Investing Like a Crypto Venture Capitalist: Placeholder Ventures
The open nature of crypto networks is liberating for individual investors. The barriers that have historically restricted early-stage investing to institutional investors like venture funds no longer exist with crypto networks, allowing anyone to participate. The crypto era is the dawn of retail investors slowly bridging themselves closer to professional investors.
More than that, investing like a venture capitalist in crypto has never been easier. The world of investing in open-source software also means public portfolios. Beyond investors actively advocating for their projects, their portfolios and active participation strategies can be tracked on-chain.
The venture fund, Placeholder is well known in the crypto ecosystem for three reasons.
- It was started by Chris Burniske and Joel Monegro, both of whom are prolific writers and former analysts in crypto (Chris at ARK Invest and Joel at Union Square Ventures)
- Placeholder’s investment thesis is public and known for investing in token-based protocols and cryptonetworks
- The duo couldn’t decide on a firm name, initially writing “placeholder” as the entity name until finally deciding that Placeholder Ventures had a nice ring to it.
While Chris and Joel were unable to decide on a firm name, they’ve been incredibly decisive in their investments with nearly 25 investments across DeFi, Web3, crypto art, and cryptonetworks.
Mason was a Senior Research Analyst at Messari focused on Web3 protocols and cryptoassets. Before Messari, Mason worked at ConsenSys as a Content Marketer focused on marketing strategy. Mason obtained his Master’s in Business Management at Hong Kong Baptist University.