Dragonfly Partners Review: The Three Most Powerful Figures in Crypto VC History
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Dragonfly Partners Review: The Three Most Powerful Figures in Crypto VC History
Dan Robinson saw it most clearly, Chris Dixon saw it earliest, and Kyle Samani saw it to the end.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Haseeb ＞|＜
Compiled by: TechFlow
LPs sometimes ask me who I think is the best venture capitalist in crypto.
I've thought about this a lot.
Since I started doing crypto venture capital, I've wanted to be the best. I'm competitive, and investing is the purest form of competition. Only one person wins the deal, only one person picks the winner of the cycle.
But when you look honestly and do the math, there are three people who have proven themselves to be the GOATs of crypto venture capital.
This might seem a bit like hagiography (it is), and probably uninteresting to anyone who isn't a crypto VC. But I am a crypto VC. This article is for those of us who do this for a living.
Here are my top three crypto VCs of all time.
#3. @danrobinson (@paradigm)
There's a legendary story about Mike Speiser, managing partner at Sutter Hill Ventures. He incubated Snowflake, which grew into a $75 billion company. It's almost unheard of for a VC to create that much value for a portfolio company.
Dan Robinson is the Mike Speiser of crypto.
Time and again, Dan has been at the genesis of generationally great crypto companies. He was there from the earliest days of Uniswap, and was effectively a co-author and foundational contributor to Uniswap V3, which became the core primitive for on-chain spot trading. He was also instrumental in the early days of Flashbots, which pioneered the modern MEV auction. He was also a contributor to early research on Plasma, the predecessor to modern rollups, which eventually led him to lead the seed round for Optimism.
Dan is a true polymath. He breaks the mold of a traditional VC. He started as a securities lawyer, taught himself to be a protocol architect and mathematician, and now is a self-taught investor. Perhaps the greatest investment @matthuang (Paradigm's co-founder) ever made was hiring Dan. Whenever we lose a deal to Paradigm, often the feedback is: "You guys were great, but sorry, I have to work with Dan."
The most awesome investors are the ones who don't just invest. Dan sees where things are going, and time and again, he's rolled up his sleeves to help make it happen. That's what makes him one of crypto's greatest investors, and earns him a spot on crypto's Mount Rushmore.
#2. @cdixon( @a16zcrypto)
Chris Dixon is the OG of OGs in crypto. He saw the potential of crypto earlier than anyone. Before Chris, crypto VC was in the minor leagues.
He was the first mainstream VC to publicly go all-in on crypto, and bet his career on it. He was the first to marry the language of venture capital with crypto and network investing, and evangelized those concepts to Silicon Valley and the institutional LPs behind it. Many of the concepts we discuss daily in our ICs are lifted directly from Chris. It's no exaggeration to say that I am walking on the track that Chris originally laid down for himself.
Two deals that Chris Dixon led are landmarks in crypto venture history. The first, of course, is Coinbase. In 2013, Chris led Coinbase's Series B, when the entire industry was still nascent and its future uncertain. That deal perfectly embodied Dixon's philosophy—"what the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years." He had the vision to get that deal done, and then doubled down, going all-in on the industry. It was much harder to do what we do now in the era when Chris first did it.
The second deal is Uniswap. Almost everyone who saw the Uniswap Series A passed (the FDV was $100m—Uniswap was tiny back then). There were debates about whether AMMs were capital efficient enough, whether they'd face too much adverse selection, whether they were easy to copy. Paradigm (despite leading the seed) passed, we passed, and reportedly the rest of a16z's IC was reluctant to do the deal.
But Chris? Reportedly, he said: "A smart contract that can buy and sell anything? That sounds cool. Who knows what will happen—let's do it." He was right. It was cool. It was the possibilities unlocked by permissionless AMMs that gave rise to many non-obvious innovations. Missing that Series A taught me an important lesson.
Though I disagree with a16z's worldview in many ways, everyone in this industry owes Chris a deep debt of gratitude. He is one of the biggest reasons crypto has the cultural status it does today. He has fought with his career against the headwinds in Washington, fought for crypto's legitimacy, and won it cultural acceptance as a frontier technology. Much of our language and framing about crypto comes directly from Chris.
Crypto venture capital would not be where it is today without Chris Dixon's early push. For that, we owe him a deep thank you.
#1. @KyleSamani( @multicoin)
Kyle, Kyle, Kyle.
I often trade barbs with Kyle. He rubs a lot of people—including me—the wrong way, pretty much all the time.
But investing is a competitive sport. In the end, you either put points on the board or you don't.
And Kyle has put the most points on the board. The staggering returns he generated from his seed investment in Solana, and the work he put into that deal, will one day be the subject of a book that I will read while frowning the entire time.
You see, the best investors are contrarians, and Kyle is a true contrarian. Being a contrarian doesn't mean you post a hot take that gets a bunch of people saying "wow, that's smart." If everyone wants to retweet you, by definition you're not a contrarian. You know you're a true contrarian when you make people angry, when you make them think you're an idiot, when you make them think you're burning money.
Kyle is one of the few true contrarians in crypto. I disagree with him on almost everything. But his early investment in Solana, and his conviction to hold through the FTX collapse, unquestionably makes him the greatest venture investor in crypto history.
We often say that venture capital is a power law business. Kyle and his legendary Solana investment is exactly what we're talking about. Sometimes, it really is just one deal.
That's why Kyle is the greatest crypto VC of all time.
So, that's my top three.
LPs sometimes ask me where I think I rank on this list.
Though I think very highly of myself—yes, I think very highly of myself—I don't think I'm in the top three. I'm definitely top ten, maybe even top five, but I'm not as good as these three. I hope one day, before my career is over, I can surpass them. On a quarterly basis, I've had quarters where I've outperformed each of them.
But overall? These three are the best to ever do it.
It probably doesn't help Dragonfly for me to praise our competitors. But there's something bigger than competition. You see, it's hard to be an investor in this industry—most of my peers along the way haven't made it. Crypto is brutal.
Though I compete with these guys every day, I have immense respect for them. I've watched them grow over nearly a decade of ups and downs. All of us have collectively ridden the ups and downs of crypto, supported our founders, supported the industry, and helped it stand shoulder to shoulder with other areas of technology. Doing my year-end reflection, I thought it was worth paying homage in an industry that rarely praises VCs.
Whether they know it or not, each of them has contributed a lot to me. I've learned a great deal from each of them. I genuinely hope they're proud of what they've accomplished.
Dan Robinson saw it most clearly.
Chris Dixon saw it earliest.
And Kyle Samani saw it last.
Salute, gentlemen. May we continue the great game.🫡
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