Four questions to Dr Georg Stricker, Tech Partner at Signature Ventures
They are our clients, our friends, good contacts or just people we met. They have a new vision, they are running great projects, they are developing new services or they just want to share their story. We interview key people of the blockchain and fintech ecosystem: if you want to be next, please email us at blockchain@havas.com.
Who are you?
My name is Juri (or Yuri) but ever since I moved from Russia to Germany as a kid my name was changed to Georg. However, I still go by my original name. I am Tech Partner at Signature Ventures and responsible for all tech-related topics, from deal sourcing and founder support to the development of investment theses and investment strategy. I have studied statistics and computer science at LMU (Munich) and UCL (London) and received a PhD in Computational Biology from the TU Munich. I have been active in the Blockchain space since 2013 after discovering Bitcoin. My general interest in finance and innovation led me to participate in the ICO hype of 2017 and put me through some hard lessons but also introduced me to some incredible people which ultimately led me to become one of the founding members of Signature Ventures.
Describe your Venture Capital company
Signature Ventures is a Blockchain-dedicated VC fund. Supported by extensive research, we invest in strong founding teams that will shape the future of the decentralized internet. We invest globally, although we often like to make sure that a part of the team is located in Europe. Together with my founding partners Juliane Schiefer and Florian Huber, the team consists of six people with different backgrounds and proven track records in VC, law, tech, finance and entrepreneurship. This diversity and expertise in combination with our strong network makes us the perfect partner for every Blockchain startup looking to build out a sustainable and innovative business at scale.
Could you tell us more about your investment thesis?
Signature’s investment thesis is based on the conviction that Blockchain is the inevitable next step in the evolution of digital transformation. In particular it is a paradigm shift from centralized data silos to decentralized open data flows with the user at the heart of it.
While the transformation itself might take decades, we believe it will be based on three pillars. Fundamental infrastructure, interfaces to this infrastructure via open finance and applications. Each of these pillars is enabling the next one and feeds back to inform necessary improvements. This creates an innovation feedback loop that drives the transformation of the digital world today to the digital world of tomorrow.
How do you see the future of Blockchain adoption?
After expectations in Blockchain together with the crypto market capitalization got way ahead of the technology in 2017, a second wave benefiting from healthy Blockchain fundamentals has started in 2019. Not only has it become more professional but it is now taken a lot more more seriously. This can be seen in the various attempts across the globe to regulate the technology as a whole instead of concentrating on parts of it like the ICO in 2017. We believe Blockchain adoption won’t come through “killer apps” but through a combination of generational change and the growth of the Blockchain ecosystem. Just like linear TV will likely become extinct as the younger generations switch more and more to streaming, the Web3 ecosystem will grow until it is the dominant way of interacting on the internet. In this regard we believe that despite a slow adoption of cryptocurrencies by “traditional” finance (e.g. PayPal, Revolut, Robinhood etc) the integration will actually work the other way around. Blockchain’s DeFi ecosystem will integrate traditional assets and pave the way for a new financial ecosystem.
