Pear VC’s Anand Iyer goes solo with new $200M fund for crypto developer tools

The bedrock of any tech product is the engineers. As the race between different chains heats up, communities of loyalists are duking it out to attract developers to their own chain of choice in hopes that doing so will boost growth. Without adequate infrastructure and tooling, the big ideas and promises of web3 don't have a chance.

At Microsoft, where he worked as a developer evangelist, Iyer tried to encourage engineers to build on the company's stack by investing in it. Iyer, a serialentrepreneur with two successful exits, spent the majority of last year honing in on his interest in web3 as a visiting partner at Pear VC.

The man who got his start in trading Bitcoin in the year 2013) is joining a growing group of solo GP raising venture funds built on their own name and reputation. According to Iyer, he has raised $20 million for his first fund. A number of family offices and individuals from the VC and tech communities are participating in the fundraise.

Iyer said that Canonical has made 16 investments in seed and pre-seed startups. FormFunction is a Solana-based NFT marketplace, Thirdweb is a low-code multi-chain dApp tool, and Notifi is a web3 messaging startup. The firm expects to make between 40 and 50 investments in its first fund.

There is a market map of various segments within the web3 developer infrastructure landscape.

The small size of Iyer's fund is a key differentiating factor. Recent ventures into web3 developer infrastructure startups have been made by traditional venture firms.

I don't want this to be a fund that is too big or too large because I can participate in many rounds. I can invest in early stages, so I am not trying to compete for a certain percentage of ownership. Iyer said that he can write relatively small checks and still be a part of the startup journey.

Iyer sees developer infrastructure as an area that is still undiscovered within the space.

Iyer said that he feels like DeFi apps are built by early adopters for early adopters, and that it needs more product people building infrastructure tools to expand its reach.