Haun Ventures leads $24 million round into web3 developer platform Thirdweb

Katie Haun's Haun Ventures has led a $24 million round into Thirdweb, a platform that aims to make it easier for developers to create web3 apps, at a $160 million valuation. 

Coinbase Ventures, Shopify, Protocol Labs, Polygon, Shrug VC and billionaire Joseph Lacob also participated in the round, which closed last month, according to an announcement Thursday. The company was founded by Bebo founder Furqan Rydhan and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett of Dragon's Den UK. 

Thirdweb offers pre-built smart contracts to create products ranging from NFT drops to a  marketplace, software development kits (SDKs) to build products from the ground up and a dashboard for developer teams to track and manage on-chain contracts. The company says that the products it offers are fully non-custodial and on-chain. 

"As a developer, when you're thinking about web3, the first problem is everything is different than I have learned previously... if I want to create a token or an NFT or a wallet, how do I get started?," said Furqan Rydhan in an interview with The Block. "Smart contracts are also a lot more sensitive than developing for traditional internet software where 'move fast, ship fast and break things' was the developer motto — a mistake on the blockchain could cost you $100 million." 

While Thirdweb counts web3 entities — DAOs, multi-sig wallets and on-chain teams — brands such as New York Fashion Week and Afterpay are also using its services to build web3 services such as NFT-gated membership clubs and tickets, virtual metaverse-like worlds with the aim of increasing fan engagement. 

Rydhan also cited a car company that is currently using its products to build an NFT waiting list for its new model release. 

Currently, its services are available on the Ethereum, Avalanche and Fantom blockchains, however, it's currently readying Solana integration with a tentative launch date of end of September. It plans to use the funding to add further blockchains such as Cosmos, Near and Flow. 

Rydhan also claimed that with this raise the company now has over three years of runway with 60-70% still left over from its seed raise $5 million back in December of last year.