Doubling Down: Growth at Blockchain Capital

Blockchain Capital is approaching its 10-year anniversary and, like the industry, our firm has evolved a lot since inception. That full 10-year history is too much to cover in a short post but recent additions to the team are emblematic of our core values and our commitment to providing best-in-class service to Founders. This is a brief glimpse inside the firm….

We recently announced the addition of two new members of the team: Caleb Tebbe and Alan Curtis. Alan and Caleb are among the strongest operating/engineering duos we’ve had the pleasure of working with and we could not be more excited to welcome them both to the team.

I have worked directly with Caleb and Alan for over five years now. In fact, we connected over LinkedIn (this was pre-crypto Telegram days).

RADAR was building one of the first DEXs on Ethereum and I was talking to all of them — but this team was unique. Alan was (and still is) a maniacally organized, hyper-competitive, and uniquely capable Founder while Caleb brought the technical genius and a more subtle presence to balance things out. They shipped like crazy. They were great at product development. And marketing. And business development. And, most importantly, at identifying upcoming challenges and opportunities.

The complete history of RADAR is an amazing story in itself — we’ll save that for another time. TLDR; they shipped category leading products, faced several wild and unusual challenges, and ultimately found a successful exit via acquisition and served as executives at the world’s largest publicly traded crypto mining company.

Now, five years after we first connected, we continue to work together in an entirely new capacity: as colleagues and investors at Blockchain Capital.

At Blockchain Capital our mission remains the same as Day One: to be the best possible partners to Founders and to deliver phenomenal returns to LPs — Caleb and Alan are critical to accelerating our efforts on both fronts.

Caleb is joining as Principal Research Engineer as a core contributor to our growing engineering team. Caleb started his career in the crypto industry over six years ago as the first Data Science Software Engineer hire at Coinbase. Roughly 18 months later he co-founded RADAR to build at the frontier of crypto. And build he did: Four years and five products across five categories. Caleb’s tenure in our burgeoning industry and direct experience building and shipping products makes him a very rare talent.

At Blockchain Capital, Caleb will be building alongside our Founders, leading technical research efforts, and helping us diligence opportunities. His experience and counsel has proven to be invaluable to both first time and veteran Founders alike. We’re doubling down on engineering because it’s been a highlight for Founders we’ve backed — we’re listening and responding to that feedback.

A recent example of our engineering team building alongside Founders is Ryan Sproule (another research engineer at Blockchain Capital) who supported Fuel by building Swaymigo, a smart contract toolbox that helps accelerate developer adoption. It’s great! Fuel loves it. We love it. It’s a win-win and this is the upside of having a long-term, values-aligned relationship with our Founders. Caleb will be accelerating and amplifying our efforts on this front.

The other recent addition to our investment team as Head of Platform is Alan Curtis. Over our 5+ years working together, Alan proved not just to be a highly capable Founder but also a uniquely disciplined and principled leader.

Notably, we didn’t go out looking for a Head of Platform — we simply listened to the unanimous feedback about Alan that we received from Founders in our networks. We consistently heard the same thing: Alan has a rare ability to pull the best out of people he works with, to develop deep professional relationships, and to triage all the expectedly unexpected situations that arise in the journey of a startup.

Alan has experienced the best parts of being a Founder — and also the hardest parts. It’s this breadth and depth of the Founder experience that we’re particularly excited to add to the team.

“Platform” means different things at different firms but we’re particularly keen on Alan’s vision: supporting Founders and their companies through networks. As a Blockchain Capital Founder himself, Alan has a unique perspective on the types of post-investment services that actually move the needle and where Blockchain Capital can provide critical, differentiated support.

At the end of the day, our relationship with Founders is paramount. We’re diligent board members, enthusiastic builders, and we’re scaling our efforts to deliver best-in-class Founder experience — which is exactly why we’re excited to add Alan and Caleb to the team. Both bring a deep network, incredible experience, and share our mission-focused vision and values.

Onward and upward!

About Blockchain Capital, LLC Based in San Francisco, Blockchain Capital is the first dedicated venture capital firm to invest exclusively in the blockchain technology sector. Founded in 2013 by Bart and Brad Stephens, Blockchain Capital has funded over 165 Founders with the principal mission of helping these entrepreneurs build world-class companies and projects based on blockchain technology.