2024 Kickoff for Cohort 7 of BBX

Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator
4 min readJan 29, 2024

--

2024 Cohort Kickoff

Cohort teams visit and meet with digital asset leads from Paul Hastings legal team in San Francisco.

The Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator welcomed the 2024 Cohort, our 7th, to the programming kickoff on January 17 & 18, held on the Berkeley campus and in San Francisco.

Activities included a networking event at Pantera with mentors and VCs after an overview on the web3 market, speakers from Electric Capital, Mysten Labs, Paul Hastings, Ripple, Supra and AnChain.AI, a welcome from Rich Lyons, Assoc. Vice Chancellor, and connecting with Fellows from Blockchain at Berkeley, as well as the Haas Blockchain Club and Berkeley Law Blockchain.

Thank you to our partners, mentors, VCs and the 2024 Cohort teams who traveled from around the world to meet us at UC Berkeley. We look forward to productive months ahead and our 2024 Demo Day in April!

Read on for more details and photos of the kickoff!

On Wednesday, Maria Shen, Electric Capital Partner, spoke on her newly released and notable annual Developer Report for 2023 and provided perspective from Electric on what is interesting for 2024.

On Thursday evening, Paul Veradittakit, (2nd from left) Managing Partner at Pantera and Berkeley alumnus, welcomes the teams and the Xcelerator network to their offices for an evening mixer.

Assoc. Vice Chancellor Rich Lyons welcomes the teams to Berkeley and to our Xcelerator dinner & mixer with mentors and VCs, held at Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology.

Mysten Labs’ head of strategy Sina Nader shared a perspective on the past 5 years and advised each of the teams during a Q&A.

Past cohort Xcelerator teams AnChain.AI and Supra, both having raised significant funding, shared their perspectives on the web3 startup journey and offered advice for founders.

Paul Hastings’ Eric Sibbitt and his team provided a regulatory deep dive on considerations for teams working in web3 and with digital assets.

At their new offices in San Francisco, Ripple shared news on the many XRPL ecosystem opportunities for founders.

View of San Francisco Bay from Pantera’s offices on the 45rh floor of the Transamerica Building in San Francisco.

UC Berkeley’s Xcelerator lead Nick Friedland, RDI Deputy Director Jocelyn Weber and Blockchain at Berkeley Xcelerator leads Belle Tangkuptanon and Keshav Raj Signhal welcomed members of Cohort 7 to Berkeley and gave an overview of the extensive blockchain activity and opportunities at UC Berkeley.

More Kickoff Highlights

  • Pantera’s Ryan Barney and Nehal Maurer gave an overview of the market and advice on raising today in web3.
  • Many VCs and mentors from the Xcelerator network joined the evening events — dinner & meetup at UC Berkeley and networking at Pantera.
  • The Xcelerator thanks the 10 new teams, speakers, and our network for making our 2024 kickoff so interactive, informative and valuable!

Alumni Spotlight

AnChain.ai Works to Protect Cryptocurrency from Latest Threats

AnChain.AI, from the Xcelerator’s first cohort in early 2019, is making a global impact with the global cryptocurrency law enforcement. Featured by the IRS, they are proud to be the top 3 vendors in this space, as well as the youngest, the most capital efficient, and the most advanced AI.

AnChain, along with the IRS, Chainalysis and TRM Labs, appeared at a Cyber Summit in Rome to discuss the latest threats and investigation techniques emerging in the digital asset sphere.

The event highlighted two important aspects of the collective fight against international tax crimes affecting American taxpayers and world economies: strengthening ties with our global counterparts and leveraging public-private partnerships.

Twitter Website YouTube Email

Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator Newsletter
January 27, 2024

Copyright © 2024 UC Berkeley RDI, All rights reserved.

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

--

--

Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator
Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator

Written by Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator

A partnership between Berkeley Engineering’s RDI & SCET, Blockchain at Berkeley, and Berkeley Haas