Participated · Series A · Jul 2024

TigerBeetle develops an open-source database engineered for online financial transaction processing, providing debit/credit primitives and enforcing financial consistency out of the box. The database can handle more than 8,000 debit and credit card transactions in a single query, reducing the query count and latency compared with general-purpose databases. TigerBeetle offers a managed service (currently invite-only) and reached its first production release in March. The company reports paying customers "since day one" and a community that has grown over 200% year-over-year. It has eight employees and plans to double headcount by 2025, while its cloud platform is under development. Use cases called out include ledgers, instant payments, usage-based billing, gaming live ops, metering, inventory and reservation systems. TigerBeetle is a San Francisco-based provider of a distributed financial accounting database designed for mission-critical safety and performance. Its core product is a financial accounting database that can handle extreme throughput, enabling 1,000,000 journal entries per second on consumer-grade hardware. The technology is positioned to power the future of financial services. Led by Joran Dirk Greef, Adrian Hope-Bailie and Donovan Changfoot, the company intends to use new funds to accelerate growth, expand operations and broaden its business reach. TigerBeetle announced a $6.4M funding round in January 2023.

Participated · Seed · Jul 2022

Arkive is building a decentralized, on-chain museum governed as a DAO where members vote on acquisitions and curate collections. The company encodes provenance, authentication, condition and ownership metadata into complex NFT bundles to enable transparent custody, voting and fractional ownership. Arkive intends to keep artifacts close to their cultural roots by arranging long-term residencies and traveling exhibitions rather than concentrating items in a single, centralized institution. The company is not currently planning to operate a physical museum, though its team has experience in moving and storing valuable objects. Arkive has launched out of stealth after acquiring historical pieces including the original ENIAC patent and Lynn Hershman Leeson’s 1985 print “Seduction.” Founder and CEO Tom McLeod previously founded Omni (acquired by Coinbase) and had prior exits including Pagelime and LolConnect. The company raised $9.7 million in a recent funding round to support its launch and early operations.

Led · Equity · Jun 2020

Hacker Noon is a user-generated online publishing platform that allows IT specialists and people working in startups and tech companies to submit and publish articles. Its audience is concentrated in the US, India, the UK, Canada and Germany. More than 13,000 users worldwide contribute to the site, while the core team consists of 14 people, including two Ukrainians. The company plans to expand globally and reach a Ukrainian audience. The recent funding will be used to reach new audiences and make the website more profitable. Genesis Investments expects Hacker Noon to open an R&D center in Ukraine. Hacker Noon operates a technology-focused publishing platform and has recently positioned itself as both a publication and a software company after launching its own CMS, Hacker Noon 2.0. The site serves 4,000,000+ monthly readers and 12,000+ contributing writers and reports creating 100+ years of reading time since July 2019. Hacker Noon is implementing Web Monetization to allow streaming micropayments to writers and has begun a three-year partnership with Coil to pilot that capability. Writers can add a Web Monetization meta tag to receive streamed payments based on how long Coil members read their stories, and can opt to donate earnings to internet-focused charities. Financially, Coil invested $1M at $11.35 per share, valuing the company at $11.5M pre-money; Hacker Noon remains entirely common stock and its prior equity crowdfunding share price was $8.20. The company said it will use the investment to expand editorial, sales, and software teams, and Coil’s Jonathan Greenglass will join Hacker Noon’s board.

Led · Equity · Jun 2019

Imgur is a meme and storytelling app known for ‘meme dumps’ of 50+ images and GIFs and built-in meme-creation tools, serving roughly 300 million monthly users. The company began in 2009 and spent its first five years bootstrapped before taking venture capital. Imgur’s core product is a unified, unpersonalized homepage and community for memes, art, science, and short storytelling. It plans to integrate Coil’s micropayment Web Monetization tools and eventually launch a premium membership with exclusive features for Coil subscribers. The company raised a $20M venture equity round to diversify revenue beyond advertising and will take a cut of Coil payments. Management says the round was at a valuation higher than last time, and the firm faces the challenge of adding paid features without cannibalizing the free community. Imgur is an image-hosting and sharing service that grew largely through adoption by the Reddit community and operates iOS and Android apps plus a mobile meme generator. The company bootstrapped for five years and is profitable, claiming over 130 million unique visitors per month and that mobile accounts for 30% or more of traffic. Revenue comes from a mix of advertisements (the largest source), donations, pro user accounts, and enterprise image hosting for customers such as Yahoo and Stack Exchange, though Imgur declines to disclose exact revenue figures. Product plans include a content-discovery update due in about a month and longer-term mobile experience improvements, along with better, more selective advertising products. Imgur currently has a 13-person team and expects to double or triple headcount over the next year to support product, ads, and hiring.