- Airstack, which makes tools for Web3 developers, has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding.
- Cofounder and CEO Jason Goldberg launched Airstack during the depths of the crypto crash.
- He ignored advice to take the summer off and instead built a prototype, which caught VCs’ attention.
Jason Goldberg cofounded his Web3 development startup, Airstack, in May, just as crypto markets began to unravel. When he first set out to raise funding, investors advised him to take the summer off.
Goldberg, a repeat founder whose past startups include Social Median, Fab, and Hem, decided not to heed that advice. Instead, he and his cofounders — Deepesh Nath, Sarvesh Jain, Ignas Peciura, and Vysakh Nair — pushed full steam ahead to build a prototype of Airstack’s platform.
Following their guts ended up paying off. Airstack has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding from investors including Animal Ventures, Warburg Serres, Polygon, Genblock, Fenbushi, Resolute Ventures, WW Ventures, Tensai Capital, WestWave Ventures, Lecca Ventures, and Martin Crowley’s Peoples Syndicate.
That total surpassed Goldberg’s initial goal, he told Insider, and the company capped each investor’s allocation at $250,000 in order to meet demand.
“Rather than us going out and pitching, it was investors knocking on our doors and saying, ‘Hey, we saw what you built. We’d like to become part of it on the ground floor now,” he told Insider.
Airstack’s technology essentially creates application programming interfaces, or APIs, for Web3 applications. It improves upon existing infrastructure such as The Graph by allowing developers to access real-time data from several Web3 applications at a time, Goldberg said.
Goldberg had previously forayed into blockchain with an earlier project, OpenST, which developed tools for scaling Ethereum applications and integrating crypto wallets into those apps. They built a short-video app called Pepo to showcase that technology, but eventually shuttered it.
Along the way, Goldberg and his cofounders realized one big challenge of building products on the blockchain: the lack of interoperability between apps. APIs by then were standard in the world of Web2, but practically nonexistent in crypto.
This summer’s market downturn provided a valuable opportunity for Airstack’s team to quietly work out their concept, Goldberg said. By September, he and his cofounders were ready to unveil their prototype, and it quickly drew interest from investors.
As the Web3 frenzy has subsided, Goldberg said, he believes his experience points to the need for startup founders to rethink their approach to funding.
“The model that existed in 2020, 2021 — just raise as much as you can early and prove it later — that model’s over,” he said. “The new model is, we’re going to build something, show people what we can do, and if they appreciate it, we’ll find the money and the financing we need for the project.”
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