How can crypto VCs find their next opportunity? Haseeb says “some things never come back”
Author: Wu Says Blockchain Original title: Haseeb on Crypto VC: Sorry, Some Things Will Never Come Back In an interview with MAD Society on July 15, 2026, Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi discussed crypto venture capital, founder judgments, and long-term trends in the industry. He believes that the key to venture capital is to seize a few non-consensus opportunities. Excellent founders should have outstanding “peak ability,” but lack of integrity and inconsistent words and actions are clear danger signs. Haseeb also said that it is difficult to form long-term enterprises in the direction of some structured products and the tokenization of individual assets, while the DeFi, stablecoin, payment and prediction markets will continue to exist; in the long run, cryptographic technology will eventually be incorporated into various financial and technology products, and the “crypto company” label may gradually disappear. The audio transcription was done by GPT, there may be errors, please watch the original video at YT. Poker and venture capital: How to establish judgment discipline in a long feedback cycle Haseeb Qureshi: There really isn't much compatibility between poker and venture capital. Poker is very similar to trading because they all have very fast feedback loops that can be iterated very closely and quickly. As soon as you play a hand, you'll know whether you won or lost, and whether your decision was right. But in venture capital, the feedback cycle is very slow. If you invest in a founder, it may take many years before you know if your original judgment was correct. In the first year, you may see some initial signs, such as the company is growing and seems to be starting to gain some market recognition. Even if a company has completed Series A or even Series B financing, it can still suddenly go awry. It may have looked like it was going well for several years, but the founders had a fatal flaw that eventually led them to lose the ball in their final offense in the final game of the season. So the reality is, it's hard to quickly judge whether you're doing a good enough job as a venture capitalist. Many funds raised funds by relying on the early book valuation of their portfolios, but it was only discovered in the end that there were no real winners in the entire portfolio. Let's say you invested in Axie Infinity or OpenSea early on, and you probably thought, “Wow, I'm an amazing investor, I did such a great job.” There are also several funds that have invested in FTX in the early stages. At the time, people would say, “My God, this guy is simply the son of choice in the investment world. Can you believe he participated in the FTX seed round?” But just a few years later, the situation became: “OK, this fund doesn't seem to be anything special now.” Because its brightest star project has already exploded. Venture capital is unique in this regard. This means, first, you must take the initiative to establish a feedback mechanism for yourself, rather than expect the world to give you direct feedback. Because as a venture capitalist, you have to keep learning and improving, but it often takes many years to know whether an investment is successful or not. Therefore, feedback must come more from your judgments about your own performance rather than from external results. For a lot of people, this is very difficult. Another difference between venture capital and poker is that venture capital is a team sport, while poker is a single player game. Of course you're playing cards with other people, but essentially you're facing the entire table alone. That's not the case with venture capital. You can only be successful if the founder you invest in is successful; you can only really win if your fund is successful and the projects carried out by the other partners in the fund are also successful. As a result, venture capital relies heavily on collaboration and interpersonal relationships. But if you're a poker player, you hardly need to care about anyone else in the world. As long as you sit at the table, play properly, and continue to make a profit, you can still be a successful poker player even if you don't have any friends. This is also a very different point between the two. Most really good venture capitalists are really good at dealing with relationships. I don't think I'm particularly good at this, but I'm definitely a lot better than the past and better at building relationships than most traders I know. Most traders don't need that. Just like poker players, they don't need to be friendly, be good at handling relationships, and don't need to have a large network of people. Therefore, the ability to really help you make good venture investments in poker is mainly the ability to think clearly about risk and the ability to control emotions well. I found that a lot of venture capitalists aren't really good at this. They can be very emotional, and it's hard to handle conflict. These two aspects are just right...
