Jesse Walden

Jesse Walden is the founder and managing partner of Variant, an early stage crypto venture firm built around the "ownership economy" thesis of backing networks owned and operated by their users. At Variant he led investments in Uniswap, Phantom, World, and others. Before Variant he was an investment partner on the first crypto fund at Andreessen Horowitz, where he later led the a16z Crypto Startup School accelerator. Earlier in his career he founded Mediachain Labs, a blockchain protocol for tracking ownership of digital media, which was acquired by Spotify in 2017, and before that he ran Cool Managers, an artist management firm that helped acts like Solange and Blood Orange reach fans directly. He is also widely cited for popularizing the idea of "progressive decentralization," a playbook for how crypto founders can hand control of their projects to communities over time.

11 talks by Jesse Walden