Pontoon Finance DraperDragon Investor Spotlight

DraperDragon is a sector agnostic investment venture on the lookout for emerging companies and innovative technologies with potentials to become the next big thing in the blockchain industry led by Tim Draper. Their unique and unparalleled years of experience allows them to invest in appealing technologies and add our resources in a way to boost the growth of the company. Their latest investment in Pontoon Finance sums up their objectives and mission to support emerging blockchain startups.

Pontoon Finance, the first decentralized, state-of-art cross-chain liquidity protocol is excited to announce DraperDragon’s investment in our blockchain liquidity protocol. Pontoon Finance has an objective to solve the issues of fragmentation and composability, the biggest issues in the DeFi sector through its mirroring technique across L1 and L2 chains.

Here’s an interview with DraperDragon on its investment with Pontoon Finance.

What was the perspective behind Investment in Pontoon Finance?

Pontoon Finance shows potential in tying in the loose ends with respect to fragment liquidity across various blockchains. This makes their impact quite real when looking at their prospect as a Defi protocol. As a reputable investment firm, we see value in their grit and work. We choose to bring in the necessary support from a venture investment standpoint for them to be able to realise their goals.

A liquidity solution requires access to a reliable and scalable solution ecosystem in order to bridge the interoperability gap between blockchains. This is essential to allow users to transact across Ethereum, Polygon, Binance, and other blockchains. That definitely caught our attention.

DraperDragon believes in this project and most importantly, the opportunities it presents to stakeholders and liquidity node operators. As \a reputable investment firm that capitalizes on opportunities, our team was enthusiastic in adding our resources to Pontoon.

What is Your Investment Vision for 2021?

DraperDragon has been big on the metaverse since 2018. We intend to go deeper in that direction and invest in picks and shovels alongside. We have been evaluating various NFT related deals, so looking to follow in on our investments in Nifty’s and makerspace as well.

Above all, we are looking at a more global footprint with our investment, especially in Southeast asia. Be it Metaverse, picks and shovels, NFT related deals or enterprise offerings, we are in for the bold. We are in for supporting those who are looking to build a better future.

Is DraperDragon more inclined to investing in Projects or Founders?

We invest in both. You can’t invest in the project without supporting the brains behind the project. Ultimately, you are supporting the project, which is the product of the vision of stellar founders. In the crypto landscape, both go hand in hand to bring in greater revolution.

What are your accessing criteria to recognise if a product is market fit?

Well, this can be complicated at times, considering that it is very early for web3 at the moment. Sometimes unique application use-cases can really kick start the adoption journey and turn out to be great.

In accessing a product that is market fit, we tend to put ourselves in the shoes of the users. Most of us at the fund, utilise these products ourselves, so we are able to figure out the gaps in the current ecosystem. Beyond that, we analyse the trend and the opportunities to fill in the loop holes or improve upon experiences. Assess if it is big enough to create an impact for the masses.

If we are satisfied with the answers, we conclude that such a product will solve the problem of the users. This is what we saw in Pontoon. A liquidity solution for the fragmented market that is restricting users to disconnected blockchain ecosystems.

As a Venture Fund, what are you bringing to the forefront to support Pontoon?

The Draper Venture Network draws in substantial resources and capabilities that are developed over the course of two decades by investing in various early stage projects who continue to reach greater heights breaking the conventional barriers. Our unique experience, in-depth knowledge and unparalleled network is instrumental in adding values and resources in a broad manner.

We would continue to support Pontoon’s vision to bring DeFi to the mainstream and drive massive adoption.