Matthew Graham is the CEO of Sino Global Capital , who are providing strategic investment to best-in-class companies that are moving the blockchain and digital assets ecosystems forward, and then help them to thrive in the Asia market. Matthew joins Pete Townsend on this episode originally recorded as part of the Techstars Web3 Convo Series of fireside chats powered by the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator program in Ireland .
In this episode, Matthew shares insights on his first priority to help companies *before* investing in high-conviction / high-quality projects, guiding founders into the unique yet massive markets of China and India, making his hobby his job, and what makes a great Web3 project.
This episode of MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by Philip Lee , one of Ireland’s fastest-growing corporate law firms and expert advisors at the heart of the Dublin and London start-up, fintech and crypto communities.
Skip to main content
HIGHLIGHTS: Matthew Graham on his entry point into crypto:
“I had been involved in crypto as a hobbyist pretty early and had first tried to integrate it into my professional life as early as 2013. But it was really that Ethereum ‘aha’ moment when I realized that this is now something so much bigger than just some cool technology with some dope people.
“Now this is actually a thousand or even 10,000 times bigger. The opportunity is something that could rival even what I had been a little too young to participate in with the 1990s in the United States when the internet revolution basically went ‘hockey stick’.
“So that was the ‘aha’ moment for me when I realized that I needed to drop everything and focus Sino on crypto, which we immediately did.”
Matthew Graham on the first crypto bull run in 2017-2018:
“2018 was amazing, but I hated 2017, it was my least favorite year because it was all kinds of bullsh*t and LARPers and projects that didn’t make sense.
“Everybody was way too excited and there was a lot of crap. I hated 2017, but 2018-2019 was amazing because it was serious people focusing on serious things who weren’t looking at the price every two seconds.
“That was an extraordinarily important and a very pivotal time because that was when we went from a few people here and there to a very serious entry of world-class people into the space, whether you’re the genius developer or coming from the institutional side.
“It’s extremely important to not say this in a way that can be misconstrued because the revolutionaries are actually the most important. The people that were early in the space, we owe a tremendous debt to them because *they* did this, not people that came later. It went from revolutionaries to cowboys and speculators [in 2017].
“But 2018 and 2019 were a special time because a different type of person started entering the space that was a little more institutional and a little more buttoned-down. I think this is quite healthy and it’s a necessary stage for crypto becoming the most significant technological wave of change since the internet.”
Matthew Graham on the value proposition of Sino Global Capital :
“What’s important to me as I build Sino: Number one, we need to have a unique value proposition, which I think we definitely have. When Sino is on the cap table, we have dedicated teams to service portfolio companies in both greater China and India.
“China and India are very famously two of the most important markets in crypto, but also two of the most impenetrable and idiosyncratic markets for even the very best blockchain companies in the world. We’re able to help in those two enormous markets in a very deep and hands-on way.
“Number two, increasingly there’s a signaling effect with having Sino on the cap table, which I think will continue to deepen over time where people know that we only invest in stuff that we love. If I feel lukewarm, we just don’t do it. I don’t even care if it will make money, we’re not going to do it. We only do things we love, and we do it in a very long-term and deep way.”
“We look for people like Sam [Bankman-Fried, FTX founder] , we look for people like Anatoly [Yakovenko, Solana co-founder] , we look for people like the Wintermute team , who are just studs.” Matthew Graham on what he looks for in Web3 projects: “It all starts with definitions and there are a lot of different definitions for Web3 that are floating around, but […]
source MoneyNeverSleeps: Matthew Graham | Sino Global Capital, Web3 and Making Your Hobby Your Job
Protected by Patchstack