Mathijs van Esch built his path into crypto through academic research, writing a thesis on enterprise blockchain use before joining Maven 11 in 2017 and rising internally from analyst to partner, and he holds two master's degrees in Accountancy and Tax Economics, giving him a numbers-and-structure lens that shows up in his focus on infrastructure investing, capital allocation questions like when protocols should consider buybacks, and the operational plumbing behind stablecoins and real-world assets. This background also lines up with his reputation for deep, high-volume research, having reportedly analyzed more than 200 investment opportunities in detail.