Why I Became a Founder and Investor in Web3

When I first became interested in crypto, nearly every conversation revolved around token prices. People were glued to charts, chasing volatility and trying to predict which project would explode next. I understood the excitement, but my attention went elsewhere.

I became obsessed with the infrastructure underneath it all.

The reason I entered Web3 had very little to do with speculation. What drew me in was the possibility that blockchain technology could eventually rebuild major parts of the global financial system.

I saw a real opportunity to rethink how ownership, capital, and coordination work online.

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Why I Became Focused on Tokenization

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Once I started studying blockchain systems seriously, I became convinced that tokenization would eventually become one of the biggest categories in finance. Most financial infrastructure still runs on slow, fragmented, and expensive systems. Settlement takes time, ownership records need to move across multiple parties, and administrative overhead piles up quickly.

Blockchain networks introduced a completely different model.

Assets could eventually move with embedded transfer rules, transparent ownership records, automated compliance standards, and near real-time settlement. I spent a huge amount of time thinking about what that could mean for private equity, real estate, funds, and capital markets.

Back in 2017, very few people inside crypto wanted to discuss regulated assets or institutional finance. The market rewarded speculation far more aggressively than infrastructure.

That disconnect was exactly why I became interested in building Polymath.

I believed institutional adoption would eventually become one of the largest drivers of crypto growth. Large financial institutions were never going to move meaningful amounts of capital through systems lacking governance standards, identity requirements, and compliance infrastructure.

At the time, that view was unpopular.

Years later, tokenization became one of the biggest conversations happening across global finance.

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How Building Companies Turned Me Into an Investor

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I never woke up one day and decided I wanted to become Trevor Koverko the venture investor. I’ve always seen myself as a founder first.

What happened naturally over time was that building startups constantly put me around founders working on difficult technical problems before the markets paid attention.

Some of the best ideas in technology sound early, strange, or overly ambitious at first.

I became interested early in Ethereum because smart contracts introduced a completely new framework for programmable ownership and financial coordination. I also spent time around companies such as ShapeShift because they represented some of the earliest examples of blockchain-native financial infrastructure operating outside traditional banking systems.

What excited me about those companies was not short-term market hype. It was the possibility that entirely new financial rails were being built in real time.

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Over time, I started investing more and more in founders building infrastructure across crypto, digital assets, AI systems, and decentralized finance.

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What I Actually Look for in Founders

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Emerging industries are chaotic. Funding conditions change quickly, entire sectors can lose momentum overnight, and public sentiment can swing aggressively between optimism and panic.

You learn far more about a founder’s potential during difficult periods.

I pay close attention to how people operate when momentum disappears. Do they keep building? Do they adapt quickly? Do they stay rational when markets become irrational?

That matters much more to me than polished presentations or social media attention.

Many of the strongest founders I know spent years building before validation arrived.

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Why I Started Paying Attention to AI Infrastructure

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Over the last several years, I have become increasingly interested in AI infrastructure because I have seen how dependent modern models are on high-quality data.

Most people focus on model performance and compute power. Far fewer people discuss the operational challenges behind AI itself. Training systems require enormous amounts of labelled, refined, and continuously improving data.

That became one of the primary reasons why I co-founded Sapien.

I became interested in the idea that decentralized systems could help coordinate large-scale human intelligence and specialized datasets for AI training. The category still feels extremely early to me.

I think many people underestimate how large the market for AI data infrastructure could eventually become.

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Why I Still Believe in Web3

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Crypto has already gone through multiple major cycles during the past decade.

During downturns, people tend to conclude the entire industry was driven purely by speculation. I have never viewed it that way because the underlying infrastructure keeps improving regardless of market conditions.

Developers continue building. Institutions continue moving closer to blockchain-based financial systems. Tokenization continues gaining traction. AI systems continue to increase the demand for decentralized coordination and digital infrastructure.

The long-term opportunity in programmable ownership, digital assets, and internet-native financial systems still feels massive to me, and that strong belief is why I continue to build and invest across Web3 today.