New VC Fund Specializes in Cryptographic Assets and Blockchain Network Services
Iterative Instinct I, GP is a $1.4M micro-fund based in New York City and operated by two 31-year-old fund managers.
Iterative Instinct (“i2”), a Manhattan-based venture fund, announced it had secured $1.4M in capital commitments for its $2.0M debut fund.
I2 has a specific investment mandate to seed and develop products, services, and assets that utilize the three core technologies of the blockchain paradigm. Those technologies are cryptographic hashing, asymmetric cryptography, and peer to peer (P2P) distributed computing.
The fund also has capital earmarked for a secondary mandate: to actively manage a portfolio of crypto-assets. Over the last year, the i2 technology team has built a proprietary level 2 trading interface to amplify its investment capabilities.
The fund was founded by emerging managers Chris Dannen (31) and Brandon Buchanan (31), each a General Partner of the fund. Mr. Buchanan was previously the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of a $100M AUM venture fund in New York. Mr. Dannen is a self-taught creative technologist who has worked in corporate strategy and media.
Mr. Buchanan's expertise in securities law, venture financings and corporate governance will be a valuable asset in helping i2 and its portfolio companies navigate the nascent regulations around distributed crypto-economics. He has worked with the SEC, FINRA and CBOE in the past in his capacity as a securities and broker/dealer lawyer at WilmerHale. As a Corporate Associate at Gunderson Dettmer, he was counsel to a number of startups and venture funds with respect to formation, corporate governance, and financing matters. He also spent time as an M&A investment banker at Credit Suisse AG.
Mr. Dannen's unique approach to product development, which places a strong emphasis on narrative, purpose, and message, will help i2’s portfolio companies attract grassroots growth and top talent. He has created and executed multi-year editorial and creative campaigns for Quartz, Fast Company, Soho House, Wired, General Assembly, Bloomberg, Samsung, and Microsoft. He currently advises two startups: Loomia, a smart fabrics company run by Thiel fellow Madison Maxey, as well as M-RAD, an award-winning architecture and design firm based in Los Angeles.
"Introducing Ethereum and Solidity,” Mr. Dannen's fourth book, will be one of the first programming guides for the Solidity language when it is published by Apress Media on January 17, 2017.
The fund has an internal technology team. Creative director and full-stack developer Christopher McClellan is responsible for the i2 user experience across the fund's many interfaces, including its trading suite. He is backed by a senior engineer with 25 year's experience building large-scale Wall Street trading systems.
Fintech, software services, blockchain-accessible hardware, and cryptographically-secured software and assets will be the focus of i2's seed-stage venture activity.
To guide the way for highly specialized portfolio companies, the fund has added Mackenzie Millar, practitioner of venture design and strategy at Frog Design in New York and San Francisco, as its advisor for financial products and growth. Market-making activity and commodity asset strategy will be advised by Cody Hoffman, a former vice president of oil derivatives trading at JPMorgan in New York, London, and Canada. Dr. Solomon Lederer will be the fund's blockchain engineering advisor. He was trained in the Air Force and has a PhD in large scale sensor networks from Stonybrook University. Today he works as a software engineer for the Wall Street Journal, and operates the Coinspace, a blockchain education venue.
I2 organizes a monthly meet-up on the emerging field of crypto-economics, held at Coinspace, which is located in the Industry City complex at Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Legal counsel for i2 was Kirkland & Ellis. The Iterative Instinct branding kit was designed by the Brooklyn-based studio, Ensemble. For questions, email [email protected].
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