Darius Rugevicius
Founder & Managing Partner
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- Full Name
- Darius Rugevicius (also appears publicly as "Darius Rugys")
- Title
- Founder & Managing Partner, Connect Capital; Managing Partner / Partner, Maven 11 Capital
- Firm
- Connect Capital (also Maven 11 Capital)
- Firm Type
- Angel investor / crypto-native venture capital fund
- Investment Stage
- Seed and Series A (early-stage)
- Check Size
- Approximately $100K–$5M, with a typical sweet spot around $1.5M (Maven 11 fund deployment)
- Target Company Profile
- Founders building blockchain/distributed-ledger infrastructure, DeFi primitives, and Web3 applications
- Sector Focus
- Blockchain, digital assets/cryptocurrency, DeFi, Web3
- Geographic Focus
- Global, with European and Netherlands base (Maven 11 is Amsterdam-based)
- Location
- United States (Lithuanian origin)
Background
Darius Rugevicius is a blockchain-focused venture investor who built his early reputation as an ICO-era advisor and fund manager. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Business from ISM University of Management and Economics in Lithuania (2011–2014). Earlier in his career he worked within a venture/consulting team at CIVITTA, a Baltic-region advisory firm, where he was involved with startup initiatives across Europe.
He founded Connect Capital, an investment fund that took a venture-capital approach to blockchain and digital-currency assets, where he serves as Founder & Managing Partner. Through Connect Capital and his personal advisory work, Rugevicius became an active ICO advisor during the 2017–2018 token-sale boom; aggregator records credit him with advising roughly four projects that collectively raised about $35.2 million. He was also a Partner at Prime Block Capital, another blockchain-focused investment vehicle.
In 2020 he joined Maven 11 Capital — an Amsterdam-based, blockchain-only investment firm founded in 2015 — as Managing Partner, where he is described as "one of the most active investors in blockchain." At Maven 11 he helped scale the firm's investing platform; in December 2021 Maven 11 closed its second fund, Venture Fund II, at $120 million (building on an initial ~$40 million raise), backing infrastructure protocols, DeFi primitives, and Web3 applications.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Invests almost exclusively in blockchain, distributed-ledger technology, digital assets, and cryptocurrencies — Maven 11's stated mandate is to back ventures "that adopt this technology."
- Targets early-stage rounds (seed and Series A) with checks roughly in the $100K–$5M range and a sweet spot near $1.5M.
- Focus areas include novel infrastructure protocols, DeFi primitives, and Web 3.0 applications — the explicit themes Maven 11 cited when raising its $120M fund.
- As a crypto-native investor, he leans toward token/protocol-level bets and active participation (e.g., Maven 11 serves as a Pool Delegate for Maple Finance), not just equity.
Notable Investments
- Maple Finance — decentralized corporate credit / institutional lending market (Maven 11 acts as a Pool Delegate).
- Merit Circle — gaming-focused DAO / play-to-earn metaverse yield organization.
- Anoma — privacy-preserving, intent-centric layer-1 blockchain protocol.
- Zapper — DeFi asset-management and portfolio dashboard.
- Constellation Network — distributed-ledger / data-infrastructure protocol.
- Shyft Network — blockchain compliance and trust/identity network ($SHFT); he served as an advisor.
- ORCA Alliance — banking platform connecting crypto and fiat services (2018 ICO); advisor.
- Dock — data-exchange / verifiable-credentials project; advisor.
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