Introducing Canonical Crypto

From Trusted to Trustless...

Gm! I am happy to share Canonical Crypto, a $20M early stage, “picks and shovels” fund focused on investing in founders building infrastructure in web3/crypto.

When we look at the web3 developer stack, it is still maturing compared to what we see in web2. We take for granted the web2 dev stack - everything from code collaboration, testing, security, infrastructure, data storage, scaling, messaging, analytics, identity, monitoring, interop etc. While some of these areas are getting the requisite attention, especially within certain crypto ecosystems, they are still fairly underdeveloped compared to web2.

We need better tooling and infrastructure to support developers building on-chain, and this will help move web3 development forward.

And while I am excited to see how we unbundle AWS using web3, there are net-new on-chain primitives arising, like the MEV “economy”.

Composability introduces wonderful network effects to projects that are thinking “protocol first” instead of “application first”:

The GTM for these developer-first companies looks different. I learned this first-hand during my time at Microsoft, where I was an early member of the Developer Evangelism team, and where I focused on getting developers to build on our platforms.

I have also founded companies and I have the scars to show for it. Hiring, growth + scaling, marketing, analytics, IR, fundraising, GTM, M&A - I have been there, done that.

Moreover, I have had the opportunity to lean in and support some early DeFi projects with their tokenomics, or auditing smart contracts, and I want to share my learnings.

I’ve also had the privilege of spending time with my friends at Pear, where I learned from the best on how to work with companies at the very earliest stages in helping craft the narrative and helping companies thinking about turning an app into a business.

The DeFi masterclass that Kedric and I launched last year has become an incredible marketplace for all types of talent. Just last week, we announced our jobs board in partnership with Pallet and we have already had some of Canonical’s portfolio companies signup to get access to this talent.

As a tech native, a digital native, and now a crypto native, I am excited to combine all of this experience into building a world-class developer-friendly crypto fund to support the companies we invest in.

I am so incredibly grateful to all our LPs who have placed their trust in me and Canonical to support our builders: Shan Aggarwal, Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Mar Hershenson, Steve Jang, Li Jin, Mike Kerns, Sriram Krishnan, Artia Moghbel, Paul Murphy, Haseeb Qureshi from Dragonfly Capital, Jeff Richards, Dan Romero, Brian Rumao, Roneil Rumburg, Hunter Walk, Amy Wu from FTX Ventures, Bilal Zuberi, Harlem Capital, Lux Capital among others.

I couldn’t have gotten here without Semil Shah. He has spent countless hours helping me refine my pitch and making key intros. This man should run a masterclass for emerging fund managers. Fortunate to be in his orbit. Thank you for all your support, brother.

To the founders who have entrusted me: I have made it a personal goal to appear in the “thanks” section of each of your investor updates. Hold me to it!

If you or anyone you know is building for developers in web3, please have them reach out. I also have a long “request for startups” - if you are a web2 product manager or developer looking to take the leap into web3, I’d love to chat: ai at canonical.cc

LFG.