With A New Investment Arm, German VC Picus Capital Goes Web3

The German venture capital firm Picus Capital started a new division called picus.xyz to invest in web3 and cryptocurrencies.

“Picus.xyz is not only a sign of our long-term belief and commitment to web3, but also a means for us to more effectively communicate with the web3 community, and a way to aggregate all of our know-how and value-add to prospective partners,” the company said in a blog post.

The new investment arm will stick to the firm’s main idea, which is to invest in web3 infrastructure and consumer products in the early pre-seed to Series A stages. It will put money into both shares of stock and tokens.

Since it was started in 2015, Picus Capital has put money into over 140 companies, such as Nested, Omni, and Gatherly. The company has already backed a number of crypto startups, such as Stride, an AI infrastructure platform called Spice AI, and Arch, a service for managing crypto assets.

“At picus.xyz we seek to partner with founders whose north star is the advancement of web3 and who are solving the hard problems in the way of the next billion users,” the company said.

Picus Capital is known for giving founders their own teams to help with HR and operations. The new investment arm will offer similar help, but it will be tailored to the specifics of web3. For example, it will help with designing tokens, helping with audits, and managing communities.

David Mirzazadeh, Daniel Niklas, Pierre Bourdan, and Julius Nagel are all on the investment team. Before joining Picus, they worked in the fields of investment banking and consulting.