Venture Captial Is Dead: Long Live Venture Capital 3.0
By: Vince Wicker
Tags: Decentralized Finance, Defi, Ethereum Blockchain, Crowdfunding, Cryptocurrency Investment

Venture Captial Is Dead: Long Live Venture Capital 3.0

Read about it in blogs, articles, and websites. Watch it play out in movies, on television, or all across YoTube. Observe how people fanboy/fangirl about it online or in their applications to Business School.

Being in or around venture capital is cool. Or at least it used to be.

There was a time when venture capital really took a risk (e.g. Intel, Apple, Sun Microsystems, Twilio), but as of recent most of them don’t appear to be seeking out “the next big thing.” Instead, these funds are playing it safe — instead, they appear to seek out the next thing that looks like the thing that worked before. If I hear about the next “Uber of [insert industry here]” or the “Netflix of [insert industry content option here]” one more time….

Outside of a few large bets here and there (most of which are inside larger companies such as Google or SpaceX), these VCs might as well be investing in mutual funds.

Don’t get me wrong, Venture Capital 1.0 still throws a lot of money around (especially if you run a fund) but as people pick apart this model more and more, it is not what it used to be. And certainly, it is not benefiting anyone except the wealthy who invest in the VC Funds and the executives of the venture-funded companies (sometimes).

Of all the things wrong with it, the phrases “Out of Touch” and “Inner Circle” speak the loudest to this author.

In case you’re wondering — in our book — crowdfunding and 2017’s “ICOs-Gone-Wild” are Venture Capital 2.0. Those models only benefited people on one side of the equation — the people that received the funding. The investors just got a chance to participate

That’s why I’m excited to tell you about what I’m seeing as Venture Capital 3.0. It wasn’t easy to find.

Bees.Social is launching a “bottoms-up” accelerator program in Q1. What makes it special is what it's not.

Its not a VC fund backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of bullying, out of touch funding.

It's not two to five unimaginative people in Palo Alto or San Francisco who think that they’re always right because they have the cash — and you don’t.

It's not a homogenous group of reviewers who will find an excuse not to invest because the CEO of the target company doesn’t look like them or didn’t attend the same computer science or MBA program that they did.

It's not Venture Capital 1.0

Bees.Social only accepts cryptocurrency projects and does not directly invest in the projects that make it into its program.

Before you dismiss that, understand that Bees.Social plays a far more valuable role for a cryptocurrency project

it puts its projects in front of its network of thousands of retail crypto early adopters

it promotes its project alumni across its network

it enables network members to build affinity with each winning project

Its executives work with the projects to right-size their tokenomics for 2021 and beyond

It can accelerate a strong project and re-launch one floundering for lack of liquidity

What is really unique about this approach is that Bees.Social allows its members a very special opportunity — to carve out early, below-market priced stakes in those projects with special Bees.Social tokens. To find out more about this membership (and capital growth) benefit, read this piece on Bees.Social seedz.

So far seven projects have gone through the Bees.Social accelerator and another two dozen or so are on the waitlist for screening. Read our piece on the Bees.Social screening process here. It's built for individual investors and framed in a way to encourage adoption by everyone, just not a select few wealthy individuals.

Venture Capital 2.0 taught us the power of crowds but forgot to give the crowds more than early access to a song or smartwatch. Venture Capital 1.0 taught us the power of accelerating growth, focusing on the fundamentals and screening for projects that have a future.

Venture Capital 3.0 is the future of VC funding for cryptocurrency projects that actually make sense. What makes this even more powerful is that the investors are not the super-wealthy or partners in the venture fund; the investors are everyday people seeking to build generational wealth.

Find Out More

Sign up here if you want to be on one of the Bees.Social introduction calls!