Luchang Zheng Podcast Transcript
Luchang Zheng joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Luchang Zheng. Luchang Zheng is a founding partner of Arcanum Capital, a global ambassador of Draper University, a serial entrepreneur, and a Web3 evangelist. With a strong marketing and cross order communication background, Luchang has extensive experience bringing a broad range of cutting-edge technologies to commercialization.
She dedicates her passion towards cross border consulting and investment with portfolios spanning four continents covering blockchain, AI, fintech, big data, and IOT. Prior to starting Arcanum Capital, she was the Chief Explorer of Robotics and AI at GWC and organizer and producer of the Global Mobile Internet Conference.
She also mentor’s entrepreneurs at MIT LaunchX and Leanin China. Well, good afternoon, Luchang. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. I appreciate you making the time. Like I said, getting out of bed every single day is just my passion is talking to somebody new across the microphone on us.
Amazing podcast. So again, thank you. And Lou Chang, we’re going to just jump right into your questions here. Can you share the story behind founding Arcanum Capital? What gap did you see in the market that Arcanum Capital aims to fill, especially in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors?
Luchang Zheng: Thank you for the question, Brian.
Well, I’ve been writing angel checks and advising startups since 2016. And all my partners, all the founding partners of Arcanum Capital have been in industry for a while, especially Rahul and Karthik. They joined since 2013, quite early. But it was until like 2017, 2018. When the ICO craze started, we witnessed a lot of investors in this industry became SAF traders, and we were not happy with that because that short term action had done harm to the industry.
So actually, during COVID, Rahul my Draper University classmate one, one day called me and said, Hey, sister I think it’s time for us to build a brand together. And with that synergy, we can actually better support long term vision founders in blockchain and crypto. What do you think? Well, yeah, why not?
Because I’m not Balaji and I don’t have the influence power just as an individual. So why not consort our all our resources together and build a fund and to continue support the long-term vision entrepreneurs. So that’s how we started. And during the whole process of brainstorming for the bests of phone one, we actually found out that the influence of blockchain and cryptocurrency can be really powerful and dynamic and massive production in emerging market was burgeoning at that time.
But entrepreneurs in emerging markets or in emerging countries are mostly underserved compared to Silicon Valley founders. So actually, we found out that to support those undervalued founders is actually our edge. So how can we leverage the limited resources to help proliferate the whole ecosystem into emerging market?
And then we came up to the tonality just to support as many young and bright, even first-time founder in emerging market as we can. And especially in India, because we have Rahul in Bangalore and Hyderabad, and I was traveling back forth between Silicon Valley and China and Karthik in New York and James in Switzerland and UK.
So, we are very widespread around the world that gives us an edge too. To support from different perspectives with different resources around the world.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I appreciate the story leading up to this. This, this obviously is something that I really relish in. So does our audience, as far as everybody’s story that they bring to the podcast.
I really, really do appreciate that. And Luchang, what is the core investment philosophy of Arcanum Capital? And how does it guide your decision-making process when evaluating potential investments in blockchain and crypto startups?
Luchang Zheng: Well, thank you for that question. That’s a really good one. So, my background actually was from marketing.
And in our marketing industry, we have four P’s like, I think in investment industry, especially for VC early-stage investment, we have another four P’s, which stands for people, problem, progress and price. We always put people first. That’s one of the core investment philosophy of Arcanum Capital because the founders and founding team are the most important assets of the whole projects.
The price could change, the progress could be altered, and the problem. Could have like different kind of solutions, but people we always focus on the people. And that’s also our successful recipe for identifying some earliest startup founders in phone 1. Doomed to become like the next unicorn in the industry and besides identifying the people, we think that the industry is pretty nascent.
So, firstly, we need to be on one hand on board massive developers, and that’s how we also focus on infrastructure development at the 1st fund. But on the other hand, actually Production technology needs a lot of massive adoption. So DPing, games, RWA, NFT, DeFi are those and those steps which can make the industry being more vibrant and more accessible to massive audience.
So that’s also one of our thesis. So, combining these two together on one hand, the massive developer on board, on the other hand, massive retail users on board. That’s our investment thesis.
Brian Thomas: I love it. Thank you. The philosophy and obviously I like to highlight the people that is the core to everything.
And I, I do appreciate the share chain. Next question here. Tell us about the ways in which Arcanum capital. Connects the dots for its portfolio companies, wherever possible. I understand that a big part of your key differential. Differentiator is the way you’re able to be very hands on activist investors who help your portfolio companies find the missing pieces to help them thrive, whether that be infrastructure or something else.
Well, that’s
Luchang Zheng: correct, Brian. So, Arcanum is. Dedicated to adding value and support beyond just writing a check. First of all, Web3 and cryptocurrency is a global game since day one. Not only do our team members has different geological base and focus, but also we are from different industry and culture background.
That advantage absolutely weaved a worldwide network for our portfolio. And we at Arcanum Capital knew from inception that we had to be different. And brought our passion and drive for helping startups into the fund management world. So, we worked very hard to help each and every portfolio company wherever we can.
From, I’ll give you some examples from like, Tokenomics design mechanism brainstorming, hands on strategy. Creative direction, marketing, PR BD, human resource, staking infrastructure, and to like exchange listing partnerships and even help them to find like best MMM team in the world, not to mention bolstering like a distribution and liquidity bridging East to West, et cetera.
So yeah, from many perspectives and we strongly believe that we are there in the trenches. With the entrepreneurs as they realize their visions. And only there can we maximize the performance of our portfolios and feel great, feel truly great about the work we’ve done.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And being in the middle of that, you can really understand the problem or maybe somebody’s perspective on why they’re investing in, in something that they’re so passionate about.
Really appreciate that. And exactly. Thank you. Luchang. Tell us briefly about your role based in both the United States here and China. Opens up a door to deep Asia or a cannon capital in terms of both sourcing potential projects and helping them go to market. Right.
Luchang Zheng: My background, licensing, marketing and cross border communication.
So, since 2014, I always acted as a role of connector between East and West. With previous working experience it is so easily for me to apply that experience into Arcanum since our inauguration in 2020, and I’ve traveled to more than 80 countries and worked in 3 continents. So, actually, I enjoy bridging those gaps between different continents between different countries and.
People will say that if you travel to a lot of places, you might understand the local culture, but actually it’s not. Traveling is different from working. We’re really dealing with local business and the reality really bites because especially concerning crypto, even I mentioned before, it’s a global business, a global play from day one in different market.
They have Very complicated legal compliance and different service providers and consumer behaviors of different demographics. So how can you bridge those gaps with deep understanding of, like, both market East and West? For example, every time I travel back to Asia, I will visit like mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Southeast Asia, Korea not only to catch up with my partners and investor friends there, but also to.
Just experience the vibe of the market and collect market intelligence by myself. And then I will bring that to Silicon Valley or to United States and to actually share those practice there because a lot of the Asian practice is different from Silicon Valley. But also, a lot of good infrastructure and solid technology are burgeoning out of Silicon Valley.
And how can you be The connector to make the massive adoption in emerging market with those technologies, you need like a service provider for the project to build their communities and to do PR marketing and user engagement. So usually, I will recommend like my trusted service providers in different market to different projects.
For example, if a European project wants to. Set their foot in India or Korea, they’ll come to us, and Rahul might take the Indian part and I will like in charge of the far East Asia part. So yeah, that’s, that’s how we collaborate. Very dynamic. And we’re trying to help our portfolio globally from different perspectives.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And gosh, you are so well traveled. You know, 3 countries that is amazing. And I know you can’t learn the culture and, you know, in a day, but I know that’s helping your company obviously thrive, knowing that you have a lot of this connection across multiple cultures and countries. So, thank you.
And Luchang last question of the day. From your vantage point, what are the most exciting trends in blockchain technology today, and how are they reshaping industries? Blockchain
Luchang Zheng: technology is evolving rapidly. So, from last cycle, last cycle, we’ve heard a lot of words like terminations, like DeFi, NFT, right?
For this round, for this Bitcoin halving and the upcoming bull market, I think well, it falls down to two categories. One is like I mentioned, the infrastructure part. So interoperability and modularity are the upcoming trends. And for the massive adoption part, which means decentralized physical infrastructure, and also the thriving of BTC ecosystem will actually draw a lot of attention from everyday user.
I’m not going to detail, but I think these trends are reshaping the industry by providing more inclusive financial systems, redefining ownerships in the digital realm and introducing innovative governance structures, both in the digital world and the physical world.
Brian Thomas: Thank you for sharing. And I get really jazzed you know, this podcast, we talk to everybody around the world, but blockchain technology, one of the emerging technologies that we talk about on the podcast, is just something that I get really jazzed about.
And it’s, you probably already know our, our platform is also duplicated out on web three. We are a black chain platform as well. So that’s something to share with, with the world. So I appreciate that. And Lu Cheng, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Luchang Zheng: Really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Luchang Zheng Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
