Chapter One

Overview

Chapter One is a Los Angeles early-stage venture firm founded by former Tinder product chief Jeff Morris Jr. that closed a $40 million web3 fund in December 2021 (TechCrunch). Before that pivot it backed Alt’s early rounds, and it later ran a $1 million-check crypto incubator (Crunchbase News).This profile covers Chapter One, Morris’s firm — not a similarly named fund — and follows it from its syndicate origins through its web3 fund to its incubator.

From Tinder operator to solo general partner

Morris’s path into venture ran through operating, not finance. He focused on product and revenue at Tinder for four years until leaving in late 2019, and TechCrunch describes Chapter One as a small but growing Los Angeles firm with new hires from Facebook and Stripe at the time of its web3 fund (TechCrunch). Like many investors, he began writing checks on the side of his full-time job: in 2016, aided in part by Tinder’s profile, he put together one of the larger syndicates on AngelList, where he says he went on to raise 15 special purpose vehicles to back startups (TechCrunch). Some of those companies broke out, including Density, a people-counting, AI-sensor startup that announced $125 million in funding at a $1.05 billion post-money valuation (TechCrunch).

A role with Index Ventures followed, and Morris became a scout for the firm, investing in a handful of seed rounds including Dapper Labs, the blockchain company behind NBA Top Shot, then valued at $7.6 billion, and Compound Labs, whose native token had already returned many millions to early investors (TechCrunch). He says that scout fund was marked up by more than 30 times (TechCrunch). Armed with those wins, he returned to AngelList, raising $1 million from the first related email he sent to prospective investors, then quit Tinder to invest full time; that debut fund went on to raise $10 million altogether (TechCrunch). Decrypt dates the firm’s launch to 2017, with Morris as sole investor, and records later additions including Jason Marder, former head of design at Stripe, Doug Dyer, a former investment manager for Texas Children’s Hospital, and Menelaos Mazarakis, who had worked on Facebook’s Novi crypto initiative and on product experience at Instagram (Decrypt).

The Alt backing belongs to this earlier, pre-web3-pivot phase, and it is the detail most web3-only coverage omits. In March 2021, Alt officially launched after raising $31 million combined in seed and Series A financing, with the Series A led by Seven Seven Six and Chapter One among the other investors, alongside First Round Capital, Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures, Addition Ventures, SV Angel, BoxGroup and others (Crunchbase News). Chapter One’s presence on that cap table shows a generalist early-stage investor before the firm narrowed itself to web3 — a narrowing TechCrunch explicitly describes as a shift “from a more generalist vertical interest toward web3 obsession” as early bets in Dapper and Compound Finance took off (TechCrunch).

The web3 fund, its backers, and its incubator

In December 2021 Morris closed a $40 million early-stage fund focused on web3 investments, and was in the process of raising a separate $20 million opportunity fund (TechCrunch). The notable feature was who backed the backer: the limited partners providing some of the capital included Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed Venture Partners, while Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon of a16z invested in a personal capacity (TechCrunch). Morris said Index was not an investor because the firm does not invest directly in other managers’ funds, and that he had structured information-sharing so that everybody gets the same information at the same time, deferring to founders on sequencing introductions (TechCrunch).

A discrepancy in the fund’s size must be flagged, because two independent outlets reported it differently within a week. Decrypt, on 14 December 2021, describes Chapter One as having “just raised a $50 million fund,” led by former Tinder, Stripe and Instagram executives, with $10 million dedicated to Ethereum Name Service projects and early-stage checks of $500,000 to $2 million (Decrypt). TechCrunch, on 20 December 2021, reports a $40 million early-stage fund plus a separate $20 million opportunity fund in raising (TechCrunch). This profile uses the TechCrunch breakdown, because it distinguishes the two vehicles, and flags Decrypt’s $50 million figure rather than silently averaging or reconciling them; the $20 million opportunity fund’s closing was not verified in the sources read.

Chapter One’s differentiation attempt followed in March 2022 with Chapter One Studios, a six-month incubator program providing three crypto startups with million-dollar checks and in-house guidance (TechCrunch). Founders would receive $1 million in investment for a 15% stake, the program would kick off in April after about a month of applications, and startups could work from Chapter One’s Los Angeles office or remotely (TechCrunch). The firm said it was especially interested in identity, consumer applications, cross-chain interoperability, and wallet and developer infrastructure, and had already backed MoonPay, Syndicate, The Graph and Dharma, which had recently been acquired by OpenSea (TechCrunch). Morris’s thesis for the whole exercise was usability: while many funds participated in governance, liquidity or market-making, no fund was entirely focused on usability and making crypto more accessible (TechCrunch).

What this profile does not claim

• No fund size is stated without its caveat: Decrypt’s $50 million figure conflicts with TechCrunch’s $40 million plus $20 million opportunity-fund breakdown, and the profile uses the latter while flagging the former.
• No Chapter One activity after March 2022 is claimed, including later funds, Studios outcomes, or current portfolio.
• Whether the firm stayed web3-only after 2022 or broadened again is not claimed.
• The $20 million opportunity fund was in raising in December 2021; its closing was not verified.
• Aggregator portfolio counts were not used.