Participated · Seed · Jul 2020

Evertas is a Chicago, IL-based cryptoasset insurance company focused on covering the full spectrum of crypto risks for institutional holders of cryptoassets and blockchain technology. It covers exchanges, custodians, traditional financial institutions, funds, family offices, corporations, miners and net worth individuals. As a Lloyd’s coverholder, Evertas can write and service policies insuring custodial cryptoassets and blockchain infrastructure. The company is licensed to operate as a Class 3A Insurer by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Led by CEO J. Gdanski and President Raymond Zenkich, Evertas intends to use new funding to expand underwriting capacity, add key personnel and further develop proprietary enabling technologies and standards. The company closed a $14M Series A to support those plans. Evertas has developed comprehensive underwriting tools and a framework for crypto, including blockchain and DLT systems. It offers an end-to-end insurance product for crypto that includes claims handling and comprehensive risk-management processes. The company says these capabilities allow it to underwrite and scale insurance products for the crypto ecosystem. Led by CEO J. Gdanski and President Raymond Zenkich, Evertas is headquartered in Chicago, IL. It raised $5.8M in seed funding and will use the proceeds to accelerate product development and build out infrastructure. The team also counts a number of industry operators and individual investors among its backers. Evertas provides insurance coverage for institutional holders of cryptoassets, including exchanges, custodians, traditional financial institutions, funds, family offices and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. The company focuses on underwriting risks faced by institutional crypto participants and operates as a licensed insurer. Founded in 2017 and rebranded from BlockRe, Evertas received a Class 3A licence from the Bermuda Monetary Authority earlier in 2020 to begin operating from that jurisdiction. The team includes experienced executives such as the founding Chief Insurance Officer of Lemonade and senior blockchain insurance and banking veterans. Evertas will use the seed funding to support its growth plans. The company emphasizes its world-leading team as it scales operations in the institutional crypto insurance market.

Led · Seed · Aug 2018

Sagewise builds a smart-contract safety net and software development kit (SDK) that offers monitoring, notification, freezing and dispute-resolution capabilities to keep contract execution aligned with parties' intent. Co-founded by Amy Wan, Esq. and Dan Rice, the company aims to provide transactional confidence in the blockchain ecosystem. Its toolkit is designed to mitigate variability in smart contract coding quality and evolving circumstances by enabling dispute handling at any stage. The company cites an estimated $100–$200 billion in value currently held in smart contracts and platforms like Ethereum, underscoring demand for its offering. Sagewise plans to expand its offerings and hire additional staff with proceeds from its financing. Founded in 2017 and operating from Los Angeles, Sagewise recently closed seed funding to launch and grow its platform.

Participated · Equity · May 2018

SpringRole is an Indian blockchain professional network led by founder and CEO Kartik Mandaville that combines artificial intelligence and blockchain to eliminate fraud from user profiles. The platform seeks to give weight to online professional reputation and enable people to be rewarded for their endorsements. It is building features including directory listing, search, a job board, work attestation and reputation scoring. SpringRole has launched a referral program that allows beta users to invite their network in exchange for SPRING tokens. The company has announced product partnerships with WorkCoin and Bloom to extend its offerings. In February, Rick Marini of Protocol Ventures and Alex Waters of ELM Labs joined as advisors. SpringRole aims initially to penetrate the Indian market for technical professionals and to become a meaningful asset for U.S. and European companies setting up offshore capabilities in India.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2018

Spring Labs builds the Spring Protocol, a blockchain-based data-sharing platform intended to enable richer, privacy-preserving exchanges of consumer financial and identity information for credit decisions, identity verification, fraud prevention and underwriting. The company aims to help lenders predict creditworthiness for people outside traditional credit-bureau systems and to allow competitive parties to collaborate anonymously for common-good outcomes. Management says the technology can unlock siloed data, support unique information-sharing networks, and potentially bridge the digital asset world and the regulated financial ecosystem. Spring Labs is raising a $30 million Series B led by TransUnion; the majority of the round has been funded but it had not officially closed and the valuation was not disclosed. Partnering with TransUnion gives Spring Labs access to TransUnion’s sales force and more than 10,000 contracted financial-institution customers, and TransUnion has positioned the investment as strategic as well as financial. The company previously raised a $23 million Series A in June 2019 and has added Brian Brooks as its first independent director. Spring Labs develops the Spring Protocol, a blockchain-based network that enables network participants to exchange valuable information without sharing underlying source data. Its initial use case is to facilitate the exchange of identity, fraud, and risk information among financial institutions to create a secure ecosystem for consumer financial data. The company intends to use proceeds from its financing to accelerate development of new products and the Spring Protocol itself. Spring Labs raised $23M in a Series A led by GreatPoint Ventures with participation from multiple investors. Founded in 2017 by CEO Adam Jiwan, the company is based in Chicago, IL and Los Angeles, CA. Following the investment, GreatPoint Ventures founder Andrew Perlman will join Spring Labs' board of directors. Spring Labs is developing the Spring Network, a blockchain-based platform designed to allow lenders, banks and data providers to share credit and identity information. The network is planned as a second-generation blockchain that will incorporate both public and permissioned nodes to meet regulatory and compliance needs. It will use privacy-preserving smart contracts to enforce information security and manage data-sharing. The company will use the seed funding to build its platform and to expand its engineering team. Spring Labs is led by CEO Adam Jiwan and is based in Los Angeles, CA and Chicago, IL. The article reports the company raised $14.75M in seed funding to support these efforts.