Andreessen Horowitz has launched a new $300m venture fund that will invest into crypto companies and protocols.
The vehicle, a16z crypto, will be run like a traditional venture fund, and will invest over the next 10 years, regardless of market conditions dropping. The firm will invest in any stage, asset type and geography – it will support companies from seed stage pre-launch, up to developed networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Investments will also be made in traditional methods like equity or convertible notes, by will also support new instruments such as the direct purchase of coins and tokens.
Portfolio companies will have access to its whole a16z team, as do non-crypto investments, and will help with developing their products.
In a blog post Andreessen Horowitz said, “We are focused on non-speculative use cases. We want services powered by crypto protocols to be used by hundreds of millions and eventually billions of people. Crypto tokens are the native asset class of digital networks, but their value is driven by the underlying, practical uses cases.”
Alongside the launch of the fund, the firm has named the hiring of Katie Haun as a new general partner. Prior to Andreessen Horowitz, she served on the board at HackerOne where she invested into companies from Seed to Series C, as well as advising crypto companies.
In a blog post about the hiring the firm said, “A big challenge, we thought, would be for an outsider to network in Silicon Valley or quickly come up to speed on the dizzying array of technologies required to do so.
“We were wrong. Nearly every crypto entrepreneur we saw already knew and liked Katie. Anyone who was learning about crypto knew who she was and had great things to say. She was relentless, she was pervasive, and most of all, she was effective.”
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