WiB Spotlight is a new Q&A series by Women in Blockchain where we highlight women and non-binary leaders building in the crypto space.

Introducing Sachi from Polygon Ventures! Polygon Ventures is Polygon’s $100 million fund focused on supporting visionary teams in the Polygon and multi-chain ecosystem. In this month’s WiB Spotlight, we talk to Sachi about how she went from a career in tradfi to one in venture capital, as well as her process for scoping out and investing in promising projects.

WIB: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Sachi: I studied electrical engineering at CalTech. Initially I thought I’d do academia or research, but after doing some internships and research summers, I realized that wasn’t what I was passionate about. I decided I wanted to do something more in consulting or finance. That’s when I got an internship at Bank of America Merill Lynch on the sales and trading desk. That internship went really well, and I decided to take a full-time role there. I started off doing structured notes, which is a more complex version of a bond. I also traded bank bonds. That gave me a very fundamental understanding of how finance in general works. This definitely helped me out a lot once I transitioned into crypto.

WIB: How did you get into crypto? How did you end up at Polygon?

That was during the pandemic, so about three years ago. I met Sandeep back when Polygon wasn’t even Polygon yet, it was named Matic and they had also not listed on any exchanges yet. Everytime I met Sandeep, I felt like the company was reaching an inflection point in growth. The growth was becoming exponential. He was the one that converted me into crypto, he’d always make the analogy about how you can think of gold as Bitcoin and Ethereum as replacing all the centralized financial institutions including the Fed and the banks. That vision really spoke to me. At a certain point, I decided I want to go to crypto. Polygon felt like the perfect opportunity because it was also a company that was growing very rapidly at that point.

I joined without a specific role in mind, I had to carve it out myself.

I explored different things. At that time, Sandeep also announced that he was going to start an ecosystem fund. He decided to allocate $100 million to invest within the Polygon ecosystem. There was capital sitting there but nobody was really taking a lead to figure out how to invest that capital, or doing due diligence on projects. I decided that we should have a formal ecosystem fund set up. I became one of the first people on the Polygon ventures team.

Since then, we’ve grown the team from one person to eight people. We look at everything web3, whether it be gaming, DeFi, infrastructure. The mandate is pretty broad. We invest between $100–500,000 in projects, but we can provide additional support whether it be for business development, marketing, or technical support on top of Polygon.

It’s a great place to be, I feel like I picked the right ecosystem and also the right role. Polygon is one of the top three blockchains projects consider when they want to build on the blockchain. I see a lot of innovation on top of Polygon, there’s a lot of good investment opportunities within the Polygon ecosystem.

WIB: How do you scope out good projects to invest in? What’s your process? Are there specific factors you look for?

Sachi: The number one factor is the founder. You look at the founder and make sure that their background is relevant to whatever they’re building out. For example, if they’re looking to build a new ZK rollup, they should definitely have some background in ZK tech or a PhD in cryptography because ZK tech in general is very difficult to understand and implement.

Number two is the product. When I look at the product, I assess if this is a copy-paste of what already exists, is this a copy-paste with significant improvements, or is this something completely new that will change the paradigm for the market. Obviously we want to invest in projects that are either significant improvement to what is already existing, or something that is completely new that can significantly improve what already exists within the market.

Number three would be the valuation. Polygon Ventures typically only focuses on early-stage deals, so pre-seed or seed. We prefer projects that are under a few million in valuation. If a project has a $50 million valuation, there needs to be a compelling reason as to why we should invest.

WIB: Let’s say you pick a project to invest in. When you do that, even if they have a high valuation and have a great founder, I guess to some degree, Polygon is taking on some element of risk. So what happens if a project you invested in doesn’t do well?

Sachi: We’re a bit more hands-off just because we typically aren’t the lead investor. It’s usually the lead investor that takes on that responsibility, but obviously we do provide support for projects. If there’s a project that isn’t doing well because they don’t have enough funding, we can help them with introductions to other venture capitalists, or introductions to other projects.

It honestly comes down to the integrity of the founder and how well they execute. The best thing a founder can do if their project is struggling is to realize that maybe the project doesn’t work, stop it at that point, and return whatever capital they have raised. I think it can be very hard for a founder to come to terms with the idea that maybe their idea just doesn’t work or there’s no product market fit. But if they can go above that and halt operations, and return the money to the investors, that’s a really good signal to me because the founder understands when to stop or when to say no. I’m happy to back a founder in the future if they decide to start another company then, because I know I can trust this founder.

WIB: Just to switch gears a little bit, you said you joined Polygon when the team was still relatively small. What was it like to go from a small team to a huge team? Now everybody knows Polygon, it’s a giant, giant ecosystem. Have you seen differences in work culture or in general?

Sachi: Things progressed so fast, in the blink of an eye, that I didn’t even realize how big Polygon had become, especially when I first joined. When I first joined, the total size of the Polygon team was 200 people or so. Now the entire Polygon Labs team is about 400 people.

The workload increased exponentially, especially at the peak of the bull market. There were so many projects that were building on top of Polygon and it was difficult for the founders and employees to prioritize what projects to support. It was a difficult decision to make because we want to support all projects that are building on top of Polygon. But unfortunately the reality is that there is limited bandwidth. It’s difficult to scale, especially if you go from 100 projects to a 1000 building on top of Polygon. That was probably the hardest thing during the bull. But over time, we learned how to scale. Most projects are self-served. A lot of the documentation is online. Those projects can build on top of Polygon without necessarily needing support from Polygon itself.

A saying that kept me grounded was to always stay humble. This is something that Sandeep always said in the beginning, that it’s really important to stay humble and grounded even if you’re a very large protocol because it also reflects in your attitude when you’re talking to a project. A project wants to feel good about itself. If you think you’re better than everyone else, it reflects very poorly on the protocol. Sandeep is always pushing on us to stay humble and grounded, and this mentality has really worked well for the company as a whole.

WIB: Coming across so many new projects and promising founders, have you ever considered starting your own thing?

Yeah, I’ve definitely thought about starting a new company if the opportunity presents itself. To be honest, I haven’t really thought of a good idea yet, so unless I have really strong conviction, I don’t think I would take that leap. I’m definitely open to the idea, but I’m happy where I am right now.

WIB: Do you have any advice for people starting off in the industry, or people already in the industry searching for their next opportunity?

I have two pieces of advice. One, I think it’s very important to have a mentor or somebody that you look up to. I’ve been surrounded by many experienced people in the crypto space. It’s very difficult when you initially go into crypto because it’s not just about understanding the technology that is constantly changing, but you also have to understand the nuances of the industry, like understanding who are the people you want to work with versus who you want to avoid. Unfortunately in this industry there are a lot of scammers as well as people thinking only about short-term gains. A mentor can help you navigate this, guide you in terms of what ecosystems you should work for, what jobs are good, and make good decisions for your career long-term.

Two, within web3 the most important role is the community manager role. If you want to get started or dip your feet into web3, I’d suggest going into Discord and Telegram channels and interacting with the community. I think this is a great first role to work in if you’re new to the industry. I think tech matters in crypto, but community matters even more.

WIB: You talked about how a lot of projects in the space can be scammy and this is definitely something a lot of people experience. Just from your experience, what are some red and green flags in projects to look out for before joining their teams?

I think the first thing you should do is do your due diligence. it can be really difficult evaluating a project by yourself but if you ask around people within the industry about their opinions on projects x, y and z, they should give you candid feedback on what their reputations are and whether they are a reputable project or not.

It’s also worth looking at a project’s cap table. A project’s success doesn’t necessarily depend on its funding, but looking at this information definitely helps. If they have reputable investors, that’s a good signal that these VCs did the due diligence on these projects and they have confidence that these projects will succeed sometime in the future.

Lastly, I suggest that people talk to the team. If it’s a very small team you should definitely talk to the CEO and the people you will be working with and trust your gut feeling!