RW3 Ventures (an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the blockchain industry) announced the successful closing of RW3 Ventures Fund I LP, with $60 million in capital commitments. This Fund received significant support from The Raptor Group and Mubadala Capital, the wholly-owned asset management subsidiary of Mubadala Investment Company, a leading global sovereign investor headquartered in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Launched in 2021 in partnership with The Raptor Group (the family office of Jim Pallotta), RW3 Ventures supports early-stage companies building disruptive blockchain infrastructure and decentralized applications and protocols. The firm also takes a collaborative and hands-on approach to help founders in Web3 grow and scale their platforms. Along with deploying capital, RW3 Ventures is uniquely positioned to help startups hire talent, build communities, and enhance their technical research and development capabilities.
The RW3 team boasts a significant level of operating and investing experience at some of the largest digital asset firms and financial institutions, and featires an extensive network of relationships throughout the blockchain ecosystem. The team is led by:
- Pete Najarian, Founder and Managing Partner – Pete previously served as the Chief Revenue Officer of BitGo from 2019 to 2021, where he helped lead the company through its most dramatic period of growthBefore that, he served as a Senior Vice President- Institutions at Xapo, which was acquired by Coinbase in 2019. Pete also brings considerable traditional markets experience having served as global co-head of the emerging markets businesses for two of the world’s largest financial institutions.
- Joe Bruzzesi, Partner – Joe previously served as a Managing Director at BitGo from 2020 to 2022, where he oversaw the Americas division and led over $10 billion in transactions involving some of the largest crypto protocols, companies, and funds. Joe is also one of the earliest advisors to Avalanche.
Fund I seeks to capitalize on RW3’s institutional approach, extensive network of blockchain ecosystem relationships, and differentiated operating model to bring major growth to its portfolio companies. And the Fund targets opportunities from pre-seed through Series A and places an emphasis on teams that seek to utilize blockchain technology to disrupt real-world industries and business models with sizeable addressable markets. To date, the Fund has made several investments across blockchain protocols, decentralized infrastructure, fully homomorphic encryption, and gaming.
KEY QUOTES:
“Blockchain technology is fundamentally changing the way the world transacts and manages value, services, and data. While there are many talented founders in the industry with revolutionary ideas, most are in need of operational experience and support to drive their businesses forward. At RW3 we leverage our experience developing and scaling some of the largest crypto infrastructure firms to help our portfolio companies around the world meet their full potential. The combined networks of RW3 and Raptor are already proving to be unique and powerful in this space.”
- Pete Najarian, Founder and Managing Partner of RW3
“Pete and Joe’s disciplined, methodical, and institutional approach to the digital asset markets is based on their years of experience helping companies scale in growth markets and manage risk through volatility. Blockchain companies have the potential to be among the most valuable enterprises in the future, and we believe the best investment opportunities will present themselves over the next 36 months. I believe the RW3 team is exceptionally well-positioned to identify the most promising companies of tomorrow and help them grow.”
- Jim Pallotta
