After spending over 35 years in the venture capital and corporate world, Mike Sigal now dedicates his time to sharing his wisdom with emerging leaders across the world of finance. At the Unbounded Capital Summit, Sigal was one of the keynote presenters and CoinGeek Backstage caught up with him to discuss how blockchain impacts finance.
Sigal has a wealth of experience in finance and has worked with leading global institutions, including SWIFT, where he was a senior advisor for over six years. In the VC world, he was a partner at 500 Startups for a decade and is currently a venture partner at GPO Fund.
Since May 2023, he has been an advisor at Unbounded Capital, having met founder Zach Resnick in Lisbon.
“When I look at blockchain, I’m looking at the technology and what happens to the financial services world when you replace a lot of the legacy technology,” he told CoinGeek Backstage reporter Becky Liggero.
At SWIFT, he explored how the messaging protocol can integrate fintech solutions to speed up data-rich payments. With a scalable blockchain like BSV blockchain, transactions are instant for a fraction of a penny in fees, drawing Sigal to the BSV blockchain world. With Unbounded Capital investing primarily in BSV blockchain companies, it was an easy decision for him to join the New York VC firm.
“As someone who’s been involved in payments, the idea that any infrastructure can move money around the world at 1/1000th of the cost of what SWIFT or Visa can move opens a lot of interesting things, and that’s what gets me excited,” he stated.
At the event, Sigal advised startup founders seeking funding from VCs. While having a great product is crucial, he revealed that VCs are focused on optics as they translate to the inflow of investment capital and a rise in management fees.
VCs are led by the question: is the investment I’m about to make going to look good to the people who might invest in me? Sigal revealed. As an entrepreneur, “you need to think about how your narrative, which is divorced from your product, plays into market momentum,” he told CoinGeek Backstage.
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