KYLE SAMANI

Before crypto, Samani built Pristine, a startup making software for Google Glass aimed at surgeons and doctors. He sold it to Upskill in 2016.

Then he went all-in on crypto. In 2017 he co-founded Multicoin Capital in Austin, Texas, with Tushar Jain.

The fund launched right into the token boom and made a name with concentrated, high-conviction bets. Samani became one of the most-read writers in crypto through Multicoin's research posts, part analysis and part sales pitch for the coins the fund already owned.

Multicoin Capital is the whole story. It is a crypto fund that invests in both liquid tokens and early startups.

Its most famous bet is Solana, a fast blockchain the fund backed early and championed relentlessly. Multicoin has also held positions in Helium, The Graph, Arweave, and other crypto projects.

Before all this, Samani founded Pristine, the Google Glass healthcare startup he sold in 2016. Multicoin is where his reputation, and his returns, live or die.

Samani runs a concentrated book. That means a handful of big bets instead of a little bit of everything.

He picks a thesis, like fast cheap blockchains will win, then loads up on the coins that fit it. He is famous for writing long public arguments for his positions.

Some call it research. Critics call it talking his own book.

Either way, he commits hard and defends his calls in public, which cuts both ways when he is wrong.

Solana is the win, full stop. Multicoin backed Solana early, when it was an unproven fast blockchain, and the token later soared into the tens of dollars and beyond during the 2021 boom.

On paper the bet returned many times the money at its peak. Multicoin's flagship fund posted enormous gains through 2021, among the best in the whole crypto sector.

Samani argued for Solana for years while skeptics laughed. For a long stretch, he had the last laugh.

FTX is the scar. When Sam Bankman-Fried's exchange collapsed in November 2022, Multicoin disclosed it had a chunk of the fund's assets trapped there.

The firm told investors it could lose a big share of that money. The flagship fund fell sharply that month.

Concentrated bets and trust in a seemingly safe exchange turned into a fast, public loss. The lesson is brutal and simple.

Where you keep your money matters as much as what you buy.

Samani believes a few correct, concentrated bets beat a long list of safe ones. He thinks the biggest returns come from strong opinions held early and defended in public.

He also believes in doing the research himself and writing it down, so the thinking is out in the open. His philosophy has an obvious flaw, and he knows it.

When concentration is right, it is glorious. When it is wrong, there is nowhere to hide.

Samani keeps his personal life mostly private. What is public is the professional origin.

A former healthcare-software founder who caught the crypto bug around 2016 and 2017 and never looked back. He moved his firm and himself into the Austin tech scene, part of a wave of investors leaving the coasts for Texas.

Samani's real education was building and selling a startup before turning thirty. He founded Pristine, a Google Glass software company for healthcare, and sold it to Upskill in 2016.

That gave him a crash course in technology and running a company. Crypto he learned the way many early investors did, by diving in headfirst and reading everything.

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