Vinny Lingham is the chairman of the board and co-founder of Civic, a blockchain startup offering decentralized identity verification. He also joined the leading crypto investment fund, Multicoin Capital, as a General Partner in 2018. Previously, he was the co-founder and CEO of Gyft, a mobile gift card company, which was acquired by global payments leader First Data Corporation and prior to that, founding and exiting multiple other startups.

He is an active investor and co-founder of South African Venture Capital leader Newtown Partners and has led early stage investments into successful startups, including SweepSouth. Vinny was a Shark on Shark Tank South Africa, a Dragon on Dragon’s Den South Africa, and an Angel in National Geographic’s Undercover Angel. He is a co-author of “I’m In: Essential Advice for Entrepreneurs.”

Llew is the Managing Partner of Newtown Partners, a venture capital firm founded by him and Vinny Lingham. The firm invests globally in early-stage, emerging technology and disruptive business model startups that drive economic activity in a fundamentally positive way. In 2019 they started working with global logistics group, Imperial (JSE:IPL) to enable their corporate venture capital program. Newtown Partners operate out of offices in San Diego, U.S. and Cape Town, South Africa.

Llew is a go-to-market strategist with almost two decades of experience in digital product management and digital marketing. He co-founded Clicks2customers (rebranded to www.nmpidigital.com) with Vinny Lingham, now a global digital marketing agency with annual billings in excess of $100 million and Synthasite (rebranded to www.yola.com).

Llew is also the former Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation, the original, the oldest and the largest cryptocurrency advocacy organization globally, headquartered in San Francisco, U.S. Llew has a Masters degree in the Management of Technology & Innovation.