Haseeb Qureshi and Alexander Pack got into a public exchange about who truly founded Dragonfly Capital on the social media platform X after Qureshi posted an article detailing how to create a successful venture capital firm.
Qureshi initially claimed that he built the firm from zero, but Pack challenged this narrative, stating instead that the firm was established and could boast of a $100 million fund before Qureshi’s arrival.
Who truly founded Dragonfly Capital?
Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly, posted an extensive 13-lesson guide on X (formerly Twitter) detailing how to create a successful venture capital (VC) firm. In his post, Qureshi detailed his journey of joining forces with Bo Feng to build Dragonfly from the ground up during the 2018 crypto winter. He described using a fake-it-till-you-make-it strategy, claiming the firm originally had no brand and no ability to lead deals.
In the comments of his post, Alexander Pack, a former partner at the firm, accused Qureshi of rewriting history.
“Haseeb, it’s very simple. You wrote a post about how to start a VC. You lied about starting the VC. You have never started a VC firm in your life.” Pack wrote.
Pack stated that he and Bo Feng had co-founded Dragonfly more than a year before Qureshi was hired. According to Pack, the firm was already operational, had a $100 million fund, and had already participated in several high-profile deals.
To support his claim, Pack referenced a 2018 Forbes announcement that explicitly names “Alexander Pack and Bo Feng” as the founders of Dragonfly.
The article stated that the duo was looking to invest $100 million into a mix of crypto-first funds and protocols. At the time of that publication, Qureshi was listed as a General Partner at MetaStable Capital, an entity Dragonfly had actually invested in.
In a response to defend himself, Qureshi clarified that while the fund had been announced, it had not been fully raised when he joined. He also maintained that he was responsible for shifting the firm away from a fund-of-funds model toward a direct-investment powerhouse.
Through the series of exchanges, Qureshi stated that Pack is no longer welcome at the firm and alleged that Pack’s departure from the company four years ago involved him lying to people about deals.
What were Qureshi’s early contributions?
Qureshi’s 13 lessons emphasize that VC is a people business and that personal distribution, like a social media presence and engaging in public storytelling, is a requirement for modern firms.
His post mentioned that firms like a16z are often viewed as media businesses with a venture arm. However, a focus on personal branding can create friction when multiple parties feel their contributions to that brand are being erased or undervalued.
In his exchange with Pack, Qureshi argued that even if Dragonfly existed as a legal entity, the company currently recognized by the market was built through the specific strategies he implemented, such as Dragonfly Research.
When Dragonfly Capital launched, they had little brand recognition in the competitive VC landscape, and so they branded themselves as a research-driven fund in order to stand out.
The research was simply Haseeb Qureshi republishing his deep-dive explainers and speculative “wouldn’t it be crazy if” posts that he used to write for his personal blog under the Dragonfly Research banner.
The strategy eventually helped them win deals and attract founders before they had a long track record of successful exits.
Dragonfly Research eventually evolved into a legitimate department that publishes extensive data-heavy reports, such as the State of Airdrops Report and Crypto Compensation Reports, which use proprietary data to analyze how much crypto workers are paid or how airdrops affect long-term token health.
The team now includes data scientists, legal experts, and other researchers who publish under the same banner.
Despite media reports suggesting that institutional interest in crypto has waned, Dragonfly recently launched its $650 million Fund IV. Currently, the company manages roughly $4 billion and has 45 employees spread across New York, San Francisco, and Singapore.
Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/dragonfly-co-founders-dispute-vc-origins/
