Worldcoin’s co-founder leaves the organization to start “Blackrock for the New Economy”

• ByStartupStory     |    August 25, 2022

According to sources, regulatory filings, and investor decks, Max Novendstern, co-founder and former CEO of Worldcoin, has departed the high-profile business to create a new endeavor. A Worldcoin spokeswoman confirmed Novendstern’s departure but added that he continues to advise the company. Novendstern did not respond to a tweet sent to him on Wednesday.

According to the investor deck, his new company, Mana, is creating an “AI venture capitalist that will run autonomously on-chain” or “Blackrock for the new economy.” According to people familiar with the subject, the startup is working with Tribe Capital, Multicoin Capital, Dragonfly, and Variant to raise financing.

Their goal is to create a general Al who can examine any company and fund it with one click. The idea is to create a venture paradigm that grows like software—no marginal cost: anyone in the world can fundraise and invest, and because Al improves with scale, the system improves in a flywheel.

 The “programmatic deal memo” is at the heart of their system. An Al anticipates the analyst’s assessment for any investment criteria (team, product, strategy, etc.). Data pipelines produce predictions that are split between neural nets and human labelers. Analysts utilize the tool to work faster; they train the Als by utilizing the tool (‘GitHub Copilot for investors’).

In an exponentiating market, success implies outperforming every fund in the world in terms of speed-of-capital and cost-of-capital. Venture capital is no longer limited to early equity investments in Bay Area moonshots. Rather, the new market includes simultaneously financing all asset classes—debt, equity, and tokens—in all cities and industries, as software globalization reaches the second half of the chessboard.

In an exponentiating market, success implies outperforming every fund in the world in terms of speed of capital and cost of capital. Venture capital is no longer limited to early equity investments in moonshots in Silicon Valley. Rather, the new market entails simultaneously financing all asset classes—debt, equity, and tokens—in all cities and industries, as software globalization reaches the “second half of the chessboard.”

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