Published on September 11, 2025
Watch the full video of this panel discussion on Gamma Prime’s YouTube channel
Panel discussion with Constantin Kogan (CEO at TDX), Laura K. Inamedinova (Chief Global Ecosystem Officer at Gate), Viivek Mehata (Head of Marketing at NewTribe Capital), Mads Mathiesen (Research Partner at Maven 11 Capital), Luchang Zheng (Founding Partner at Arcanum Capital), and Heslin Kim (Venture, Growth Partner at Republic Crypto)
In this episode, a diverse panel of leading VCs shares insights on identifying successful Web3 projects and startups. The discussion covers key investment criteria such as the importance of the founding team, product-market fit, and the challenges around tokenomics. The panelists also highlight preferred sectors for future investments, including AI, defi, and infrastructure around stable coins. The discussion emphasizes efficiency, adaptability, and innovative design in both pitching to investors and building robust Web3 products. Practical tips on how startups should approach VCs are also provided to help founders make impactful connections.
Constantin (TDX)
All right, now we were given a green light to start this panel. We have the most diverse, the most international panel in the history of Web3, so we’re excited to share some of the findings. We’re trying to find the next Web3 unicorn, so we will begin with the simple findings of who are these incredible panelists.
30 seconds to present yourself. I’ll start really quickly. My name is Constantin Kogan. I’m a CEO of TDX and also a partner in TDBC.
Luchang (Arcanum Capital)
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Luchang, the founding partner of Arcanum Capital. We’re an early-stage VC backed by Tether and Team Draper.
Viivek (NewTribe Capital)
Hi, guys. So myself, Viivek Mehata. I am heading the marketing and deal flow and investments at New Tribe Capital. We are UAE’s second most active VC firm with around 250 plus projects in our portfolio, and we are pretty much sector agnostic.
Laura (Gate)
Hello, everyone. My name is Laura Kornelia Inamedinova, and I’m Chief Ecosystem Officer at Gate.io as well as Principal at Gate Ventures. Gate Ventures is the venture arm of Gate.io Exchange. We do early-stage projects anywhere C to precede, and we mostly focus on Infra, Stables, DeFi, and PayFi.
Mads (Maven 11 Capital)
Hey, I’m Maas, Rain and Coffee on Twitter. I’m a research partner at Maven 11. We’re based out of Amsterdam, and we’ve been investing since 2017.
Constantin
All right. We committed to make this fun, dynamic, like no BS. So let’s go right into it.
Let’s talk about the metrics. A lot of founders here, we know that the market is starting to rebound, and let’s discuss practically what are you looking for from the projects? What are the most important metrics or criteria? Let’s do top three for each person. You want to establish?
Luchang
So I think deep down inside, I really agree that the founder and the founding team are the most important criteria of the whole project. The founder’s caliber really defines the nature of the projects, and their quality defines the ceiling of the company.
So besides the quality of the founders, I think second, what we’re looking for is the product market fit. It’s usually like early-stage founders, they don’t know how to pivot, but when they see a signal, they try to grasp it. But deep down inside, you really need to find out what is your product market fit and what the users need the most.
Yeah. So those are the two criteria we’re looking for.
Viivek
Interesting. I pretty much agree with what you said, but apart from that, what we actually look into is the product market fit, like addressing the market, what is the time, what is the target audience, and what is the problem that the product is actually trying to solve. So we try to cut down the noise around.
A lot of the founders just want to ride the wave. Like when there was AI, they wanted to build an AI product. When it’s a deep end, they want to pivot around a deep end product.
So we don’t budge around those founders and look for more integrated founders and teams, as she mentioned. So that is one, definitely like, real problem-solving and a great solution that they’re catering to.
And the second is a long-term vision. So they better be building something in the longer run, in a particular vertical, and that is catering to a mass audience. So that would be two of our X factors, to be honest.
Laura
So Constantin, to answer your question, I think I need to take one step back and kind of educate some of the founders in the audience. What is a VC investment?
So as a VC, you’re investing in very, very risky assets, which are founders. Usually, you’re betting them only on the deal on a very, very early stage, and you’re expecting huge multipliers, because if you want to get 20%, 30% yearly APY, yield-bearing products, if you want to get 2X, 3X in a couple of years, there are a lot of hedge funds doing that.
So in the end, you’re coming to VCs, and you’re asking for them to give you money for basically what I call a high-risk loan, because you’re not betting your collateral, you’re betting your reputation.
Because if you raise capital and you fail, they’re not going to be deploying again, and all the VCs do due diligence on the founders, especially if they have a bad track record.
So you come in, and you ask for this high-yield, high-risk loan, and what do VCs care about? Only one thing. Will they make money? And it’s not going to be 10%, it’s not going to be 2X, they’re expecting 5 to 10X return. Is it possible? Not in this market? That’s a separate conversation we can have, but it’s high multipliers.
So every sentence, every word, every slide you put to VCs needs to answer this question: How are you going to take their money and multiply it? And that you can show in numerous ways, through your track record, through your tokenomics, through your go-to-market, advisors, and so on.
But in the end, the first metric we look at as a VC, will we make money on it? And if yes, then how are we going to do it?
Mads
It’s a pretty loaded question. I’d say it depends on the stage of the project. So if you’re looking at a pre-seed, seed company, metrics are pretty hard to come by. Often it’s just an idea, and then you fall back to the founder point, and that’s what you’re investing in.
If it’s a Series A company, you’re expecting some sort of product, some sort of metrics. If it’s DeFi, it’s TVL. How easy is it to monetise that TVL?
But I think it all comes down to the founder at the end of the day, and then also just original ideas. I think there’s a bunch of stuff that is just copy-pasta, and that’s not that interesting. It could be the 15th Aval fork on the 15th L1. Okay. Hard to get metrics there.
But I think it’s very dependent on what stage of the company you’re looking at.
Constantin
Brilliant. So I hope that was helpful for anyone who’s going to pitch afterwards. Now let’s talk about the tokenomics.
Laura
Who cares about the founders who are like, just give me the money.
Constantin
Yeah. We’re going to have 23 minutes left. We’re just going to make it clear for everyone.
Now let’s talk about the tokenomics. A lot of people try to bring the utility to the token. They spend hours modelling risk management, et cetera. By the way, I want to do a plug for my colleague, Rishabh, who developed the AI tool for that. By the way, this is work really hard on this. But still, we see in the industry there is a lack of expertise. Not many people understand market making, how to actually design long-term tokenomics because that’s their first project, and it’s almost like going public.
So what are the specific maybe red flags or things you’re looking when you’re looking at token utility and token metrics? You can go in different order if you prefer to, by the way.
Mads
Sure, I’ll go first. Just general tokenomics?
Constantin
Yeah, how do you analyse tokenomics? What’s your approach?
Mads
I mean, you have to also think about this from a legal perspective. I mean, you could just make a security, and that’s a great token. Revenue goes to the token, but there are a bunch of legal loopholes you have to go through.
So that’s one thing to look at. I also just think about how much you’re actually selling off the company. So you don’t want to be selling 45% before token generation. We’ve seen this happen over and over and over. I try to sell as little as possible.
Obviously, that’s hard. You want to raise money, and sometimes you have to raise at low valuation. But sell as little as possible. I think proper vesting schedules for both investors is very important. I also think, if you actually want to have a community involved, I think just doing public sales is quite smart at the moment. So Legion, Echo, and so on. Having most of the tokens sort of centralised in a couple of funds is not very smart.
Laura
I want to add a couple of things. First of all, probably 80% of token projects don’t need a token, especially if you’re a B2B. I would say 99% of B2B projects don’t need a token.
Founders use tokens for additional liquidity fundraising because they don’t need to give out equity or they just hear these stories in media. This guy has raised X amount of millions with a token. So instead of going traditional B2B fees and actually showing traction, showing market fit, I’m going to just launch a token and YOLO in a conference. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work.
Number three is you need to understand that everyone, investors, angels, your community, are going to dump your token, especially in this market where there is no liquidity. So if you launch and your token does at least a little bit well, they’re going to dump it straight away to get some sort of capital back because nothing is performing and they want to cash out some capital.
So then you need to plan your tokenomics in a way that whenever you have token unlocks, you’re going to have enough buy pressure from the community, usually thanks to whatever marketing strategy you’re doing to sustain it. Because otherwise, we’re going to have this really bad market as we’re seeing right now. Tokens launching, you see one, two green candles, usually done by market makers and then a lot of red candles.
Or projects delaying, delaying airdrops, even changing tokenomics down the line just not to get unlocks. And then, of course, everyone’s unhappy and there is a different conversation. So think, do you actually need a token? Probably not. And maybe you just build a great company that has a product, has users, is revenue and then profit positive company rather than go into all this journey of doing a token.
Because again, token holders and users are usually two very different audiences that you need to tackle. Have hassle, spend two years of your life and then you say like, well, yeah, we didn’t work out because the market is shit. No, you just shouldn’t have done it.
Constantin
By the way, maybe we’ll mix this question with another one. You mentioned that most of the projects don’t need tokens, which I think we probably could agree. There’s a lot of tokenomics done not right.
So maybe it’s better off if they were just equity and with token warrants as a possibility. So maybe you can also help us understand how you look at projects that are pure equity and the token is optional. So it’s not guaranteed. Would you still invest? Yes or no? And if yes, what are the criteria?
Viivek
I think it pretty much depends on the fund strategy as well. Like for a fund like us, we only invest in SAF models and very little, like only one or two percent of our investments would be into SAF models where we are investing in actual equity.
Because the thing with equity is most of the crypto projects, as you mentioned, they’re not here for the longer run. They are just here to ride the wave or else, we don’t want to associate ourselves with an equity project which you don’t know how it’s going to do later.
So with a token, you also have some sort of backing at least that you can back out later. So that’s one thing.
But adding to what she said, when it comes to tokenomics, few things at the prima facie that we look into is the primary structure of how they look, how they’re aiming to back their launch, how they’re aiming to go to market with this tokenomics.
There was this, I’ll just give you a quick example, there was this one project, of course, I won’t take the name, but the unlock of the team was way earlier than it was for the investor. So that clearly says that they wanted to dump the token and then that would leave investors empty-handed.
So we try to keep ourselves safe hands from such projects. So those are some of our red flags, to be honest. And yeah, so supply, tokenomics structure, and a good go-to-market strategy. That would be some of our X factors.
Luchang
Firstly, I totally agree with Laura that not all the projects need a token and also not token projects need airdrops.
Hey, Heslin! I haven’t seen her for a while. Yeah, we’re going to get to you later. So back to my topic.
For example, some of the portfolio invested, they are pure equity plays. One from New York called HiFi, one from Mexico called Radium. They are doing purely global transaction settlement.
So you can imagine those companies, they don’t need any token. They’re just playing the tube business. The transaction from China or Korea go to Mexico and Mexico settle with US dollars. Instead of dollars, they use stable coins. So they’re acting as a new bank.
So that kind of business is lucrative and even if they don’t IPO or get M&A, they can pay us by dividends. So we don’t need a token for that kind of institution or company.
But if you do need a token, you really need to design it intricately and well to hold the sell pressure and also make it desirable. Because if you want to have innovation in the token metric design, remember, innovation is not sexy if it doesn’t run with a real use case. If the users are going to dump it or if they sell the token, they’re still going to use your product, which means your product is good and your company can survive at that level.
Constantin
You join us in a fun time when we’re about to talk about the red flags, right? So this is, what is the most fun red flag recently that you discovered in a project?
Heslin
Okay, jumping right in. I think it’s interesting based on what Lucia said about tokenomics in general. I would say in current market conditions that a red flag that just stands out immediately is not understanding how your tokenomics are going to impact a listing strategy.
So typically, if I’m doing any kind of venture bets or due diligence and analysis on a project, if we’re going to be putting a check in, understanding that there is an exit path to liquidity for the investors, for any angels that are coming in, the VCs, how are you going to sustain this sell pressure long-term?
If you don’t have an open strategy for existing liquidity in the open markets, if you don’t have significant vesting schedules or any way to dampen the impact of liquidity, if you’ve done rampant airdrops or point farming campaigns and don’t understand what the actual impact of that is on the open market itself versus just trying to generate massive social side bots, blowing out your Twitter, getting a lot of users in your Telegram and Discord.
These are very surface-level metrics, but most projects typically start with this without understanding the implications of what that means to have those users have tokens, what kind of sell pressure that’s going to lead to. And this all revolves around tokenomics.
And as a red flag, I feel like the majority of projects in the space right now don’t understand the dynamic of what you’re doing when you’re trying to aggregate a community, when you’re trying to aggregate a user base, and what actually that leads to in the end in a listing environment.
So, you know, sourcing and hunting deals, I think it’s incredibly important to look for founders who understand the implications of onboarding a community, onboarding customers, onboarding retail, what it means for the trading of your token. And, you know, tokens are not equity models. We don’t trade on P-E ratios. We don’t trade on cash flow.
So there has to be a strong understanding of, yes, I have a product. Yes, I have tech. Yes, I have users. Maybe I’m generating fees and revenue. But is that really going to lead to a multi-hundred million dollar token without the right metrics and sustainable approach to a listing strategy and the subsequent sell pressure that you’re going to entail.
So typically, projects don’t think about that or they’ve got very surface-level understanding of how that works in practice. That is a major red flag to me, to invest without hearing the overall tokenomics strategy and listing approach to what is the post-listing environment for a two to three year post-listing window when all the investors are going to be unlocking over that period of time.
And also, do you understand the dynamics between where we are in a current bull market cycle, the liquidity that’s available to you at the moment versus in a bear market condition when you’re getting unlocks and you’re going to be driving down the price even more with subsequent unlocks that you’re getting on a monthly basis, on a linear basis, etc.
So, tokenomics in general, I think, are a rampant part of red flag calling out. And, yeah. I hope I jumped in quickly.
Constantin
You’ve just destroyed most of the tokenomics.
Mads
I’m just going to tack on to that.
Constantin
I think… You have 30 seconds, Mads.
Mads
Okay, yeah. I’ll be quick. Red flag is thinking the token is the product. I think the greatest investments we’ve ever done, the token was never in discussion until way later. I think focus on the product first and then you can sort of shoehorn the token in if you even need one. I think talking about tokens constantly, especially if you’re pitching to a VC, obviously depends on what kind of VC you’re pitching, but at least for us, that’s a major red flag.
I would not focus on the token at all. It’s not important. At least not for now.
Constantin
Yeah. Just my two cents, I 100% agree because at the end of the day, it’s financial engineering. It’s a very nuanced skill set that most of the founders who are coming from product or development background, they just don’t have.
So it’s good to have your partners, whether it’s VCs or advisors, who can help you build the models, risk management, and build it up separately.
Now, we have 11 minutes left, so let’s do the blitz, right? Let’s talk about the positive aspects of VCs because we always talk about doom and boom, that everything is bad, like red flags.
Let’s talk about what are you bullish at? Let’s imagine you’re in a closed room, and you’re talking to friends. There’s no one here.
So essentially, the two trends or verticals that you are personally very bullish, like that you would invest, like you think this is the future and this is what’s going to bring the next trillions of liquidity or that’s going to practically change the world through Web3 innovation.
Viivek
Probably a tough question for everyone, I think. But, yeah. So I think I’ll answer it in a very generic way.
So we look at, as I mentioned, there’s a problem, then there’s a solution. We look at it that at what scale can this solution be solved? So like, if you see, previously we had computers, then we had laptops, then we got to mobile phones, and probably now AI took over.
We have AI devices. So, you can see where this is heading. AI could be an answer to that, but at the same time, like a real AI, not like random AI agents that people are talking at the sake of conversational AI agents or just like text creators, not them.
But real problem-solving AI agents, that is one. Then, actually, the basis layer of, or infra layer for stablecoin and payment solutions. So that is something that we believe will be the next thing that will go big because the way finance is transforming today, we move from DeFi to 2.0 today and probably heading to another 3.0 in the coming times.
So, I think DeFi is going to go big. So, that would be the stablecoin infra or in general, the payment stable.
Constantin
So AI and DeFi. Okay.
Luchang
Well, I think instead of picking these specific verticals, I’m going to say my prediction for the general trend. There are two of them. One is that I think all of us, VCs, love to back products or projects which are already generating revenue.
So, if you can self-sustain, not burning VC money at the beginning, we’ll be very pleased to support you, to help you grow faster. And the second is that, according to Darwin’s theory of evolution, we love to back the founders who know when and how to pivot.
You know, because the evolution theory is like, species change over hundreds of years and adapt to the environment, but in crypto, in the Web3 world, the adaptation maybe happens in weeks and months. So, how can you identify the opportunity and real product-market fit and really pivot and be flexible and move fast?
That’s a quality we’re looking into, and those are the kind of entrepreneurs we’re trying to write a check with, if they really know how to cope with the tight and evolute and change and pivot and then lead the trend.
Constantin
Great point. Revenue is the king.
Laura
Up to a couple of months ago, we saw a huge correlation between stablecoins and money flowing into Bitcoin, all the other assets. Whereas now, stablecoin usage is increasing, even if there is a lot of outflows.
Our analysts are predicting that stablecoin usage is going to grow and grow and grow. So, we are very bullish on products whose success is directly tied to the increase of stablecoins. That could be other products, payments, it could be either in DeFi.
So, anything around stablecoins—not stablecoins themselves, not the issuance of stablecoins, but platforms around it—is the number one thing we’re looking into right now. And if you’re building anything in that space, just please grab me because this is what I’m mostly looking into.
Mads
I’ll give an example of something I spent a lot of time on last year, end of last year. Specifically, what I called opinionated application, with a bare article on this in December. And it’s the idea that you can utilize underlying infrastructure to build better applications.
I think the best example of this is HyperLiquid. HyperLiquid prioritizes cancel orders and post market maker orders, which makes it a little bit easier for market makers to market-make efficiently, which means you have better prices for the end user.
So that’s something I’m very excited about. It does take a very good team to utilize underlying infrastructure to build something new. And I’m still excited about DeFi. I use DeFi every day, and I think it’s one of the clearest PMFs of crypto: decentralized finance.
Heslin
I’ve got three. I think it’s all picks and shovels, infrastructure-related. So, anything revolving around improving UI/UX on Bitcoin infrastructure, wallets like David Marcus’ LightSpark, things like this, I think are incredibly useful. As we move into a space where more institutions are obviously putting this on their balance sheet, there needs to be more sophisticated tooling in that regard.
The second would be revolving around permission-based systems. We saw legacy tech around this, things like Hyperledger Besu and R3 Corda, but I think migrating into a current enterprise stance of management tooling, things along the lines of Fireblocks across the entire gambit of token projects in general, will be much more needed across the space.
Thirdly, I think robotics is going to be an interesting sector over the next four to eight years, one to two cycles, based on the convergence of multi-discipline narratives with AI, Deepin, and RWA. I think it brings about a really interesting space to explore for Web3 and participation on that side as well.
Constantin
Beautiful. We have an incredibly efficient panel, which I love. Maybe we even have some time to say how people can contact you. What’s the most efficient way? Here, obviously, they can come up after the panel and talk to you, but after.
Laura
Can I teach the founders how to approach VCs in the most effective way? First of all, never DM them. Ask for the introduction. You definitely know someone in the space who can do the introduction. That’s going to go much further than just sending a cold DM.
When you approach someone, five sentences: Maxim. Hey, I’m building this. This is why it’s relevant. Fact about the team or about the product, why it’s incredible, and what’s the competitive edge. What is the ask? That means evaluation of how much you’re raising, and who is on your cap table, whether investors or angels.
Please don’t come to any VCs and start telling a five- or ten-minute story of whatever you’re building. No, five sentences. And then, if it’s interesting, the VC will ask you for your details. Send them the blurb afterwards. That’s it.
It’s very efficient. It lets you connect with more VCs, and you’re not wasting VC time, especially when they’re trying to be polite and listening for 10–15 minutes knowing it’s probably not a fit. And it’s okay if it’s not a fit. Build that relationship on efficiency because maybe it’s not a fit for me, but maybe Constantine can invest, or a NewTribe Capital can invest, and I can refer it to them. Be very efficient and save your time first, because here, you have probably 20–30 VCs, and you want to talk with everyone, so don’t cannibalize one VC’s time.4
Viivek
I generally suggest founders a very similar, but 300-character approach. The 300-character approach is basically: if you cannot summarize your pitch in 300 characters, you can’t pitch. It’s very straightforward.
You have to start off with a one-liner: who you are, what you are building, the problem you are solving, and then you can summarize stage-by-stage: someone on your cap table, any backers, or something like that. That is very straightforward. LinkedIn is an official way to approach, but warm introductions work best, more than a cold DM.
Yeah, warm DM, like coming through a friend—there’s more than an 80% chance that you’ll hear back from any of us, and I think all of us agree to that.
Luchang
Yeah, just chime in real quick. Don’t stack buzzwords without clarity. That’s a pain for us on the call when we’re reading the deck, because we want to know who is using your product and why they are using it. Just indicate that with full clarity, and also articulate your vision.
I mentioned flexibility, adoption, and moving fast, but move fast and pivot without losing your vision. That’s also important.
Mads
Yeah, I have a little bit of a different view. For me at least, I’m more on the research side, but I do invest as well. I think talk about what excites you. I prefer somebody coming up to me and talking about something we both have in common, which is crypto. It could be a specific infrastructure thing we’re both excited about, ordering of transactions in a block, for example.
That usually turns into a friendship, and then that can turn into a pitch. I think the best way to approach people is naturally. If you just come up to me and say, I’m building blah, blah, blah, I’m raising this, for me that’s a lot. I prefer a natural conversation about something that excites you, and I think that’s a better start to a relationship.
Heslin
From my side, I prefer immediate conversations with some kind of POC or MVP in hand already. Everyone’s got an idea; there are millions of ideas out there. If you haven’t put enough faith into what you believe in to execute and build a product in advance to show me what you have conviction about raising funds for, then I’m not interested in hearing about the millionth idea for how to spend something out.
Having a tangible product, or at least some mock-ups, is very important from just an early stage, beginning the conversation, to get the ball rolling and then directionally where we can help, pointing you towards the best go-to-market, etc.
Constantin
Beautiful. I think it’s very easy. We’re going to even conclude earlier to be the most efficient panel ever, and if you feel that you’re a Web3 unicorn, you can just come up and use all this valuable advice that you’ve just been given and apply it on the spot.
So give a round of applause to these amazing VCs. Thank you so much for your attention.
