Title: General partner, Initialized Capital
City: San Francisco
Notable crypto investments: Bison Trails, CoinTracker, Horizon, Talos, TRM Labs, Hummingbot, DeFi Alliance
As a self-taught coder, engineer, and four-time founder, Brett Gibson became a VC by accident. In 2017 he was looking for a job and “mentioned it to Garry, and he asked me to join,” he said, referring to Garry Tan, the successful cofounder and managing partner of Initialized who also has a background as a software engineer.
At first, Gibson used his technical skills to build the firm’s database software to track potential investments, log portfolio company updates, and facilitate voting on new investments.
He was also responsible for reading the technical documents the firm received from crypto-token projects and pitches. “Once I got deep into the space and fully down the crypto rabbit hole, it became clear to me it was where I wanted to spend my time,” he said.
Now as an early-stage investor, he looks for founders who can dive deep into the technical parts of their startup. “I like founders who are kind of obsessed with what they’re working on,” he said, “but are also very intellectually honest and clear-eyed about what they know, don’t know.”
