Dear Friends & Family,

In the late 1990s, there was a frenzy of investment in fiber optic cables.

Companies laid down miles and miles of fiber, but an estimated 95% remained dark—unused and gathering dust.

Investors were scratching their heads, wondering if this monumental overcapacity would ever turn a profit.

Enter YouTube, Netflix, and online multiplayer gaming—apps that eat up bandwidth like there's no tomorrow.

Fast-forward 20 years, and that former overcapacity has become a blessing.

Thanks to a few daring entrepreneurs (and their investors), the groundwork—literally—for this digital revolution was laid.

We might see a similar setup with blockchains today, most of which are sitting idle.

Just as the demand for bandwidth skyrocketed, I believe blockchain's time in the spotlight is coming, and artificial intelligence will be the one to make it happen.

Like 96% of all servers run on open-source Linux, I wouldn’t be surprised if blockchains become the open-source transaction logs that AI agents rely on.

While a blockchain won’t tell you the answer to life, the universe, and everything (that’s still the job for Sam Altman), it could be the missing link for automated peer-to-peer communication.

Blockchains can already process thousands of transactions per second, offer zero-knowledge proofs, and verify authenticity, ticking all the boxes for what’s needed.

With AI developing at warp speed, this demand could soon become apparent.

What took 20 years in the early internet days could happen within a few years for AI, thanks to the accelerated speed of innovation.

Recall - Your Second Brain

If you're like us, you're probably sifting through hundreds of articles, videos, and PDFs every day.

But how much of that information do you actually retain?

Ever since the internet became a thing (and we all became information hoarders), I’ve been searching for the holy grail of categorizing and storing all the data I encounter daily.

I’ve tried it all, including Evernote, Apple Notes, Notion, Roam Research, Obsidian, anytype, and dumping PDFs into folders.

Nothing worked really well. And I’d estimate I’ve used less than 1% of the content I've saved.

Either I couldn’t find it in the tangled maze of my various systems, or worse, I’d completely forgotten I’d saved it in the first place.

Unfortunately, we can’t all have the photographic memory of Mike Ross or Lisbeth Salander.

Paul Richards, Igor Gligorević, and Sankari Nair—a founder trio based in Amsterdam (originally from South Africa and Serbia)—are obsessed with using AI and knowledge graphs to solve this problem once and for all.

It didn’t take long for their product, vision, and drive to convince us to team up with them.

Along with Jason Calacanis' Launch Fund, we were among the first investors in their seed round.

If you’re a knowledge worker buried under a daily avalanche of information, you need to check out Recall.

It automatically summarizes, classifies, and even translates your data for seamless research or everyday use.

The design is so clever it has quickly become one of the most used apps on our team.

No wonder they were just voted #1 Product of the Month on Product Hunt.

And this is just the beginning—the roadmap for the next two years is phenomenal.

Their fan base (and revenues) are growing fast, and we believe that Recall has a fair chance to overtake apps like Evernote (which is a textbook example of how not to run a software company) within five years.

Oh, and because we want to be of service to our currently 1148 newsletter readers, we begged Recall for a discount code.

Use code "BFC2024" at www.getrecall.ai for 30% off for 12 months if you love it as much as we do.

And no, we won’t get an affiliate commission, but you will get a great productivity tool!

Meet the team at Token2049 in Singapore

Ben and Sagar will be attending TOKEN2049 in Singapore from September 16-20, where they’ll be checking the pulse of the Web3 community and connecting with founders and fellow venture capitalists.

They're also co-hosting an event with Metaschool, and we’d love for you to join! You can register for the event here.

If you’re in Singapore that week, don’t hesitate to contact Ben and Sagar. They’d be thrilled to meet up and chat in person!

Recommended

We invest in things nobody cares about. Yet.

This has always been the mission of early-stage venture capitalists—until the mega funds came along, where the attraction lies in the huge management fees for the fund managers.

Large Language Models (LLMs) and now Defense Tech are an asset managers' dream come true.

The velocity of money allocation in the venture capital business has never been higher.

However, while management fees accrue regardless of performance, investors only receive returns when the managers have been successful.

A micro fund, like yours truly, does not have the luxury of lavish management fees.

Our incentives align with our investors’: Invest in the right companies and help them grow, or there is nothing in it for us. Simple.

Harry Stebbings, undeniably one of the most inspiring (and entertaining) voices in venture capital, recently interviewed Nicholas Chirls, the manager of Asylum Ventures, a small VC fund based in New York, and got some clear statements.

It’s a fantastic watch with some quality VC bashing and a few apocalyptic scenarios.

We, of course, come out as the good guys in this narrative—small is just beautiful!

You can either watch the video, or, if you’re short on time, you could read a summary from our friends at Recall—yes, the team from above.

Join our stellar investors

Join us in shaping the future of the internet with Web3, AI, and more—and become an investor in our fund.

We invest globally at the early stage in exceptionally talented, mission-driven founders whose business models are poised to leap forward with the latest technological advancements.

If you’d like to learn more, reply to this email (which is sent from my personal email account), and meet us in person.

Best,

Wolfgang with Ben, Marcel, and Sagar