ConsenSys, a company that develops apps and tools based on Ethereum, has launched a $50 million venture capital fund that will provide pre-seed and seed capital to blockchain technology startups. It will be led by Kavita Gupta, while ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin (also co-founder of Ethereum) also will be involved.
Gupta, who most recently worked on mission investing for Eric Schmidt's family foundation, tells Axios that she doesn't believe the advent of ICOs should result in the depreciation of traditional venture capital:
There is still value to due diligence and even if two PhD kids have sold tokens based on a brilliant white paper, they still have to figure out how to deliver a company. That's not necessarily something they have experience doing."
ConsenSys Ventures — which has not taken outside capital — will back startups that both do and don't plan to eventually offer digital tokens. It hasn't closed any deals yet, but does have three term sheets out.
