Thread by @reganbozman

Crypto is back. Crypto vc funds are hiring again

Have gotten pinged last few weeks asking for advice on getting these roles

Can't give succinct advice but I can write 30 tweet threads

1/ Here's rough story of Lattice and the mistakes and lessons along the way

2/ Journey starts in 2016, moved to SF to work on venture team at AngelList

Had been working in tech in NYC and had spent prior 6 months failing to try to start a company

So I needed $ + a job + thought of learning more about vc was appealing after 75+ vc's had turned me down

3/ SF my first exposure to real tech/vc world

Angel investing seemed cool? People around me somehow had money to invest in all these companies and I was fascinated

I lacked any of the necessary criteria to do it - no money, no network, and nothing to offer companies

4/ I remember 6 months into AngelList a guy I went to HS with got into Y
I was stoked - first chance to write an angel check

I emailed him asking him to invest $1K and he basically told me to fuck off

Company went nowhere ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5/ AngelList was not crypto focused but people there - Naval, Josh Slayton - were crypto OG's and I started to learn more from them

AngelList spun out CoinList in summer 2017 and I was the first employee to join

6/ I knew absolutely nothing about crypto but it felt like there was a lot more room to innovate in capital formation in crypto than in vc

I also felt like CoinList would give me index-like exposure to crypto and de-risk the category a bit

These were both generally right

7/ At CoinList I first finally had a seat where I feel like I could 'sell myself' and had something to offer companies

I actually knew very little, but I could tell a story about having unique insights into crypto market trends

I still didn't have a track record or much money

8/ Early 2018 I met Devin & Alex from OpenSea 2 months before they were graduating from YC

YC was prestigious, I liked them, and the market (ebay for NFT's) seemed reasonable

So I asked them to invest

9/ Surprisingly they agreed and I became the second smallest investor on their cap table

The fact that they let a 26 yo dude with 0 track record invest shows how much less competitive these markets were back then

10/ I wrote about ~10 more tiny angel checks largely just based on founders that I got to know

Some worked!

@hagaetc & @mewwts were two of my first friends in crypto and was stoked to back Dune on Day 1

But most of these angel investments went to 0

11/ After the OpenSea check I knew I wanted to be an 'angel investor,' whatever the fuck that means

I knew I need to build a brand, so I started writing on Medium

My early writing sucked and not many people read it, but it was a start

12/ The first 'brand building' thing that I did that really worked was just publishing a google sheet of every active crypto fund in September 2018

A few founders had asked me if I had seen a list of active crypto funds, so I built one

medium.com/startup-grind/…

13/ This was how I initially met a lot of investors - I put my Telegram handle on the page and a bunch of VC's reached out

Lesson: finding a gap in the market and solving it is one of the best ways to build a brand (even if that solve is a google sheet!)

14/ This led to my first unsuccessful attempt to break into crypto venture

Fall 2019 a16z was hiring for an investing role and I got a warm intro from a friend. They wouldn't even give me an interview

So I got back to work

15/ I had gotten to know @MikeZajko over bear market guinesses at Kell's on friday afternoons

Mike had seen some folks do well by organizing 'retreats' in the digital ads space (his prior life)

Crypto folks love nothing more than a boondoggle and he saw an opportunity

16/ Early 2020 we organized the first @gocryptopeaks

We invited everyone we knew and somehow got 50 people together in Tahoe for two days of skiing and crypto banter

17/ A crypto ski conference sounds a bit silly but it really helped accelerate our careers

I remember texting Mike when @KyleSamani signed up and was like holy shit maybe Crypto Peaks will work

12 months later Kyle was immensely helpful in getting Lattice off the ground..

18/ We now host ~100 top investors/founders every year at Crypto Peaks and it's become a mainstay event

Lesson: investors are humans who (mostly) like fun and hosting a dope event can be a good wedge into this business

19/ In early 2020 the market started to show signs of life

I wanted to up my investing game but still didn't have a ton of cash

I had seen a handful of folks I vaguely knew from AngelList - Niv Dror, Ryan Hoover - go out and raise small 'operator funds'

20/ I tested the waters a bit on whether I could raise a 1-2m operator fund and this was DOA

I didn't have the track record, didn't know many LP's, I wasn't a founder, just not much interest in this

Back to the drawing board...

21/ I started talking to a handful of other 'angel operators' I knew at the time about how we could operate more effectively and uplevel our investments

@crabbylions @WarcMeinstein @JoyceInNYC @ZhuoxunYin @reubenbrama @kermankohli @iamdonho fulvia cooper and a few others

22/ We launched Free Company in Q2/Q3 2020

It was a loose 'syndicate' of us basically just pooling our money deal by deal

The thesis was that the sum would be greater than the parts, we could size up check size and share dealflow

23/ Our timing was perfect and Free Company definitely outperformed most crypto VC funds from that era

We invested from mid 2020 to mid 2021 and there are some really awesome early checks in there - Hashflow, Audius, Rabbithole, YGG, Alethea, Ribbon, Axie

23a/ Lesson: Angel investing is almost always more lucrative than crypto venture

You need cash to start but if you can recycle some liquid gains/quick exits, you can do very well and don't need to worry about fund construction/admin

Crypto VC payback period is 5+ years!

24/ Once the bull market kicked into full gear, the structure just sorta stopped working

All the individual members had more cash to invest
Everyone's allocations started getting cut back so less of an incentive to bring in deals

25/ So winter 2021 I'm camped up in a cabin at Alpine Meadows and basically just working and skiing

I was doing some consulting/advisory work on gtm/network launch with a handful of projects and contributing to some DAO's

26/ I tried to figure out what my next move was - still wanted to go into crypto venture and pinged a dozen investors I knew well to get 'advice' on how to become an investor

None would hire me

Back to the drawing board

27/ Mike and I had been talking about doing something for awhile and we felt like there was an angle to launch Lattice

Some personal investments started to cook
Market was hot

And we felt like we had a market wedge with our experience on gtm/network launches

28/ Initial plan for Lattice was $5M part-time fund, but the market was hot and we ended up raising $20M and giving this a go

Made 35 investments Spring '21 to Summer '22

Cyber, DIMO, Galaxy, Goldsky, IYK, Layer3, LiFi, Lit, Redstone, Sherlock, Subsquid, Sunscreen, Tea, etc

29/ We deployed Lattice I in bull market but wanted min 1% of every network and largest check was 500k so had a rough ceiling on valuation

This did cause us to miss some winners but kept us disciplined

Lesson: guard rails can be v helpful!

30/ We had been upfront that we planned to deploy fund 1 quickly bc it was relatively small and started having conversations on fund 2 in early '22

We did first close on fund 2 ~3 weeks before Luna crash which was insane luck

Lesson: timing is everything in this business

31/ Don't have much wisdom to share, can only comment on our journey

If you're trying to break into crypto vc happy to answer any questions, dm's are open