Author: Jeff John Roberts
Translated by: TechFlow
Happy Friday, everyone. I'm financial editor Jeff Roberts, temporarily taking over for Ellie today. Since moving to Southern California two years ago, I've been amazed by the thriving venture capital scene here - compared to Silicon Valley and New York, this VC landscape seems less covered by the media. Recently, I interviewed a veteran in this field - Adam Winnick.
Winnick is a vibrant person who possesses one of the most important qualities of a venture capitalist: the ability to gather influential people. I last met him at a dinner hosted by Medici Network, an institutional investor conference focused on the crypto field, bringing together various people from startup founders to bankers, and representatives from Ivy League endowment funds and sovereign wealth funds.
The dinner was held at Avra restaurant in Beverly Hills. As someone who has attended many similar events, I noticed that besides the excellent Mediterranean cuisine, the atmosphere was very "normal". Once upon a time, people participating in crypto events considered themselves outsiders, and the venture capital industry viewed crypto investments as a completely different species, playing by a completely different set of rules.
But I'm not sure if this perspective still holds.
Today, crypto investment is more like a branch of venture capital, although there are still some obvious differences - especially in terms of return models. Traditional VCs typically acquire a batch of stocks from startups and wait around seven years for returns; the crypto VC world is more liquid, revolving around tokens rather than stocks.
In the early days, the combination of crypto and venture capital led to some extreme behaviors - such as VC firms hoarding tokens linked to "semi-finished" projects and then selling them to retail investors. However, more stringent lock-up periods have recently curbed some of the worst behaviors, and upcoming clear regulations are expected to further improve the situation.
Winnick is a staunch supporter of the token model. He believes: "This is a powerful incentive mechanism that can kickstart network effects. Just because someone is abusing it today, or didn't know how to use it correctly early on, doesn't mean it won't be better utilized in the future."
If traditional tech and the crypto world gradually converge as Winnick predicts, tokens are likely to become a more common feature in venture capital. Winnick says that in this convergence process, the winners will be those who can combine the mature technological architecture and extensive business networks of so-called Web2 with the highly technical and low capital-intensive dynamics of Web3.
Winnick, a former banker, and his co-founder Kamal Mokeddem, a former Oracle developer, seem to have found a way to crack the code of crypto investment. Their company, Finality Capital Partners, had a 69% internal rate of return (IRR) for its first $45 million fund at the end of last year, investing in Series A rounds for promising crypto staking projects like EigenLayer and Babylon.
Meanwhile, although still in its early stages, the fund's second investment vehicle, Liquid Fund, has already risen 12% this year, while many other funds have remained flat or negative in the first few months of 2025.
Although Finality Capital cannot compare with crypto VC giants like a16z and Haun Ventures, the progress of its partners shows they have found their positioning - Winnick attributes this achievement to his willingness to provide frank advice and maintain direct contact with enterprises in the portfolio.
Venture Capital Dynamics
Senra Systems: This aerospace and defense industry harness developer located in Redondo Beach, California, completed a $25 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Dylan Field and CIV, with follow-on investments from General Catalyst, Sequoia, Founders Fund, and others.
[The rest of the translation follows the same approach, maintaining the structure and translating all text while preserving names and specific terms]
