Hybrid Capital

When Starta Accelerator took the bold step of hosting its own ICO in July of 2017, it was the first accelerator to "tokenize" part of its portfolio and raise funds through a crypto token sale. After four of its portfolio companies learned from the experience and launched their own ICOs - raising over $22 million - Starta's Partners Alexey Girin and Ekaterina (Katya) Dorozhkina realized that they were standing on the cutting edge of a trend which would radically reshape venture capital altogether. 2017 was simply the beginning of a movement which was only in its nascent stages. ICO funding was having something of a "Wild West" moment, with one week having a thousand more currencies than the last and governments scrambling to regulate. While ICOs had previously been limited to blockchain infrastructure, tech founders completely unrelated to the community were seeking out ICOs as a method to avoid traditional VC models which cost them valuable equity. They were also bringing in anyone with a pulse to invest - something which caught the ire of the SEC and other global regulatory bodies. What these companies were lacking was a structure which would make them just as acceptable and palatable as traditional venture capital. They needed the streamlined process of "blockchainization" which Starta Ventrues founders had envisioned as they used their ICO insights to build Token Rockets program. Token Rockets, under the same Starta Ventures umbrella of companies as their pioneering Accelerator, would intake promising startups and help them develop their whitepapers, coins, and legal framework needed for an ICO. Indeed, if ICOs were going to the future of venture capital, someone had to take a step forward and do something. Nonetheless, Token Rockets itself cannot restructure the ICO funding ecosystem all by itself, and that is where their new market report and e-book comes into play. This short read lays out months of research and experience into easily digestible chapters which can enable any VC fund or individual investor to establish a process of more sustainable startup ICOs which can carry us forward through the next decade of sea changes in the venture ecosystem.