A low-key king or a fallen nobleman? The Crypto Layout of Lightspeed Venture Capital

Original author: 0xclancularius, Rhythm BlockBeats

The name Lightspeed Venture Partners (Lightspeed Venture Partners) appears a bit high in the encryption world recently.

At the beginning of 2022, FTX dropped a blockbuster news, announcing the launch of a $2 billion Web3 venture capital fund, FTX Ventures, and attracting Lightspeed Venture Capital Partner Amy Wu to manage. As soon as the news came out, the focus of the market immediately fell on Lightspeed, which has a 20-year history of VC.

The long bull market in the Crypto market in 2021 has spawned a large number of native encryption institutions and attracted the attention of more traditional financial institutions. Lightspeed Venture Capital is one of them. This year, Lightspeed Venture Capital not only made frequent moves in the Crypto primary market, but also jointly launched a $100 million chain game fund with FTX and Solana, and the layout of NFT, GameFi, DeFi, public chain and infrastructure has fully blossomed.

Mercedes Bent, partner of Lightspeed Venture Capital, said in an interview that by 2021, Lightspeed Nearly $500 million invested in 40 blockchain/Web3 investments to date. Investments this year include FTX, Solana, Terra, Alchemy, Parallel Finance, LedgerX, Blockchain.com, etc., and will continue to increase investment in the Web3 and NFT fields in 2022.

As a traditional Internet venture capital fund established in 2000, Lightspeed Venture Capital may not be able to become an encryption investment like a16z or Coinbase Ventures The benchmark and leading capital of the industry, but the investment strength accumulated over the years is also a force that should not be underestimated.

For investment institutions, investment income is the absolute proof of strength. To understand the record of this established institution in the new world of encryption, we have to speak with facts.

Crypto Investment Landscape

The following is the analysis and arrangement of the basic data of Lightspeed Venture Capital:

- After sorting out the official website and public information of Lightspeed Venture Capital (USA), Rhythm’s incomplete statistics found that since 2013, Lightspeed Venture Capital has invested a total of 19 There are 14 online crypto projects, 14 of which will be invested after 2021, accounting for 74%.

In contrast, a16z will have 63 online projects in 2021, Three Arrows Capital 29, Alameda Research 25, DCG 24, Multicoin Capital 24.

- As a veteran Internet VC, Lightspeed is obviously not so obsessed with the token issued by the project side . Among the 19 projects, the tokens of only 5 projects have been launched, accounting for only 26%.

- In terms of investment categories, Lightspeed Venture Capital’s investment scope includes NFT, DeFi, GameFi , public chain and infrastructure fields. Among them, there are 2 public chain projects, 10 infrastructure projects, 2 DeFi projects, 2 NFT-related projects, 2 Web3 decentralized applications, and 1 GameFi. Infrastructure projects accounted for 53%.

- Strictly speaking, Lightspeed Venture Capital is not a native encryption VC, but it still takes The share of leading investment to 7 times, accounting for 37%. The performance is commendable.

In-depth look at the crypto investment history of Lightspeed Venture Capital, you will find that there are investment good opportunity.

- In 2013, betting on the old public chain Ripple, you can get a super high increase of 354 times XRP.

- He invested in the decentralized music application Audius in the A round of 2018, and the token rose the most 16 times.

- In 2021, Lightspeed Venture Capital has successively invested in Terra, one of the most popular public chains, and the most The popular trading platform FTX, and led the seed round of Hawku, an NFT trading platform that many capitals are optimistic about, are all good investment performances.

Deep binding to FTX?

With FTX appointing Lightspeed Partners to manage the new fund, the relationship between the two institutions has also come under the spotlight. One is an established institution that grew up with the Internet, and the other is an emerging force that has risen rapidly in a short period of time. The two seem to have established a connection.

A closer look at the investment history of Lightspeed Venture Capital, FTX has participated in 9 projects in various ways, including investing in FTX itself, accounting for 47%. Coupled with the joint launch of the encryption fund by the two, it seems that Lightspeed Venture Capital has been deeply bound with the new encryption force FTX.

However, after further analysis, it will be found that among the above 9 projects, 6 projects are led by Amy Wu. Retained the title of partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners, but its twitter profile has become FTX Ventures. With the change of Amy Wu's position, Lightspeed Venture Capital will inevitably become a thing of the past. It remains to be seen how deeply FTX is bound to Lightspeed.

Interestingly, Amy Wu is not the only Crypto talent that Lightspeed has lost.

In the investment history of Lightspeed Venture Capital in 2021, in addition to FTX, another eye-catching name is Terra. The former Lightspeed Partner who led the investment is Natalie Luu. In December 2021, Luu has announced that it will join Terra as the head of ecosystem development.

Partners continue to rush to the back of native encryption companies, which may reflect Lightspeed Venture Capital’s interest in Crypto Still have reservations. At present, Lightspeed Venture Capital itself has not established an independent fund for the encryption industry, and the pace of investment is still slow compared with VCs such as a16z. In the ever-changing encryption industry, this kind of caution will undoubtedly appear passive.

How to judge a VC

In the encrypted world full of gangs and different styles, what kind of VC is a good VC?

From the perspective of serving entrepreneurs, Richard Malone, Operation Director of Advanced Blockchain AG, put the fund Divided into three basic categories: Brand Funds (brand funds), Specific Value Add Funds (special value empowerment), All-Purpose Service/Value Add Funds (usually started and conducted as incubators and accelerators).

Generally speaking, Brand Funds play the role of endorsement, and these Brand Funds often refer to It is a well-known fund. Startups receiving investment from these funds are the equivalent of attending an Ivy League university or owning a Hermès Birkin bag. When a company’s investment institution adds the name of these Brand Funds, it will trigger a FOMO sentiment among other funds and retail investors, which will bring more resources.

Lightspeed Venture Capital is undoubtedly one of the Brand Funds. As a well-established institution familiar to the financial world, this name will undoubtedly give startups a layer of gold.

However, it is easy for Brand Funds to sit on its past achievements and "eat its laurels". Lightspeed Venture Capital has made a lot of achievements in the traditional Internet field, and it cannot cover up its slightly passive situation in the encryption industry. With a16z, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital and other VCs advancing rapidly in the Crypto world, the slower speed of light seems to be going backwards.

From the perspective of an objective and neutral third party, a good investment institution needs to be able to discover good company and track, and present it to the world. As Chen Yuetian said in the article "Spark Prediction 2021", VC should be the person who reserves the possibility of various changes for this world. Prometheus brought the fire, and VC should be the one who spread the fire.

Reflected in investment behavior, the same transaction price, the investment on the left side of the peak of the price curve Institutions, the level is higher than the investment institutions on the right. An organization that grabs Alpha at the seed round is better than an organization that FOMOs into it later. For Lightspeed Venture Capital, whether it is in the investment opportunities of Terra or FTX, it is of course great to be able to capture Alpha, but it still has not yet achieved the fastest and top level.

In the ever-changing and chasing crypto VC industry, when other players are running with all their strength, Lightspeed Venture Capital, which still has spare capacity, will inevitably not be able to occupy the leading position in the head. By the time it really pays attention to the growing Crypto world, it may be too late for the industry to play completely differently by then.

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