Wonderful Founders Build Wonderful Companies

Wyre was bought for $1.5B

Today, one of our earliest investments was acquired for $1.5B.

8 years ago Brayton Williams and I made a decision to invest in two energetic founders, and it shouldn’t have happened:

1. We rejected their application.

2. The deciding factor was that Michael Dunworth was Australian, so we invested.

Michael Dunworth and Yanni Giannaros were founding a company called SnapCard, which was the 8th Bitcoin startup Boost VC ever invested in. We loved their energy, this was an evolution of a previous product where they would pick your laundry up in a super hero outfit and clean your laundry and then drop it back off in a super hero outfit. After we sent out the rejection email, they followed up and said that we should reconsider. We are proud to have invested.

Snapcard was a payment processor for Bitcoin. They had a plugin where you could buy anything on the internet with Bitcoin, every week they would come up to us and say “someone just bought a sailboat.” or paid their taxes or… Everyone thought the product was super automated, but the two founders were just maxing out their credit cards and receiving Bitcoin to make it happen! It was so fun to watch. There were always creating momentum and always building progress.

Eventually they saw the limitations of Snapcard, and a few “pivots” later, they ended up building out regulatory and payment infrastructure for Web3. Ask anyone in Web3 and they will tell you that Wyre is the scrappiest team on the planet, we’d like to think that this was due to Boost VC, and our “Be the cockroach” mantra.

At Boost VC we talk a lot about “Being a Cockroach,” and not enough about being great humans.

Yanni and Michael are some of the best people. They are awesome to be around, and committed to the people who are around them. We have become dear friends over the last 8 years. Yanni and Michael are the archetype of every founder I would like to invest in - High Commitment, High Energy and High Integrity.

I’m sad to have them officially leave the Boost VC portfolio if I’m being honest with myself, and you may scoff by thinking “$1.5B”.

What I have learned about venture capital is that the goal is to find wonderful people who build wonderful companies. And discover the ones you would never want to sell and always be a part of. Michael and Yanni are wonderful people.

I’m glad that they will always be a part of the Boost VC community and be our friends :) Cheers to two great humans, and the Wyre team that got them there. They are just getting started.