Jesse Walden
Founder and Managing Partner
Jesse is the Founder and General Partner at Variant. Jesse led the firm’s investments in Uniswap, Phantom, World, and many others. Jesse was previously an investment partner on the first crypto fund at Andreessen Horowitz and later led the a16z Crypto Startup School.
Prior to that, Jesse founded two startups aimed at giving creative people more agency over their work and their businesses: Cool Managers and Mediachain Labs. Cool Managers, founded in 2011, was an artist management firm that leveraged new tech platforms to help artists like Solange and Blood Orange reach their fans directly and run their businesses independently. Mediachain Labs, founded in 2014, was an early blockchain startup that built the Mediachain protocol for tracking ownership of digital media assets on public blockchains. Mediachain Labs was acquired by Spotify in 2017, where Jesse led blockchain R&D as a product lead.
Jesse writes regularly on technology, markets, and the future of the internet.