Sequoia announces partnership with Strips
MENLO PARK, November 18, 2021 — Strips, the first interest rate swap exchange powered by a virtual automated market maker (vAMM), today announced the project has partnered with Sequoia Capital and Sequoia Capital India to bring interest rates trading to DeFi. The new long term partnership will see investment from Sequoia to expand the team, and launch a suite of new fixed income products.
“We’re really delighted to have Sequoia as a partner, and it’s a testament to our long term vision of bringing interest rates trading onto the blockchain.” said Ming Wu, founder, Strips. “Fixed income trading in traditional finance has typically been inefficient to trade, costly to settle and with murky price discovery. With Strips, we will bring the interest rate market into the 21st century by leveraging blockchain technology to offer price transparency, instant settlement and automated clearing. We believe that Sequoia will be a valued partner to bridge us to Silicon Valley and Wall Street to further revolutionize the landscape of traditional finance”.
“Interest rate swaps (IRS) are the most popular derivative products in TradFi, and Strips Finance is bringing them on-chain. Ming and the talented team at Strips have the ideal backgrounds from leading financial institutions to build this important market. The Sequoia team is delighted to work with them from their earliest days to help execute on their exciting roadmap,” said Shailesh Lakhani, MD, Sequoia India.
About Strips
In finance, interest rate swaps account for $400 trillion of open derivatives positions, which represents over 80% of the world’s total derivatives volume. Interest rates touch on nearly every financial product in traditional markets, but unlike traditional finance, the tools to wield them in decentralised finance (DeFi) have yet to be developed or meaningfully deployed in the market.
Strips aims to solve this by allowing traders to easily trade interest rates using a derivative instrument called an interest rate swap. Interest rate swaps pay the difference between a floating rate and a fixed rate and allow traders to express directional views on interest rates in a flexible, capital efficient way. Interest rate swaps are a great tool for traders to express directional views in both bull and bear markets. Strips will be looking to launch on Arbitrum.
Strips Finance uses a virtual automated market maker (vAMM) model for liquidity, which is an adaptation of the constant product function popularised by Uniswap. On top of the exchange, the project is also actively building out products for interest rate trading, yield hedging and leveraged yield farming.
Strips’ team comes from a background in portfolio management and high-frequency trading. The project’s founders previously worked at Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, GIC. Strips’ CTO previously sold his startup to a leading Russian digital bank, and taught blockchain development. The core team has a well-rounded background ranging from traditional portfolio investing, decentralised finance and blockchain development.
Strips is currently hiring for several roles. Interested applicants can email their resume and cover letters to jobs@strips.finance.
To learn more please visit the project’s website at https://strips.finance/ or follow the project on
About Sequoia
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia helps daring founders build legendary companies from idea to IPO and beyond. We aim to be the first true believers in tomorrow’s most valuable and enduring businesses. We partner with a few outliers each year and go all-in, providing them with the hands-on help required at every stage of the company building journey. Our expertise comes from nearly 50 years of working with legendary founders like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Jan Koum, Adi Tatarko, Brian Chesky, Anne Wojcicki, Eric Yuan, Julia Hartz, and Patrick Collison. In aggregate, Sequoia-backed companies account for more than 25% of NASDAQ’s total value. Since our inception, the vast majority of the money we invest has been on behalf of nonprofits and schools like the Ford Foundation, Mayo Clinic and MIT, which means most of the returns we generate benefit these great causes.
Sequoia India
Sequoia India operates in Southeast Asia and India where we actively partner with founders from a wide range of companies, across categories, including BYJUs, Carousell, Druva, Gojek, OYO Rooms, Tokopedia, Truecaller, Zilingo, Zomato and more.
We spur founders to push the boundaries of what’s possible. In partnering with Sequoia, startups benefit from 49 years of tribal knowledge and lessons learned working with companies like Airbnb, Alibaba, Apple, Dropbox, Google, LinkedIn and Stripe early on.
From the beginning, universities, endowments and other non-profits have been the backbone of our investor base, which means founders’ accomplishments make a meaningful difference. For more information on Sequoia’s work in India and SE Asia, visit sequoiacap.com/india
