Why Ethereum Foundation Director Tomasz Didn't Accept Venture Capital When Starting Out On December 29, 2025, Tomasz Stanczak, Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, shared in an interview with ETHPanda that he didn’t intentionally reject funding. Instead, during the early development stages of Ethereum clients and other core infrastructure, the project was still immature, making it difficult to craft a compelling narrative for investors. Additionally, his lack of an elite academic background and fundraising experience made it hard to convince investors. In this situation, he chose to advance the project through self-funding, using tangible results rather than repeated explanations to validate his decisions. Tomasz believes that while this path comes with long-term pressure and challenges, self-funding allows him to focus solely on delivering results rather than being accountable to external capital. This approach, he says, is more manageable and better suited to the realities of early-stage core technology exploration. Source: ETHPanda