Balaji Srinivasan
Balaji Srinivasan is a renowned angel investor, tech founder, and WSJ bestselling author. He is a high-profile figure in the cryptocurrency space and an early investor in various successful tech companies and crypto protocols. Balaji is best known as the former Chief Technology Officer at Coinbase and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Before joining a16z, he was the Co-Founder and CTO of Counsyl, where he won the Wall Street Journal Innovation Award for Medicine and was named to the MIT TR35. He also taught classes at Stanford University, including the online MOOC in 2003 which reached 250,000+ students worldwide. Today, Balaji is an active angel investor, serving as the Founder and Board Member of Coin Center, the leading non-profit focused on the policy issues facing cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Balaji Srinivasan Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Co-Founder and Board Member
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Chief Technology Officer
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Lecturer, Department of Statistics and Computer Science
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General Partner
Academic History
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Ph.D., Electrical Engineering
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M.S., Chemical Engineering
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M.S., Electrical Engineering
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B.S., Electrical Engineering
TECH & CRYPTO INVESTMENTS
Balaji is an early investor in many successful tech companies and crypto protocols, including Akasa, Alchemy, Benchling, Cameo, CoinTracker, Culdesac, Dapper Labs, Deel, Digital Ocean, Eight Sleep, EPNS, Farcaster, Gitcoin, Golden, Instadapp, Lambda School, and Levels Health.
He is also an early investor in Locals, Messari, Mirror, OnDeck, OpenSea, Orchid Health, Prospera, Replit, Republic, Roam Research, Skiff, Soylent, Stability AI, Starkware, Stedi, Superhuman, Synthesis, and Zora Labs, to name a few.
Balaji was also an early investor in many important crypto protocols including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, NEAR, Polygon, Chainlink, XMTP, ZCash, and more.
As CTO, Balaji evangelized for both cryptocurrency and for Coinbase, educating the world and recruiting crypto-first talent to the company.
He sourced and closed over $1.5+ billion in deals for Coinbase Custody, and drove the addition of new assets to the Coinbase platform.
He supervised the integration of Earn.com into Coinbase and subsequent expansion to 100+ countries.
He also sourced and closed $300+ million in deals for Coinbase Earn, including $120+ million from the Stellar Foundation.
EARLY CAREER
He was also the Co-Founder of Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), Counsyl (acquired by Myriad), and Teleport (acquired by Topia).
As a General partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he moved into biomedicine and blockchain through both investments and recruiting, which led to the a16z Crypto and Bio funds.
At Counsyl, he was responsible for scientific codebase, marketing, design, public relations, recruiting, training, fundraising, and technical vision.
ACADEMIA
He taught occasional classes at Stanford University, including data mining, statistics, genomic, and blockchain services.
He also taught computational biology, Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency.
He also taught an online MOOC in 2013 which reached 250,000+ students worldwide.
RECOGNITION
2018 Fortune's "The Ledger 40 Under 40"
2013 MIT Technology Review's "Innovators Under 35"
Wall Street Journal Innovation Award
MEDIA & PUBLICATIONS
Balaji has been featured or quoted in various leading financial media outlets and publications.
He has been quoted in Forbes, The Economic Times, Yahoo! Finance, CNBC, Business Insider, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Wired, and more.
He has also been quoted in TechCrunch, CoinDesk, and Cointelegraph.
He has also appeared as a guest on Real Vision.