I remember the first time I met Ninos Mansor back in 2018. He was at a Seattle crypto event and ran into Geoffrey Arone, one of our founding partners. Geoffrey immediately liked him and put me on the phone with him. The first thing I noticed was Ninos’ funny Australian accent. The second was how ridiculously enthusiastic he was about crypto. And near the end of the call I realized he was also pretty darn smart.
At the time Ninos and his brother Ninor were investing their own capital from a vehicle called Byte Size Capital. We did a few deals together, and I liked talking to them. They usually saw things in a very different way than I did.
By early 2019 Geoffrey had moved on to start his own crypto startup (Logos), and we were looking to hire new talent. We were speaking to Ninor and Ninos so often that it already felt like they were part of the team, and we made it official. They joined the fund as partners in March 2019.
Fast forward to today: we’ve done over 100 deals together and we launched two ecosystem funds – Algorand and Moonbeam.
And now it’s time for them to leave.
More than anything they want to go out again on their own and see what they’re made of. I can’t deny that I admire the founder/entrepreneur attitude more than just about anything else in business.
They leave as friends, and they currently plan to raise their own crypto venture firm. We will be the first investors in that fund as an anchor, and will continue to work with them in much the same way as we do now. I won’t say anything more now about their fund; it’s their journey and I’ll let them tell you all about it at the right time.
With this move our network continues to expand. We are building out the team here and have recently added Chad Gunther as a structural financial advisor and Keli Callaghan as our newest partner. Our portfolio of over 150 companies is expanding. And we look forward to holding our very first Founders Retreat this fall to support and highlight our founders and startups in these nuanced times. More on our Founders Retreat later.
