Draper Goren Holm, the Los Angeles-based venture studio focusing on early stage blockchain startups, has raised its first traditional venture fund with $25 million to bankroll seed and Series A rounds. The announcement was made at the firm's seventh annual Los Angeles Blockchain Summit, which was scheduled to take place at the L.A. Convention Center and offered attendees $100 worth of bitcoin each. Instead it's gone virtual.
The firm was founded in 2018 by Tim Draper – a prolific Bay Area VC whose early bets on unicorns like Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter paid off big before he became a leading proponent of crypto currency – along with serial entrepreneur Josef Holm and Alon Goren, co-founder of the Crypto Invest Summit.
As a venture studio, Draper Goren Holm has already backed 18 startups, carving out a niche in decentralized finance (DeFi) and the security token and digital securities sector. Portfolio companies include DeFi Money Market, Totle, Ownera, Innovesta, LunarCrush, Degens, Giftz, Vertalo, Coinsquad, CasperLabs and Jointer.
Southern California is not known as a crypto hotbed, but Goren, who was born and raised here, says by its nature crypto is decentralized so founders and investors might as well live somewhere that they desire.
"Have you ever lived somewhere you didn't actually want to be?" Goren asked. "It sucks. I don't want to invest in someone that isn't where they wanna be."
Goren added that he thinks Southern California can also nurture higher-quality startups.
"The startups here, for a long period of time, had to prove a little [more] than up in Silicon Valley their worth and I think it made for a more realistic and solid foundation for growth," Goren wrote in an email. "Companies seemed to always be a little further along and a little more established before they went out to raise a round."
Though it will still be based in Los Angeles, Draper Goren Holm will be opening an office in Vienna, Austria in December, led by Holm, who is Austrian and has been splitting his time between that country and Santa Monica.
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Visitors to L.A. – or locals looking for a fun reason to leave their apartments – can scroll the interactive map on a browser or download the app.
Image courtesy of the L.A. Tourism Dept.
The “Discover Los Angeles” map can be broken down by neighborhood or by a series of “guides,” which all feature as part of the larger promotional campaign roll-out known as the Explorer’s Guide to L.A
Atlas Obscura and the Tourism Department also published a hardcover edition of the Explorer’s Guide, along with several other speciality breakout guides, including the Meeting Planners Guide, artistic Visitor’s Map and, for those with more expensive tastes, the L.A. Luxury Guide to the city’s pricier pursuits. The paper versions of the guides have QR codes for travelers to scan and take information with them on the go.
This year’s collaboration with Atlas Obscura gives the Tourism Department’s previous guide a much-needed update – it was previously a whopping 136-page PDF document created in 2020.
The Explorer’s Guide includes a mix of places you’d expect to see on the map, like Griffith Park and the museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. It also has some unlikely spots sourced from Atlas Obscura’s network of local explorers who recommended their favorite places to visit: the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Venice Canals or the Watts Towers, a stunning, monumental public art exhibit of mosaic steel towers that was built by one Italian immigrant over a 34-year period.
30 neighborhoods are discussed in the guide, from classic tourist destinations like Hollywood and beach cities like Santa Monica and Venice to lesser-known but still exciting enclaves like Leimert Park, Frogtown and Little Ethiopia. There’s also several maps for specific interests – taqueria lovers will find new spots to nosh with the taco map, and there’s also a map of the Downtown Arts District, spots to stargaze and sports venues.
“For myself and the writers and editors on this project, many of them L.A. natives, getting to write and curate the official visitors guide to the city of L.A. was an absolute dream,” Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras said in a statement. “We hope that these guides will inspire all the curious travelers arriving in L.A., to try new things, as well as providing new adventures for longtime L.A. residents. There is really no limit to what L.A. has to offer.”
