CoinMarketLabRaising for a crypto startup starts with a hard truth: many generalist VCs stay cautious on token deals. The investors who do invest fall into a few clear buckets, and knowing which bucket fits your round saves months of pitching the wrong rooms.
Crypto-native funds are the core of the market - firms that only do crypto, understand token economics and can move fast. Multi-stage platforms (the big names with dedicated crypto arms) bring larger checks but slower processes and more diligence. Corporate venture - exchanges and infrastructure companies investing from their balance sheets - often wants strategic fit, not just returns. And accelerators take you earliest and smallest, in exchange for structure and a network.
Fit matters more than fame. The right question is not "who is the biggest fund" but "who has led rounds at my stage, in my sector, in the last year." A DeFi fund that has never backed infrastructure is not a lead for your infra round, whatever their brand.
That is why we built the CoinMarketLab VC database: a filterable database of crypto VC profiles with sectors, stages and portfolio, so you can build a shortlist of funds that actually invest in what you're building - instead of spraying a deck at every address you can find.