Polygon Founder Raises $50M for First VC Fund Built by Web3 Founders
New York City, NY, 25th August, 2022, Chainwire
Symbolic Capital has announced the launch of an oversubscribed $50M fund focused on identifying the world’s best web3 startups. Led by Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal and ex-Borderless Capital’s and Cere co-founder Kenzi Wang, Symbolic aims to support the best web3 projects with capital and mentorship to help founders realize their vision.
As web3 figureheads with deep roots in the industry, Symbolic Capital’s founders are well placed to identify web3 projects whose solutions will power the decentralized web. Wang also co-founded Cere, a leading decentralized data infrastructure solution, while Nailwal’s Polygon role has been dedicated to mass adoption of Web3. Since meeting in Binance Labs in 2019, the two have co-invested in over 40 companies including Axie Infinity, YGG, Biconomy and many other top projects.
“The mission of my life is to get Web3 to masses, that will happen only if we have pioneering Web3 apps and Symbolic capital has been setup to help those early stage developers to realize their visions”,” says Nailwal. “Symbolic will offer a level of support to our portfolio companies that is unique. We built blockchain companies from the ground up and are intimately familiar with the unique challenges that these projects face. For Web3/token startup, it’s not only about the product and product market fit, it also is about designing sustainable economies with pragmatic tokenomics, building passionate communities around your product before taking your Token public, marketing across Web2 and Web3 both, BD and so much more. ”
Symbolic’s initial investments include BlinkMoon, Planet Mojo, and Community Gaming, where they’ve invested alongside other top-tier firms like Sequoia Capital, a16z, Galaxy Digital, Tiger Global, and FTX. Investors in their initial $50M fund include crypto protocols, other T1 VC firms, leading exchanges, crypto auditing firms, and crypto vendors as well as a selection of family offices and institutions.
Symbolic is also planning to differentiate itself through leveraging a unique data platform to drive its investments and support of portfolio companies. The firm will make a proprietary data engine core to its daily operations.
“Our data platform will provide a leg up on the rest of the market,” says Nailwal. “With the tools we have built, we’ll be able to scrape and analyze data like GitHub contributions, social media traction, Discord engagement, and granular token performance to help drive our investments, as well as tracking things like employment migration trends and job histories to identify and recruit top hires for our portfolio companies.”
When asked about how his background as a founder influences his vision for Symbolic, Nailwal adds: “We’re specifically focused on supporting founders from emerging markets that have often been passed over by traditional VC. Starting Polygon in India, we struggled to get connected to VCs that believed in our vision and abilities as founders. Our mission with Symbolic is to empower the next generation of emerging founders who have historically been overlooked by the VC industry.”
About Symbolic Capital
Symbolic Capital is the first venture capital fund developed by web3 founders supporting web3 founders. Its goal is to identify ambitious startups that are creating transformative solutions for the decentralized web. Led by web3 leaders Sandeep Nailwal and Kenzi Wang, Symbolic will invest in the best global startups and provide the resources and mentoring they need to succeed.
Learn more: https://www.symbolicvc.com
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