Venture studio launched by crypto VC to build startups in the Web3 space

SPARTAN Group, which invests in and advises crypto companies, has launched a new arm called Spartan Labs to build startups in the Web3 space.

Shaun Heng, the former vice-president of growth and operations for crypto data platform CoinMarketCap, is leading the new venture building initiative.

Venture building studios build tech startups in-house before spinning them off. Prominent examples include Germany's Rocket Internet, which was involved in the founding of Lazada, foodpanda and Flash Coffee.

Spartan Group is launching its venture studio amid a global crypto frenzy that has prompted an influx of capital into non-fungible tokens (NFT), decentralised finance (DeFi) and Web3 infrastructure.

The venture capital firm last week announced a US$200 million metaverse fund, and has backed projects such as Solana, Dapper Labs and Qredo Network. It has advised and invested in over 100 companies in the Web3 and DeFi space since 2017.

Heng plans to build a team of entrepreneurs, engineers, product managers, UX experts, game economists and NFT strategists for Spartan Labs. Before CoinMarketCap, he founded a startup in Singapore called Eatsy, which operates an app allowing users to place orders and make payments at restaurants.

"The industry today has too much capital chasing too few builders, and we hope to change that with Spartan Labs," said Heng.

He believes interesting gaps in the ecosystem include companies building within the infrastructure for NFTs, the metaverse and decentralised autonomous organisations; cross-chain wallet infrastructure to onboard the next wave of crypto users; and in DeFi that can bridge crypto assets to real-world use cases.