Variant Fund

Basics

• From Spencer Noon (18-12-2020):

"Founded by Jesse Walden, formerly of a16z Crypto, Variant is a new early-stage venture firm that invests in crypto networks and platforms building The Ownership Economy. In a short matter of time, Variant has already emerged as one of the leading early-stage crypto funds too, backing top projects like Uniswap, Cozy Finance, and Reflexer Labs."

• From CoinDesk (5-3-2021):

"Variant Fund formed in July, at the height of 2020’s “DeFi summer,” animated by the thesis that people who make platforms and products stronger can and should share in their growth."

Investments

• Aptos; took part in their $200m strategic round (15-3-2022).
• Aztec; part of their Series B $100M raise (16-12-2022).
• Bitclout; it's founder has mentioned this fund as an investor (23-3-2021).
• BoardRoom. Participated in a $2.2M raise for BoardRoom (13-10-2020).
• Braintrust; according to this thread (8-2021).
• Canto; since 23-1-2023
• Cozy Finance. Part of a $2M raise for Cozy Finance (3-9-2020).
• Hyperlane
• Farcaster; participated in the $150M Series A (22-5-2024).
• Fei Protocol; part of a $19M raise (9-3-2021).
• Goldfinch Protocol. Participated in a $1M funding round among a list of other funds (3-2-2021).
• Lens; part of the $15M raise by Aave (6-2023).
• Matter Labs; part of the $200M series C (16-11-2022)
• Morpho; took part in its second raise of $50M (1-8-2024)
• Reflexer; investor. Participated in a $1.68 million seed round (5-8-2020).
• TokenTerminal; they mention this as one of their 'community members' (1-8-2022), however, due to the nature of the ones named, we can assume these are investors.
• Uniswap (18-12-2020)
• Uniswap Labs; participated in the $165M Series B, and mentioned as a 'longtime investor'.
• zkSync; due to the investment in Matter Labs, it can be expected that they also will own future zkSync token allocations.

Team

• Jesse Walden
• Spencer Noon; general partner (18-12-2020).
• Stani Kulechov; venture partner (5-3-2021)
• Cooper Turley; advisor (5-3-2021), Venture Partner (27-10-2021).
• Jake Chervinsky; strategic advisor (29-5-2021)
• Mason Nystrom; joined as an Investment Partner (30-6-2022).