Today the breaking news is the announcement of ZenLedger’s $6M Series A funding round led by Bloccelerate VC. Investors include Mark Cuban’s Radical Ventures, G1 VC, Borderless Capital, 4RC, Centrality, BIGG Digital Assets, CoinGecko, and angel investors Jon Staenberg and Darren Lau.
These investors join an esteemed list of prior round investors of course including gCC (gumi Cryptos Capital) as well as Vestigo Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Migration Capital, Blackwater Capital, and Karl Muth.
From a thesis perspective, we see crypto tax compliance as growing on the same exponential path as bitcoin, but with about a 3 year lag as the governments of the world get organized. Both governments and taxpayers need to up their game and many more tools will be needed.
“gumicorn” culture is Gambaru culture
In Japanese language and culture the idea of gambaru means essentially “bravely produce effort”. Unlike the culture here in the US, the goal of producing effort is not self-glorification, but rather to celebrate the connection between a person and their family and community. What we know is that everyone is always watching one another to understand what is both possible and what is normative. A leader who embodies “gambaru” culture inspires and lifts everyone around them. You can read more about Gambaru, this key concept which we use to define “gumicorns” here.
A true gumicorn founder/CEO
As you know from our other writing, we are constantly on the prowl for what we call “gumicorn” founders. Obviously a Unicorn is a billion-dollar company, a “gumicorn” founder is someone capable of creating a unicorn, a decacorn or even more.
Pat Larsen is one of those folks. Definitely a competitor and a type-A personality, a former military helicopter pilot and athlete, he definitely plays to win and exhibits tremendous drive. He also has a huge amount of intellectual curiosity, certainly off the charts in that category. Pat is exceedingly well informed on a huge number of topics, and you would generally expect someone with these qualifications to be a little bit arrogant. But not Patrick. He is a very hard-working and surprisingly humble given his many achievements.
Toughness
One of the properties we look for in founders is toughness, and Patrick exemplifies this quality. Once during intensive discussion of business strategy, after we had exhaustively listed perhaps a dozen alternative playbooks, we came back to “Plan A”. The thing was, up till that point, this plan had not borne fruit, and so continuing to do something that doesn’t seem to be working takes guts.
But after exhaustively analyzing all other options, the clear path forward was just to grind out the last bit. One of the factors in advising this was knowing Patrick and his personality. Not every entrepreneur would have been able to keep going under those circumstances, but he really dug deep and executed like a champ. One definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing over and over but expect different results. But it turns out there are cases when this kind of characteristic bears fruit, and it’s important not just to know what kind of situation you are in, but also just having the fortitude to pound out the last stretch and get to the results. He’s one of those guys.
First Interview with Patrick
In this interview from the MikoBits show with Patrick we talk about:
* Bitcoin and cryptocurrency taxes
* Bitcoin price
* How to pay your taxes on cryptocurrencies
* Macroeconomics
* Helicopters
* Startup Entrepreneurship
* Leadership VS Management
Zenledger is the leading Bitcoin and cryptocurrency tax software provider.
Patrick is a fascinating guy a former Medevac chopper pilot and commander turned bitcoin and startup entrepreneur.
despite this thumbnail looking very similar to the above one, this second interview is a separate interview, this time focused more on ZenLedger and the IRS.
Second interview about ZenLedger:
Although this thumbnail looks very similar to the one above, this is Patrick’s second visit to the MikoBits show and is a lot more about the IRS and about ZenLedger than it is about getting to know Patrick. If you’re interested in this story, please check out both videos!
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
