Quick take:
- Strobe Ventures is spinning out from BlockTower Capital with $235 million in assets under management.
- The spinout comes just a few months after BlockTower Capital announced plans to merge with Arca.
- The venture firm will be led by Thomas Klocanas, CEO and managing partner, alongside his colleagues Steven Venino and Winnie Lau.
BlockTower Capital is spinning out its venture arm with $235 million in assets under management. The new venture firm is rebranding to Strobe Ventures and has plans to raise $100 million for its second fund, according to an announcement on Wednesday.
The spinout comes just a few months after BlockTower Capital announced plans to merge with Arca, the Los Angeles-based financial institution with a focus on digital assets. The venture arm decided to remain independent after the merger.
According to the announcement, the new fund will take a “high-conviction approach” to investments with a focus on early-stage crypto projects. Strobe Ventures will be led by CEO and managing partner Thomas Klocanas alongside his colleagues Steven Venino and Winnie Lau.
Commenting on the spinout, Klocanas told The Block: “The spinout is motivated by a strategic decision to remain small, focused, and contrarian, versus the trends of multi hundred million dollar to multi billion dollar funds and fast deployment in web3 venture, which matches the fund’s strategy and deployment to date, and was supported by the fund’s LPs.”
The venture firm’s first fund has already invested in popular DeFi and L1 projects Ethena, Morpho, Aptos and Maple Finance, and plans to continue investing this year.
“We expect to make about 10 more investments this year, with an average check size of around $3 million per startup,” Klocanas said, adding that the firm aims to invest in pre-seed to Series A investments with low velocity investment cycles over rapid capital deployment.
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