Meet the team

Ciaran Hynes

Managing Partner

Rob Frasca

Managing Partner

Ken Lang

CTO

Connor Cantwell

Partner – Europe

BlockVenture is a research driven alliance of university blockchain groups and venture capital funds.

Ciaran Hynes

Role

Managing Partner

Bio

Ciarán Hynes is a serial entrepreneur and Investor and has raised over $100m in venture and corporate capital. Ciaran founded 7 companies, served as CEO at 5 of these companies, and has served as Board Director with over 20 companies, including Gecko Governance, Locatible, Nova Leah and Oneiro With over 10 years of deep tech market experience and an extensive network of investors, advisors, government agencies and business leaders throughout the U.S., Ciaran delivers strategic benefits to many organizations. Ciaran has spoken at numerous industry events, received the ICCA International Market Award.

Rob Frasca

Role

Co-Founder & Managing Partner

Bio

Rob Frasca is a serial entrepreneur, investor, visionary online pioneer and frequent speaker on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. A pioneer and product visionary, Rob founded and brought 3 venture-backed startups, to successful exits, and served as CEO of 4 companies.

Rob is widely recognized for creating the first Internet fintech company (GALT Technologies), the Internet’s first stock quote and portfolio management service- NETworth, which was eventually acquired by Intuit in 1994 and became Quicken Financial Network. His second startup, an early artificial intelligence company, was acquired by Lycos, the second-most-popular internet portal at the time, where he became VP and General Manager. Frasca’s third startup, Affinnova, was acquired by Nielsen in 2014. He is a visionary and online pioneer who has brought over 50 products to market, including one with over 100 million users.

Frasca graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and received an MBA/M.S.I.A. from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. He is also a decorated U.S. Naval Flight Officer with 18 combat missions.

Ken Lang

Role

CTO

Bio

Ken is a pioneer in AI and machine learning and invented search engine collaborative filtering. He holds more than 40 patents, two of which were proven to be responsible for more than 20% of Google’s ad revenue. Prior to COSIMO, he was COO of Keane Advisors, where he developed new algorithms and technology for trading and asset allocation. Before Keane, he served as CTO of Vringo while teaching as an adjunct professor at NYU. He also founded WiseWire, where he served as CEO and CTO (after WiseWire was sold to Lycos, he served as Lycos’ CTO). Ken has BAs in Electrical Engineering, CS, Mathematics, and Physics. Ken also has a Master’s in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Connor Cantwell

Role

Partner - Europe

Bio

Connor is a proven business leader with a track record of growing businesses. At age 27, he was appointed Managing Director of Nielsen Ireland and subsequently joined the Nielsen European Executive Board. Connor founded and subsequently sold 20-20 Insights, an award-winning software and analytics company. He then established Centauri Technologies with investment and operational activities across a portfolio of technology companies. He brings a high degree of strategic thinking and has been active in the blockchain area since 2015.