applications across two cohorts in 2025. What's the percentage of them coming to you or you guys going to find them and where are they coming from? And also how do you filter for the 10 that make the cut?

Yeah, so there's a few different components. think one is like the volume comes from some of the marketing automation that we've done and the content we create and the events we produce. So like we get to see a lot of breadth from that side. Then it's also, we have partners and sponsors.

So that's one side of it. And then the other is just like us going out and targeting. And I think like, ultimately, I think you find. The highest quality generally comes from the targeting, but you find some gems that you would never find from the marketing.

think you need a bit of both. The other part of that is, especially for these ecosystems, a company that might not be venture backable at that moment for me, may be very valuable to them as another builder in their ecosystem. So the fact that maybe it's not the right investment, but I can introduce them directly to that chain and they're meeting all these new builders. That is just as valuable to them potentially, sometimes even more valuable than just the three companies or four companies that we're going to invest in during that cohort for their track.

like generally we're working on three or four tracks. For example, like one might be Avalanche or one might be a Flow blockchain, or one might be specifically ZK roll-ups. And then we have usually a general track. They all come together for a cohort and we work very intimately with each company.

So there's like some group stuff and the There's individuals, individual work every week. And the goal is to just get them prepared and get them thinking right and get them to understand how to build some kind of like the economic systems within their organization to be a sustainable business in the crypto world, really. And then that's evolved as we've learned. We've now done four cohorts, I think it is now.

This is our fourth cohort. So we've invested in about 30 companies or so through the accelerator now, writing a hundred K checks into each company. So that is part of our strategy. When you get to work hands-on with these teams, there's a lot you learn.

Like, the reality, you know, I don't care what anyone says. It's like recruiting. Like, you only know someone so well during the interview process. Shifting gears a little bit, going back to this topic that we touched on in the beginning a bit briefly.

For most people, crypto blew up in their face. The NFTs, the meme coins, the whole degen era left a lot of LPs and a of GPs as well that were rising up. Crypto-focused funds just burned. And I know you're raising your fund too into that headwind, but what do you see differently about today and 2026 compared to 2021?

Oh God, so many things. Well, first of when I was raising the first fund, I think I raised 25 million in three months. It was very quick raise. Like at that time, especially consumer web three, there wasn't that many people that knew it as well as I did.

I don't think out there really. So there was that component. And then the second side of that was there was just a massive amount of FOMO and crypto was also very, very invoked. It was really hot.

Fast forward to now. I think that We are at a very different time in crypto. I spent six months at the end of the year last year where I was like, am I still aligned with all of this? Like I spent 13 years here building in this space with a complete passion for what was possible.

And everything that I believed in was starting to die. It just had not only died, but it was hated. We weren't the underdog anymore. So it was not only that we were not the underdog and people rooted for the underdog and we were this rebellious anarchist.

was being corporate takeover and meme coin bowling. It was like the worst of both sides. It was like the highest end of banking and corporate and suit and tie. And then the absolute worst of like degenerate activity and the in-between stuff just died.

And that was really hard for me to digest because I just started to lose interest in everything. All the deal flow I was seeing was just not interesting and exciting to me. I made less investments in the second half of last year than I made the last five. And that was a challenge.

For the first time, I feel like I'm not the kind of person we have to burnt out. Like I had been a founder since I was 19. It finally made me realize that I haven't been wrong this whole time. These last 18 months, while I'm thinking about this thesis and where I'm right, I knew where the world was headed.

And I've known this for seven years when I was building AI agents, AI chatbots, ⁓ it's finally now real. This is the moment. The connection of AI and the blockchain coming together. This is what I've been excited about for all these years.

So it reinvigorated me. Like I felt over the last 45 to 60 days. I sat the team down, we did almost like a remote retreat. And for almost two weeks, we just sat down discussing our processes, our workflows, how we operate, our thesis, the sectors we're interested in, what does diligence look like?

Like this whole world changed in the last two months. I'm the most excited I've been in a long time. I love that. It's very clear that you've been extremely thoughtful about.

the types of founders that you're collecting in a way into Redbeard Ventures. I'm sure that you've had the same level of thoughtfulness when you're collecting the right type of customers as your LP base in Redbeard Ventures fund. And two, I know you're shifting things up a little bit where you're going away from the crypto native VCs, investors who wrote you for the first fund and then towards more institutional capital and allocators for fund too. And this one's going to be a little bigger as well, like between I know you mentioned, how are you finding those conversations?

Are they understanding the shift that you're seeing or is it like a big, do you think that's really lacking? That's what's interesting. For the past 12 months, like the year of 2025, it was very weird. It was like crypto native investors are in defense mode.

The people that have been all in on crypto are really playing defense. They're trying to defend their positions. They're either trying to get into more pure liquid positions or trying to be nimble with liquidity because they've been getting beat up for the past year. There's no FOMO anymore.

So from a crypto perspective, January 5th, I'd say like the world changed. The new models came out. I dug into vibe coding. I understood that this was like our horse to automobile moment.

I understood that I put my agent in a social network for other agents. It starts talking on notebook. The next thing you know, it's asking for a crypto wallet. And it's just like, it's not asking for a bank account.

It's asking for a crypto wallet so it can operate and become an economic actor in this space and perform things that I'm asking you to do. It's asking for stable coins. It's asking for Ethereum or it's asking for Solana. It's not asking for Fiat or my credit card.

I just realized that like, This was it. Like, this was the thing I've been saying for the past five years. Like I literally was like in my deck. was like the past 12 months has been like in my deck was like websites were the way we experienced web one mobile apps were the way we experienced web two AI agents on blockchain rails and how we're going to experience web three.

And that now all of a sudden for the past six months, I'd say. They're starting to become more interest, especially because of the government from non crypto. So a lot of my pitches were to the non crypto natives. And that's where most of my interest over the past six months became more real was either from like, strategic that need like that see us as ecosystem builders or non like the web two community that looks at crypto now and says, Hey, I need to get exposure here now.

There's the government regulation, there's institutional capital, infrastructure's starting to mature. I need exposure. Then all of a sudden over the last month, you can see the aha moment. It's like, I get it, okay.

I can just like kind of walk people through like how this agent economy is going to like work and like how it's gonna come together. And you start to like piece it together for people. And if you can help them connect the dots and more agents gonna take in the world. How are they gonna get data?

And is it gonna be glasses and AirPods and wearables and AR and VR? Hardware is gonna get way cool again because it's defensible. And it collects a unique data set that nobody else has to provide context to agents that nobody else has. So I just think that right now, so like you start with like how they take in the world and then you start to move into the infrastructure they need, like where are they going to compute from and energy and data and memory.

If you start to think through that stuff, it's like where also do we want it all centered around one or two companies or we want distributed options and decentralization. And I think that people are going to start to get more and more concerned with like how important data is and how do they own it and how do they make sure that they get to benefit from it, not just the other companies. So like that's the thing that drives me and what I'm thinking about for this next fund and how that's the differences in terms of where we were then was all experimentation in the world in terms of the consumerization and ownership, but ownership wasn't really connected yet.

The reality is it's like agents are the real user of all of this. And that's where it's going to get super fascinating. And then you just have to think about what's defensible in this world. And that's going be the biggest question people have to answer.

Where do you see Redbeard going? into the next future funds to follow. We're a team of 10 now. Everyone we hire has to be basically, no matter what your role is, you're either an investor and a product manager.

If you're head of sales, you're also a product manager. If you are an analyst and a product manager, like you've got to be in product now. You have to understand how to build a design and automate your workflows. I built, personally built the base, the foundation of our new investor operating system.

And we were moving our CRM, like I'm saving six grand a year, getting rid of our CRM. And now we're all building on top of that stack now. I made every single thing we do and we're building decision, decision intelligence and knowledge graphs and networks. And all the stuff that I applied from a recruiting AI days are coming into handy.

I'm coding till two in the morning every night. Like I'm back to like being a DGEN, but in a productive way, productive DGEN behavior. I'm just, constantly building and tinkering and learning. And it's been really exciting.

Where do I think RBV goes? think we to build. We continue to deploy capital into great businesses and really great technology and founders. But we also build, that's why Denari exists.

Denari is a lab, it's playground for us to experiment. We build skills, we build infrastructure. We're already getting into more of like, we're becoming more of a validator now. We became a validator of the Canton network.

Now we're looking at two other networks to become a validator of. I want to build distribution, whether it's build or buy, I to figure out distribution. I've always been a big person on media and like content as a marketing vehicle. And I think it's more important than ever before.

I think that's going to get really exciting. we have to build an own distribution. I think that's critical. like, guess it's the same story.

It's like, how do you become an entrepreneurial investor? I'd like to eventually do an NFT asset fund. I'd love to do an asset fund that focuses on art and collectibles. Like that's just something I've been passionate about for so long that I'd love to have a long-term asset fund that's purely focusing on high-end digital art and collectibles.

think that's going to play well in the long-term and has a great time to be looking at it. These are things that I want to, I'm a big believer in the firm. Again, just like this ecosystem that we can build that'll I want to continue to grow the syndicate because I SBDs are a great option for many people. I believe in the ability for anyone to be able to get access to startups and venture capital.

That's been my vision. I believe in entrepreneurship and I believe in innovation. believe that everyone should have connection to that. Usually my last question before I hand it over to Fabri is what's your hottest take?

What is something that you will die on the Hill for? But I feel like you've kind of laid it all out throughout our conversation. So thanks. everything I would say.

I think I'll die on the Hill. is I believe like, I really believe in the vision of a metaverse. I really do. Like there's this company Wilderworld that I just absolutely love.

This was one of the things that really bothered me about crypto for so long. It's like, I'm watching these incredible builders build such impressive, incredible technology and visions of the world that we want to see. And they get no attention while Fartcoin becomes a billion dollar company. It was making me so frustrated with this space because at the end of the day, lead, that's Wilderworld is one of those companies that leans in.

They are, they're They're not afraid of crypto. They're going to go all in. They believe in a digital society. They believe in AI agents being productive assets.

They believe in gaming and an open world and environment where we're going to be able to earn, socialize, work, produce, and they're building it. And actually, like, it's there. And they actually were able to execute the vision. So I'm hoping companies like that get the opportunity in this world to get the resources and be realized for their incredible work that they do.

That's what I hope for. That's one of the many mountains I might die on. Let's assume that I couldn't be further away from a degenerate and I'm running my family office. I'm transitioning my grandfather's wealth that was made primarily from the family business into real estate.

And then my dad put that into public assets and private equity. And now when I get like a slice of the singularity that you're describing. You must encounter some pushback around the fact that it's like you're just surfing a hype cycle to another. And these two things are nowhere near related to each other.

There is definitely a lot of skepticism around trend surfers, so to speak, and also bundles of sorts, because they're pitched a lot of low grade quality product, let's say, like a biotech blockchain enabled AI fund. for example, what's your argument to this? How can you get them to see the light? I guess I can justify my own journey as a way to be like, Hey, you're damn right.

There's definitely people out there that are just like trend hopping and it's, there's no doubt in my mind that as I talk about things without knowing my story, there's the easiest thing to say is like trend, you're stopping from trend to trend. But when you've been at the core of frontier tech, spent six years building an AI company and selling it, spent 12 years in crypto, not leaving during those downturns, but doubling down during the downturns, being the holder of NFTs that you believe in for the 10 year journey and had been pitching for the past 18 months, this thesis of the blockchain wasn't built for humans.

It was built for agents. My story adds up. And then from that perspective, I think I can justify that enough to myself. There's a real thesis.

and real foundational thinking and experience that comes with where we are today and why I'm here. Second, I would say is that like... You know, the one thing you always have to do is connect the dots for people and make it something that they can relate to. So like when I'm talking about like, try not to go too deep into the technical component and I never talk about TPS or transactions and I want to talk about the use cases, the things that are going to impact people and like help them bring visualize what this world is going to look like.

And I think that's really important in terms of having these conversations. And I think that the reality is when it comes to family offices and people that have built up wealth, I think that they are not afraid of investing and they're not afraid of necessarily being ahead of the curve. They're not afraid of risk. They don't want to be an idiot.

You know what I mean? They don't want to be stupid. And so what they'll do is wait for signals. And I think that that's something that like wait for the government to take a second and say, Hey, what's going on here?

Wait for the institutions to say, Hey, what's going on here? and start putting in more capital. See the infrastructure start to mature and start to realize applications that make sense. Experience, like see how AI is starting to now take over the world and actually make an impact.

And then when you start to add those dots up, if you're not understanding that like... digital currency, agents and immutable records for all of this type of things that are gonna be happening. And the infrastructure for these agents to direct cross companies are gonna need to be decentralized and need to have infrastructure that is not owned by one entity but owned by the contributing economy of it all. I think that you're in denial at this point.

Now I'm not saying that we've gotten right tokenomics and all of this stuff, but I think we're gonna figure that out very soon. I think we're gonna understand that this is a new form of equity and we're already seeing assets go on chain. All of this stuff is coming together. so it's not like I have to, I just need to show you the map of what's been happening and where it's coming to.

And if I could connect the dots enough for you, then you got to make them at some point, you have to make the conclusion of, I believe in this person as someone who gets it? And then do I believe in his thesis about where the world was going? And then it's, then you make your decision. That's really it.

mean, like to me, that's the, it's not, you know, it's not rocket science really. And then on the metaverse, you know, what was her? Zuck burning like 10 billion a month, something like that, at the peak of like, know, rebranded the entire shebang to meta. Is that the metaverse you're talking about?

Or is it like a singularity of like agentic entity, human entities, distributed network of sorts? Like when you talk about metaverse, what do you actually see in your mind? What is that vision? So to me, it's probably the closest thing that I think that I would probably portray as the metaverse is almost like a Grand Theft Auto.

It's a world, an open world that enables people to explore and discover. And I say Grand Theft Auto in terms of just giving you an analogy of the experience. First, it's like an open world for exploration. Games, quests, things to do with others, collaboration, competition, but the ability, and then this is where it goes from game to, to me, the metaverse is identity.

reputation, capital, the ability to earn, the ability to own, the ability to produce. And when you start to combine those things, I have zero doubt that that's going to be something that we're going to be spending a lot of time in. I just have no doubt. It, to me, it's inevitable.

And I think what Wilderworld is the perfect example of a company that's taken the steps to get there. They first had you understand the lore. They then had you buy. the assets to start to accumulate early assets of their world.

They launched a car partnership with Lamborghini and the actual Lamborghini car was minted and produced and released the same day in partnership with them. So it's like officially licensed. Like that's real. They launched the things that are going to impact your role in that digital society.

And then they released the first game, which was the race car game. And then they released the second game, which was the shooter game. And then they just released the alpha of their open world game, which kind of combines all of this together. And now they've layered on the economic layer.

which is that every single thing in their world is an asset to be owned or to purchased. And the most recent thing is that they're leaning into the AI NPCs and that you will build and own your NPCs and they can perform and build and create and manage things for you. And that will be how you earn in their economy. And NPCs are going to be a major part of the gaming world like they've always been, but they're going to come to life in a different way and produce for you.

And they've thought this thing out to such incredibly beautiful. in depth, deep levels that I think that they're, if given the right resources and the right appreciation of what they've built, they'll be one of those companies that get there. wasn't Facebook's little silly thing that they built. That was just, that was dumb.

That was just not knowing it's wild, literally, no pun intended. I just want to support that. you know, that's to me, not a company that I worried about when they're like, I don't worry about their vesting date. You know what mean?

Like I don't worry about that tokens vesting day. I'm in it. I want to see it through. I can't say that about every project I've ever invested in, that's for sure.

Some that are timing, some are trend-based, some are based on what I see from an infrastructure perspective or what's going on with their tokenomics or adoption. I want to see a team like that succeed and bring the world, like the world that I believe should come to fruition to life. You just listened to another episode of the Slice Podcast where we uncover the stories of fresh emerging managers across the early stage venture landscape. Next week we're bringing on new pro...

profile to the show. We're joined by a 20 plus year LP capital allocator who's reviewed thousands of emerging managers across his careers. And now spends his time helping those emerging managers sharpen the narratives and stand out to institutional LPs. He shares more on that on the pod than anyone we've had on.

So don't want to miss this. If you're a manager or a fellow LP, make sure to be subscribed to our podcast. on slice.fund forward slash podcast or listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts these days.

We'll see you right then.