Nisa Amolis is a former securities lawyer, a passionate investor in technologies, a blockchain enthusiast, and a best-selling author. She is a prime example of an entity that has achieved a remarkable level of success in the fintech industry. Her expertise lies in investing in ventures, brand development, business development & partnerships, writing, government, and regulatory affairs. She realized the potential of the continuous technological shift and its possible applications and co-founded a New York-based venture capital investment firm, Venture Funds A100x in 2020.
After earning a business degree from the University of Michigan and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, she went on to work in the fintech industry. Initially, Nisa began her career as a securities lawyer which is significant in the spaces that are heavily regulated for risk managing the fund. Before paving her way in founding Venture fund A100x, she had already earned a name in the industry and has been on the Boards of several institutions including Wharton Entrepreneurship, Girls Who Invest, and regulatory organizations.
Ever since the blockchain was invented, the consumption rate of this technology by various applications has substantially increased. Nisa was beforehand intrigued with such innovation in the vast sphere of information technology. She has been investing in fintech/blockchain and has been an early-stage investor for the past decade. She says, “Crypto and Decentralized finance (defi.) Traditional finance is being disrupted before our eyes.” Nisa has been in venture capital for over 10 years at multiple funds investing in disruptive technology. She worked as a generalist technology seed investor before focusing on blockchain, which is regarded as the most significant technological shift of the century. She trusts this shift and states that this sector will drive the next generation of valuable companies. Before investing, she was an entrepreneur and spent many years in business development and strategy at companies like Time Warner, NBC Universal, and Anderson Kill. Thus, she has developed a keen interest in this field. Meanwhile working as a securities and corporate lawyer, she has attained experience in managing regulatory(s) to invest in. “As the financial world is heavily regulated, a securities attorney’s background can provide the proper risk management for a fund and regulatory guidance for founders,” she mentions. Until now, she has been awarded recognition as one of Business Insider’s Women VCs to Watch and Top 100 Women in Fintech, and Top 50 Global Blockchain Thinkers.
The fund was founded to encourage women and minorities to participate in the wealth creation opportunities offered by the crypto industry. According to Nisa, most of the large funds in the space are run by men who invest in other men, which leaves female founders to get less than 2% of all venture funding. Hence, she desires to invest in diversity and recommend them to participate in the fund. Moreover, she has stated that tokenization, crypto, decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens, and other innovations have the ability for the financially excluded to create wealth and own their property in Web 3. Yet various existing institutions, venture capital systems have failed to make the process feasible for women and minorities to participate. “They will keep entering crypto and defi because the existing systems have not afforded the opportunity. Like with Robinhood, they will continue to enter finance. promote meme stocks or tokens,” she asserts.
Nisa strives to participate in events and conferences related to her field of expertise/interests or other co-related topics regularly to improve her skills. She firmly believes in the process of learning thus always prefers to be surrounded by the people who inspire her to learn more. She has no qualms about hiring intellectuals and becoming acquainted with a new ideology that she is unaware of. She says, “After all, you can learn from such team members and constantly improve.”
“As the financial world is heavily regulated, a securities attorney’s background can provide the proper risk management for a fund and regulatory guidance for founders”
Democratizing venture capital
A100x invests at the intersection of blockchain technology and social impact. Aside from cryptocurrency, as many other industries are being disrupted by technology, A100x aims to fund diversity and to create wealth for a diverse investor base. She believes that the wave of innovation is beginning to produce viable products both for consumers and enterprises in the distinctive field. In 1983, the internet has disrupted the way people communicate opening various opportunities for people. Being one of the investors that foresaw and achieved stellar returns in the blockchain and crypto-asset markets of the past five years, she is witnessing a tsunami of internet applications poised to disrupt a host of traditional industries. She says that A100x will remain laser-focused on the disruption that delivers real products, rather than those that only promote or enable pure crypto-asset speculation. Additionally, A100x will focus on solutions that generate social and environmental impact, as well as economic impact outside of speculation and gambling. Currently, it is investing in companies that use frontier technology to solve real-time problems outside of pure finance and speculation. This includes supply chain solutions for provenance, tracking, and agreements; title management in the automobile industry, real estate, and other high-end property; healthcare inpatient data management, vaccine passporting, and drug provenance; climate solutions in carbon trading and carbon tracking; key enabling infrastructure including security and hardware solutions, DevOps frameworks, programming environments, and cryptography.
The Book that Everyone is Talking About
Nisa has been an avid reader of trade publications since the beginning of her journey, which inspired her to turn her reading ability into a book. She quickly recognized the importance of a woman’s reach in business and technology. As a result, in 2019, she invested in writing a book titled ‘WTF Is Happening: Women Tech Founders on the Rise.’ She asserts that technological innovation is exploding, and venture capitalists are continually looking to invest in the next big thing. “But while female pioneers are making remarkable strides across a wide range of emerging tech fields—from robotics to virtual reality to drone technology and autonomous flight—they are receiving only a small fraction of the available funding, an inequity that harms both innovator and investor alike,” she continues. Through her book, Nisa attempts to portray profiles of dozen female founders whose remarkable work will make a profound difference in the way we live. This eye-opening volume provides a new appreciation of the extraordinary strides being made in disruptive technology by female entrepreneurs who are attempting to change the world. In the book, Nisa gradually narrows down the focus of a reader on the distinctive approaches taken by various female leaders to create their ventures. Irrespective of the interests, this book assists every individual to be it a venture capitalist or a young woman entering into STEM fields.
Nisa will continue to inspire, particularly aspiring female leaders, in the future through her endeavors. She is a regular judge/panelist on CNBC, MSNBC, Fox, and other new channels, where she discusses business, market aspects, and empowering women in technology.
