Collective Campus, Australian innovation consultancy and startup accelerator, is spinning off Metarise – a $10m web3 venture fund and community-owned web3 startup accelerator.
What is the global web3 landscape like?
Only 0.1% (30,000) of the 30 million software developers across the globe are active in web3, with similar patterns across design and marketing professionals. This has prompted various web3 networks and protocols to announce over US$9 billion worth of ecosystem development funds in the 12 months to May 2022, including Avalanche ($200 million), Harmony ($300 million), Algorand ($500 million), and TRON’s $1,111,111 ecosystem fund.
But the team behind METARISE thinks that the problem goes beyond capital to identifying, recruiting, educating, and on-ramping talent into the burgeoning space. And with web3 tipped to grow at mid-double digit CAGR through to 2030 and become a multi-trillion dollar industry, co-founder Steve Glaveski sees this as an opportunity worth investing in. Earlier this year, Aussie VCs King River Capital and AirTree Ventures both announced $50 million web3 funds.
He says that METARISE’s unique community-owned model differentiates it from other accelerator programs. “ Each of our accelerator stakeholders will be rewarded with a native token that gives them a share in our accelerator profits, including exposure to the tokens of every single startup we incubate. This aligns incentives between all of our stakeholders – community, coaches, mentors, advisors, startups, investors – and our mission.”
“Our investments will be vetted graduates of our programs that are solving specific problems or adding specific value to networks and protocols with large and growing user bases.”
What is Collective Campus’ market reach?
While the fund is geographically agnostic, it is paying special attention to emerging markets and Asia-Pacific. “Fourteen of the top 20 countries, by way of crypto-adoption per capita, are in emerging markets, with six of them in Asia. Many of these markets have been plagued by unstable local currencies, and challenging political realities, setting the foundation for both crypto-adoption, and subsequently, web3 use cases and applications to thrive,” said Glaveski.
METARISE has already attracted a number of high-profile web3 advisors such as Jennifer Tran of MintGate, Ada Jo of Lympo (acquired by Animoca Brands), and Jin Kang of prominent investment DAO GlobalCoinResearch, and has mentors and coaches on board from globally renown brands such as Coinbase, Dapper Labs, Animoca Brands, and The Sandbox.
Since 2017, Collective Campus has incubated and mentored 90 startups that have gone on to raise a combined $185m and has run over 200 workshops on early-stage innovation for over 150 firms and 10,000 people, so it has the networks, skills, and experience to execute.
Earlier this year, Collective Campus helped ASX-listed Creso Pharma navigate its way into the metaverse. ‘CC’ has been the recipient of several Department of Infrastructure Entrepreneur Programme grants to support the development of Australia’s startup ecosystem.
“We are still early. There are only 30 million users with a non-custodial Metamask wallet tapping into the power of web3. But just 12 months ago there were less than 10 million, and 12 months prior to that there were just 500,000. This is a new and rapidly evolving frontier, and we aim to give investors and our community exposure to a diversified pool of web3 startups working to make a transformative and positive difference”, said Glaveski.
The METARISE fund will be open to investors, and is now accepting expressions of interest.
