Early stage focused web3 company Opening chapterformerly known as OP Crypto, closed its seed funding round at $30 million, David Gan, the company’s founder and general partner, shared exclusively with TechCrunch. This capital is in addition to the companies existing Venture Fund I of $50 million.
The fund, OP Fund of Funds I LP, targeted family offices and high-net-worth individuals seeking “diversified” exposure to early-stage crypto business deals. It is backed by investors such as Mirana, FJ Labs and Serafund. “Rather than family offices trying to make the best investments themselves, this vehicle is a good hedging and risk-adjusted vehicle for cryptocurrency exposure,” Gan said.
This vehicle plans to invest in about five new investment managers and funds annually, as opposed to backing specific projects, protocols or startups, Gan added. “We’re putting our money in the hands of other institutional managers and getting a fairly diversified portfolio that those funds are invested in.”
The flagship vehicle will focus on investing in “up-and-coming” people who are “hungry” looking for early-stage startups. “This is a good calendar year to double the space, invest early and bring back entrepreneurs,” Gan said.
The fund has grown around 30% to date and plans to continue to focus on emerging managers in the crypto business space.
The five managers it has invested in are Syncracy Capital, Escape Velocity, Alliance, OrangeDAO and Everyrealm. It has also co-invested alongside Bain Capital Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Multicoin Capital and a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon. (Note: Inception Capital has a general partner interest in the first two managers.)
In general, the Fund of Fund (FoF) space is a huge market with billions of dollars in capital, but in the cryptocurrency space it is “very small,” Gan said. “I can count the number of Fund of Funds cryptocurrencies on one hand.”
However, going forward, Gan believes there are great opportunities for managers who have grown in the past two years to take on sovereign wealth funds, endowments, pension funds or institutional FoFs that can then advance the crypto business space “to match this in the traditional market.
This post has been updated to include information about it Venture Fund I in the first chart.
