Vanessa Grellet is a fintech veteran who holds nearly two decades of experience across financial services, regulation and next-gen technology. She currently serves as the head of portfolio growth for CoinFund, a New York- and Miami-based investment firm focused on crypto assets and early-stage Web3 initiatives. Grellet’s entry into the blockchain industry dates back to November 2016, when she took up the role of an executive director at ConsenSys, primarily tasked with driving forward the Ethereum ecosystem. She has helped lead initiatives such as the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and the Accounting Blockchain Coalition.
Grellet previously worked for goliaths in traditional financial services such as the New York Stock Exchange and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The entrepreneur is also the president of the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition, a nonprofit organization that supports the development of blockchain-based offerings tailored to address social and environmental challenges. She holds leadership positions at two investment firms — Nexus and Cornerstone Capital — and is one of the founding members of the Crypto Tea community. She studied international business, trade and tax law at Université Paris-Panthéon Assas (Paris II) and business and managerial economics at HEC Paris.
Grellet joined CoinFund’s New York office in May 2021 and began to play a key role in managing the company’s portfolio of over 50 early-stage and Web3 companies. In an effort to scale and grow startup projects, Grellet handles numerous initiatives, including tokenomics, team hiring and management, as well as helping launch tokens.
Under Grellet’s oversight, the company entered the nonfungible token space in June with the launch of Dubbed Metaversal for minting and trading blockchain-based collectibles, art and other assets. Around the same time, CoinFund also launched an $83 million venture fund to further delve into the decentralized finance and NFT markets — backed by investors including Venrock. Some of the company’s other prominent investments include layer-2 scaling solution Fuel Labs, esports startup Community Gaming and blockchain infrastructure platform Blockdaemon.
In addition, CoinFund also jointly invested in Space, a company dedicated to building the Metaverse. Supporting the company’s growing portfolio of businesses, it also hired some prominent names from traditional space, including Christopher Perkins, Citi’s global co-head of futures, as president and a managing partner and David Pakman, a prominent venture capitalist, as a managing partner.
In 2022, Grellet’s primary focus is expected to be on onboarding promising early-stage crypto ventures into CoinFund’s portfolio and ensuring success in the launch of their products and services. The year started with CoinFund bringing on former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo, also known as “Crypto Dad,” as an adviser.
The company has also led multimillion-dollar funding rounds dedicated to numerous other crypto initiatives, including decentralized prime brokerage liquidity protocol Primex Finance, digital asset management platform Hal and NFT-focused venture studio Metaversal.
Grellet believes in the disruptive potential of the NFT ecosystem and envisions the mainstreaming of the technology in the next four to five years. Under her leadership, the company is expected to make a majority of its investments in companies focused on NFTs and the Metaverse.
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