It’s been a very long time since I’ve written publicly from the evm.capital side.

This year has been nothing short of a roller coaster. I’ve been fully occupied building LocalHost and because of that I naturally took a step back from running evm.capital day to day. I want to be clear something upfront though — I’m not quitting evm.capital.

I’m still very much part of it. I continue to manage the fund, stay close to operations and remain involved in decisions. What has changed is how the work is distributed. Over the past months, Andrew and Rishabh have taken on the responsibility of leading most of the execution, and they now jointly run the majority of the work — from sourcing projects to screening. This has been intentional, and honestly, healthier for the organization.

What we are today

evm.capital began with a simple idea: that creativity and ambition are evenly distributed, but access to resources is not.

From the beginning, we weren’t trying to build a huge venture fund or a brand. We wanted to create a small pool of capital that could move quickly and support people at the moment when they were still unsure whether an idea was worth pursuing. The kinds of moment where a few thousands of dollars, some encouragement, and a signal of belief can make a real difference.

In 2025, we deployed over $10,000 USD across more than 15 projects, with several still operating in stealth. The majority of this capital went into crypto-native work, but not in the typical sense of funding token launches or marketing-heavy ideas.

Instead, we backed:

• early protocol experiments
• developer tools
• infrastructure ideas
• builders testing strange or unpolished ideas before the market had any opinion

Some of these projects will eventually ship something public. Some will turn into entirely different ideas. Some will quietly shut down. That outcome spread is exactly what we expect at this stage.

How evm.capital has evolved

While I stepped back from daily operations, evm.capital didn’t stall. If anything, it became more grounded.

Andrew and Rishabh have been thoughtful stewards of the original intent. They’ve been careful about what we fund, honest about when something isn’t ready, and disciplined about keeping the bar centered on effort and curiosity rather than polish or narratives.

At the same time, it’s become clear that the way we operated early on — largely ad hoc, intuition-driven, and reactive — has limits. It worked when everything was small, but it left a lot of learning on the table.

Which brings us to what’s next.

What’s next

Going forward, evm.capital will look more structured in how it operates. Not bigger, not louder, and definitely not more corporate — but more intentional.

Until now, evm.capital functioned mostly as a lightweight grant engine. We would come across someone interesting, fund them, and move on. That simplicity was a feature early on, but it also meant we weren’t always capturing patterns, following progress closely, or giving builders a clear sense of what “next” could look like.

The next phase is about turning evm.capital into something more systematic, without losing its soul.

One change you’ll notice is that we’re starting to think in terms of stages, rather than just one-off grants. Not stages in the accelerator sense, but loose internal markers — an idea phase, an experimentation phase, a signal phase. The goal isn’t to push projects forward artificially, but to help both builders and ourselves understand where something stands and what kind of support actually makes sense at that point.

Capital allocation

Alongside that, we’re experimenting with better capital allocation loops. Instead of every grant being a single decision, we want the ability to follow momentum when it shows up. That might mean small top-ups, phased support, or quicker redeployment into builders who are clearly learning fast. Capital, at this level, should help compress feedback cycles — not just be distributed evenly.

Operationally, we’re also beginning to offer more shared support to builders who want it. This doesn’t mean heavy programs or mandatory check-ins. It means optional access to things like feedback, introductions, distribution experiments, and simple accountability structures. The idea is to reduce unnecessary friction, not to standardize outcomes.

Another important shift is clarity around where evm.capital fits in the broader lifecycle of a project. We increasingly see evm.capital as the layer before markets, before speculation, and before public accountability. If a project reaches a point where public capital, or broader distribution make sense, there should be a clean handoff to the next system — rather than evm.capital trying to stretch itself into something it isn’t.

Despite all of this, one thing is non-negotiable: evm.capital will stay small on purpose. Constraints are part of the design. If this ever needs scale or hype to justify its existence, then it has already lost what made it useful.

A few things worth saying out loud

Most ideas don’t fail because they’re bad. They fail because they never get enough time or space to be tested honestly.

evm.capital exists to extend that window, just a little — long enough for someone to find out whether they should keep going.

I’m deeply grateful to Andrew and Rishabh for taking real ownership of evm.capital over the past year. This isn’t ceremonial leadership — they’ve been in the weeds, making judgment calls, protecting the fund’s intent, and doing the unglamorous work that actually keeps something alive. evm.capital is better for it.

To everyone we’ve funded, supported, or even said no to — thank you for trusting us at a very early and vulnerable moment. If evm.capital helped you try something you wouldn’t have otherwise, then it did what it was meant to do.

We’ll keep this small, thoughtful, and builder-first.
And we’ll keep learning as we go.

More soon.

Cheers,
Suhas Sumukh
Co-founder & General Partner
evm.capital