It’s been a year since Boris Wertz was a guest on Tank Talks, and oh what a year it’s been. We’ve seen NFTs and Crypto rise, fall, rise, and crash. And that’s just the last few weeks. We thought it would be fun to listen with new ears to this thought-provoking conservation with someone who has helped build the crypto space into what it is today. Through his position as an early investor in Dapper Labs, creators of CryptoKitties and NBA TopShot , Boris has been an early believer in the power of blockchain and crypto and he’s now setting his sights on climate change investing and the creator economy. Boris’ Background: Boris Wertz is founding partner of Version One and one of the top tech early-stage investors in North America. Born in Germany and based in Vancouver, Boris takes a wide-angle view to find great companies all across North America with a focus on the pre-seed and the seed stage in marketplaces, enterprise SaaS, crypto, healthcare, energy, climate.. He is a board partner with Andreessen Horowitz and is well-respected for his uncanny ability to find the next generation of leaders. Before becoming an investor, Boris built an online marketplace for used and out-of-print books in 1999, selling the business to AbeBooks.com where he became COO and led a team of 140 people doing $250mm in platform revenues. After AbeBooks.com was sold to Amazon, he moved into investing, first as an angel and now with his own fund Version One which launched in 2012. A word from our sponsor: At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves. The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at any time. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees. Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for every entrepreneur. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in 24 countries including Canada, the US and many other countries around the world. Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a $700 sign-on bonus and skip the waitlist that already has thousands of companies by visiting tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to get setup today! In this episode we discuss: 02:27 The growth of DeFi as an industry 03:48 How negative associations with the early ICO market has affected DeFi 06:01 The opportunity Boris saw in 2017 09:32 The speed of innovation the crypto space 11:14 How big the market for Ethereum can grow 12:52 Valuing crypto platforms and protocols 14:04 How Uniswap.com works and its power 16:10 The lending mechanic in Ethereum 18:58 New platforms like nexusmutual.io and opyn.co 22:42 How DeFi compares and competes with another Boris portfolio company, Coinbase 27:28 Has Boris bought any TopShot packs personally 29:39 Selling his Cryptokitties investment to his LPs 31:30 The future of cryptoart 32:33 What value means with today’s meme-investing 34:47 How his team decides on what is worth investing in 37:50 Addressing Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger’s crypto critique 40:08 Working with LPs as investment thesis evolves 43:02 How portfolio company silviaterra.com is working to fight climate change 44:34 Investing while remote Fast Favorites Podcast: Invest Like The Best Newsletter or blog: stratechery.com Tech gadget: Google Pixel New trend: The creator economy Favorite book: Albert Banger’s forthcoming book Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here! Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency