On September 6, Sino Global Capital, a venture capital firm in the Web3 field, announced the completion of its brand reshaping and changed its name to Ryze Labs, aiming to promote innovation and find the potential of emerging markets.

Founded in 2015, Ryze Labs has accumulated more than 50 portfolios during these rounds of bull and bear markets, with DeFi accounting for the largest share, followed by infrastructure and games. Many well-known projects such as Solana, Polygon, and Wintermute are in Ryze Labs' investment portfolio. Among early VCs, Ryze Labs can be considered the first echelon.

During the TOKEN2049 conference, BlockBeats also chatted with Matthew Graham, the founder of Ryze Labs, to hear his views on the current primary market and Ryze Labs' investment logic. They are more interested in projects that can truly generate demand, but most projects currently do not meet this condition.

Matthew Graham

Do not compare with any investment institutions

BlockBeats: First of all, congratulations to Ryze Labs on their rebrand. Matthew, can you introduce yourself and explain the reason for the rebrand?

Matthew Graham: I'm Matthew, the managing partner at Ryze Labs, and I also manage the investment portion of the business and some other businesses that will be launched over the next year.

Our company was founded in 2015 and this is the first time we have rebranded. Initially, we focused on connecting the Greater China market with the international market, hence the name Sino, meaning related to China. Now we have expanded to a wider range of markets in emerging sectors. We have a presence in places from Egypt to Singapore. Most importantly, our story is bigger than before, and our interests and mission have expanded to all emerging sectors.

We have been thinking about rebranding for a long time. As time goes by, the brand name will become more and more meaningful. A good name can better represent who we are now and give us room for further growth.

BlockBeats: Which venture capital firms do you think are the most promising at the moment? Which of them can Ryze Labs be compared to? What scale do you hope Ryze Labs can reach?

Matthew Graham: We shouldn't compare ourselves to anyone. No one is doing what we do, which is to bring Web3 companies around the world to billions of potential customers. I agree with Peter Thiel's theory, why compete with others? We should find what we can do best and execute it. So we are proud to be able to support, invest in, and support these very important and often difficult emerging economies around the world.

Most of our team members have four capabilities, namely finance, technology, globalization and local markets, which means they are experts in one or more emerging markets, and also means that we can provide a variety of support for the portfolio in India, China, Singapore, the Middle East and North Africa, including senior public relations, market research, market localization, business development, marketing communications and even human resources. For example, some projects may find it difficult to find an Indian general manager, but at this time we can personally help them.

"Bringing Web3 to billions of potential customers" is our unique value proposition. No one in the industry is doing anything similar.

Find projects that actually generate demand

BlockBeats: Does Ryze Labs currently have a specific investment philosophy, such as a preferred sector or geographic focus? I noticed that the top three investment categories are DeFi, infrastructure, and games. Can you explain?

Matthew Graham: When we evaluate projects, there are some special things we pay attention to. First of all, our investments range from seed rounds to Series B, mainly seed round investments. Take the seed round as an example. When we evaluate a seed investment opportunity, the first thing I want to see is that they already have what I think are "super fans". I want to see that they have found the product market fit point, which does not need to be for a thousand people, it can actually be for five people. These "super fans" are certainly not the project party's own social network, but are found through project development. These people are those who absolutely need your project. Because I think the hardest thing is to make your project indispensable to two, three or four people, and let these people need it. This is actually very difficult.

Many projects, I would say the vast majority, don't have even one or two people who really need their product. I firmly believe that if you can find the five people who are critical to your project, as long as they need it, whether it's a game they want to play, or a DeFi product they want to use, you can figure out how to get it to 60 people, 300 people, or 5,000 people. Most people don't have that ability. That's the first point I want to see.

The second thing I want to see is the ability to deliver quickly and be able to do that consistently, so rather than us being particularly focused on a particular geography, I would like to see those two traits.

BlockBeats: The number of investments by Ryze Labs has dropped significantly this year. Why has there been such a change in strategy?

Matthew Graham: Generally speaking, we want to take a counter-cyclical approach. In a bear market, we even want to be more aggressive, but we want to see solid market performance and unique ideas, as I mentioned before. Therefore, we believe that whether it is a bear market or a bull market, we must maintain our standards and wait for projects that meet our standards. We are not in a hurry to act.

BlockBeats: Over the past year, it has been widely acknowledged that games are rapidly gaining popularity. What do you think of the entire gaming industry?

Matthew Graham: First of all, I believe that games can be the key to mass adoption. In the first wave of games, there were two factors that prevented us from achieving more. First, Web3 games may not be as fun as Web2 games. Web3 games have not reached the level of Web2. Second, the impact of game economic fluctuations is quite large. We have made great progress on the first problem. The quality of games is better, and some have even covered a wider gaming population.

There is also a serious problem right now that it is difficult to attract people who are not yet on Web3. Web3 games generally do not use Web2 marketing strategies. Games end up targeting people who are already on Web3, which is a very small group of people. To solve this problem, either reduce the friction of attracting users from Web 2.0, use different marketing techniques, or find alternative monetization paths.

BlockBeats: So far, do you have any investment cases that you personally consider to be very successful or very unsuccessful or that you regret?

Matthew Graham: We can certainly look back and say we should or shouldn't have invested in a certain project. But in fact, our thinking will be different at different points in time. For example, the idea at one point in time may look very different six months later.

I think it is more important to find patterns and lessons that can be learned. Success may be based on luck, and how to make success more based on skills and less on luck is the most important thing.

BlockBeats: Multicoin was very popular and grew rapidly in 2021, but this year their management scale has decreased by 90%. Will it be difficult for Ryze Labs this year?

Matthew Graham: Cryptocurrencies are known to be susceptible to extreme economic cycles, and it seems to me that it is very important to manage the fund's exposure to these cycles, especially if there are external investors. There are probably various approaches that can be used in this regard.

For example, if you invest a large amount at a certain point in time, the risk exposure will be huge, and the risk of a bear market will also increase and be unknown. However, if you invest in a long-term weighted balance approach, you will reduce your exposure to bull and bear market cycles.

The market has hit bottom

BlockBeats: Do you think we are in the early stages of a bull market? Do you agree with the theory of market cycles?

Matthew Graham: Absolutely. I do think we have hit bottom. We have seen the worst of it with Solana at less than $10 and Bitcoin at less than $20,000. I am optimistic for the short to medium term, and I have always been very optimistic about the long term for this industry. I also agree with the concept of market cycles, especially in the cryptocurrency space, where market cycles are more extreme.

BlockBeats: Looking ahead to the future, which tracks and fields do you particularly think are promising?

Matthew Graham: Anything that can promote more ordinary people to participate is very attractive, and the most important thing is to expand the crowd participating in Web3. It would be best if users would not realize that the underlying product is DeFi or some kind of cryptocurrency technology. We are very interested in different products in this category and the infrastructure that can support this goal.