Alon Goren from DGH, an early-stage blockchain venture capital fund and producer of the world’s largest blockchain and cryptocurrency conference, sits in an exclusive interview with the CEO & Co-founder of Fintech TV, Vince Molinari.
Fintech TV's “The Digital Asset Report” welcomed Alon Goren, who is a founding partner of DGH.
Excerpts from the interview:
Vince Molinari
It's been a while, and I kind of want to ground this a little bit, going back to probably 2018, I think, when you first launched Draper Goren Holm with Josef and Tim Draper. It has been quite a journey. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the founding, the journey, and where we are today?
Alon Goren
Josef and I have been in this space for a long time. We've known you since the days of crowdfunding and trying to democratize capital. It's really exciting that the next evolution of digital investing and online investing has gone into crypto and blockchain. Josef and I were hosting our Crowd Invest Summits. While we were doing our own businesses, we realized that we get to meet the best entrepreneurs, the best investors in this brand new space. That’s when we decided to go out on our own and start our own venture studio to invest in the really early-stage companies in the space. And since then, it has grown and we have had Tim Draper join us. He invested in a previous company of mine, and so he invested in this. We became partners, and we started Draper Goren Holm (DGH), which invests in early-stage blockchain companies and even incubates and accelerates the really early ones.
Vince Molinari
Well, that's terrific. And it's kind of evolved. I know we share the same passion for education, and awareness, really bringing forward so much of the new to greater audiences. So you've got the 4th annual Security Token Summit here in New York City, on May 15 & 16. We are so delighted and proud to be a media partner with you. Tell us a bit about that upcoming conference.
Alon Goren
It's exciting for us to bring it to New York although we do our big conference every year in Los Angeles. In L.A, we organize LA Blockchain Summit and thousands of people would attend that conference. That is going to take place in September. But Security Token Summit was created out of the love for the space and the idea that we wanted to actually hang out with our friends and spend more time with them. Talking about the LA Blockchain Summit, when you have thousands of people coming to the convention centers, it's like speed dating. But we wanted to sit down, relax and have a conversation that was a little more conducive to the security token space, which is more regulated. It's a little bit more serious in some ways. So we decided to create a high-end event where it's much more exclusive in terms of fewer people but more opportunities to connect with those people. But we're still going to stream it live on the Internet for free for people who can't come. And this is the first year we're doing it in New York City, which we think is really important. We've always done our events in LA, but New York is the epicenter of traditional finance, and we want to make sure we're there to help convert the masses into this new digital era.
Vince Molinari
Well, I absolutely love that you're coming to New York City. We welcome you all with warm arms and open hearts. Can you share some of the line-ups of STS 2022 with us?
Alon Goren
Yeah. We have a lot of really exciting announcements from some of our Draper Goren Holm portfolio companies like Ownera, and their management team is going to speak. But we, of course, have Tim Draper coming to give some of his future predictions. We have Congressman Tom Emmer to talk about what the blockchain is doing in Congress. We have Anthony Scaramucci, Jay Clayton, and a lot of the people from the traditional finance world. It's going to be a really great event. We also have some surprises, some celebrities, and folks who are making announcements in the space. So the one that we recently announced is Brooke Shields, but we have some other surprises in the works as well.
Vince Molinari
Well, it would be uncharacteristic if you weren't teasing us with some cliff-hangers. Are there tickets available? How do people sign on getting to the event?
Alon Goren
Because it's a very exclusive event and we're running towards the limit of the tickets, we've now created a place on the website, SecurityTokenSummit.com, where you can apply to attend. We just verify that you're in the space and you're there for the right reasons. But because you're watching Fintech TV and Fintech TV is a media partner of ours, viewers can get five free tickets. You can apply going here. The first five people to sign up with that will get to come to the event for free, which is really exciting because we're hitting our limits in capacity and want to make sure it's a very exclusive event.
Vince Molinari
First of all, huge thanks from Fintech TV for that generosity and for making those tickets available to our viewership. And it's such a testimony to yourself and Josef and Tim, the generosity and the commitment to building the community and democratizing and giving that ability to folks who maybe couldn't access it or get that ticket on their own. Really thank you for leading by example and kind of walking the walk.
Alon Goren
It's really important to us. One of the great things that happened over the last couple of years is that our events went virtual and we became adept at the digital nature and the digital platforms. Thus, we're going to keep the live stream for all of our events, always free as well. The last Security Token Summit had tens of thousands of people watching from around the world for free, live on the internet. So even if you don't plan to attend in New York, you can go to securitytokensummit.com and sign up. Then you'll be able to go and watch a live stream for free and we're really happy to do it right. It's all about like we said, it's accessing the best entrepreneurs for us on our own. Our biggest ulterior motive is not to make money off the event. It is to meet the best entrepreneurs in the world. We want to make sure everyone can participate.
Vince Molinari
Looking forward to seeing you there. I know we're going to be on-site doing some great interviews. I'll be doing a speaking role there so it's going to be a lot of fun. Thank you for engaging with the community so deeply and being so committed to the space. I appreciate it. I can't wait to see you in New York.
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