# Picks & Shovels

> Picks & Shovels is a VC fund in San Francisco backing Software and Information Technology. See 10 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: VC Fund
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Total investments: 10
- Last investment: Oct 2024
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/picks-and-shovels
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/picksco
- Website: https://picks.co/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/picksco/

Picks & Shovels is a VC fund in San Francisco focused on Software and Information Technology. The Picks & Shovels Co. crafting tools for investors and traders of digital currencies and crypto assets.

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $2M–$8.5M |
| Pre-Seed | $1M–$3.1M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Software | 4 | 40% |
| Information Technology | 3 | 30% |
| Blockchain | 2 | 20% |
| Financial Services | 2 | 20% |
| B2B | 1 | 10% |

22 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 5 | 50% |
| Pre-Seed | 4 | 40% |
| Venture - Series Unknown | 1 | 10% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Baselayer | Baselayer automates business risk assessment and eliminates B2B fraud in the financial sector. It offers services such as business verification (KYB), fraud detection, business onboarding optimization, risk profiling, portfolio monitoring & alerting, and workflow automation. Baselayer empowers 100s of financial institutions, governmentagencies, lenders, and fintech to unlock instant trust with any business in America. | $20M | Seed | Oct 01, 2024 |  |
| Blueprint Finance | Blueprint Finance develops protocols and infrastructure to advance on-chain financing. | $7.5M | Venture - Series Unknown | Feb 15, 2024 |  |
| daydream Labs | Daydream Labs develops a SaaS platform that automates programmatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) from end to end. Its platform identifies search patterns, creates content at scale, and automatically improves that content to get the most relevant search patterns and produce unique and differentiated content. | $2.5M | Pre-Seed | Dec 11, 2023 |  |
| Ion Protocol | Ion Protocol is a lending protocol that accepts pledged and re-pledged assets, allowing users to deposit any validator-backed asset (including LST and re-pledged holdings, among others). | $2M | Seed | Jul 14, 2023 |  |
| Ion Protocol | Ion Protocol is a lending protocol that accepts pledged and re-pledged assets, allowing users to deposit any validator-backed asset (including LST and re-pledged holdings, among others). | $2M | Pre-Seed | Jul 14, 2023 |  |
| Olympix | Olympix is a startup that wants to make Web3 more secure.It is a cutting-edge developer tool for preventive Web3 security. | $4.3M | Seed | Jul 11, 2023 |  |
| Blip | Blip unlocks personalized, engaging, and powerful bill management experiences for fintech and bank customers. | $2.1M | Seed | Feb 07, 2023 |  |
| Stell | Stell is a platform that digitizes the relationship between aerospace companies and their suppliers with a living specification workflow | $3.1M | Pre-Seed | Jan 17, 2023 |  |
| Nibiru Chain | Nibiru Chain is a breakthrough L1 blockchain and smart contract ecosystem providing superior throughput and unparalleled security. Nibiru aims to be the most developer-friendly and user-friendly smart contract ecosystem, leading the charge toward mainstream Web3 adoption by innovating at each layer of the stack: dApp development, infrastructure,consensus, a comprehensive developer toolkit, and value accrual.Since late 2022, dozens of projects have begun building on Nibiru across sectors such as DeFi, gaming, real-world assets, NFTs, developer tools, and bridges—each sharing the common mission of making interactions with digital assets fast, secure, and user-friendly for everyone.Core Token Utility: The staking and utility token of Nibiru Chain is called ‘NIBI’. This token plays a pivotal role in powering the network’s Proof-of-Stake consensus and decentralized governance, a process by which NIBI stakers can decide on and bring about changes in the network. Additionally, NIBI is utilized to secure the network and pay for computation in the form of gas fees, essential for facilitating the creation of new blocks on the chain.“Dev Gas” Royalty Mechanism: Imagine protocols like Uniswap or Aave earning half of the ETH expended on them. This distinctive feature attracts developers to Nibiru, where builders automatically earn half of the NIBI gas expended on their smart contracts, encouraging network growth and sustained development of the ecosystem. | $8.5M | Seed | Sep 15, 2022 |  |
| Assistiv Labs | Assistiv Labs remotely connects users to real assistive technologies, like NVDA, JAWS, and Windows High Contrast Mode, using any modern web browser. Founded in 2019, the company is based in White Salmon, Washington. | $1M | Pre-Seed | Jul 13, 2022 |  |

10 of 10 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Portal Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/portal-ventures-a465) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [Basis Set Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/basis-set-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Punk Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/punk-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [SevenX Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/sevenx-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Shrug Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/shrug-capital) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Smrti Lab](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/smrti-lab) — VC Fund, 2 deals together

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## FAQ

### What does Picks & Shovels invest in?

Picks & Shovels invests primarily in Software, Information Technology and Blockchain startups, most often at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. Most of the 10 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Picks & Shovels's check size?

Picks & Shovels typically joins rounds of $2M–$8.5M at Seed and $1M–$3.1M at Pre-Seed. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Picks & Shovels participates in.

### When did Picks & Shovels last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Picks & Shovels closed in Oct 2024. Shizune tracks 10 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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