Samuel Harrison, co-founder and managing partner at Blockchain.com Ventures, a corporate venture capital fund anchored by crypto firm Blockchain.com and VC firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, has left to set up a new VC firm.
As managing partner at Faction VC, Harrison said he had raised more than $250m for a debut VC fund focused on blockchain. He remains a venture partner at both Blockchain.com and Lightspeed.
Before starting Blockchain.com Ventures in July 2018, Harrison had been an investment principal at Prosus, a Netherlands-listed internet and media holding group, where his $200m of early-stage investments had included Udemy, Codecademy, Brainly, SimilarWeb, Swiggy, Twiggle, Coins.ph, and Sololearn.
The move follows increased focus on crypto funds by traditional VC firms and corporations. GameStop, a US-listed games retailer, said it would work with games developer Immutable to launch a non-fungible tokens (NFT) marketplace and $100m fund aimed at supporting game developers and studios.
In-game NFT collectibles garnered $2.3bn in sales during the third quarter of 2021, according to the Blockchain Game Alliance, led by Axie Infinity’s paid-to-play game Robbie Ferguson, co-founder of Immutable, said: “GameStop, in partnership with Immutable, has the potential to cement itself as the ultimate destination for the next paradigm of gaming; true in-game economies that enable full, permissionless ownership of in-game items.”
Separately, Sequoia Capital blew up the traditional VC model when it said it would form a single fund to hold all of its US and European investments (including publicly-traded shares) made by dedicated sub-funds, including a $500m to $600m Crypto Fund targeting liquid crypto investments rather than in crypto startups,
Sequoia’s Alfred Lin told Axios: “This fund will let us managing these tokens differently, from staking to voting rights and having a say on governance.”
Lin added that around 20% of Sequoia’s investments over the past year have been for crypto startups, and that such deals would continue at a brisk pace.
The other two subfunds set up by Sequoia this month are an Ecosystem Fund-of-funds at nearly $1bn to back Sequoia scouts and alumni setting up deals and also some third-party efforts and an Expansion Fund at up to $3.5bn to provide more capital to US and European companies.
Photo of Samuel Harrison from LinkedIn
