I’m incredibly excited to be joining Vance Spencer, Michael Andersson, Daniel Mason and the rest of the Framework team to help build and invest in founders at the intersection of DeFi and Gaming. Framework is different than most VCs in crypto insofar as at its core it’s a technology company, building products and services to support the open blockchain networks that the fund invests in. With a background as an operator in FinTech, community infrastructure, and blockchain gaming, I’m looking forward to supporting Framework’s platform initiatives and build alongside some of the brightest founders in the space.

When I started to dive down the crypto rabbit hole in 2020, it became very clear to me that DeFi would enable a new set financial primitives that could change the landscape of financial applications. My early career in traditional finance had highlighted many shortcomings of the industry and DeFi seemed an innovative and creative attempt at a new financial architecture. I began to see how the traditional infrastructure of finance could be swapped out for a more efficient system, with better mechanism design, aligned incentives, and innovative technological improvements that created a design space for net-new financial applications.

It wasn’t long after this that I was introduced to the Framework team. I was aligned with Vance and Michael’s bias for venture platform and attracted to their thoughtful insights and passion for where crypto was headed. As crypto-native technologists, researchers, and investors, the team at Framework understand this space better than most firms, allowing them to outcompete both other crypto-native and crossover venture firms.

Framework’s platform is specifically one of the areas in which the team has a very clear advantage. The team provides operational support to ecosystems, growing their user bases, helping to run their infrastructure, and even helping with protocol governance and community. Their reputation of operating in the trenches alongside their founders, regardless of market ups and downs, has cemented their position as one of the few firms in the space with demonstrated expertise in meaningful post-investment support.

This is accomplished through Framework Labs, a sidecar entity with a mandate to actively participate through infrastructure providing, software, tooling and on-chain engagement in the networks and protocols Framework invests in. This empowers Framework to dictate the outcomes of portfolio companies and tie the portfolio together under the Framework Tent, a platform initiative spearheaded by Daniel Mason this past year that aggregates and productizes resources and services for teams. Framework’s platform effectively serves to maintain leverage over the entire crypto ecosystem by virtue of the firm’s operative participation in their investments.

Vance and Michael refer to this concept as Network Capital, or the downstream effects of being active stakeholders in their investments. It’s for this reason why I have strong conviction that Framework will become one of the decisive winners in the space. With their fundamental understanding of how to successfully bring winning projects to market, Framework has clearly positioned themselves as a Venture Participant, not merely an asset manager. The same cannot be said about all VCs.

So what’s next? I’ll be helping the next generation of crypto-native founders and teams build and execute on creating the next wave of applications and successfully get to market. Framework is currently deploying their third, $400 million fund for investment in early-stage blockchain gaming, Web3, and DeFi startups and networks — so if you love to build things, then wherever you are in your crypto journey, I’d love to learn more about you, your project, and story. You can find me on Twitter here.

I would like to thank my network, community, and friends for helping me get to this point. An enormous thanks to Daniel Mason for connecting me with the Framework team, Kili Wall, Mene Mazarakis, Rob Sarrow, Pavan Sethi, Adam Delehanty, Greg Clayman, Jonah Bookman, and many others.