“I was always hungry \u2014 like, dude, always hungry. Always like, ‘Fuck, I need to eat.’ Always, always, always \u2014 it sticks with you. I don’t care if I’m in Singapore at a famous crypto conference at a high-flying restaurant, I would still order food from right to left. I would start with the price, like, ‘What can I get?’ You’re aware.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Back in 2017, anyone could easily get in on highly public ICOs raising $30 million to $50 million with a white paper full of dreams just because it had the word “blockchain” in it. Things are different today, with venture capitalists<\/a> having to network and clamor to get a small placement of $250,000. Cap tables that track investor allocations fill up fast, and investors are lucky to get a pitch before needing to decide.<\/p>\n “In this cycle, with the speed of things, you don’t have time to consider,” notes vantKruys, who heads New York-based digital asset fund TRGC. Often the only investors who have the privilege of doing full, proper due diligence are the “alpha dogs” like Coinbase Ventures<\/a> and Binance, for whom he says room will be made even after a round has closed.<\/p>\n As vantKruys, 45, stepped out of his Uber upon arriving in San Francisco from Amsterdam for Blockchain Week in 2018, he saw a sight that brought him back to his childhood. The vast homeless population, often suffering from mental health issues, reminded him not only of his father but of the life for which he too was thought to be destined. The reality on the street of the city of technology startups was little different than those of his native Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America where the average income is under $400 per month.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n VantKruys had a difficult childhood and bounced around foster homes before ending up at a residential institution for 80 other disadvantaged children. He was born to teenage parents, and when not in prison, his father could be found “walking around the city in his underwear, dirty and unshaven \u2014 lost on heroin.” If his start in life were a poker hand, it looked much like a 2-7 offsuit \u2014 the worst possible combination.<\/p>\n On his first day of elementary school, his classroom teacher told him and five other peers from the facility that “People don’t escape their circumstances.”<\/p>\n “You guys have a 99% likelihood of repeating your parents’ lives,” the teacher lectured them in front of the whole class. VantKruys asked if that meant that he still had a 1% chance of making it. Some students began to giggle. \u201cIn Suriname culture, that’s a no-no. You never contradict or say anything smart to teachers. I got smacked as hell, like, ‘Know your place,'” he recalls. At eight years old, he knew there was a very hard journey ahead.<\/p>\n But vantKruys had a plan. He believed in that 1% chance, even if no one would allow him to dream of it. “I thought of it like a boxing match in my head. I’ve got to beat 99 Mike Tysons to get where I want to, for that one shot,” he remembers. He worked hard, often getting the best grades.<\/p>\n Homelessness was just one of the “Mike Tysons” he had to defeat. After high school, he managed to get into Utrecht University in the Netherlands to study pharmacy. He wanted to become a doctor, and his uncle covered his airfare. However, without money, he had to make do with sleeping in the central railway station, where he kept his things in a locker, and washing up at a local gym before heading to his morning classes.<\/p>\n “This is just another Mike Tyson fight,” he thought to himself as he lived life in survival mode, convinced that one day there would be a final battle, and that he would make it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n A post shared by Etienne | TRGC (@etiennevtk)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe short stick<\/h4>\n
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