Symbolic Capital, a VC fund developed by web3 founders, has raised $50 million to fund the world’s best web3 startups. Led by Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal and ex-Borderless Capital’s and Cere co-founder Kenzi Wang, Symbolic aims to support unique web3 projects with capital and mentorship to help founders realize their vision.
Symbolic Capital is the first VC fund developed by web3 founders supporting web3 founders. It intends to identify ambitious Web3 startups that are creating transformative solutions for the decentralized web.
Symbolic to invest in the best global web3 startups
Led by web3 leaders Sandeep Nailwal and Kenzi Wang, Symbolic will invest in the best global startups and provide the resources and mentoring they need to succeed.
As web3 figureheads with deep roots in the industry, Symbolic Capital’s founders are well placed to identify web3 projects whose solutions will power the decentralized web. Wang also co-founded Cere, a leading decentralized data infrastructure solution, while Nailwal’s Polygon role has been dedicated to mass adoption of Web3. Since meeting in Binance Labs in 2019, the two have co-invested in over 40 companies including Axie Infinity, YGG, Biconomy and many other top projects.
Sandeep Nailwal, Partner at Symbolic Capital, said that the mission of his life is to get Web3 to masses, and he believes that it will happen only if we have pioneering Web3 apps. He said that Symbolic capital has been setup to help those early stage developers to realize their visions.
“Symbolic will offer a level of support to our portfolio companies that is unique. We built blockchain companies from the ground up and are intimately familiar with the unique challenges that these projects face, states Nailwal. “For Web3/token startup, it’s not only about the product and product market fit, it also is about designing sustainable economies with pragmatic tokenomics, building passionate communities around your product before taking your Token public, marketing across Web2 and Web3 both, BD and so much more.”
Symbolic’s initial investments include BlinkMoon, Planet Mojo, and Community Gaming, where they’ve invested alongside other top-tier firms like Sequoia Capital, a16z, Galaxy Digital, Tiger Global, and FTX.
Investors in their initial $50 million fund include crypto protocols, other T1 VC firms, leading exchanges, crypto auditing firms, and crypto vendors as well as a selection of family offices and institutions.
A data platform to evaluate web3 projects
Symbolic is also planning to differentiate itself through leveraging a unique data platform to drive its investments and support of portfolio companies. The firm will make a proprietary data engine core to its daily operations.
As per Nailwal, this proprietary data platform of Symbolic Capital will give them a leg up on the rest of the market.
“With the tools we have built, we’ll be able to scrape and analyze data like GitHub contributions, social media traction, Discord engagement, and granular token performance to help drive our investments, as well as tracking things like employment migration trends and job histories to identify and recruit top hires for our portfolio companies,” Nailwal said.
When asked about how his background as a founder influences his vision for Symbolic, Nailwal commented:
“We’re specifically focused on supporting founders from emerging markets that have often been passed over by traditional VC. Starting Polygon in India, we struggled to get connected to VCs that believed in our vision and abilities as founders. Our mission with Symbolic is to empower the next generation of emerging founders who have historically been overlooked by the VC industry.”
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