Control Your Destiny

August 2026

“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed.” — Francisco D’Anconia

The crisis is palpable, and pervasive. The institutions that were supposed to serve society instead extract from it. Younger generations, especially, have lost faith in The System entirely: we don’t trust The Bank to hold our money, The University to find us a job, The Utility to keep our electricity and water running, or The App to keep our data secure. These institutions employ millions of capable people, own hundreds of billions of dollars of assets, have access to the latest technologies, and are funded by the deepest capital markets in history—yet a full century after being handed monopoly control over public infrastructure, they still can’t keep the lights on.

We got self-driving cars and super-intelligent sand, but along the way we lost control over our own destiny and with it our faith, politics, literacy, sensuality, optimism, and sense of purpose.

We know The System is broken, but feel powerless to change it. Still, whenever the opportunity arises, we fight back: we start side hustles and build social media followings for when The Employer inevitably fails us, we install solar panels, batteries, and water purifiers in our homes for when The Utility inevitably fails us, and we buy Bitcoin for when The Bank inevitably fails us. We cannot, and do not, expect The System to work for us.

And why should we? The System was designed to prevent us from helping ourselves. Wanna fix your neighborhood’s Internet connection? You can’t put up a cell tower without spending years asking the local government for permission (zoning), and even if you could, you can’t run radios on them without spending billions of dollars on spectrum licenses from the federal government. A family member wants to try a promising new drug with the potential to treat their rare disease? They can’t actually get their hands on it without spending years asking for permission from regulators (drug trials) and lobbying large insurers (reimbursements). Try to fix the water pipes downtown, or a street lamp along the highway, or the yield earned on the cash in your bank account—you’ll soon run into similar issues. Perpetually asking, asking, asking for permission.

EV3 invests in companies that empower their users to DO, instead of ASK. Our portfolio companies help property owners generate their own solar power and Internet connectivity locally, rather than relying on public electric and telecom grids that could fail at any moment. Others help creators make a living selling their own ads and merch outside of the pennies-per-impression regime of streaming and social media giants. Others let people move their money and trade their assets within the regulated financial system without revealing data to institutional intermediaries, or give employees and immigrants access to the banking and credit products they need to control their financial destiny. One even lets users control their dreams, literally.

Some people — whether through nature or nurture — never learned to ask. For them, capitulating to The System was never an option; they needed to control their destiny, and help others control theirs. Society calls them misfits, nerds, activists, and rebels—we just call them entrepreneurs. Abbey Meyers, when she found herself in the situation described above, lobbied the media and the government so intensely that she birthed the legislation behind the modern biotech industry. Satoshi Nakamoto was so convinced in the power of Bitcoin — 7K lines of code sent to a small mailing list — to overtake the global financial system, that he protected his (or her, or their) identity so intensely that it remains unknown to this day. Abbey and Satoshi looked The System in the face and refused to accept what it offered—instead, they paved their own path, found a group of early believers, and eventually saw their ideas proliferate into trillion-dollar industries.

“One man with courage is a majority.”

What if people didn’t need to ask for permission? Instead of ask, ask, ask, the world could be full of people who do, do, do. Complainers would lose all credibility—if things were really so bad, they could fix it themselves. The costs of switching “careers” (if the term still exists…) would drop to ~zero, creating a more dynamic and therefore efficient labor market. Young scientists, engineers, and economists would be unrestrained from working towards solving the biggest challenges facing their generation, like climate change and interplanetary travel. Issues that affect small numbers of people in deep ways, like rare diseases or indigenous communities, would finally get the attention they deserve, from the people most deeply impacted. With a greater sense of agency and autonomy, people would live longer, happier, more fulfilling lives.

We started EV3 as 25 year-olds with no track record, no team, and no reputation. What we had was a differentiated thesis we deeply believed in and an unwavering commitment to controlling our destiny. Over a hundred LPs thought our thesis was “too niche”, “too crazy”, or “too risky” and passed on the fund. Once we had finally hit our target, several of our LPs shut down or stopped deploying entirely amidst the collapse of Terra/FTX, forcing us to go back out to raise in a market that had all but left crypto for dead. Capitalution, though, was never an option—we put all of our savings into the fund, went without salaries or health insurance for almost two years, and spent all of our time and money on the road meeting with founders and allocators who aligned with our vision. We took 250+ flights that first year, but by the end had gained the trust of an incredible set of limited partners and raised a $20M Fund I that put us in business.

We set off to build a firm that would allow us to do what we love for the next 50 years: partner with entrepreneurs from day zero, work hard to help them build their businesses, and look back on the journey knowing we played a critical role in helping billions of people become do-ers and reclaim control over their destiny with technology. We invest in a small number of new companies each year, with check sizes between $500K and $5M, so we can concentrate our time, capital and reputation on helping our founders win. We invest from day zero, when everything about a company is ambiguous except for the most important thing: a founder who refuses to give up control over his or her own destiny, and who is hell-bent on turning their vision for the future into reality. We typically invest before a company has revenues, users, a product, and sometimes even a bank account or legal entity. No idea is too weird, too early, or too ambitious for EV3.

What Does EV3 Believe In, and Invest In?

We believe tokenization is the single most important paradigm shift of the 21st century. Financial assets are what everyone talks about, but tokenization impacts data, credentials, attention, and other types of assets in equally profound ways. By making them programmable, tokenization brings the costs of finding, moving, copying, and trading these assets to ~zero. Like water in a pipe or electricity in a wire, tokenized assets that move without friction flow hundreds of times faster towards the “lowest potential energy” — i.e. the most useful and valuable — places.

As tokenization proliferates, money, data, attention, and identity will move around the world faster and more frequently than anyone today thinks is realistic, or even possible. As a result, the duration curve for every asset structurally steepens: when people have exponentially more options for how to spend their money, time, and attention, the opportunity cost of locking in to any single idea, asset, or job long-term also rises exponentially. Who knows what opportunities might be available tomorrow? This trend is visible everywhere, from sovereign yields (long bonds at multi-decade highs), to market share shifts in entertainment platforms (towards short-form video), to retail trading activity (towards short-term levered contracts), to software pricing (from SaaS to token-based), and even dating (more relationships, fewer marriages). People are more willing than ever to try something new, but less willing than ever to commit long-term. This steepening duration curve is rewiring the economics of the world’s largest industries, threatening its largest institutions, and creating opportunities for entrepreneurs.

There has probably never been a better time to build out your Life’s Work. As the world seeks instant liquidity, instant delivery, instant access, entrepreneurs who can compound assets, insights, and relationships over decades are even more powerful. It’s these founders — the ones that believe in their vision so much they name their company after their daughter (like Rumi), or help their co-founders escape a war zone (like FortyTwo), or tattoo their company’s logo on their neck (ahem) — that keep the tenacity and hunger to build companies that redefine their industries over decades. The journey of being an entrepreneur is never easy, and never over, but there are few greater fulfillments in life than building something enduring alongside people you respect.

In the era of tokenization, we believe the most valuable businesses will build moats around selling “picks and shovels” tools to the short-end of the duration curve, and helping users regain control over their time, money, and environment being subservient to The System.

For financial assets, that means exchanges that take a fee on each trade and whose users are trading (or betting) with greater frequency (and leverage) than ever before, and originators that control the supply of collateral for semi-liquid, high-yield investment products that anyone can access onchain—we call these liquidity basins.
For attention assets, that means tools that help creators today, and agents tomorrow, grow and monetize their audience without being beholden to large social media and streaming platforms—we call these attention basins.
For data assets, that means APIs that give agents and robots situational awareness of what’s going on in the real world around them—we call these machine maps.

Helping people reclaim their destiny from The System is our Life’s Work. If you’re building a business with the potential to help billions of people do this, we would love nothing more than to be your earliest and staunchest believers. We just raised $60M of fuel to help entrepreneurs like you reach Escape Velocity and reclaim control of their destiny.

Reach us at founders dot ev3 dot xyz. For encrypted emails, use our public key.