Investing for the Long Haul
Three years ago, we announced that Spencer Applebaum and Shayon Sengupta had been promoted to Investment Partner. At the time, we noted that both had already become core members of our investment team through their work sourcing and winning competitive deals, identifying new opportunities across the crypto ecosystem, and supporting our founders.
Today, we’re excited to share the next chapter in that journey. I’m proud to announce that Spencer and Shayon have been promoted to General Partner and Co-Heads of Venture at Multicoin Capital.
Over the past several years, both have taken on significantly more responsibility across every dimension of our business. They’ve not only continued to identify, source, and lead deals at an increasing rate, but have also increasingly taken on more ownership of the strategy, operations, and long-term direction of Multicoin.
Growth From Within
Spencer and Shayon have both been with us since the early years of the firm—over eight and five years, respectively. Since then, they’ve had an outsized influence on how we invest and have been instrumental in several of our most important investments (e.g., Dune, Drift, Fuse, fun.xyz, Geodnet, Helium, Hyperliquid, Jito, Kamino, LI.FI, Render, Sei, Solana, etc.). They have also built deep relationships across the crypto ecosystem and have helped refine our mental models and investment frameworks as the industry has evolved.
Over time, their roles have expanded beyond just making investments. Increasingly, they have become more public, representing the firm outwardly at our own summit and others. They both are prolific writers and speakers. Alongside me, they were the primary authors of our updated firm thesis. Over the years they have taken greater ownership of the firm, in areas like portfolio construction, internal processes, and the ways we partner with founders at the earliest stages of company building.
This promotion reflects the reality that Spencer and Shayon have already been operating at the GP level for some time, and they will continue to help drive thesis formation and portfolio strategy across all funds. We’re proud to make it official.
Crypto is one of the most dynamic and rapidly evolving industries in the world. As the ecosystem expands into areas like decentralized finance, decentralized physical infrastructure networks, AI and crypto, publisher-exchanges, and internet capital markets, we believe the nature of crypto investing will continue to evolve (just as it did before) and that active capital allocators will play an increasingly important role in supporting the teams building these systems.
Looking Ahead
Multicoin was founded on the belief that crypto will fundamentally reshape global markets. Over the past several years, Spencer and Shayon have helped turn that belief into an actionable investment portfolio pushing the frontier forward.
Their promotion to General Partner and Co-Heads of Venture reflects both the impact they’ve already had and the role they will continue to play as we build the firm for the long haul.
You can reach them at @SpencerApplebau and @shayonsengupta on X.
We’re excited for what comes next.
/RWAs Are Just Built Different
For most of DeFi’s history, activity remained mostly self-referential and endogenous to the crypto ecosystem. People traded crypto for crypto, borrowed crypto using other crypto as collateral, and built derivatives based on crypto prices.
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