Mahesh Ramakrishnan (Escape Velocity) - On The Brink #376
Mahesh Ramakrishnan (Escape Velocity) on Decentralized Wireless
Host: Matt Walsh, Castle Island Ventures
Guest: Mahesh Ramakrishnan (Escape Velocity)
Escape Velocity is a fund focused on the Decentralized Wireless category.
Intro
Historically, the two strongest incentive systems backing major developments have been religion & finance. Mahesh went to Harvard to study economics & religion as an under-grad. In 2015, he found Ethereum & recognized it as a new incentive system that could co-ordinate human action at scale.
He always wanted to be an investor. So, he learned about investing for 5 years after college. First, at Goldman & then at Apollo (private equity) to build the skill-set needed to be an investor. Institutional investors create & update their mental models with changes in market conditions.
In 2020, he found Helium, which is one of the first networks that uses token incentives to build physical networks that deal in real world quantities. Helium supported data transfer for IOT (Internet of Things) devices. He realized that Helium’s model could be re-purposed for tons of different use-cases such as 5g development, etc.
The wireless space is capital intensive, debt burdened, has a lot of regulatory tape, has aging infrastructure towards the upgrade cycles & trillions of dollars of incumbent revenues.
So, Mahesh & Escape’s other co-founder raised $25 million to invest in the decentralized wireless space.