Steve Jang

Who they are

Steve Jang is Founder and Managing Partner of Kindred Ventures — co-authored Ethereum smart contract standard EIP-6551 and previously founded SoundTracking, a music app acquired by Napster-Rhapsody.

Person

Steve Jang started Kindred Ventures in January 2014, building it from inception as an early-stage fund focused on AI, deep tech, and crypto. He came to venture with genuine founder credentials: he was on the founding team of what became one of the first large on-demand music streaming services (acquired by MySpace), then co-founded SoundTracking, a music social network that was later acquired by Napster-Rhapsody. Along the way he had a stint at Uber, adding operator scale to his founder background. He holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MBA from USC Marshall. The founding companies he's built or backed span Future Primitive (a crypto startup studio), Bitski (a Web3 wallet startup acquired by Phantom), and Kindred Ventures itself — each sitting at the edge of a new platform wave. He co-authored EIP-6551, the Ethereum standard for token-bound accounts, a signal that he doesn't just invest in technical standards shifts — he writes them. The through-line is platform transitions: music streaming in the early web era, on-demand services at Uber, and now crypto and AI infrastructure at the frontier.

How they likely show up

  • Founded Kindred Ventures in January 2014 and has run it for over a decade → thinks in long fund cycles, not short sprints; patient capital orientation likely shapes how he evaluates founders too.
  • Co-authored EIP-6551, a live Ethereum smart contract standard → goes beyond observer or cheque-writer; expects to be hands-on at the protocol level when conviction is high.
  • Serial founder across music tech, Web3, and VC (SoundTracking, Future Primitive, Bitski, Kindred Ventures) → high agency, likely impatient with founders who wait for permission to move.
  • Content themes cluster tightly around AI, deep tech, and crypto → focused investor, not a generalist; probably engages most when conversation stays at the frontier, not legacy markets.
  • Possibly — mixed tenure shape across roles suggests comfort with parallel tracks (investing + advising + building) rather than sequential single-focus careers.

Conversation tips

  • → Come with a specific technical or protocol-level question — he co-authored EIP-6551, so he's read the spec and written the code; surface-level crypto takes won't land.
  • → Reference a specific Kindred Ventures portfolio company or investment thesis if you know one — he's been building the fund since 2014 and the portfolio reflects deliberate bets.
  • → If music tech comes up, treat it as context for his platform instincts, not nostalgia — SoundTracking and the early streaming work are about spotting distribution shifts early.
  • → Don't over-index on Web3 hype framing; his EIP-6551 work suggests he cares about primitives and standards, not narrative cycles.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on EIP-6551 — he co-authored the Ethereum token-bound accounts standard, which means he has a specific, technical view on what on-chain identity and ownership should look like; that's an unusual credential for a VC.
  • Lead with Bitski's acquisition by Phantom — he founded a Web3 wallet company that was absorbed by one of the dominant Solana wallets, which says something specific about how he thinks about infrastructure bets and exit paths.
  • Mention SoundTracking and the MySpace music streaming acquisition — two early exits in music tech before streaming was mainstream signals he's been pattern-matching platform transitions for a long time.

Discovery questions

  1. EIP-6551 introduces token-bound accounts as a primitive — how do you think that changes what's actually buildable on-chain versus what was just theoretically possible before?
  2. You co-founded Future Primitive as a crypto startup studio alongside running Kindred Ventures — how do you decide when to incubate versus just write a cheque?
  3. Kindred Ventures has been investing since 2014 across multiple crypto cycles — what does the AI-crypto convergence look like from your portfolio's vantage point right now?

Avoid

Don't pitch or discuss online gambling, European gaming operators, or regulated betting markets — those are facts about a different company entirely and have nothing to do with Steve's work.

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Sources

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Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on June 5, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →