When he was an undergrad at Penn, Anthony Georgiades started a company and, he says, “was ripped off by some developers.” That experience made him keenly aware that there was a body of technical knowledge that he did not have access to. After graduate school, he joined First Round Capital as an analyst, and that nagging feeling persisted. “I was looking at certain companies and there was almost a language barrier,” he says, referring to his lack of technical knowledge. So he went back to school for a masters in computer science and robotics. It was during those studies that he was exposed to the crypto space and, he says, “fell in love with the future of digital assets and the crypto economy.”
His newly acquired technical knowledge was a huge asset when he and a partner founded Innovating Capital, a venture capital firm, in 2017. The company focuses on crypto, digital assets, and Web3. “My conversations with founders are typically a lot less of your general venture capital-based dialogue, like “what’s your burn rate”, and a lot more to do with the product itself,” Georgiades says. “And that resonates with a lot of founders. We’re a true partner to the companies we invest in.”
Georgiade’s expertise and interest lies in the core infrastructure layer of the crypto ecosystem. That expertise led him to co-found Pastel Network, a blockchain infrastructure that primarily serves non-fungible token technology. For example, Georgiades explains, NFTs that are bought and sold live on layer-1 blockchains such as Etherium, which are fast but have limited storage capacity. Because a token contains so much underlying data, that data must live on a different blockchain. That’s where Pastel comes in. The company partners with layer-1 blockchains, dApps, and third party enterprises to provide an infrastructure for digital assets that ensures their security and authenticity. “That’s where we set the future of Web3,” says Georgiades. “It’s going to be kind of a multi chain world where different blockchains interact and interoperate.”
“I definitely think [Cointelegraph Innovation Circle] gives us a good amount of credibility and a channel to push out specific topics that we want to be domain authorities on.”
Layer-1 blockchains that may be viewed as tier two players gain a competitive edge by partnering with Pastel, says Georgiades. Those less prominent contenders are using his company to differentiate themselves from and compete against tier one blockchains that are mostly interested in growing their user bases. Pastel’s customers are more concerned with building best in class ecosystems and becoming dominant players over the next decade by partnering with Pastel to better serve their users. Crypto meltdowns such as FTX make Pastel an easier sell, says Georgiades, because they highlight the need for stronger security solutions.
As a member of Cointelegraph Innovation Circle, Georgiades takes full advantage of the publishing benefit by contributing regularly to Expert Panels as well as writing by-lined articles. “I wanted to get content out there so that we could drive the narrative around, for example, crypto winter, or various NFT use cases,” he says.
Currently, he doesn’t feel that there’s domain authority on such topics and he’s hoping to fill that void. “With a really great name brand like Cointelegraph, there’s the ability to leverage that in terms of pushing out meaningful content,” he says. “I definitely think [Cointelegraph Innovation Circle] gives us a good amount of credibility and a channel to push out specific topics that we want to be domain authorities on.”
Additionally, Georgiades values the vetted community as a source of potential collaborators, partners, users, and investors. “It’s definitely something I’m optimistic about,” he says.
