Original author: Jaleel Jialiu , BUBBLE , BlockBeats
Original editor: Jack, Zhang Wen, BlockBeats
This article would like to thank all the agencies that accepted the interview: Evie (JE Labs); Miko (Hyperion); Ergou (BLOCKFOCUS); Dov , Gary , Joyce (Mango Labs); Sam (WOK Labs), (Anonymous), etc.
KOL Agency is filling the position of Crypto VC.
Last weekend, another once-prosperous Chinese crypto VC stopped. Against the backdrop of tight liquidity in the global financial market, the crypto industry has fallen into a long junk time and venture capital (VC) is experiencing an unprecedented winter. However, KOL Agency, a track that suddenly emerged in this cycle, is enjoying spring.
During the call with BlockBeats, Dov, the founder of Mango Labs, was on his way home after dinner. His work rhythm is now more compact than when he was a VC. He is overwhelmed with business and projects. Every day he is either in meetings or making impromptu calls on the roadside. After working full-time in the agency business, his identity and rhythm have changed.
Projects are difficult to implement and VCs are struggling, but on the other hand, more than 20 KOL agencies have emerged in the market in the past six months, becoming one of the hottest and most profitable new business forms this year. Dov, who was still in the VC field a year ago, seems to have foreseen the changes in the industry.
“Many VCs have had a hard time this year, and are now starting to transform into agencies,” said Miko, the founder of Hyperion. One of their core team members closed his own VC last month and joined the agency track.
This seems to be a common feature in the industry. Most of the core team members of the Agency have investment experience.
Agencies have gradually become the next stop for VCs. When VCs lose their appeal to retail investors, agencies become the creators of new market narratives. This is the winter of VCs, but also the spring of KOL agencies.
VC’s “next stop”
Before a project goes online, the most common actions to increase popularity on Twitter are to ask KOLs to retweet, post long articles, post profiles, and do AMAs. But here comes the question: Who will post? What to post? How to contact KOLs? How to evaluate ROI? If it is a new project, even the first step may be difficult.
Project owners need voice but don’t know how to spread it; KOLs have content but don’t know how to connect with others. This is the real background of the birth of KOL Agency, a business that was born out of information asymmetry and trust needs in the market.
“At that time, I was attending a conference in Denver, and many foreigners working on projects asked me directly if I could introduce Chinese KOLs,” Dov recalled. “I helped a project connect with a Chinese KOL, and I didn’t expect the effect to be so good.”
At first, he didn’t plan to work full-time as an agency. But while helping out temporarily, he keenly caught a glimpse of a change in the industry: “KOLs are flipping VCs, which will be a very critical trend.”
After returning to China, he did not go all in immediately, but tried slowly. It was not until the end of 2023, at an event in Hong Kong, that he once again strongly felt the potential of the Agency model. It was at that time that his partner Lolo took the initiative to approach him, and the two hit it off.
“She said that the logic of ‘KOL flip VC’ that I talked about was very correct and we could do something together. I felt that the timing was right, so I tried to take on a few projects. At that time, I didn’t do many projects and they were not very popular.”
The turning point came in January 2025, when Dovs Mango Labs entered a period of explosive growth, with traffic and cooperation projects starting to grow significantly. This period was also the window period for the entire KOL Agency model to rise to prominence.
Ergou, the founder of another BLOCKFOCUS, was also one of the first people to start agency business in the Chinese region. When he entered the circle in 2018, Ergou worked in a software company doing marketing and KOL docking business. A year later, he started his own KOL account. From posting content, riding on the popularity to participating in community interaction, he played his KOL account step by step.
When I first started on Twitter, I only had 100 followers, but Yijie was already following me. At that time, Ergou was still a sophomore in college, the youngest in the circle, but very active. He was also 19 years old when he started his career. Ergou joked, I am the Uh-huh of that year.
With the accumulation of connections and resources, Ergou officially launched BLOCKFOCUSs Agency business in 2021 to help project parties find suitable KOLs for marketing and promotion.
We are not MCN
If you have ever paid attention to the traditional Internet celebrity economy, you must be familiar with the term MCN. In essence, the role of KOL Agency is very similar to MCN in the Web2 world.
In the Web2 context, MCN (Multi-Channel Network) plays the role of middleman between brands and Internet celebrities: brands do not need to connect with Internet celebrities one by one, but instead sign contracts, set prices, and manage content through MCN companies, and centrally arrange the rhythm of content production and dissemination.
But MCN also has its heavy industry characteristics. A friend who works for a traditional economic company told BlockBeats that at Wuyou Media, the most famous MCN company in Hangzhou, KOLs usually sign exclusive contracts with agencies for 3-10 years, and the MCN is fully responsible for commercialization. Platform revenue sharing, brand placement, account management... even the KOLs rhythm of popularity is designed step by step by the company.
This model was once very popular in the era of short videos, but when it was directly copied to Web3, it became somewhat unsuitable.
Web3 does not have the force of contract. The KOL you cultivate can leave at any time and go wherever they want. Ergou, the founder of BLOCKFOCUS, had originally considered signing a KOL contract, but after consulting a lawyer, he found that this approach would not work in Web3.
Therefore, this is also the current situation of all KOL agencies: We dont cultivate KOLs, and we wont sign exclusive contracts.
Compared to the “buyout management” of Web2, KOLs in Web3 are more like freelancers. They can take on project A today, project B tomorrow, or even serve multiple agencies at the same time.
Hyperion founder Miko also deeply resonates with this point.
Hyperion was founded in 2019 and initially focused on integrated marketing on Web2 platforms - Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Video Accounts... The team developed a full-case communication strategy for brand clients, linking KOL resources, delivery plans and conversion paths to help brands launch products in a short period of time. It was not until 2023 that Hyperion officially transformed into the Web3 field.
In order to adapt to this more wild and distributed market environment, Hyperion has made some changes in its organizational structure and execution methods: it does not sign contracts or cultivate KOLs, but only conducts flexible cooperation: Web3 KOLs cannot be controlled. We will not sign or buy out anyone. What we do is cooperation, not control.
Circle Barrier
Although Web3 does not have exclusivity and buyouts at the contractual level, in this industry that is highly dependent on personal connections and trust, the agencies, KOLs, and project parties also have their own small circle culture and barriers.
Many KOLs give us the lowest quotes in the market. They quote $5,000 or $8,000 to outsiders, but they tell us to just pay whatever you think is appropriate. Every KOL that cooperates with Ergou is a good friend of him.
This kind of relationship is not limited to business cooperation, but also extends to daily emotional management. Ergou and his team will send cakes and write greeting cards on holidays, play games and have dinner with KOLs on weekdays, and even rely on favor to solve post deletion and public relations problems when a project encounters a public opinion crisis.
“We understand how each KOL got his or her name, what kind of content he or she is good at, what the fan profile is like, and even their recent emotional state,” Ergou said. “Only with a deep understanding can we achieve true delivery matching.”
This kind of cooperative relationship based on emotion and cognition makes some KOLs more willing to cooperate with a certain agency for a long time, reducing the cost of repeated screening and communication, and allowing the agency to gradually form its own exclusive resource pool.
Circle culture is not only reflected in the ToC KOL network, but also exists at the ToB project resource level.
Especially in todays context of shrinking primary markets and increasing information asymmetry, who can master the projects and who can penetrate the core community has become the key to whether a new agency can gain a foothold.
All of this requires strong industry connections and resources. This is why most of the founders of top agencies have VC or CEX backgrounds. They understand project logic better and are more likely to have access to resources at the start-up stage of a project.
Evie, the founder of JE Labs, who has a complex background in traditional consulting firms, crypto VCs, and personal IP building experience, started JE Labs Agency business after leaving the OKX Web3 wallet in June 2024: She revealed that JE Labs currently has almost no full-time BDs, and the BD work of almost all agencies in the industry is personally handled by the founders, and Evie is no exception.
What kind of projects you get involved in and what kind of projects you work with can say a lot about the circle you are in and the endorsement given to you by the circle behind you. The accumulation of resources and the endorsement of personal connections determine whether the agency can receive the first batch of truly high-quality projects, and these starting projects are the starting point for building a word-of-mouth cycle.
More advanced agencies are becoming “investment-oriented”
As the industry matures and competitors increase, without a moat and a deeper business city, everyone can only roll up service fees, and the industrys overall income will decrease. And these smart people who came out of VC have already realized this. So, more advanced agencies began to transform. They are no longer intermediaries between KOLs and project parties, but gradually evolved into strategic partners with investment logic.
Taking JE Labs as an example, a good launch strategy is inseparable from an execution team that understands the industry and is good at implementation. The JE Labs team is composed of members from diverse backgrounds such as consulting, VC, exchanges, and web2 giant marketing. They have both macro market understanding and front-line practical experience. This cross-border integrated team structure allows the team to quickly understand the narrative focus of projects in different tracks and flexibly adapt to the communication needs of different stages. Within JE Labs, Evie divides business services into four categories, corresponding to four different cooperation models:
1. Pure KOL promotion and marketing service: According to the needs of the project party, the Agency is responsible for KOL screening, scheduling execution, and promotion and marketing direction/talking points design, and generally charges a 20% service fee.
2. Customized consulting services: When a project has more complex requirements, such as founder IP creation, community growth strategy formulation, narrative design, or AMA full-link planning, JE Labs will charge monthly based on complexity and investment level. However, in order to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of this type of cooperation, a cooperation model of at least 3 months will be established.
3. KOL round, community round: If the project party hopes to raise funds through KOL round, community round, etc., the Agency will provide a financing service package including narrative packaging, airdrop planning, distribution logic, and KOL mobilization. The charging method is generally based on the total amount of financing and the proportion of tokens is deducted.
4. Long-term consulting cooperation: similar to Part-time CMO. For potential projects, JE can serve as their part-time CMO or marketing consultant, participate in rhythm planning, strategy design and internationalization, and the fee structure is monthly payment + Token incentive. This type of cooperation is only open to a very small number of projects.
Evie calls it resource leverage investment - using cognition, resources, and voice to deeply bind projects, and gain real strategic voice while obtaining tokens.
She said frankly: There are many people in the market who understand marketing and the crypto industry, but there are very few who can integrate the two and provide truly effective advice to projects at the strategic level.
How do you tell the narrative? How does the economic model match the market? How does KOL distribution match the rhythm? We dont serve KOLs, but business logic. Evie summarized the true value of the Agency in this way.
She believes that agencies that only connect with KOLs actually have very limited moats. Agencies that gradually transform into strategic consultants + resource partners have deeper customer stickiness and business sustainability.
Most of the top agencies that have survived in the market have shifted their service focus from execution to accompanying, and have built up more stable cash flow and deeper industry barriers by relying on the latter three types of business - financing support, in-depth consulting, and strategic binding.
VC sheds its skin, Agency emerges as butterfly in winter
In fact, KOL Agency is not a new business born in this cycle. Its prototype has already existed in the past few cycles.
During the NFT bull market, a group of MCN teams serving NFT projects briefly emerged in the market, responsible for community building, whitelist activities, Discord and WeChat group maintenance, and early AMA promotion and distribution. At that time, many NFT project teams were not familiar with the operating logic of Web3, especially those traditional IPs migrated from Web2. They did not understand the KOL pricing system, did not know who to invest in promotion and distribution, and lacked the right to speak in the circle.
Therefore, this type of MCN took on the original function of content packaging + traffic landing, and to some extent, it is the prototype of KOL Agency.
By 2021-2022, global liquidity is overflowing and the primary market is booming. VCs have huge amounts of money, and there are a constant stream of public chain projects, ZK infrastructure, and Layer 2 protocols with top-level financing, with financings of tens of millions of dollars being issued frequently.
When money is no longer the scarcest resource, other resources become scarce resources.
There are too many projects and a serious shortage of post-investment resources. For project owners, what they lack is not money, but more direct incubation resources. Therefore, in the industrys self-regulation, another role that is closer to the actual growth needs of the project was born: incubator/accelerator.
These incubators usually do not make investment decisions, but play the role of VC post-investment executors, providing landing assistance services from team building, incentive system design, media promotion, community operation, to user growth path sorting, etc., with tokens as rewards. This model is, to some extent, closer to the current Agency ecological niche.
It can be said that MCN is a content-based predecessor and incubator is a structural predecessor. The birth of Agency is the post-failure reconstruction of both in the Web3 scenario.
Today, as the primary market stalls and the secondary market recedes, VCs have entered a period of collective loss of voice, and agencies have found a new path to growth.
As Evie said, “Current project owners may not necessarily lack money, but they definitely lack resources, execution, and a team that can accompany their growth.”
Agency just fills the new gap of this era - using cognition to help build narratives, using resources to connect communities, and using strategies to participate in financing and coin listing.
The disappearance of VC dividends
If the last cycle was the highlight moment for VCs, then in this cycle, they are facing a crisis of collective failure.
In Dov’s opinion, the reason why VC “fell behind” in this cycle is ultimately due to the mismatch between supply and demand and the end of the dividends of the era.
“Why do projects fall below their issue price as soon as they go online? There are too many projects and too few retail investors. Everyone is competing for attention and liquidity, which are precisely the most scarce,” said Dov.
Dov talked about macro-level thinking: In the last cycle, the world flooded the market with money, and global asset prices collectively inflated after the epidemic. The US stock market hit a new high, the real estate market in third world countries was booming, and domestic primary investment was also extremely hot, even overheated. As everyone is constantly looking for new assets, crypto assets naturally become a new outlet in the eyes of retail investors. In that context, Crypto VC stood at the forefront: the primary cost was extremely low, the valuation rose rapidly, and the project had completed several rounds of financing before it was launched, and the book income soared.
“You can think of Crypto as a split of traditional finance. Money that had nowhere to go at the time flowed here.” Dov recalled, “In the last cycle, VC was the biggest beneficiary of the dividend of the times.”
But in this round, the tap of printing US dollars was turned off, retail investors withdrew, the market cooled down, and everything changed.
Many projects invested by VCs have not yet found PMF (product-market fit), the number of users has not increased, the products have not been implemented, and the tokens do not even have the courage to go online. Even if they are online, they are often poured as soon as the market opens. Some projects have even started to modify the terms before unlocking the tokens: extending the lock-up, lowering the valuation, or even forcing a buyback.
There is no way out in the primary market, and no buying in the secondary market. The once legendary VCs have now become industry borers in the eyes of retail investors. Its like if you play memecoin, VCs have filled up their internal market and are waiting for retail investors to take over, but retail investors will definitely not take it.
VCs ran out of money, but the project still needed someone to take over, so they found KOLs. So in 2024, the KOL round began to become popular, and even the community round has emerged today.
This is a bank run that is bound to come sooner or later.
Dov compared it with his experience in traditional PE: In the past, when we invested in consumer brands, the starting amount for a case was 100 million or 200 million US dollars. At that time, the market was too hot, and some projects did not even make a profit, but the valuation was 100 times the revenue, which was completely irrational.
The same story happened in Crypto. In the past two years, Crypto VCs have invested in concept projects with huge amounts of US dollar funds. But when they were launched, they found that no one used them, no one bought them, and no one believed in them. These projects became paper wealth piled on the table, and none of them could be sold.
“These changes are global changes of the times and have nothing to do with exchanges, VCs, project owners, KOLs, or communities. A grain of sand in the era is a mountain in the industry,” Dov told BlockBeats.
In Dovs view, this is not only a problem for Crypto, nor is it just a problem for Chinese VCs. Rather, the global market is undergoing a round of overall revaluation: US IPOs are breaking their issue prices at opening, and Chinese stocks are failing; there are very few companies to choose from in the Hong Kong stock market; VCs have lost the qualifications to tell stories, and retail investors are no longer buying them.
Look at the U.S. right now. Ant Financial and ByteDance are not listed yet. U.S. stock IPOs are similar to cryptocurrency listings. Most companies are listed. Look at NIO, MissFresh, and Perfect Diary. Arent the trends of these stocks the same as those of altcoins? Even the traditional primary market is full of bubbles.
The two cycles of Crypto are exactly the same as the Chinese consumer capital bubble at that time: At that time, all brands used the same OEM factory, and they dared to tell a new story by putting a brand on it and changing the packaging. Now many cryptocurrency projects are the same.
Todays projects are all about who can tell a story, attract the most active community, create the strongest topic volume, and gain Twitters attention.
So, Agency was selected.
Blurred Boundaries
Ergou observed this round of industry changes: In almost every round of the market, a group of marketing teams, incubators or accelerators will emerge, but most of them are just short-lived. When the next round comes, there are brand new faces again.
He recalled the “grassroots” growth period in the early days of the industry in 2021: “At that time, everyone was doing it piecemeal, and it was far from being systematized.” But now, with the intensification of competition, the head agencies have begun to form a trend of “reloading” both organizational structure and cognitive capabilities, and are truly beginning to operate like a lightweight Crypto VC.
Currently in the industry, there are two mainstream head agency models.
Teams represented by JE Labs tend to adopt a consulting firm-type structure - each project is fully responsible for a project manager who is responsible for everything from early strategy to later execution.
At JE Labs, project managers are not only responsible for KOL screening, content review, delivery scheduling, and data tracking, but also for specialization by track (DeFi, AI, Infra, etc.), gradually accumulating cognitive and practical capabilities in vertical categories. Language blocks have also been included in the refined management dimension: the team has mastered KOLs and media resources in Chinese, English, and Russian regions respectively, and accurately matched the communication habits and public opinion rhythm of each region.
Another type of representative is the division of labor and cooperation agency represented by BLOCKFOCUS and Hyperion. This type of team divides the entire marketing process into multiple modules, which are completed by different members. For example, BD colleagues connect with customers in the early stage to promote the implementation of cooperation; the person in charge of project control grasps the overall rhythm of the project, node feedback and resource coordination; KOL operation: manages the KOL resource pool and coordinates the delivery rhythm; content and data colleagues write content, review data, and adjust and optimize. This split operation is more suitable for undertaking multiple projects at the same time, and it is also more convenient to create SOP processes and realize large-scale replication of services.
Whether it is the project manager system or the multi-trade collaboration system, top agencies are no longer “middlemen”, but are gradually evolving into lightweight VCs – they must understand marketing, the project itself, and even investment and financing strategies.
Top Agencies only do three things
The combined capabilities of consulting + media + investment + strategy have enabled such an agency to gradually develop into a lighter VC with more stable cash flow.
The core competitiveness and moat of these leading agencies have shifted from who knows more KOLs to three other things: choosing better projects, telling better narratives, and designing a good exit.
Selected projects
See whether the support group behind the project is native enough; the background of the founding team, historical integrity record, resource vision, practical ability, etc.
The criteria used by top agencies to select targets are actually not much different from those used by investors to select portfolios.
Every cooperation is effective, so the KOL who cooperates with the Agency will make money every time, and the retail investors who follow the KOL can make money, so the markets attention, trust and buying level for this Agency are all different.
Therefore, Ergou, the founder of BLOCKFOCUS, rejected many project cooperations: Taking more cases can certainly increase revenue, but it also means more management costs and training costs. If you damage the brand just to increase sales, it will not be worth it. The trust mechanism is particularly important.
When an agency can create multiple successful cases in succession and receive high praise from customers, it will enter a positive cycle: more high-quality projects will come to it, word-of-mouth communication will enhance brand stickiness, and then better customers will be screened out, and better cases will be formed. At the same time, old customers may also make a second or third purchase, forming a long-term cooperation.
Buy Narrative and get Construction for free
If a16z is the representative of creating VC-level influence by building narratives, then todays top agencies are replicating this ability.
During the cold start phase of a project, users don’t even know what the project is about - what really works at this time is not the technical specification, but a clear and contagious narrative.
What top agencies need to do is to explain complex and difficult-to-understand technologies and products in one sentence so that retail investors can understand, feel comfortable with, and be willing to follow.
Gary, COO of Mango Labs, once gave a vivid metaphor: Agency is like house design and construction. 20 years ago, when you bought construction, you got design for free; now, when you buy design, you get construction for free.
KOL service is the construction, and narrative, rhythm and content control, and crisis event handling is the house design.
An excellent agency no longer just finds a few KOLs to post tweets, but truly participates in the early strategic planning of the project: from narrative construction, budget allocation, to KOL screening, communication rhythm, and expression of economic models, each link requires deep customization.
Evie, founder of JE Labs, gave BlockBeats a detailed introduction to her detailed stratification of KOL resources. Each category has a clear positioning and evaluation criteria:
1. Brand KOL: This type of KOL is usually a researcher, senior media person or content creator. They have accumulated a deep reputation in the industry. They may not have the largest number of fans, but they have a strong voice and are good at helping projects establish long-term narratives and brand endorsements.
2. Traffic KOL: The representative is the airdrop hunter. This type of KOL has a strong community mobilization ability and can quickly gather users to participate in project activities. The agency will track its conversion effect through the Ref link and accurately quantify the data.
3. Trading KOLs: They are mainly bloggers who bring orders. They usually have strong communities or trading groups and can directly influence token prices or on-chain transaction volumes. Some KOLs that JE Labs works with can bring in orders of more than 10 million US dollars per month. These KOLs are usually bound to commission-sharing bots to directly evaluate their contribution value using data.
One of Joyces jobs within Mango Labs is to maintain the KOL List. She recalled when she first joined: At that time, I was just an ordinary user. I looked at the content based on my personal preferences and didnt really understand what influence was.
But after doing this job, she began to realize: What kind of KOL can really influence readers cognition? What kind of content is considered valuable in the eyes of the project party? These are two completely different standards.
Accounts that are obviously fake may also have real interactions; while some small accounts with abstract content may have a profound impact on the core group of a track. Some people even build a strong sense of trust in actual combat just by sharing real-time records every day. So we cant judge good or bad by the number of fans, but by the degree of match.
Therefore, in addition to positive marketing, some agencies will also creatively plan some scripted verbal battles to accurately control the rhythm of public opinion and quickly expand the topic of the project through hot events. For example, Hyperion is very good at building popularity from the perspective of entertainment narrative.
Founder Miko said: We are traditional marketers at heart. For us, Web3 is just another content platform. We want to redo what Web2 did in Web3.
Their approach is very much in line with traditional entertainment industry attributes: project linkage, quarrels, script-killing, KOL fights, and even FUD scripts, using these personalized marketing methods to bring more publicity to the projects.
“You can’t just send out a list and ask everyone to post content at the same time,” Miko explained. “You have to design the order in which everyone appears, the way they speak, and the rhythm like a director. It’s a bit like choreographing a drama with multiple people talking. Communication must be dramatic to be memorable.”
In his opinion, these activities are another form of execution and communication tension. Their choice of KOL is not limited to traffic bloggers, but also many Web3 KOLs such as developers, investors, DAO organizations, etc., which can also promote the project from multiple angles.
We may even achieve the effect of breaking through the circle and crossing boundaries, because we are a transformation from a traditional MCN, and we have media resources and rich network resources in traditional industries such as the entertainment industry, sports industry, and fashion industry. Several of Hyperions core team members came from Internet giants such as Tencent, and they also have rich network resources in traditional media and mainstream online media.
We currently have an offline salon space in Hong Kong, and the space in Shenzhen is also under renovation. In the future, these venues will be open to Web3 entrepreneurs and practitioners free of charge for everyone to hold exchanges, salons or industry sharing. Miko said.
VC and Agency Resourceization
In addition to the aforementioned KOL screening, narrative creation, community integration and other tasks, most project parties are actually faced with a large number of trivial but critical resource docking needs. This is precisely one of the core advantages of many head agencies.
From crisis management, buying and selling, to introductions to market makers and trading platform resources, these services may seem fragmented, but they can truly open up the back door for project growth. As BLOCKFOCUS founder Ergou said, The value of this information far exceeds that of ordinary KOL placement.
He pointed out that often the Agency knows better than the project team itself where the project should go, and understands better what the project side really cares about most - listing on an exchange.
“For example, if a project wants to be listed on a trading platform, we can provide key information gaps: tell them the focus of listing on different trading platforms, the current hot narratives, and sometimes even indirectly get internal judgments on the rhythm of listing.” Ergou said: “BLOCKFOCUS is not only a KOL Agency, but also a KOL incubation MCN. The most important thing is that our team is more like a crypto consulting company. Any Crypto team needs a senior broker with extremely strong resources and who can find ways to help the team solve problems in a substantial way. It just so happens that our team is very suitable after settling down.”
These information gaps may be incomprehensible to outsiders, but in the network system of the leading agencies, they have become a routine capability.
Dov, the founder of Mango Labs, has also mentioned many times in public and in conversations with BlockBeats: This is not an industry secret, but our long-term public thinking and industry experience.
He further pointed out: From the perspective of the trading platform, the logic of listing coins is actually very clear - there are only two KPIs: attracting new users and bringing in trading volume. Therefore, as long as a project can bring in people or money, it is a worth listing project.
In addition to these projects, Dov also summarized a type of project that is naturally more likely to be favored: the narrative is simple and straightforward, with emotional appeal; the community is real and active, with a concentration of KOLs and topics; retail investors can understand it, trading platform BDs can set up projects, and the media can spread it easily: The essence is that you need to give the trading platform a reason to make sense.
So when we go back to the beginning of the article and see that ABCDE Capital announced that it would stop investing in new projects and shift its focus to incubation and the secondary market, it is not surprising. Whether you are a VC or a project manager, everyone has found that it is getting harder and harder to make money, so it is better to do some business with stable cash flow.
If there had not been the historically rare monetary easing in 2021, the way out for traditional primary VCs might have changed earlier - either switching to secondary or becoming resource-based VCs, similar to incubation and agency forms.
The role boundaries between these top VCs and head agencies have become increasingly blurred.
However, the current agency industry is still young, and most teams have not yet experienced a complete cycle. How long will this spring last? Can agencies survive the next round of market reshuffle? What new forms will emerge in the next cycle? Agencies are still exploring their own answers.
