Show Notes
Welcome to SustainaDAO Non-fungible Talk, hosted today by Lin Ning. Our guest on today’s episode is Yida Gao, Managing General Partner of Shima Capital. Founded in 2021, Shima Capital is based in California and is an early-stage VC firm investing in disruptive crypto and blockchain technology companies.
Shima Capital is backed by Dragonfly Capital, Digital Currency Group, Tiger Global, Bill Ackman and other strategics (e.g. Huobi, ByBit, OKex, Animoca, Republic). On August 17th, Shima just announced a $200M raise as their Fund I backed up crypto heavyweights Dragonfly and Animoca.
Yida Gao formerly co-ran Struck Capital, an early-stage industry agnostic venture fund, and also DDC (Divergence Digital Currency), a multi-strategy crypto fund. Prior to that, Yida served as a technology investor at New Enterprise Associates, a $25Bn+ venture capital fund, and as an M&A investment banker at Morgan Stanley. He graduated from MIT with degrees in mathematics and computer science and dropped out of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business to pursue crypto investing full-time in 2017. Yida also teaches a Crypto Finance course at MIT.
In today’s episode, you’ll hear how Shima is a generalist fund distributing its capital in multiple verticals, some of the investments Yida is most proud of, his opinions on which sectors can most benefit from blockchain, how blockchain can open up transparency and destruct the oligarchies monopolizing carbon credits, and his advice for Web3 builders and founders in this bear market.
The SustainaDAO Non-fungible Talk podcast covers all things DAO and Web3 from the team at SustainaDAO. In each episode, we’ll discuss a wide range of topics around blockchain technology and sustainability. You’ll hear about the most current advances in the metaverse, crypto, DAO, and how we can create sustainable value in the blockchain world. SustainaDAO is a decentralized protocol that promotes social and environmental balance with blockchain technology. Each week, we will interview entrepreneurs and educators from top universities to decode the blockchain market trends. This show is for builders, social innovators, and sustainability enthusiasts, and anyone who is curious about Web3 technologies.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- Yida’s background and his path to Shima Capital
- The wave of new crypto funds - driven by mass adoption of NFTs by users, new liquidity, and hype
- Key investment areas for Shima - as a generalist fund, they spread investments across many areas including infrastructure, social, gaming, DAOs
- Finding value investments in the Web3 wave - backing the right founders who can move at hyper speed with the best business models
- Shima’s astonishing $200M raise - investing in talent, tech support, and differentiating from other early-stage investors
- Investments Yida is most proud of - Magna.so for token table management, and TRIPS for monetizing copyright materials
- Industries that will most benefit from blockchain - looking toward more functional NFT - instant payments, stable coin for over 90 other global currencies besides the US dollar.
- In this bear market, Shima’s strategy – focusing on health checks across the investment portfolio, survival is key, and innovation/finding talent
- Advice for Web3 entrepreneurs during the bear market - good time with less noise, time to find talent, but harder to raise capital
- Advantages of Web3/blockchain technologies in addressing sustainability issues – improving access to carbon credits that are currently controlled by only 2 or 3 players, OFP (Open Forest Protocol)
Full transcript:
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