It is one thing to invest in early stage companies, but to do so in a nascent industry that constantly reinvents and rediscovers itself is a whole different venture. Richard Muirhead co-founded Fabric Ventures in 2012 around the thesis of supporting the Open Economy. While at first this meant investing in Bitcoin-related projects, once Ethereum was announced, a new horizon unveiled, filled with tremendous potential. Since then, the Open Economy thesis was adapted to match technological breakthroughs, and it is now centered around artificial intelligence, distributed computing and self sovereignty (over both fungible, as well non-fungible assets).

Topics covered in this episode:

• Richard’s background and how he founded a crypto VC
• Fabric Ventures’ thesis
• How the AI thesis evolved
• User-generated AI
• On-chain autonomous agents
• Upcoming DeFi innovations
• Web3 trends that took Richard by surprise
• Missed opportunities
• The impact of crypto liquidity & market cycles on VC investing
• How to vet projects in early investment phase

Episode links:

• Richard Muirhead on Twitter
• Fabric Ventures on Twitter
• Fabric Ventures

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst.