Author: Martin Saps

This Time It Is Not a Crypto Winter

Firstly, what is a Technology Winter? A winter, in the context of a technology cycle, was first used in reference to the AI community back in 1984 in a public debate as ‘a chain reaction that began with pessimism in its technology community, followed by pessimism in the press, a severe cutback in funding, followed […]

Recruitment for Base Camp cohort 8 is now open. Time to build.

Outlier Ventures was founded in 2014, which has meant that we have had the opportunity to experience several web3 cycles over the years. Naturally, market events trigger the entrance or exodus of builders in the space. Whilst market cycles are seasonal, our commitment to backing great founders and accelerating early stage startups exponentially grows. When […]

Outlier Ventures Announces Polkadot x Base Camp to Accelerate the Polkadot Startup Ecosystem

Over the last year, the Polkadot network has experienced a moment of exponential growth. The highly anticipated parachain auctions and recent Karura/Kusama launches on the Acala Network are driving heightened network activity, and hundreds of millions of dedicated venture capital is anticipated to enter the space to fund mentored startups building on Polkadot and leveraging […]

Announcing Diffusion Digital: The ultimate Open Metaverse conference on July 28th & 29th

We are now witnessing the emergence of the Open Metaverse, a common open economic layer built from shared open-source protocols, open infrastructure, and a single unifying yet open financial system. New business models, principles, and technologies are emerging through DeFi, NFTs, Decentralized Governance & Storage, Self-Sovereign Identity, and more. At Outlier Ventures, we were early […]

Why we Invested in Alkemi

An analysis of the market reveals why DeFi participation has lagged the broader ecosystem: institutional participation. We believe this has been due to three critical factors: Capital, Connectivity and Control. Capital, because institutions have not been able to access suitably deep liquidity in the DeFi ecosystem. Connectivity, because centralized institutions are entrenched within the Web2 […]

Meet our Base Camp 5 startups, The Open Metaverse Cohort…

  As early investors in the space, we foresaw the convergence of blockchains with other technologies such as IoT, AI, VR & AR, outlining our vision and thesis back in 2016.  Fast forward to 2021 and we are now witnessing the emergence of The Open Metaverse where NFTs and DeFi combine to create a common […]

Base Camp greets its Fourth Cohort: Defi, NFTs, identity, and more…

As we pass through Crypto Spring it’s time for Base Camp to support the next 11 companies in our cohort running January – May 2021 we’re kicking off with a number of firsts. Our first investment going to a team on the African continent, our first Outlier Ventures spin-out in Base Camp, and, unusually for […]

Launching Diffusion Digital: virtual event and new Web 3 Founders podcast announced

Outlier Ventures, Europe’s award winning blockchain accelerator, have long advocated Web 3 is more than just Bitcoin and crypto-currencies. It is instead about the convergence of blockchain technologies with Big Data and AI and the collaboration of tens if not hundreds of foundational protocols and open source initiatives. Their passionate belief being only together they […]

Thick Clients, Thin Servers aka Web3

We got excited about Bitcoin all those years ago and thought it might be possible to use the same technology for services beyond electronic cash. The vision (for some) is web services that bypass a network or database administrator (the Government, Central Banks, Facebook) and prevent any sort of censorship, blocking, or cancelling. 

We are an accelerator

We were an incubator. In the past, we incubated projects at R&D stage, in most cases over several years, from token design all the way to rolling out networks and customer go-to-markets, delivered by a team of 30 staff. As far as we are aware we were the first incubator globally to hire a Head […]

Outlier Ventures reveals its top blockchain predictions for 2020

Over 11 years since the creation of Bitcoin, 2020 will be the year we follow the S-Curve of technology diffusion out of the period of Installation and into Deployment, where we see ‘synergy’ and ‘consolidation’ of the technology begin to take effect. Blockchain will finally grow up, with institutional money trickling into the market based […]

Outlier Ventures Invests in Alkemi

Two seismic problems exist in finance. Within more traditional capital markets & banking, the market is encumbered by out-moded legacy infrastructure. Within the the more emergent digital assetization arena the markets are inefficient due to a lack of liquidity.   So we are delighted to confirm, Outlier Ventures are the lead advisor and an investor […]

What happened at Diffusion 2019?

Hundreds of developers, protocols, teams and individuals in the blockchain, artificial intelligence and IoT space joined for two days of intense hacking, talks and workshops at Factory Berlin. Our objective was to drive interoperability by joining forces to grow Web3.  The tone and format of the event was not about crypto theatre, ego and noise, […]

Outlier Ventures announces strategic partnership with Enigma Protocol

Today we can announce we have made a significant investment in, and have become a strategic advisor to Enigma, a decentralised secure computation protocol.    Partnering with the Outlier Ventures platform will enable Enigma to scale and diffuse their network at a new rate. The partnership will enable Enigma to join a family of world […]

Outlier Ventures and 18 organisations launch The Convergence Alliance to enable a new open data economy

A group of leading enterprise partners, venture capitalists, technologists, start-ups and academic Institutions join forces to better leverage blockchain to pioneer the next phase of The Web The 18 global founding members of The Convergence Alliance include; Deutsche Telekom Innovation Laboratories T-Labs, SAP, InMotion powered by Jaguar Land Rover, Smart Dubai, Imperial College London, Frankfurt […]

Outlier Ventures wins ‘Hottest Blockchain Investor 2019’ at The Europas Awards

After an intense round of public voting and judge’s deliberations, the winners were announced on the 27th of June at The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups 2019 where Outlier Ventures won the award for Hottest Blockchain Investor. [ovgallery id=”5JCsLsPC”] Outlier Ventures Business Development Manager Catherine Thomas alongside Managing Partner Stephan Apel accepted the award […]

Outlier Ventures are nominated for the UKBAA Angel Investment Awards 2019

This Award recognises the investment in an early stage entrepreneur that has embraced the power of deep technologies such as AI, machine learning, IOT or robotics to converge with key sectors and industries to achieve fundamental breakthroughs to key social or global challenges or needs. Our company, Outlier Ventures, was the main investor and have […]

Outlier Ventures Head of Crypto-economics team wins Award

The Enterprise Blockchain Awards (EBA) in April unveiled the winners including Outlier Ventures Head of Crypt-economics, Eden Dhaliwal, at a gala ceremony in downtown Toronto. The Ceremony, which took place on the 24th of April, brought together the brightest and best of the international community. The gala featured a special performance by award-winning musician and […]

Outlier Ventures are nominated for the UK Open Source Awards

The UK Open Source Awards, now in their 6th year, is a non-profit event that celebrates and acknowledges the contributions from the community of technology experts that make open source such a powerful and unstoppable disruptive force in the current technology landscape. Within the four different categories – Individual, Company, Student and Public Sector & […]

Fetch.AI and Outlier Ventures Become Sovrin Stewards

Stewards on the Sovrin network are responsible for write and read functions on the Sovrin ledger. The new stewards include  Fetch.AI and Outlier Ventures as well as AyanWorks and One Global. The network currently has stewards from 13 different countries around the globe. Fetch.AI will be using the Sovrin network to provide its autonomous agents self-sovereign […]

Outlier Ventures and list of global investors back $4 Million Raise for Agoric to enable secure JavaScript for blockchain-based smart contracts

Foundational distributed electronic markets development team close round to scale the team and build commercial solutions New York, NY (May 13, 2019) — Agoric today announced the successful completion of their latest investment round with an impressive array of global investors including gumi Cryptos Capital, Interchain Foundation (Cosmos), Kilowatt Capital, Lemniscap, MetaStable Capital, Outlier Ventures, […]

IOTA Foundation Structuring

In Q2 of 2017, Outlier Ventures were the first institutional backers of the IOTA initiative in advance of their listing on exchanges.

Outlier Ventures has been nominated at the Techcrunch Europa Awards

[image id=’2200′] Outlier Ventures are delighted to have been nominated at the Techcrunch Europa Awards as the Hottest European Blockchain Investor. Founded in 2009 and still run today by Mike Butcher, The Europas celebrates the most forward-thinking, innovative tech companies across 20+ categories. The votes will be combined with expert judges and the winner will be announced […]

Outlier Ventures joins major automakers, startups, technology companies and others to launch Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI)

BMW, Bosch, Ford, General Motors, Renault, ZF, Accenture, Context Labs, IBM, and others participate as founding members [image id=’2111′] New consortium explores how blockchain will reinvent mobility and address industry shifts [Dubai], May 2, 2018 at 12:00pm GMT — MOBI, the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative, announces its formation to explore blockchain for use in a […]

Outlier Ventures joins the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association

[image id=’2101′ alignment=’center’] Welcoming Europe’s first blockchain VC signals the maturity of blockchain investment and distributed ledger technology Leading blockchain and Web 3.0 venture capital firm Outlier Ventures announces it has joined the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association to actively engage with the British VC community on the emerging blockchain and distributed ledger […]