Firm Invests in Industrial Blockchain Companies

NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Elliptic Curve Ventures today announced the commencement of its operations providing seed and early-stage funding for companies focusing on industrial and business-to-business blockchain and fintech products. Specific focus areas will include disruptive technologies in credit, insurance, central banking, side-chains, and algorithm level enhancements.

Elliptic Curve Ventures is managed by Worth Venture Partners and springs from the collaboration of Matt Stack of XLP Capital, and Abby Flamholz and David Wertentheil of Worth Venture Partners. Explained Mr. Stack, "we believe that blockchain solutions have focused on revolutionizing retail financial services for the consumer, with emphasis on exchanges, wallets, and mobile apps. However, some of the most exciting developments over the past several years have been in algorithms that facilitate novel forms of institutional decentralization in structured financial products beyond cash, including decentralizing structured contracts, securities lending, re-hypothecation, and fractional reserving."

Leveraging the combined experience as serial entrepreneurs and investors, Elliptic Curve Ventures will find and invest in technology teams with promising new approaches to and solutions for the institutional financial sector. Target investments will be startup companies that offer technologies that can disrupt the core mechanisms of institutional capital and risk allocation.

"Our model for investment," stated Ms. Flamholz, "is to work with startup entrepreneurs to structure and deploy proof-of-concept pilots rapidly, leveraging our collective experience and contacts across the financial sector. We believe this model allows entrepreneurs to focus on technology solutions, with minimal distractions in the early stages of company formation."

"We will focus on companies that could scale faster with access to our team's resources and connections across the financial system."

About Matt Stack

Matt is a founder of XLP Capital. He is an experienced early- and seed-stage investor in high tech hardware and analytics companies and serves as a technology advisor to a variety of institutions and family offices. Over the past decade, Matt has acquired and developed a collection of minority interests in companies across North America ranging from university spinouts in medtech and machine learning to mid-sized industrial technology companies. Matt serves as an advisor to a number of privately held companies and sovereign investment trusts, where he manages and supervises technology and high-performance computing investments. He serves as the lead cryptocurrency and blockchain advisor to the United Nations, where he advises governments on technology and central banking policies. Matt has served as the Director of High Performance Computing at the Mars Corporation, Senior Quantitative Strategist at a leading private equity firm, and as a Partner at 3LP, a Boston-based elite Intellectual Property investment advisory. Matt's experience also includes managing acquisitions for a $120M corporate-led technology buyout fund in Palo Alto and spending six years at The Boston Consulting Group in the Boston and New York offices, where he worked on projects in the Health Care, IT, Retail, Industrial Goods, and Strategy practice areas. Matt holds a B.S.E. in electrical engineering from Princeton University.

About Abby Flamholz

Abby is the Managing Member of Worth Venture Partners. Her experience includes being Managing Director, Head of Convertibles & Special Situations at Stifel Nicolaus; Managing Director, Head of Convertibles, at Bank of America; and Co-Founding Partner of ADAR Investment Management. Abby attended Cooper Union Civil Engineering and graduated from NYU with a B.A. in Mathematics.

About David Wertentheil

David is a Partner and Founder of Worth Venture Partners. His experience includes being Managing Director, Head of Prime Services, Lazard Capital Markets; Managing Director, Global Prime Services Division as Head of Sales and Business Development - RBC Capital Markets; Managing Director, Institutional Direct Market Access Platform - Carlin Financial Group; and Co-Founder of the Risk Arbitrage Trading Desk for NextGen Trading LLC. David received a Bachelor of Talmudic Law at Neveh Zion College of Judaic Studies, Telshe Stone, Israel.

For more information about Elliptic Curve Ventures, contact David Wertentheil at 212-558-9017 or visit www.ellipticcurveventures.com.

SOURCE Elliptic Curve Ventures