Oliver Blakey got into venture capital through a background in professional poker and being paid in bitcoin for China-facing poker app games, which pushed him to understand crypto early, and he later backed Yield Guild Games after meeting co-founder Gabby Dizon in Macau in 2017 and watching him keep building through a tough market. He looks for founders with extreme stamina, like being willing to answer the phone at 4:30 a.m. on a Sunday, and his poker background connects to some of what he invests in today, including gambling-related projects like Monkey Tilt.
About their Fund
Sectors
Web3 / Crypto, AI, Gaming / VR, Fintech
Rounds
Pre-Seed - Seed
Avg Check Size
Notable Investments
Paper Ventures is led by three founders with unusually different backgrounds—professional poker, traditional finance and crypto exchange building, and early-stage tech investing—who have backed Web3 projects since as early as 2010 and deliberately capped their fund at $25 million so they can focus on very early, pre-seed and seed-stage companies across all sectors rather than one niche. This founder-first approach shows up in their deal flow, which ranges from highly technical infrastructure bets like verifiable AI middleware and biometric identity systems to consumer and game products built on Telegram and other social platforms.
Other partners at the fund
Notable Fund
Investments
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Sheets they're in
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Sheets they're Fund is in
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Avg. Check
Links
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