Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s investment office Draper Goren Holm is sinking larger investments in virtual currency-only startups.
Draper Goren Holm, a cryptocurrency investment firm in Los Angeles, told CoinDesk that it raised $25 million for its first venture capital fund to buffer its startup accelerator and back blockchain companies at higher investment valuations.
The venture fund, announced last week, is planning to invest $250,000 to $500,000 in seed, Series A and a few later investment rounds, the firm said, whereas the accelerator funds pre-seed rounds for between $10,000 and $50,000 and 4% to 10% ownership stakes in startups.
“A majority of the value is captured in winning companies as they grow,” Alon Goren, a co-founding Draper Goren Holm partner with Josef Holm, said. “If we don’t have the cash to double down or triple down, we get diluted and lose some of that value.”
Draper Goren Holm, which brought Tim Draper onto its partnership last year, has invested in CasperLabs, a blockchain that mimics the Ethereum blockchain’s model; Vertalo, a Tezos blockchain security token issuer; and Tezos Stablecoin Technologies, a Tezos Foundation offshoot developing stablecoins, digital currencies pegged to fiat currencies.
Forge, a subsidiary of French investment bank Societe Generale, selected Tezos in September to test the issuance of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and digital securities.
Billionaire Tim Draper’s namesake Silicon Valley venture capital firms — Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which he departed in 2013, Draper Venture Network, Draper Associates and Draper University — have invested in preeminent technology companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, Hotmail, Skype, Twitter, Twitch, Baidu and Ancestry.com.
Draper is also a bitcoin aficionado who paid $19 million for 30,000 government-seized bitcoins in a 2014 United States Marshals Service auction and invested in the digital currency exchange Coinbase and cryptocurrency-friendly stock trading app Robinhood with his personal money.
