YC’s Summer ‘22 B2B Crypto Investments
Recently, Y-Combinator (YC) announced the thirty crypto-focused teams in its Summer 2022 batch. The startup incubator is a place where young companies can go to get help growing their business by providing things like office space, mentorship, and access to investors. When a startup is accepted into YC, they receive a $500,000 investment from the incubator.
YC has been around since 2005 and has funded more than 3,500 startups. It is noteworthy to mention that 13% of the company’s Summer ‘22 cohort are crypto start-ups; a large leap from the 6% in the Winter ‘22 cohort.
The Crypto Chemistry team is planning a series of blog posts to highlight all thirty of these companies as organized by sub-sectors, starting with those tagged by YC as having a B2B focus.
Many venture capitalists prefer to invest in business-to-business (B2B) startups for a number of reasons, including:
B2B startups often have an easier time generating revenue, and are therefore sometimes perceived as less risky than consumer companies because they can target other businesses as their primary customers.
B2B startups usually have a longer runway before they need to start generating profits.
B2B startups often have a more predictable revenue stream.
B2B startups typically have an easier time raising follow-on funding from other investors.
Now let’s dig in to these young B2B-focused startups, beginning with MetaFi.
Metafi
Founded: 2022
Team Size: 2
Location: San Francisco, CA
Supported Chains: Ethereum
Tags: NFT; Gaming; SaaS; B2B
Metafi is building blockchain infrastructure for Web3 gaming.
Metafi allows game developers to: A) integrate an embedded wallet within their game, B) broadcast transactions across multiple blockchains, and C) listen to on-chain events that may or may not have an affect on game state; all within Metafi’s customer SDK.
Metafi sees a current issue with the Web3 gaming landscape that pushes players to new windows to approve in-game transactions. The company plans to circumvent this commonplace redundancy by allowing a powerful and embedded Web3 wallet directly into the game, allowing near seamless transactions at improved speeds compared to present industry standards.
Excheqr
Founded: 2022
Team Size: 2
Location: San Francisco, CA
Supported Chains: Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Near, Bitcoin, Cosmos Hub
Tags: DeFi; DAO; B2B; SaaS
Excheqr is building a singular secure platform to manage digital assets across chains.
Excheqr is available for: Web3 teams and DAOS (for corporate treasuries), Institutions and Enterprises (to help manage digital access and to access DeFi safely), and Individuals (to help secure high value digital assets).
Some areas of emphasis for Excheqr’s research arm include: secure wallet operations and recovery, quantifying smart contract risks, decentralized Web3 identity management, and much more. Check out their website for more in-depth analysis on Excheqr development.
EthosX
Founded: 2022
Team Size: 2
Location: Bengaluru, India
Supported Chains: Bitcoin, Ethereum
Tags: DeFi; B2B; Consumer
EthosX is a decentralized finance platform creating end-to-end financial derivatives on blockchains.
The company’s options infrastructure enables on-chain options trading. By keeping everything completely on-chain end-to-end, the company’s trading infrastructure eliminates counterparty and settlement risks.
The company targets both consumer and B2B users. On the consumer side, it will focus on sophisticated retail traders, whereas its B2B focus is on other crypto companies who want to use EthosX’s options infrastructure to trade high-value positions.
Immuna
Founded: 2022
Team Size: 3
Location: San Francisco
Supported Chains: Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Harmony
Tags: Security; DeFi; B2B; SaaS; Artificial Intelligence
The Immuna platform helps people who invest in cryptocurrencies manage the risks of their investments.
The platform does this by monitoring for potential problems (such as on-chain exploits, or undesirable economic situations) and by subsequently taking action to protect the investments, if needed. For example, if there is an unexpected event that could negatively affect the investment value, Immuna could automatically sell that position on behalf of the investor to try to minimize the loss. Other examples could include exiting vulnerable positions from liquidity pools, transferring digital assets to prevent draining, etc.
Derisk
Founded: 2022
Team Size: 2
Location: Seattle
Supported Chains: Ethereum, Solana
Tags: Security; B2B
Derisk provides a key management toolkit to help businesses keep their digital assets safe. The company’s products use MPC cryptography to make sure that only authorized people can access their high-value private keys.
According to the company’s launch announcement, the co-founders met at Facebook where they built the MPC custody for Facebook’s now-defunct Novi/Libra wallet. The team cites two tailwinds that it expects will drive demand for their product. First, money transmitter licenses are likely to be increasingly required for web3 businesses who custody user keys. Second, an increase in “not your keys, not your crypto” user philosophy will likely shift market focus toward custodian security.
Conclusion
The Crypto Chemistry team loves to see more early crypto start-ups raising funds to progress and advance their ideas. We believe the next blockchain unicorns are being formed right now, and we’re going to be here every week to find them.
Our team will continue to cover noteworthy fundraise announcements on our Daybreak Crypto podcast, as well as our newsletter, Chem’s Blend. If you enjoyed this blog post, please consider subscribing to stay up to date!