I'm John Patrick Mullin. I'm originally from the US, but I've been living in Asia for almost 10 years now. I've been in the crypto space since 2013 — I've seen a lot of its evolution. 

I've worked in various areas, from centralized exchanges and brokerage to being early DeFi building. 

More recently I've been focusing on building a layer one blockchain using the Cosmos SDK tech stack.

I've raised mid-8-figure amounts through both token and equity rounds for the projects I've founded. 

Now I'm working on Mantra — we’re pushing the boundaries in asset tokenization — this is often referred to as Real World Assets or RWAs. 

We’re one of the leading protocols in this space, especially when it comes to compliance. We’re all about enabling permissioned, self-custodial financial apps to be built on-chain from day one.

When we first launched in August 2020, it was all about hustle. We had just a white paper and a dream, and we were running out of money. 

Despite that, we managed to raise just under $6M through a heavily retail-focused offering. We manually KYC’d around a thousand people from 180 countries.

We recently completed our latest funding round for Mantra. We raised $12M — via equity and tokens. 

On the equity side we were pretty affordable — $6M pre-money valuation and $30M post-money.

The whole process took about 2 months — agreeing on terms in December to finalizing due diligence by the end of February. 

It was a quick turnaround, with significant due diligence — this included financial, legal, and technical reviews.

Our lead investor in this round was Shorooq Partners — a leading VC in the MENA region.

They’ve been fantastic partners and have really changed the trajectory of our business.

When we did our last equity raise — we really needed it. 

We were stuck in our general counsel's apartment in New York due to COVID, then Luna blew up and the fundraising environment evaporated. 

No one wanted to touch crypto after that, especially with the FTX fallout.

We went through about 18 months of struggling — trying to survive and build. We had to restructure and deal with a lot of tough situations. 

We finally found the right investors who believed in our vision. That’s why I didn’t re-price even though we could have. We needed someone who truly bought into what we were doing.

We’re now raising because we’ve had a significant run-up on the token side — it’s the cheapest way to raise capital right now. 

We have different types of investors for tokens and equity — it gives us the flexibility to work across both sides of the capital stack. 

It’s a bit opportunistic, but after the market imploded last time, I don’t want to make the same mistake again.

We knew we needed to launch the mainnet chain into production.

We've had great use the testnet — nearly 5M participants in the last few months. It's incentivized, but it's good to see significant usage.

The other milestone is obtaining the license. We received good confirmation from regulators in Dubai that it's imminent. 

It's now about deciding when to raise more capital and who to include on the cap table.

Ideally I’d want a sovereign wealth fund directly participating, a bank involved, tier one VCs and growth equity firms. 

The valuation should be in a completely different range compared to what we closed at back in March — but signed and finalized in December.

Being a tokenization tech stack, having a bank provides us with a lot of options for on and off-ramping various products. 

They also offer distribution channels and can become a potential client, which adds significant credibility.

If you're doing decentralized finance, the goal is to have a financial institution as your investor. The sovereign fund brings very patient capital and global credibility. 

This is strategic because our investors are ex-Mubadala partners set up in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. 

Sovereign wealth funds have deep pockets and are patient — not influenced by market cycles, which is beneficial.

From a VC perspective it's about signaling. Reputable VCs create FOMO among other investors — helping attract additional capital. 

They also provide value-added support in areas like hiring and strategic advice. It's important to have value-added partners, whether they are VCs, banks, or sovereign funds.

We've had great support from all our investors. I communicate with some of them daily — they've become true partners, making it a really good relationship.

I was primarily introduced via warm introductions from close connections and occasionally met some at meetups, conferences, or other IRL events. 

In the last round we had super high engagement. Out of more than 100 potential investors, about 95% took the call. 

Many took the call unless they were conflicted. 10% of those calls led to investment interest.

We had to cut everyone down because it was very oversubscribed. At the beginning I was begging people to invest, but by the end, everyone wanted more and I had to turn them away.

Our strategy for pitching to investors adjusted depending on the type of round. 

A token pitch is very different from a venture seed round pitch. 

When we were talking about the last round — which was a venture seed round — we focused on several key elements.

The investors primarily underwrote the team. They spent a significant amount of time with myself, our executive team, and the other key people during their due diligence process. 

They mentioned it was the fastest due diligence they had ever done on a project, largely because of the extensive time spent with us.

The investors wanted to bet on potential industry-leading organizations and projects. 

We had a strong opportunity to be the category leader in RWA asset tokenization. They were looking for a big market and saw us as a potential leader.

They also saw our resilience. Mantra is 4 years old — this was our first equity financing — this demonstrated our long-term commitment beyond just making a quick buck. 

One of the partners even mentioned that I was the first crypto founder they could have a normal conversation with, which helped in showing that we were serious and credible.

From a crypto/Web3 perspective, it's important to think on multiple levels. You need the narrative and timing to be right. 

We were already focusing on our strategy, so we didn't have to fit ourselves into a narrative to raise funds. We had conviction and positioned ourselves strategically.

We also needed to show real-world traction — product development, community engagement, social media presence, and licensing. We demonstrated we were delivering something crucial.

For crypto projects with a token, the chart needs to look good. Our token has been one of the best-performing all year, and we've broken all-time highs for a project that's been around for a few years — this excites investors.

When it comes to closing, it's important to set tight timelines. I went through Jason Yeh's fundraising program, which taught me about calendar density — scheduling all investor meetings in a short window and sticking to deadlines. This creates a sense of urgency.

While it's important to be firm on timelines, you can make investors feel special by offering small extensions if needed. 

We quickly pulled everything together for the last round which was a bit messy, yet ultimately successful. Now we can focus on maintaining a tight process.

Luna blew up and the rest of the fundraising environment was eviscerated. No one wanted to touch crypto. Then FTX happened and closed any available capital left in the space.

One of our strongest partners/investors initially passed multiple times — then ended up participating — and is now looking to lead a follow-up round. 

Be prepared for a lot of no's and don't take it personally. At the same time, do take it personally in the sense that you remember those who say no. It doesn't mean holding a grudge, but do keep it in mind. 

No doesn't mean ‘no’ forever. We had an investor pass on us 4 times — they’re now one of our strongest backers.

You never know why they're going to pass, and they usually won't give you the real reason. Use the rejections as motivation to improve your business and keep going. 

It's a game of numbers — you only need 1 person to lead and support you. Once you have that others will follow.

Take what the market can give you — find a comp that you can reasonably price against.

Shorooq Partners! They led our recent round. If you’re building something in the Dubai region, I highly recommend them.

I don't know if it's correlation or causation, but when I took Jason Yeh's "Fundraising with Confidence" class, things started working for me. 

I learned a lot — including insights into process and investor psychology. It was also a great community experience with interesting people and cool projects.

Another resource is Ryan Breslow's fundraising book, which I found very helpful — despite what's happened with Bolt. 

It's a cheat sheet for understanding investor thinking and structuring your process.

These 2 resources helped me get in the mindset of what investors are thinking, how to structure the process, and how to get deals across the line. 

Many people can get to 95%, but it takes real push to complete that last 5%.