The Venture Dept.

Early in his career, Matt Homer worked as a federal regulator at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC); before venture investing, he was Executive Deputy Superintendent at the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), overseeing licensing and supervision of major digital asset firms (including some of the largest exchanges, custodians, and stablecoin issuers in the U.S.). He has also held operating roles at Quovo and, after its acquisition by Plaid, at Plaid, and was an investor at Nyca Partners, where as of October 2026 he remains involved as an Operating Partner in an advisory capacity. He holds a master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In February 2023, the firm wrote an investment memo on stablecoin API company Bridge, calling it the most compelling opportunity it had seen among new entrants in the stablecoin space and noting that Bridge was pursuing a developer-first strategy, providing interfaces to move between any form of a dollar; the firm joined Bridge’s cap table in early 2023 as a seed investor. As of October 2026, Bridge is marked as exited in its portfolio.⁠[2][2][2][2][3]

On March 23, 2023, Department of XYZ Fund 1 LP filed a Form D with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an offering of pooled investment fund interests. The fund was organized in Delaware in 2022; its investment manager was The Department of XYZ IM LLC and its general partner was The Department of XYZ GP LLC, with Matthew Homer listed as a related person and an address at 1178 Broadway in New York City.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4]

Fund I first sold interests on March 29, 2023; as of the March 2024 amendment, it had sold $4,777,000 to 40 investors.⁠[5][5][5]

On June 6, 2024, Mountain Protocol announced an $8 million Series A round led by Multicoin Capital, in which The Venture Dept. participated alongside investors including Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Bankless Ventures. Mountain Protocol issues USDM, a yield-bearing stablecoin regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority and fully backed by U.S. Treasuries that shares yield with holders. As of October 2026, Mountain Protocol is marked as exited in its portfolio.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][3]

The firm went on to disclose a series of investments: Etherfuse on July 21, 2024 (tokenizing sovereign bonds and providing USD-MXN conversion), Predicate on October 15, 2024 (a network for setting customizable participation rules for onchain transactions), and Opacity on October 18, 2024 (one-time KYC infrastructure for tokenized securities).⁠[7][3][7][3][7][3]

On March 25 and May 12, 2025, the firm disclosed investments in stablecoin liquidity company Stable Sea and in XWeave, a cross-border payments company requiring no pre-funding, respectively.⁠[7][3][7][3]

On September 25, 2025, Venture Dept. Fund 2 LP filed a Form D with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as a venture capital fund, with no sale yet having occurred. The fund was organized in Delaware in 2025; its general partner is The Venture Dept. Fund 2 GP LLC and its investment manager remains The Department of XYZ IM LLC, and the filing was signed by Matthew Homer as Managing Member of the General Partner. As of October 2026, Fund II is investing.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8][8][3]

In 2026, the firm disclosed investments in institutional on-chain liquidity company Multiliquid (January 14), embedded stablecoin financial services company Rhythmic (February 19), Valinor, an on-chain merchant bank connecting institutional credit with crypto businesses (March 31), and protocol-native EVM infrastructure company Birdai (July 28).⁠[7][3][7][3][7][3][7][3]

In March 2026, Brooklyn-based fintech company Tare closed a $13.25 million seed round led by Blockchain Capital, with The Venture Dept. joining alongside Janus HendersonJanus HendersonJanus Henderson is a global active asset manager whose predecessors were the British Henderson Group and the American Janus Capital Group; the company was formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker JHG) and is now a private company.Open the full entry, Strobe VenturesStrobe VenturesStrobe Ventures is a crypto-native venture capital firm headquartered in New York. Formerly BlockTower VC, it was renamed Strobe by the same team in March 2025; it invests in DeFi, infrastructure, and consumer crypto projects, and in 2026 it participated in fintech company Tare’s $13.25 million seed round.Open the full entry, Neoclassic CapitalNeoclassic CapitalNeoclassic Capital is a digital asset and blockchain investment firm headquartered in Miami, co-founded by Michael Bucella and Steve Lee. It mainly invests in early-stage blockchain applications and distinguishes itself by connecting East Asian and North American markets.Open the full entry, and the Avalanche FoundationAvalanche FoundationThe Avalanche Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports the ecosystem of the Avalanche public blockchain, promoting the network’s development and adoption through grants, seed investments, liquidity incentives, and AVAX token transactions; it is a separate entity from the development company Ava Labs.Open the full entry; Tare announced the round on September 16, 2026, and The Venture Dept. published its investment note the same day.⁠[9][9][9][9][10]

The Venture Dept. said it had passed on most tokenization companies it had seen because they focused only on the thin layer of tokenization itself, and that Tare was the exception: Tare replaces the long chain of intermediaries made up of originators, servicers, trustees, administrators, and investors with a shared asset ledger, on top of which it offers three applications, a Loan Origination System, a Loan Management System, and a Digital Investor Hub; its lending subsidiary Tare Credit LLC holds consumer lending licenses in roughly 30 states. The firm first met Tare CEO Kevin Miao while doing diligence on Uniform Labs, which subsequently also became a portfolio company.⁠[10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10]

As of October 2026, alongside Matt Homer the team includes Partner and General Counsel Jon Blattmachr, who was lead counsel for digital assets at The Bank of New York and Deputy General Counsel for INX, served as Virtual Currency Chief at the New York State Department of Financial Services, overseeing licensing and examination of companies including Coinbase, Circle, Gemini, Ripple, and PayPal, and also practiced at McDermott Will & Schulte and BakerHostetler.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

The firm also has a group of Limited Partner Advisors, whose members include former DHS assistant secretary Alan Cohn, former federal prosecutor Amanda Wick, SEC alum Ashley Ebersole, former NYDFS Deputy Superintendent Gareth Rhodes, Jason Weinstein, the DOJ Criminal Division’s former deputy assistant attorney general, and Crypto Council for Innovation CEO Ji Hun Kim.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11][11]

“The Venture Dept.” refers to The Department of XYZ IM LLC and its affiliated entities, and “THE VENTURE DEPT.” is a registered trademark of the company. It is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as an Exempt Reporting Adviser, relying on an exemption from registration as an investment adviser under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.⁠[12][12][12]

As of October 2026, the firm’s listed portfolio (across Fund I and Fund II) includes alfred, Birdai, Bridge (exited), Circuit, DPM Labs, Etherfuse, Fission, Flyra, Invent Money, Mountain Protocol (exited), Multiliquid, Nashpoint, Omnia, Opacity, Predicate, Rhythmic, RWA.xyz, Squid Router, StableSea, Superstate, Tare, Tokenway, Valinor, xTAO, and Xweave.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3]

The Venture Dept.: Official website: https://www.theventuredept.vc/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

X: Public account: https://x.com/deptvc (opens in a new window)⁠[13]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deptvc/ (opens in a new window)⁠[13]