Ego Death Capital, a New Venture Capital Firm Raising $30M

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Ego Death Capital, a new venture capital firm focused on the Bitcoin ecosystem, is raising $30 million for its first fund.

“When we decided to take this leap, there was a fundamental shift underway,” Ego Death partner Nico Lechuga told CoinDesk in an interview. “You had the Taproot upgrade on the Bitcoin main chain. Lightning as a scaling solution was nearing completion.”

Lechuga was referring to the fact that Lightning Labs, the developer of the Bitcoin scaling layer Lightning Network, released a test version of Taro, new software that allows Bitcoin developers to issue assets such as stablecoins on the blockchain. Taro is built on Taproot, a Bitcoin upgrade that went live late last year and provided developers with a broader toolbox to build projects.

Lechuga stated, “We were beginning to see entrepreneurs pouring into Bitcoin from not only other ecosystems but also from other disciplines – individuals from the energy area, people from the technology sphere.”

According to a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Ego Death Capital LP opened to investing on September 2, and had raised $11,425,000 toward the $30 million target from 28 investors as of September 15.

According to Lechuga, the fund’s capital came from three partners: high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and institutional investors. Once all the funds are raised, the fund intends to invest in 12 to 15 companies with average check sizes ranging from $1 million to $1.5 million. According to Lechuga, half of the fund’s capital will go toward follow-on investments in the original batch of portfolio companies.

Technically, Ego Death began investing in the fund two months before it began raising money. The company made an unspecified investment in Fedi, a mobile application run by Fedimint, a bitcoin custodian, to help the purchase of virtual currency.

Lechuga previously worked at Spencer Barnor Capital as a senior research associate at a private equity firm. Other partners in Ego Death include serial tech entrepreneur Jeff Booth and Andi Pitt, who spent many years at Goldman Sachs including a stint as vice president of trading.

The company also has a three-person advisory board: Lyn Alden Schwartzer, an investment researcher and Swan Bitcoin board member; Preston Pysh, show host and founder of “The Investors Podcast,” and Pablo Vernandez, Swan Bitcoin’s head of research and development.

Ego Death Capital gets its name from a concept popular in meditation (and psychedelics) circles, which refers to a period of self-surrender preceding a transition, in this case, the rise of Bitcoin as an abundant, accessible financial system.

Lechuga and Andi Pitt emphasized to CoinDesk the necessity of bitcoin in emerging markets. especially those with sizable populations who lack access to banking services. The Bitcoin ecosystem needs to be expanded continuously to reach those populations.

“We’re very focused on layer 3 (the application layer) and sort of layer 2.5, the infrastructure,” Pitt explained.