Argonauts Journey

Zee Prime is first and foremost driven by curiosity. While our story began as a crypto-focused investment firm, we have been opening up to a broader range of opportunities. The core motivation behind this evolution remains largely the same as when we first started the firm.

Entering crypto on an individual level in 2016 and as a firm in 2018 was driven by a desire to be part of the zeitgeist, a truly transformative technology and cultural movement. A sense of an emerging opportunity was inspired by curiosity.

This foundational drive does not change for Zee Prime. But as we have grown and the frontier has shifted, our responsibility to the capital we manage and to the evolving opportunity set has shifted accordingly. For us internally, it’s the same operating mode pointed at different frontiers.

These are the key elements that define us:

Curiosity
Frontier
Opportunity

They are deeply interconnected, forming a reinforcing, reflexive pattern: Often, the discovery of a new frontier creates a Schelling point that attracts smart and capable people, individuals driven by inquisitiveness, which in turn uncovers opportunities.

Great opportunities rarely appear as such in prospect. That is the very nature of truly exceptional ones: others overlook them because they seem unattractive at the time, and it’s nearly impossible to foresee the nuances that will eventually make them extraordinary. Great opportunities only become obvious in retrospect.

Albert Hirschmann’s “hiding hand” principle suggests that truly transformative projects, requiring creativity and invention, cannot be justified by a purely rational cost-benefit analysis. Instead, the “heedless and unmerited optimism” (hype or unchecked hubris) of committed founders is what drives them to undertake challenges that a rational assessment would prohibit. That ultimately prevents a severe underestimation of human ingenuity’s transformative power:

“Creativity always comes as a surprise to us; therefore we can never count on it and we dare not believe in it until it has happened. In other words, we would not consciously engage upon tasks whose success clearly requires that creativity be forthcoming. Hence, the only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be.”

Consider Bitcoin: what began as a niche techno-utopist aspiration and ideological pursuit led to a groundbreaking technological solution (and innovation in social scalability). Early adopters, other than drug dealers (who found it useful), were driven by curiosity, conviction and a belief in something most others dismissed. In the end, great opportunities are defined more by the people who seize them than by the opportunities themselves.

There is no reliable process or shortcut to identifying them. Even if you’re on a hunt for (as we have put it) wackadoos, there is no template to follow. Greatness is rarely prospective and easy to spot. Great founders or ideas are great in a non-obvious way. We like to reiterate Thiel’s “everybody can fight for things that matter but true heroes fight for things that don’t matter”.

That is why, to us, curiosity is the main way forward. The frontier moved, and we followed it. In retrospect, the thread is obvious; in the moment, we were just chasing the people doing the most interesting work.

We realized we are searching for the new frontier. Along the way, we backed fascinating founders, including Tiberius Aerospace (next generation missile platforms), Kind Bio (organ engineering), Terra Fusion (frontier energy), Epic Aerospace (orbital infrastructure), Alpha Machines (PCB manufacturing), SpaceTime (sovereign data storage), Cryopets (radical life extension) and many others.

Argonauts’ journey is the next chapter of the Zee Prime story. Launching a dedicated investment vehicle for founders exploring the most challenging problems inspires our curiosity and motivation to get better as investors.

And what could be a better way to inaugurate this than sponsoring residency at the edgiest event around? Edge City has been at the forefront of encouraging founders to explore the most outrageous endeavors which cuts very close to our own mantra.

There are already too many people that can say “no” to the very few who can actually get things done. Zee Prime Argonauts are here to find those quiet heroes aspiring to get it done, not because it’s fashionable, not because they’re trying to emulate an archetype, but because they are unrelentingly curious about the problem they’re solving.

You know where to find us.