CoinFund Appoints Top Venture Capitalist David Pakman as Managing Partner
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–CoinFund, a leading crypto and blockchain investment firm is proud to welcome David Pakman as Managing Partner focused on expanding the firm’s growth-stage venture capital initiatives.
David comes to CoinFund after 13 years with Venrock, the iconic venture firm focused on investing in emerging technologies. He is widely recognized for his exceptional track record and thought leadership in crypto, consumer, and enterprise technology investing. David led both the Series A and Series B rounds in Dollar Shave Club and sat on the board until it was acquired for $1B. He led the Series A round and sits on the board of Dapper Labs, the crypto company that invented the NFT standard and he led the Series A round in Rarible, a leading NFT marketplace and protocol. He personally invested in Coinbase prior to their IPO and was named the 55th top venture capitalist in the world by CB Insights.
Spurred by his computer science background and entrepreneurial experience as co-founder of Myplay and then CEO of eMusic, David developed an early interest in mining Bitcoin and then building ethereum mining rigs. This led to his first crypto investment in 2017. He has been focused on layer one smart contract platforms, Web 3.0 infrastructure and has been particularly prescient on consumer adoption of NFTs. While much of his early venture career was focused on traditional tech investments, the last several years he has found more and more compelling investment opportunities in the broader crypto ecosystem, a trend that led David to more recently shift his focus entirely to the emergent technology.
“Like the birth of the commercial internet and the explosion of mobile computing before it, crypto is as big a tech wave as one could hope for, affecting all aspects of technology, restructuring the architecture below applications, and re-arranging the value chain of every market it touches,” said David Pakman. “Structurally, crypto offers solutions to many of the challenges we see in today’s data monopolies, platform censorship, and in abusive fees charged by legacy middlemen. Most importantly, the global startup energy bubbling forth from this ecosystem is infectious.”
David’s transition to CoinFund marks another important milestone in the partnership between CoinFund and Venrock. The two firms have collaborated closely since 2018 to support the crypto ecosystem and count Dapper Labs, Flow, Rarible, RARI and 3Box/Ceramic among their early joint deals.
“David led Venrock’s efforts in crypto and had the insight to partner with CoinFund early on. Together they have built an impressive portfolio of high potential blockchain and crypto companies,” said Bryan Roberts, Partner, Venrock. “While we will miss David, we know the combination of his investing acumen and CoinFund’s deep domain expertise and platform will be great for the crypto ecosystem and will drive CoinFund’s success. The partners of Venrock are excited to support this effort and we look forward to continuing our partnership with CoinFund for years to come.”
”We are incredibly honored to have worked side by side with David Pakman and our platform partners at Venrock for over three years and numerous investments. At CoinFund, we are consistently bridging the gap between blockchain technology and the real world, and there are few venture investors who are as deeply studied in this process as David,” said Jake Brukhman, CEO, CoinFund. “We look forward to leveraging our joint expertise and experience in continued support of current and future portfolio companies and with David joining the partnership we are exceptionally well positioned to expand our ventures capabilities.”
David blogs at www.pakman.com and can be found on Twitter @pakman.
About CoinFund:
CoinFund is a blockchain-focused investment firm founded in 2015 with the goal of shaping the global transition to digital assets and decentralized finance. The firm invests in venture and liquid opportunities within the blockchain sector with a focus on digital assets, decentralization technologies and key enabling infrastructure. The CoinFund team has studied and supported the development of the blockchain space from the inception of the first decentralized networks and brings together more than 30 years of experience in investing, engineering, law, and decentralized protocols. For more information, please visit our website at coinfund.io and follow the firm on Twitter at @coinfund.io
About Venrock:
Originally established as the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family in 1969, Venrock partners with entrepreneurs to build some of the world’s most disruptive, successful companies. With a primary focus on technology and healthcare, portfolio companies have included 10X Genomics, Apple Computer, AveXis, Check Point Software, CloudFlare, Dollar Shave Club, Gilead Sciences, Idec Pharma, Illumina, Intel, Millennium Pharma and Nest. For more information, please visit Venrock’s website at www.venrock.com and follow the firm on Twitter at @venrock.
Contacts
Press inquiries:
Sofia Coon, on behalf of CoinFund
CoinFund@wachsman.com
Nicole Pack, on behalf of Venrock
nicole@venrock.com