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Announcing Nomics' Series A VC Financing - (Ep. 0015)
Hey, this is Clay and I am pleased to announce that Nomics has raised a Series A round venture capital financing. Leading the round is Arthur Ventures, and also participating are Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, TokenSoft, Ben Davenport, who is the co-founder and former CTO of BitGo, CoVenture Crypto, CityBlock Capital, [00:00:30] King Capital, and some other friends and family, who participated in the round. We're excited to partner with all of them.
I can tell you a little bit about how this came together. A few months ago, I started looking at companies that I really, really respected, in terms of the products that they had created, but also [00:01:00] how lean the companies ran. A few companies in that category include Zapier, Clearbit, SendGrid, folks like that. I looked at the size of their series A funding. Zapier and Clearbit, I believe, had only done one round of VC financing and or seed rounds, and never had to raise [00:01:30] money again. I believe that's true of Clearbit. I know that's true of Zapier. SendGrid, of course, went on to become public. I think they're being sold to [Tulio 00:01:40] right now, but I looked at the average series A size. I saw a lot of constraint, and pragmaticism around the raise. I think we were aiming for that as well. At my last company, we raised 38 million in ventures capital. [00:02:00] So I've done the thing where we raise a lot. Over time, I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan of constraints, and just really being reasonable about these things, especially after the euphoria of the 2017 bull market and crypto.
We're excited about this. I think I was saying this earlier. [00:02:30] How this got started was I approached Patrick Meenan at Arthur Ventures. Again, they're our lead investor. I told him we were going to raise, and that I wanted to pitch him first before we went to anyone else, really. I went to Patrick and pitched him. Basically said, essentially, "Here's what we're thinking, in terms of valuation. I'd like to have you specifically [00:03:00] on the board. I'd like Arthur Ventures specifically to be the lead investor, if you guys are down for this. If you're not, no problem. We'll go to the coast or maybe we'll look here internally, but we really, really want this to be you."
The backstory there is I served on the board of Leadpages, and I'm still on board of Leadpages with Patrick for around five years. I knew that we were aligned. [00:03:30] The philosophy here is that I've seen a lot of VCs claim to do value-added things. I think in some cases it's possible, and it can happen, but that narrative has really been blown up around VCs doing intros, and helping you hire, and doing marketing stuff for you or in some cases, building software. I just, I think it's really [00:04:00] hard to actually realize that value in a lot of cases.
I heard it was a famous Israeli VC talking about how when he first got started in crypto, he tried to do everything to help his portfolio companies. What he realized over time was that the companies that were going to make it, and that did make it, and that offered the biggest return or provided the biggest return didn't really need his help at all. [00:04:30] It was the companies that probably where the investment would go to zero or something similar, that ate up all his time. He got to the point where when he made an investment, he would just give the founder or whoever was leading the raise his card, and say, "Here's my number. You can call it. I probably won't answer, but just think of this as a money-only arrangement." [00:05:00] I actually think there's a lot of value in that.
[transcript truncated due to character count restrictions]
Website: https://nomics.com
Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com
Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins
Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance
View all episodes
By Clay Collins
4.4
77 ratings
Hey, this is Clay and I am pleased to announce that Nomics has raised a Series A round venture capital financing. Leading the round is Arthur Ventures, and also participating are Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, TokenSoft, Ben Davenport, who is the co-founder and former CTO of BitGo, CoVenture Crypto, CityBlock Capital, [00:00:30] King Capital, and some other friends and family, who participated in the round. We're excited to partner with all of them.
I can tell you a little bit about how this came together. A few months ago, I started looking at companies that I really, really respected, in terms of the products that they had created, but also [00:01:00] how lean the companies ran. A few companies in that category include Zapier, Clearbit, SendGrid, folks like that. I looked at the size of their series A funding. Zapier and Clearbit, I believe, had only done one round of VC financing and or seed rounds, and never had to raise [00:01:30] money again. I believe that's true of Clearbit. I know that's true of Zapier. SendGrid, of course, went on to become public. I think they're being sold to [Tulio 00:01:40] right now, but I looked at the average series A size. I saw a lot of constraint, and pragmaticism around the raise. I think we were aiming for that as well. At my last company, we raised 38 million in ventures capital. [00:02:00] So I've done the thing where we raise a lot. Over time, I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan of constraints, and just really being reasonable about these things, especially after the euphoria of the 2017 bull market and crypto.
We're excited about this. I think I was saying this earlier. [00:02:30] How this got started was I approached Patrick Meenan at Arthur Ventures. Again, they're our lead investor. I told him we were going to raise, and that I wanted to pitch him first before we went to anyone else, really. I went to Patrick and pitched him. Basically said, essentially, "Here's what we're thinking, in terms of valuation. I'd like to have you specifically [00:03:00] on the board. I'd like Arthur Ventures specifically to be the lead investor, if you guys are down for this. If you're not, no problem. We'll go to the coast or maybe we'll look here internally, but we really, really want this to be you."
The backstory there is I served on the board of Leadpages, and I'm still on board of Leadpages with Patrick for around five years. I knew that we were aligned. [00:03:30] The philosophy here is that I've seen a lot of VCs claim to do value-added things. I think in some cases it's possible, and it can happen, but that narrative has really been blown up around VCs doing intros, and helping you hire, and doing marketing stuff for you or in some cases, building software. I just, I think it's really [00:04:00] hard to actually realize that value in a lot of cases.
I heard it was a famous Israeli VC talking about how when he first got started in crypto, he tried to do everything to help his portfolio companies. What he realized over time was that the companies that were going to make it, and that did make it, and that offered the biggest return or provided the biggest return didn't really need his help at all. [00:04:30] It was the companies that probably where the investment would go to zero or something similar, that ate up all his time. He got to the point where when he made an investment, he would just give the founder or whoever was leading the raise his card, and say, "Here's my number. You can call it. I probably won't answer, but just think of this as a money-only arrangement." [00:05:00] I actually think there's a lot of value in that.
[transcript truncated due to character count restrictions]
Website: https://nomics.com
Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com
Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins
Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance