Tribe Capital Hires Republic Capital Co-Founder Revsin as Managing Partner

Tribe Capital, a venture capital firm with over $1.5 billion in assets under management, has hired Republic Capital co-founder Boris Revsin as a managing partner overseeing equity and crypto funds plus Tribe’s newly announced crypto incubation program, Revsin told CoinDesk.

Revsin served as head of investments at Republic Capital, a registered investment advisor with over $900 million in assets under management. He led the firm’s investments in crypto companies Flipside Crypto, Robinhood (HOOD), Avalanche, Polygon and Dapper Labs, among others.

“There's sort of two things that I had been looking for. The first was to get a little closer to the companies building in the action, especially in the bear market. And I think that the incubator … helps illustrate a little bit of what we'll be able to do at Tribe,” Revsin told CoinDesk in an interview, explaining his decision to leave Republic Capital after four years.

The other factor was Tribe’s status as a larger brand with multi-asset funds across both equity and crypto markets and a multi-stage investment strategy, said Revsin.

Crypto represents about 30% of Tribe Capital’s overall assets, according to the firm. Portfolio companies include cryptocurrency exchanges Kraken and FTX, Ethereum blockchain technology company ConsenSys and CoinDesk parent company Digital Currency Group.

Revsin’s role at Tribe Capital will include investing out of the $400 million equity fund Venture Fund 3, expanding the crypto franchise with the existing team, and overseeing the new incubator program

Tribe debuted the Tribe Crypto Labs incubator earlier Wednesday, which was first reported by TechCrunch. The $25 million startup initiative will help the firm collaborate with crypto developers and accelerate early-stage investments across the Cosmos ecosystem and layer 1 blockchains such as Solana and Avalanche.

Venture capital investments were down in the first half of the year due to the global bear market, which has hit the crypto industry and investments particularly hard.

Revsin acknowledged that bear markets, from an investment perspective, offer better multiples and fundamental value. On the crypto front, Revsin noted that the industry has been through bear markets before, though the cycles are getting larger as crypto companies grow larger.

“I think crypto has a lot of introspection to do. The self-regulatory dream has not panned out to the level it should have,” said Revsin. “Regulators are going to come in and do some good work and probably some questionable work and then hopefully it all shakes out.”