Brandon Hoffman

GP & Founder at Emerging VC | AI Collective leader | ex-Samsung, ex-Morgan Stanley | Endowment & Foundation Board Member

📍 Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, United States🔄 Updated September 2026💼 28 investments📅 8 years investing🗓 Last invested Jan 2022𝕏 @upgrade_to_unlock
VC🌍 United States20+ investments
28
Total investments
10
Early stage
6
Mid stage
4
Late stage
8y
Years active

Portfolio

28 investments · sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Investor
2022
Yuga Labs is a web3 company exploring big ideas in identity, ownership, utility, and interoperability to push the crypto and NFT space forward. The Yugaverse is made up of: Bored Ape Yacht Club Mutant Ape Yacht Club Bored Ape Kennel Club Otherside Plus dozens of community projects using Ape IP. As The Defiant recently said, "The story of Yuga Labs is one where the improbable has become reality in the blink of an eye." Our flagship collection, Bored Ape Yacht Club, debuted in April 2021. Since then, we’ve created new IP for the ape ecosystem (Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club), acquired top collections (CryptoPunks and Meebits), and made both web3 and gaming history with the biggest NFT mint ever followed by a game demo with record-breaking synchronized player participation (Otherside). We also found some time to see old friends and make new ones with headline-making events (ApeFest, VMAs) and partnerships (Rolling Stone, Adidas). Along the way, the Yuga team has grown from 4 to 100+ people, and we’re still on the lookout for brilliant thinkers and doers who can grow alongside us, push us forward, and create work that makes history. If that sounds like you, apply to one of our open roles or reach out.
Investor
2022
KAP Games is a web3 gaming distributor, publisher & studio, specializing in browser and mobile-native experiences. Utilizing emerging technologies to unlock the next generation of gaming, KAP curates gaming ecosystems where diverse games, innovative projects, and vibrant communities collide.
early stageComputer Games
Investor
2022
Sounder unlocks the true value of audio content. In 2019, we saw an opportunity to transform audio content into data insights and automated solutions that help publishers, advertisers, and podcasters grow their businesses. Similar to how new technology unlocked rapid market expansion for digital and video, we’re doing the same for audio. Were on mission to make it simple for organizations to use trustworthy data, enabling the confidence to make decisions and transact in audio media. Our technology can process thousands of hours of audio content in minutes to deliver the insights and infrastructure needed for businesses to flourish.
Investor
2022
Flowcarbon brings carbon offset credits on chain, leveraging blockchain technology to accelerate the innovation and scale of climate change solutions.
Investor
2022
Home of Passage Protocol (web3 membership primitives), GYSR protocol (incentive & reward mechanisms), and Fuze CDP (modern omnichannel data microservices)
Investor
2022
Genopets is a Free-to-Play, Move-to-Earn NFT game that makes it fun and profitable to live an active lifestyle. A Genopet is a player's digital spirit animal: raised from infancy; utterly unique; and imprinted with a player's psychological profile. It is a pet that players take care of by taking care of themselves. Genopets combines user's step data from their mobile device and wearables with blockchain Play-to-Earn economics so players can earn crypto for taking action in real life as they play. The Genopets team is seeking skilled, passionate individuals to join us in bringing the Genoverse to life. We are a mission-driven group of builders, artists, and operators with decades of collective experience. If any of the above excites you, please review our open job postings and reach out!
Investor
2022
Community Gaming is an esports tournament, building efficient payment tools to enable gamers to earn and achieve. Our mission is to be the global earnings platform, working synergistically with game developers to enable millions of players to monetize their passion for gaming. In addition to our tournament infrastructure, we are dedicated to helping foster financial inclusion and technological literacy for gamers in emerging markets through grants and offline events
early stageComputer Games
Investor
2022
Hey, we’re LOOP. We use predictive models and real-time driving data to create fair and equitable car insurance whilst eliminating biased and discriminatory factors—like credit scores, zip codes, and job titles—from the equation. We’re a mission, with a business. We believe systemic injustice has no place in our financial systems. That’s why we only look at how and where you drive to give you a car insurance quote that you can feel great about. Backed by top-tier VCs, institutional investors, and reinsurers who all believe in bringing change to this industry, we’re committed to giving back and being a force for good in the world so we can uplift the communities impacted by systemic injustice. To us, that’s what it means to Drive Good.
early stageInsurance
Investor
2022
Kartera is a branded open banking payment and customer rewards solution proven to increase the ‘Average Over Value’ (AOV) and ‘Repeat Purchase Ratio’ (RPR). Karteras payment system and rewards engine is designed to complement existing payment infrastructures, reducing reliance on them. By facilitating direct, fast, easy, and secure payments from customers bank accounts, Kartera helps lower payment processing fees, minimize the duration funds are held, and reduce fraudulent activity to nearly zero, thereby enhancing financial efficiency for businesses. At Kartera, we believe payments can be fair and equitable for all parties involved.
Investor
2022
Immunefi is the leading onchain crowdsourced security platform, working with ground-breaking protocols such as Chainlink, Ethereum Foundation, Optimism, Arbitrum, and many more. Our latest product, Magnus, bridges the gap between security solutions by creating a unified platform for security operations. Allowing protocols to easily launch bug bounties, audit competitions, and proactively stop threats using our automations engine built with the industrys best vulnerabilities dataset. Our growing community of over 45,000 security researchers protects $180B in user funds and has prevented over $25B in hacks across 500+ protocols — Learn more at immunefi.com.
Investor
2022
Ready Player Me is the world’s leading avatar platform. Leveraging AI, ML, and a suite of developer-first tools, the platform empowers companies to save months of development time and increases user retention with personalized avatars. Unlike traditional avatar systems that lock avatars to a single experience, avatars created with Ready Player Me are interoperable with 10,000+ apps and games already integrated with the platform that are played by 30+ million users monthly.
late stageComputer Games
Investor
Apr 2021
Datawisp is a brand new way of working with data that puts complex analysis within reach of anyone at your company - whether they're a a product manager, a marketing intern, or the CEO! Our visual, point-and-click interface eliminates code as a bottleneck to working with data, and lets everyone in your organization focus on doing their job better. The newest version showcases a brand new streamlined UI, added features, tons of integrations, 20x improved performance, significantly fewer bugs, upgraded charts, and blockchain data for 5 new chains. If you've never tried Datawisp before, you can take advantage of all the improvements right away - you can try it out for free for 60 days. No credit card required!
Investor
2021
Big Wolf is a developer & publisher of Narrative Games powered by Original IP, Licensed IP & NFTs. We leverage our toolkit ecosystem to publish traditional and blockchain games powered by the community. Big Wolf’s leadership team has a combined 40 years building and operating free-to-play games with extensive experience working on AAA titles and Licensed Intellectual Properties.
late stageComputer Games
Investor
2021
Prime Trust provides financial infrastructure APIs that allow fintech and digital asset companies to innovate quickly, securely, and reliably.
Investor
2021
The Sandbox is an immersive metaverse platform in which users play, create, and monetize unique experiences alongside their favorite brands, IPs, and celebrities across gaming, entertainment, music, art, and more. The Sandbox leverages web3 technologies to fully enable end-user creation and creator economies, disrupting existing platforms by providing both players and creators with true ownership of their assets, creations, and rewards as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Over 400 partners have joined The Sandbox, including Warner Music Group, Gucci, Ubisoft, Paris Hilton, The Walking Dead, Snoop Dogg, Attack on Titan, Lacoste, Steve Aoki, The Smurfs, and many more
Show all 28 investments ↓
Experience · 43 entries
All (43)
Investments (28)
Founder (4)
2022
Mentor
Oct 2022
In partnership with Algorand and the Algorand Foundation, our program is designed for startups globally that focus on innovative and fast-growing web3 development solutions.
Investor
2022
Yuga Labs is a web3 company exploring big ideas in identity, ownership, utility, and interoperability to push the crypto and NFT space forward. The Yugaverse is made up of: Bored Ape Yacht Club Mutant Ape Yacht Club Bored Ape Kennel Club Otherside Plus dozens of community projects using Ape IP. As The Defiant recently said, "The story of Yuga Labs is one where the improbable has become reality in the blink of an eye." Our flagship collection, Bored Ape Yacht Club, debuted in April 2021. Since then, we’ve created new IP for the ape ecosystem (Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club), acquired top collections (CryptoPunks and Meebits), and made both web3 and gaming history with the biggest NFT mint ever followed by a game demo with record-breaking synchronized player participation (Otherside). We also found some time to see old friends and make new ones with headline-making events (ApeFest, VMAs) and partnerships (Rolling Stone, Adidas). Along the way, the Yuga team has grown from 4 to 100+ people, and we’re still on the lookout for brilliant thinkers and doers who can grow alongside us, push us forward, and create work that makes history. If that sounds like you, apply to one of our open roles or reach out.
Investor
2022
KAP Games is a web3 gaming distributor, publisher & studio, specializing in browser and mobile-native experiences. Utilizing emerging technologies to unlock the next generation of gaming, KAP curates gaming ecosystems where diverse games, innovative projects, and vibrant communities collide.
early stageComputer Games
Investor
2022
Sounder unlocks the true value of audio content. In 2019, we saw an opportunity to transform audio content into data insights and automated solutions that help publishers, advertisers, and podcasters grow their businesses. Similar to how new technology unlocked rapid market expansion for digital and video, we’re doing the same for audio. Were on mission to make it simple for organizations to use trustworthy data, enabling the confidence to make decisions and transact in audio media. Our technology can process thousands of hours of audio content in minutes to deliver the insights and infrastructure needed for businesses to flourish.
Investor
2022
Flowcarbon brings carbon offset credits on chain, leveraging blockchain technology to accelerate the innovation and scale of climate change solutions.
Show all 43 entries ↓
Investment activity
2018–2022 · 28 investments
20182202115202211
Recent (last 2 years)Earlier