By Pete Townsend, Managing Director of the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator

We’re thrilled to announce that John Wu, President of Ava Labs is joining the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator as a mentor.  Kicking off in April 2022 in Dublin, Ireland, the Launchpool Web3 Techstars accelerator is working with entrepreneurs building blockchain technology and tokenisation protocols driving towards our decentralised future.

John Wu is President of Ava Labs, an Andreessen Horowitz backed technology company building the next-generation blockchain platform: Avalanche. John’s objective is to open up financial services and products to all. In this role, he leverages his expertise from over 20 years as a fintech executive and technology investor to create a blockchain-enabled solution for originating, issuing, and trading financial assets.  

John was previously CEO of the SharesPost Digital Assets Group, enabling compliant token trading of private shares and funds. Prior to that, he was a technology investor and the founder of Sureview Capital, a global hedge fund backed by the Blackstone Group. 

John began his investment career at Tiger Management, a preeminent hedge fund with $20 billion in assets under management at its peak, before managing a global technology portfolio at Kingdon Capital.  

On October 26th, we had a fireside chat on Crowdcast with John as part of the Techstars Web3 Convo Series bringing the mind of the mentor to the masses so the global Web3 founder community can benefit from the insights of some of the leading minds in the Web3 space.  During this chat (also available as an episode of the MoneyNeverSleeps podcast), John shared his insights on what investors are looking for in the Web3 space:

“The experience is becoming more and more important in this space. Three or four years ago, you could get away with just being a great crypto-native coder and throw something out there, give it a shot, and see if it sticks. “But now, the bar is being raised, and you can’t just do that anymore. Say you’re super smart and you’re young, but you have no business experience or domain expertise, but I have another team that has your talent, and they have business experience and domain expertise. If you're a venture capitalist in the traditional Silicon Valley sense, you're looking at the latter, not the former.”

Thank you to John for volunteering his time to take part in this program, and given the depth of his knowledge, network, and experience in the Web3 space, we know that he's going to be incredibly helpful as a mentor to the founding teams that become part of the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator program.

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