Credit: Anna Tutova (Founder AI Crypto Minds) with Bill Tai, legendary angel investor.
I had a chance to meet with Bill Tai, a legendary venture capital investor known for his investments in numerous successful companies, including Canva, Zoom, Dapper Labs and Twitter, with 23 of them going public. Additionally, he is Co-founder & Chairman Treasure Data and IPinfusion, Chairman Hut8Corp (NASDAQ:HUT), the third-largest bitcoin miner by stockpiled BTC.
The world is a metaverse on Zoom.
– Bill Tai, Legendary angel investor
Bill shares insights into his background, starting with his early days as an electrical and computer engineering specialist in Silicon Valley during its formative stages. He discusses his journey from investing in silicon-related companies to becoming a venture capitalist and his involvement in various waves of technology, including computer hardware, networking, and the internet. Bill also delves into his entry into the crypto and blockchain space, sharing his encounter with Bitcoin’s whitepaper and how he became an early believer in the technology. He further talks about his recent investments, with a focus on NFTs and projects supporting various social causes. Bill shares his perspectives on the future of crypto markets, the rise of decentralized social media, and the changing landscape of technological innovation beyond Silicon Valley.
Anna Tutova: Can you tell us about your background? How did you get involved in investing and as well, how did you get involved in the crypto and blockchain space?
Bill Tai: I was originally trained in electrical and computer engineering and was trained to design computer chips initially. I came out to Silicon Valley in the eighties, I was just lucky to be kind of there at the formative stages of the basic technology that would underpin everything else.
And I ended up entering silicon related companies, both of them ended up going public. I ended up becoming a venture capitalist in 1991.
I then took a few years off, started kiteboarding a lot. But when Web 2 started, I came back into the investing game. And in the middle of all that, in 1999, a friend of mine who was then CTO of Real Philip Rosedale networks told me he wanted to take Neil Stevenson’s science fiction novel Snow Crash and build it in real life.
Anna: That was the first prototype of Metaverse?
Bill: He built Second Life. It was one of the main real physics-based motion metaverse. Philip introduced in it the Linden dollar. So, it was a digital currency in 2003.
So, when Bitcoin came out, I had already done a little bit of work on peer-to-peer networks, and I …Full story available on Benzinga.com
