by Lior Messika
Since 2018, Eden Block’s mission has been to align with and work with the world’s most talented entrepreneurs, technologists, and researchers. We’re incredibly humbled by the connections forged with our portfolio companies, our co-investors, and the broader communities that we’ve been in touch with.
The past two years have been pivotal for the Blockchain industry, as they have been pivotal for Eden Block and its activities. We have witnessed an ongoing (and far from complete) maturation of an incredibly exciting industry and have had the chance to back the formidable entrepreneurs and scientists leading the charge. In this post, I will try to give some background about Eden Block, our vision for the future, as well as provide additional information about Eden Block’s identity and focus.
With blockchain rapidly making its way into the mainstream, and its associated industry getting bombarded with incredulous amounts of investment capital, some truths became more apparent than others: with Blockchain’s purported ability to enhance and/or disrupt every single industry in the world, we quickly understood that the DLT industry would grow massively, and potentially fix a pathway towards unbounded economical, social, and even political reform. However, we also observed that this fundamental truth of opportunity would have to be matched with an equally compelling case for execution — a sorely overlooked medium beneath the billions of FOMO-inspired capital.
Business theorists at heart, our foremost goal was to meticulously map the industry as we saw it — by combining deep industry expertise with a broader understanding of how businesses and industries rise and fall. We’ve developed cutting-edge research into consensus models, cryptography, and other central architectural components. As Researchers, we executed profound analysis of the industries that we believe will be most impacted by emerging technologies, including blockchain. As demonstrated Operators, we designed frameworks — we crafted and mapped out methodologies that were specific to building, proving, and scaling value propositions enabled by blockchain and other emerging technologies. With our Founders, we developed and executed on strategies that touched every single aspect of a venture’s journey. As Investors, our mission was to develop an investment engine possessing capacities for tremendous specialization while retaining incredible breadth and perspective.
Today, Eden Block brings the most multidisciplinary, specialized, and demonstrated investment team into the uncharted world of blockchain ventures. Our mission is to bridge the colossal gap between opportunity and execution within this nascent industry. Through our investments and our work with the industry’s most brilliant teams, Eden Block and its partners strive towards refining, standardizing, and growing this infant industry to the heights that it deserves. Until now, industries such as Artificial Intelligence & Fintech have created 47 and 56 unicorns, respectively. The emerging blockchain industry has created 11 unicorns to date, and our mission is to enable the others forthcoming.
Lior Messika: Lior’s breadth of experience in the investment world is particularly unique. As Chief Executive Officer of the Messika Holdings Group, a leading single-family office, Lior’s investment lens has been profoundly multidisciplinary and highly integrative. As part of his multi-asset management strategies, Lior has built innovative frameworks and execution models specific to a number of industries. Throughout his career, Lior has specialized in capital markets, impact investing, late-stage private equity, real estate, and early-stage ventures. In 2018, Lior founded Eden Block with a vision to accelerate the application and adoption of blockchain technologies. A business theorist and technical researcher, he has executed profound research into the application of blockchain and has designed unique frameworks for business model innovation leveraging blockchain. At Eden Block, Lior works tirelessly with portfolio founders to ensure success, while constantly refining Eden Block’s vision for the implementation of blockchain in the real world.
Yoann Douieb: Yoann is a finance professional with almost 20 years of experience in investments. With education from Tulane University and the MBA Institute (INSEEC Group), where he earned a B.A in Business and Finance, Yoann went on to occupy positions related to investments, trading, sales and risk management at Legg Mason Group’s EnTrustPermal (a fund of hedge fund with $30 billion in AUM), BPCE Group’s Natixis, or First International Bank of Israel. Yoann also advised the UN on international trade and tariffs, as well as founded and managed Temple Stone, an innovative investment management company, investing across multiple asset classes with 100 million US dollars in AUM. At Eden Block, Yoann is a Partner and CFO, where he oversees cross-functional aspects of the company’s operations. That includes all financial, legal and regulatory functions, as well as risk management and investors on-boarding.
Yoann Douieb - Co-founder & General Partner
Rami Beracha : Rami has been a Managing General Partner at Pitango for 18 years until 2018. His investment focus is primarily in Disruptive technologies and building teams of serial entrepreneurs. Rami has led investments into Israel’s highest profile companies, and boasts one of the most accomplished portfolios in the global venture landscape. Rami is a Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of SOSA, a unique hub connecting global innovators with leading Fortune 5000 players seeking for innovation, with presence in Tel Aviv and NYC. He also initiated a unique investment company, i3 Equity partners, dedicated to IoT whose investors include Microsoft, Qualcomm, GE, Tata, Tamasek and the Tel Aviv University.Rami joined Eden Block as Chief of Strategy and General Partner in 2018. At Eden Block, Rami is constantly fine- tuning areas such as vision, portfolio construction, due diligence processes, and portfolio success.
Rami Beracha - General Partner
Ben Livshits : Ben is Chief Scientist for Brave Software, the company behind the Brave browser, a fast, open source, privacy-focused browser that blocks intrusive ads and trackers. He is also an Associate Professor at Imperial College London and an affiliate professor at the University of Washington. Previously, he was a research scientist at Microsoft Research. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2006. Ben’s research interests include application of sophisticated static and dynamic analysis techniques to finding errors in programs. Ben has published papers at PLDI, POPL, Oakland Security, Usenix Security, CCS, SOSP, ICSE, FSE, and many other venues. He is the author of over 100 academic papers, dozens of patents, and multiple tech transfer awards for bringing research into practice. Dr. Ben Livshits is the Chair of the advisory board for Eden Block. He joined the fund in the capacity of a scientific advisor in 2019, focusing on providing due diligence and follow-up technical advising to companies in the Eden block portfolio to provide them with the advantage of cutting-edge research and technological expertise.
Ben Livshits - Chair of Advisory Board