Former Google and Coinbase leaders founded Icebreaker to redefine how professionals and companies discover exceptional people within their networks
NEW YORK, July 31, 2024 — Icebreaker, the world’s first open professional network, today announces its $5 million seed round, led by CoinFund. The funding will help grow Icebreaker’s world-class team and further its progress toward scaling the internet’s open, verifiable, and trusted professional network. The round also includes participation from Accomplice, Anagram, Legion Capital, and more than 30 founder angels.
Digital networking is increasingly saturated with AI-driven noise and fake personas. Icebreaker was created to empower professionals to seamlessly tap their existing profiles and networks to surface exceptional people and opportunities, using recent advancements in cryptographically verifiable identity.
With Icebreaker, anyone can instantly prove credentials about themselves, provide verifiable endorsements for others, and use this shared context to freely search the entirety of their network. What emerges is an open graph of reputation and identity. This model strikes at the primary weakness of existing closed networks and gives professionals the ability to find top-tier candidates and opportunities wherever they may be online, based on shared context and trust.
“The world runs on trust,” said Icebreaker co-founder, Dan Stone. “Until now, it’s been impossible to see because our existing networks optimize for engagement over signal. Yet every leader knows the loudest or most followed person is rarely the best. Icebreaker lets you see who your close network trusts so you can cut through the noise to surface the talent and opportunities that are quiet, yet exceptional.”
As a co-creator of Google’s largest cross-identity measurement and marketing platform, Stone is a world expert building products at the intersection of data, privacy, and AI. In early 2021, he met co-founder Jack Dillé via pseudonymous forum discussing NFTs before the duo realized they both worked at Google. At the time, Dillé was working on YouTube and Google Shopping as a UX leader. Later that year, Dan and Jack both left Google to work full-time in crypto at Coinbase and SZNS, respectively, before leaving their roles in early 2023 to found Icebreaker.
At Icebreaker, Stone and Dillé are solving one of the digital age’s most complex and consequential problems: finding high-quality candidates and opportunities.
“Seeing people take full control and ownership of their network is really magical,” said co-founder Jack Dillé. “Existing platforms make it intentionally difficult to build and use our own connections, and often require us to pay just to navigate our own network. We have a core belief that data should be completely user-controlled, where people decide exactly what and how much they want to share with their connections, with no third-party intervention.”
Icebreaker piloted early iterations of the platform through engagements with other Web3 companies such as Coinbase, Opensea, and Polygon Labs, and at industry conferences like DevConnect in Istanbul and FarCon in Santa Monica. Last year, they debuted their first Passport program at Station3, a Web3 co-working space and innovation hub. The program has allowed founder Bob Loukas to track verified engagement with Station3 programming, whether the members are physically at the headquarters in downtown Manhattan, or checking in digitally from around the world.
“One of the next significant use cases for crypto is to develop foundational social graphs for applications to leverage, and we’re excited about the blueprint being created by Icebreaker for digital trust and identity on the internet. We are proud to back Dan, Jack and their team in their mission to introduce true ownership of professional identity to everyone online,” said Alex Felix, Chief Investment Officer, CoinFund.
With Icebreaker, anyone can create curated, high-context profiles based on one or more existing identities like LinkedIn, GitHub, X, or Farcaster by visiting icebreaker.xyz and logging in with email, Farcaster, or Ethereum Wallet. Professionals can signal their networking status, skill, work experience, professional highlights, and verified credentials, in addition to linking and optionally verifying their choice of more than 50 account types. Current and former colleagues can endorse each other with just two taps while seeing who else in their network is making and receiving endorsements. Most importantly, every professional can search the entirety of their network for free, forever, using more powerful filters than competitors who charge thousands of dollars annually.
“Trust in digital identity is rapidly deteriorating, especially in professional networking,” says Mike Viscuso, Co-Founder, Carbon Black and Managing Partner, Legion Capital. “I can’t see a way to restore that without completely re-imagining identity and building it from the ground up with a deeply thoughtful privacy design. It’s one of the use cases I’m most excited about with crypto, and why I’m a huge supporter of Icebreaker.”
This summer, the team of six will focus on bringing new social graphs into the application on behalf of users as well as promoting connectivity through professional skill endorsements and recommendations.
“I’m encouraged by this new wave of consumer startups that are implementing cryptography in a practical way,” says Dan Romero, co-founder of Web3 social network Farcaster and angel investor in Icebreaker. “If Icebreaker can issue and maintain offchain and onchain credentials at scale, it will dramatically pull crypto adoption forward by years. I’m excited for them to continue building.”
Connect directly on Icebreaker, or follow the company on X and Farcaster.
About Icebreaker
Icebreaker is the modern open professional network where you meet exceptional people.
About CoinFund
CoinFund is one of the world’s first cryptonative investment firms and a registered investment adviser founded in 2015. The firm champions the leaders of the new internet, powered by foresight as active investors to achieve extraordinary outcomes. CoinFund invests in seed, venture, and liquid opportunities within the blockchain sector with a focus on digital assets, decentralization technologies, and key enabling infrastructure. For more information, visit CoinFund.io, LinkedIn or join us on X.
SOURCE Icebreaker
