Matt Huang is a rare investor.
In his early twenties, on a week-long vacation to China, he met with Zhang Yiming. Yiming was building a personalized news app out of a dusty apartment in Beijing. Huang didn’t like the idea, and couldn’t understand a word Yiming said, but he could tell Yiming was special.
He found a way to invest at a ~$20 million valuation. Yiming’s app turned into TikTok and Huang’s share of the business, ByteDance, has turned into a sum approaching one billion dollars.
At Sequoia, he refined that talent for seeing genius early and developed a stellar reputation. When he left in 2018, Michael Moritz reportedly called him "the only regrettable loss in Sequoia's history."
Later that year, he co-founded a crypto investing business with @FEhrsam, who had previously co-founded Coinbase. They called it @paradigm, and today the firm manages over $12 billion.
Huang is rare, not because of his success or his ability to spot category-defining companies in their infancy, but because he has built an investing firm where the mission genuinely comes before the money.
As @brian_armstrong, CEO and Co-founder of Coinbase, said: “Who leaves a job like that at Sequoia? He’s a silent killer. Our industry needs more people like him who have high integrity and are in it for the long-term and the right reasons.”
Paradigm doesn’t just invest, it builds. Its researchers, who double as investors, develop foundational innovations, then give them away to the entire industry. Their open-source tools power 90% of smart contract development. Their mathematical breakthroughs have helped create billion-dollar companies.
The mission is to advance the frontier of crypto. Returns follow the mission. Six years in, it is working. Paradigm’s flagship fund has grown from $760 million to $8.3 billion.
Behind the numbers is an unconventional team, which Huang likens to the X-Men Academy.
“No one is central casting to be hired by another investing firm,” he said. But folks like @_charlienoyes, @danrobinson, and @gakonst do things that no other investors can, and Huang, along with @alanapalmedo, hold their quirks together like few leaders can.
I spent the past couple of months learning everything I could about Huang and Paradigm. At first, I was drawn to his remarkable achievements but as I spent more time with him, his Paradigm team, and people close to him, it became clear that the real story was in their steadfast mission to make crypto successful.
@matthuang might be the most important investor you've never heard of. You can learn all about him in my profile linked below.
In an industry known for short-term thinking, he's playing a game measured in decades, with a team that’s quietly reshaping finance from their penthouse office overlooking San Francisco.
In his early twenties, on a week-long vacation to China, he met with Zhang Yiming. Yiming was building a personalized news app out of a dusty apartment in Beijing. Huang didn’t like the idea, and couldn’t understand a word Yiming said, but he could tell Yiming was special.
He found a way to invest at a ~$20 million valuation. Yiming’s app turned into TikTok and Huang’s share of the business, ByteDance, has turned into a sum approaching one billion dollars.
At Sequoia, he refined that talent for seeing genius early and developed a stellar reputation. When he left in 2018, Michael Moritz reportedly called him "the only regrettable loss in Sequoia's history."
Later that year, he co-founded a crypto investing business with @FEhrsam, who had previously co-founded Coinbase. They called it @paradigm, and today the firm manages over $12 billion.
Huang is rare, not because of his success or his ability to spot category-defining companies in their infancy, but because he has built an investing firm where the mission genuinely comes before the money.
As @brian_armstrong, CEO and Co-founder of Coinbase, said: “Who leaves a job like that at Sequoia? He’s a silent killer. Our industry needs more people like him who have high integrity and are in it for the long-term and the right reasons.”
Paradigm doesn’t just invest, it builds. Its researchers, who double as investors, develop foundational innovations, then give them away to the entire industry. Their open-source tools power 90% of smart contract development. Their mathematical breakthroughs have helped create billion-dollar companies.
The mission is to advance the frontier of crypto. Returns follow the mission. Six years in, it is working. Paradigm’s flagship fund has grown from $760 million to $8.3 billion.
Behind the numbers is an unconventional team, which Huang likens to the X-Men Academy.
“No one is central casting to be hired by another investing firm,” he said. But folks like @_charlienoyes, @danrobinson, and @gakonst do things that no other investors can, and Huang, along with @alanapalmedo, hold their quirks together like few leaders can.
I spent the past couple of months learning everything I could about Huang and Paradigm. At first, I was drawn to his remarkable achievements but as I spent more time with him, his Paradigm team, and people close to him, it became clear that the real story was in their steadfast mission to make crypto successful.
@matthuang might be the most important investor you've never heard of. You can learn all about him in my profile linked below.
In an industry known for short-term thinking, he's playing a game measured in decades, with a team that’s quietly reshaping finance from their penthouse office overlooking San Francisco.
Read the profile here: joincolossus.com/article/paradi…
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