gumi Cryptos Capital coinvests with General Catalyst, Dragonfly, Circle and Balaji Srinivasan and others.
Thesis
Parallax is tackling the $21 trillion dollar cross-border payments market. This is a very clear use case for blockchain, as open source financial infrastructure as a global, permissionless, decentralized set of protocols can radically lower the cost of global legally regulated money transmission (remittance). International remittance is a historically fragmented industry and the players tend to operate on the basis of country pairs. Parallax as a matter of the founder started with the Philippines, which is a country with fairly sizeable remittance estimated at $32.54B in 2022 but growing fast. This is due to a fairly sizeable base of overseas workers who are sending money to their families back home, but also due to a substantial remote gig economy set of digital workers who are paid electronically. This latter segment is the initial traction segment for Parallax. The idea of digital remote work was further accelerated by the COVID global pandemic as nearly all knowledge workers started working remotely, thus accelerating and further reducing the competitive advantage of non-remote workers.
At gumi Cryptos Capital, we believe that the Internet will be rebuilt on a foundation of new protocols, and that these protocols will liberate a whole host of new applications starting with financial services like cross-border payments. We are proud to back entrepreneurs like Mika and Alex who are passionate about using blockchain technologies to solve real-world every day customer pains.
Founders
As always, gumi Cryptos Capital is founder-focused given that we are investing at the earliest stages. Mika Reyes, cofounder and CEO of Parallax was born and raised in the Phillippines. She founded Parallax in response to hearing from her friends who are part of this digital remote worker industry. These friends were experiencing challenges receiving payments from abroad using services like Payoneer. We like founder/entrepreneurs who themselves are very close to the pain they are solving. This creates a very strong understanding of the customer pain and creates solutions and a positive feedback loop that culminates in product market fit. At gumi Cryptos Capital, we look for founders who have backgrounds of high achievement, such as Mika’s experience as a Product Fellow at the storied venture capital firm, Kliener Perkins, Caulfied and Byers and her studies at the Harvard Business School. But we also look for people whose stories include overcoming significant obstacles including bias, such as being a female tech founder or racial or ethnic minority. Mika represents to us an excellent founder CEO who has overcome substantial obstacles and attained high achievement. This is reflected in company performance recently, as Mika has aggressively cut fees by 83% compared to comparable services resulting in a 202% growth average month over month in her service.
Alex Kuang, the CTO and cofounder was a Senior Engineer at Linkedin who helped to scale their data infrastructure by more than 10x during his tenure there. He has worked at venture-backed startups like Homebound (backed by Google Ventures and Khosla Ventures) and others. But perhaps to us the most exciting qualification was that he has in his past worked as a remote freelancer and so has had his own direct experience of the customer pain. Not only does this produce significant product market fit, but it also produces a deep conviction, mission, and passion to help solve this problem for not just the Filipinos, but produces a passion and bond of kinship with millions of remote workers around the world.
Conclusion
gumi Cryptos Capital continues to invest our $110M Fund II into the bear market of 2023 with high conviction and substantial deployment pace. We continue to see great founders and great investment opportunities in the earliest stages. If you know of early-stage founders who have shown exceptional achievement or who have overcome substantial life obstacles (or both) please don’t hesitate to introduce them to us.
Disclaimer
Information is provided for general educational purposes only. This presentation is not an offer to sell securities or a solicitation of offers to buy securities. Nothing contained herein constitutes investment or other advice nor is it to be relied on in making an investment decision. For more important information, please see disclaimer
