LA-Based Blockchain Venture Firm Raises $25 Million Fund

Ben Bergman

Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.

LA-Based Blockchain Venture Firm Raises $25 Million Fund
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

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.

The firm was founded in 2018 by Tim Draper (center)– 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 (right) and Alon Goren, co-founder of the Crypto In

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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LA-Based Apex Is Tapping Into the Small Satellite Market by Making Buses for Spacecraft

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

​Ian Cinnamon
Ian Cinnamon

On this episode of Office Hours, Apex founder and CEO Ian Cinnamon discusses the importance of investing in space exploration and shares his thoughts on the evolving space ecosystem in Los Angeles.


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This Week in ‘Raises’: Measurabl Snags $93M, Selva Ventures Grabs $34M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Raises
Image by Joshua Letona

A local data management platform company lands fresh funding to help commercial real estate owners reduce carbon footprint, while one Los Angeles-based venture firm closes its second fund to accelerate the growth of emerging companies across health, wellness, beauty and personal care.

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Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

McKinsey & Company Launches InLA Accelerator To Help Underrepresented Founders Tackle Startup Challenges
InLA

In 2022, female founders saw a 28% decline in overall U.S. funding, while Black-led startups saw a 38% decline in total capital received. In an effort to increase funding for minority-led startups, global venture firm McKinsey & Company is launching InLA, an accelerator program for underrepresented founders.

“This effort is something that the firm has been really excited about for a long time,” Engagement Manager Elkhyn Rivas Rodriguez said. “There's obviously a meaningful and growing startup community out here and just from a diversity standpoint, LA is incredibly diverse and multi-ethnic and multicultural. So we think that there will be a really great pool of potential companies to partner with.”

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