Colosseum, Solana brush
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– Crypto accelerator raises $60 million for its first fund to support early-stage startups in the Solana ecosystem.
Coliseum said Tuesday that the fund will only invest in a select selection of projects from the Solana Hackathon winners. Colosseum co-founder Clay Robbins told The Block that Colosseum is currently the exclusive platform partner for Solana Foundation hackathon operations.
The Coliseum was founded earlier this year by Robbins, Nate Levine and Matty Taylor. Taylor, former Solana Foundation Growth Director, launched the Solana Hackathon program in 2020. In January of this year, the Solana Foundation entrusted Colosseum with managing its hackathon and accelerator program.
The Coliseum concluded its first Solana Hackathon on the online platform Renaissance from March 4 to April 8, Robbins said. He added that it was the largest participation of any Solana hackathon ever, with more than 8,300 participants from 95 countries.
Colosseum Fund I
The Coliseum began raising money for Fund I late last year and closed this month, Robbins said. The Coliseum initially aimed to raise $50 million, so the fund was “oversubscribed,” Robbins added. He declined to name the fund’s backers but said they include ecosystem founders and hackathon alumni.
The fund’s initial deal size per startup is a standard investment of $250,000, but Robbins noted that check sizes in subsequent rounds may vary.
With its first investment, the fund has backed 10 projects, all of which will be announced at the first Demo Day on June 27. These include Ore, a mineable token project on the Solana blockchain, Urani, a Solana intent-based swap aggregator, and BlockMesh, a Solana-based DePIN project.
Robbins added that the fund’s full deployment is expected to take place over three to four years, depending on the size of the deployment of future cohorts and follow-on investments.
“Cryptocurrencies are still early in their adoption cycle, and Coliseum’s model of integrating online hackathons with accelerators and funds can drive the development, adoption and growth of all early-stage technologies,” Robbins said. “But Solana is the ecosystem we are most excited about because it provides builders with the infrastructure they need to scale their cryptocurrency products today.”
As for what impact this funding will have on the Solana ecosystem, Robbins said Colosseum will accelerate the time it takes for the team to find product-market fit.
“More broadly, we believe the Colosseum platform will significantly increase the speed of on-chain experimentation everywhere in the world,” he added.
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