Crypto-Friendly Investment Search Engine Vincent Raises $6M

Vincent, a search engine for investments in alternative assets that was created by the founders of the crowdfunding website Indiegogo, has raised $6 million in a funding round led by entrepreneur Jason Calacanis’ LAUNCH fund. Investment firms 8VC and Digital Currency Group (the parent company of CoinDesk) also participated.

Vincent had previously raised a $2 million in a seed round of funding in December, when the platform emerged from a testing mode. 

Vincent tracked $3.3 billion in investable opportunities last month and saw users deploy about $100 million in capital, the company said. 

Crypto accounted for 12% of asset searches on Vincent in June. The most popular searches were for venture capital at 28% and real estate at 26%. The crypto search figure for June was down 4% from May, as the category dropped out of the top five segments. 

“There has been a small downtick for crypto in June, and I think that’s in parallel with interest rate concerns and inflation concerns, so you’ve seen a little bit of a shift to yield-oriented assets, like real estate and debt in the last two months,” Vincent founder Slava Rubin said in an interview. 

Still, startups focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology are the leaders under the platform's venture capital search umbrella, ahead of such topics as artificial intelligence and cannabis, Rubin added.

“When we launched in November, crypto wasn’t in the top five of sector searches in startups,” Rubin said. “But now it’s number one month after month.”