Blockchain investment insights, Connor Cantwell, Dublin, Wednesday 5th February

Interesting interview with Connor Cantwell who will be speaking at AKASHA Innovation Hub and SORS Digital Assetseventm with a panel discussion on Wednesday 5th February covering the topic of Tokenisation in Ireland. Get tickets here.

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

We have just come out of a period of heavy operational support and engagement on a couple of the projects we invested in during 2018/2019, both here in Ireland and particularly in the US. That now opens up capacity and scope to look at some new investments in 2020 and hopefully, some interesting new companies and people.

COSIMO Ventures invests in early stage deep tech companies so we focus on areas such as Distributed Ledger Technology based initiatives, AI/ML, AR, IoT and CyberSecurity. In practice, many projects see convergence across these technologies to drive disruptive solutions. We take a very hands on approach with the companies we work with and our US team are very active helping many of them scale into the US and beyond.

We stepped up our deal sourcing activity in the last quarter of 2019 and are progressing conversations on some potential new investments. The quality of companies we see continues to impress.

In parallel, we also re-opened the gates to take additional investment into COSIMO X – our tokenised venture fund. It is an evergreen fund and gives investors great flexibility to participate in the venture capital market. While we get traditional investors who write big cheques for venture capital investment, we also have a global spread of smaller investors. This has been one of the benefits of tokenising, as smaller investors can get into COSIMO X for a minimum of $10k (outside the US) and given that the tokens can be traded, they are liquid.

We are one of the first VC’s globally to give people who never had access to the venture capital asset class, the opportunity to invest through COSIMO X.

How was the last year, what worked well, what didn’t move as quickly as you would have liked?

We had our sleeves rolled up in 2019 and were very active in the digital asset world through our investment in Oneiro. They launched ndau in 2019 and it has done particularly well, with market cap now sitting over $80m. It is a buoyant digital currency and we were attracted to the business and the product as it addressed the shortcomings faced by many cryptocurrency projects – namely price volatility, governance, liquidity and security.

We also actively supported the launch into the US museum, gallery and visitor attractions of an AR product built in Wicklow. While Lingar was built with the US market front and centre, reaction was beyond expectation and it is now being rolled out in Ireland and the UK.
These projects are progressing well – like any innovative projects, they typically take longer and cost more than the best laid plans.

What are your plans for the future?

The partners in COSIMO Ventures are all entrepreneurs, with the track record to back it up. The business has iterated constantly since we were formed 5 years ago. The COSIMO X fund provides considerable scope and flexibility over the next couple of years to accelerate our focus on the deep tech area and blockchain related projects in particular. We plan to increase the breadth of our investor base from a geographical sense and dramatically expand the number of smaller investors involved in COSIMO X.

What will you be talking about at this event? 

Looking forward to sharing our experiences around investing in and supporting enterprise blockchain projects, the ndau digital asset journey and tokenising our venture fund. All of this has evolved in an ever-changing landscape with fluid rules of engagement. See more about the event here.

What inspired you to attend it?

It sometimes feels that it is hard to wrap your arms around the blockchain opportunity because of the pace of change. We attend blockchain related conferences and events on a continuous basis. The area is developing at an incredible pace and it is great to engage with the people shaping the industry and the next wave of technology evolution.

Which influencers and websites do you follow to keep up to date with the latest developments?

How can people find out more about what you are working on?
Drop us a line through www.cosimoventures.com

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