Capital and conviction, when both are scarce.
The best founders are hardest to back exactly when it matters most: early, unproven, and daring. That is the moment I want to be in the room. I am the guide, not the hero. Here is the thesis behind who I back and how I help.
Daring founders need a guide who built
Most capital shows up after the risk is gone, when the round is oversubscribed and the outcome is already legible. That is not backing a founder. That is buying a result. The founders who go on to build legendary companies needed conviction earlier, when the idea still sounded crazy and the safe money had not arrived.
I have been that founder. I co-founded India's first bitcoin exchange and helped fight the country's central bank to the Supreme Court and win. I know what it feels like to be told the thing you are building is impossible or illegal, and to keep going anyway. That is the seat I want to sit in for other founders: someone who has actually built, taken the real risk, and can be useful when it is still hard.
What I look for
Substance over spectacle. I would rather back a founder doing quiet, real work than one performing progress for an audience. I look for conviction that survives pressure, a problem that actually matters, and the rare founder who sees that bitcoin, AI, and robotics are one thesis rather than three trends to chase. And I look for and-not-or thinking: builders who refuse the false binary and find the bridge.
How I help
Three things, at the stage all three are scarce. Capital, so the founder can move. Conviction, so they are not alone when the market is unsure. And doors, because a warm introduction to the right person at the right moment changes the trajectory of a company. I run a family office and venture studio built for exactly this: early, hands-on, generous first.
The founder is the hero of this story. My job is to be the guide who hands them the map and the tool, not the one who takes the stage. That framing is not modesty. It is how the best outcomes actually get built.