Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto-exchanges, introduced a new incubation program to support top early-stage teams with the best resources to ignite their blockchain startups. This move is the follow up of their earlier move back in June to launch a $1 billion venture capital fund.
The 10-week on-site program is said to be taking in 8-10 companies per batch and will be providing $500,000 to each participant for a 10% equity in the business. However, the means of the investment is still unclear, in between the form of cryptocurrency, fiat, or both. Aside from the money talk, the company is keen on providing the participants with mentors from both the crypto and startup scenes to guide them in their journey, and also the network they will need to set up their own. Access to the support services is included as well for the ‘fellow Binancians’.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Binance Labs CEO, Ella Zhang explained that the program - focused on startups - includes projects focused infrastructure, public chain scalability, security, decentralized exchanges, wallets, custody, payment, coin stability, compliance, decentralized apps, gaming, virtual goods and more.
Looking at blockchain business with global problems and opportunities, Binance is aiming to operate across different parts of the world.
“We’re looking at different cities across the world because blockchain and crypto are international. We see problems and opportunities in different regions with different ways to leverage the blockchain,” Zhang said. Apart from Africa and Asia, she added that no other destination was of interest yet.
Zhang and Christy Choi, Binance Labs Director, also explained that the whole program is molded around in the particular manner (10% equity) so as to facilitate the startup founders by allowing them to focus largely on the development on the product or service instead of having them worry about the business setting.
The one focus of this aggressive investment strategy is also to help the founders ‘get rid of those noises and focus on their product’, by which Zhang means the legalities and retail investor expectations and concerns that they often find themselves dealing with when they opt to start out with a private investment company.
Zhang acknowledges that this rigorous effort is only made up for when the incubator finds those meaningful blockchain and crypto companies that they are looking for which will make Binance grow. In lieu of this effort, the venture will also have ‘follow-on’ investment opportunities to facilitate a long-term relationship between the company and the former participants.
