The Rules:

Every week I breakdown startup pitches with the added hook that you can invest whether you’re accredited or not (if you don't know what that means, click here).

I base my review on a 3-minute founder pitch and some light diligence.

My scoring system is not a validation of idea, or grading for likelihood of success. It just means, all things being equal at launch — this startup has these boxes checked.

What I look for:

1. Founder — ability to lead, sell into and influence a given market

2. Idea — is it inevitable or solving a BIG problem in a scaleable way

3. TAM — how big is the total addressable market

4. Traction — do they have meaningful early traction

5. Unfair Advantage — do they have a competitive edge

★★★★★

Company Overview

Diamante Blockchain is a DeFi payments and financing ecosystem for the gems and diamond industry 👉 Watch The Pitch 📺

Key People: Dinesh Patel (3rd generation diamond trader, 3x founder), Chirag Jetani (Engineer, with 10 years experience running multinational diamond businesses), & Samuel Proctor (Chief Regulatory Advisor on digital assets)

Traction: The founders of Diamante have literally been in the diamond trading business their entire lives — with respective family businesses dating back 3+ generations. Co-founder Chirag has been involved in Blockchain since it became popularly known and the two have been plotting a way to bring the tech to an archaic mammoth of a global business. To that end, they’ve already begun beta testing their PayCircle proof of concept with 10 global diamond trading corporations and have a consortium of more than 400 diamond dealers that represent an $80 Billion TAM. Diamante is pre-revenue and to date has spent approx. $1M in development and infrastructure costs. PayCircle is just coming out of beta and they project revenue to be around $100M by 2025, assuming beta clients continue using their core product.

Terms & Takeaway

Invest in Diamante Blockchain here 👉 Term Sheet

Security Type: Reg CF

Pre-Money Valuation: $12,500,000

Raised (as of publishing): $754,341

Minimum Investment: $100.00

Here's what I like: A quick reminder, 5 stars doesn't mean this will be a 100x exit, but it could be. There is a LOT of chatter out there about NFT and blockchain, crypto — most of it has little to no utility. Then, companies like Diamante appear, and show you exactly why this stuff deserves the attention it’s getting. I think the founders are the perfect blend of industry experience, ambition and blockchain maxi! The concept is so obvious and utilitarian that is gives me the chills… there are few businesses that lack transparency and need technology more than the diamond and gems industry. Diamante instantly gives global trading a singular currency to transact and ledger from, and if that weren’t enough reason to see the upside; the transactional and time savings alone make this a massive improvement for literally any user they onboard.

Here's what I don't love: The diamond and gems industry is incredibly fragmented. It also is controlled by only a few major players and the lack of transparency has been on purpose (we don’t need to get into the ethics here). There is a world where the idea of this gets shunned, but to be honest, the advantages of blockchain and crypto — even with shady characters — might be too much to ignore. This is relatively new tech and unproven in this market or application. To me, an outsider, I feel the decades of industry experience and connections should provide an unfair advantage, but it might also limit the vision or perspective so my only real fear would be somebody else building a better mouse trap.

Who should invest and why: If you’re into DeFi and crypto or blockchain projects, you probably already see the opportunity. Plus, the $100 min and $12.5M Value Cap make this deal relatively low risk given the addressable market. That said, there’s a lot that can go wrong, if the blockchain infrastructure is lacking or a better, faster, more secure tool is built… this will all have been for nothing (but you can say that for anything).

I believe it’s inevitable that somebody will take and own this entire market and if it’s Diamante, I would probably lose sleep knowing I passed 🤷‍♂️

As always, startup investing is super high risk, anything can happen.

Invest in Diamante Blockchain here 👉 Term Sheet

Questions, DM me 🤳 @kitun.

Disclaimer: It goes without saying, but this information should not be constituted as financial advice, my investing opinions are my own and all diligence is the responsibility of each individual investor.