"Funds Typically Treat Community as an Afterthought; That's Wrong:" Soona Amhaz

In this week’s episode, I speak with Soona Amhaz of Volt Capital. Soona saw the value of crypto from very close when her family lost most of their savings after Lebanon’s currency crashed. She immediately told them to move their money to Bitcoin to protect themselves against further currency devaluation and currency controls.

She was working on a startup as an engineer while trying to learn about bitcoin and onboard others into the space, and she realized there was very little information about crypto. So she decided to start the newsletter called Token Daily which quickly became one of the most popular news sources about Bitcoin and ICOs back in 2017. The newsletter went from being a network of information to a network of people thanks to live events.

That’s how she got to meet great teams building interesting projects in crypto and see their progress before anyone else did. When she saw big funds come in and invest in the projects she also knew had potential, she realized she had an edge and decided to start her own fund, Volt Capital.

She raised $10 million for the fund earlier this year, backed by CMT Digital, Balaji Srinivasan, and investors from Union Square Ventures and Founders Fund. Her focus is on pre-seed and seed investments. In this interview, she talks about her investment thesis, how she evaluates founders and what it’s like to be a VC in a crypto bull market. She says that while public crypto markets are cooling off, private equity markets are more insulated. She’s not sure whether the current environment is the start of a bear market or a dip in a longer bull market, but regardless, she says the builders will keep building and the tech will keep moving forward.

00:00 Intro
00:40 Background and how Soona got into the crypto space
05:20 Helping the family onboard to Bitcoin
08:03 How it helped them
09:01 Whether she’s introducing her family to DeFi and thoughts on its adoption in emerging economies
10:52 Founding TokenDaily
13:22 The forming of a community around the TokenDaily newsletter
17:03 How important was the mix of online/in-person events in this community?
18:37 How that evolved into starting Vault Capital
20:48 How the newsletter was wound down after the transition to Vault Capital
21:28 The restructuring of TokenDaily on relaunch
22:36 Balancing conflict-of-interest between the projects TokenDaily covers and the projects invested in by Vault Capital
23:38 Additional background on the starting of Vault Capital
24:05 The first investments of Vault Capital and the total composition by location
25:47 Valuation strategy used by Vault Capital (with examples)
28:58 The increasing interest of fintech firms in crypto
30:18 How Vault Capital assesses the founders of projects
34:13 A VCs perspective on the recent bull run (and all the capital being raised for projects)
37:03 The balance of implementing guardrails in a venture capital firm
37:48 Is the amount of capital being raised currently a sign of an overheated market?
39:19 Thoughts on where we are in the crypto market cycle
40:58 Primary cause of the correction?
41:45 How healthy is the market at the moment? (in terms of tech)
42:42 What's being built during this bull run/cycle? (from Vault Capitals vantage point)
44:51 Take on investing in Ethereum dapps mirroring on other chains?
46:24 What does a venture capital firm look like in a DAO future?
49:09 Outro

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