Richard Muirhead is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Fabric Ventures, an organization that backs the founders of the Open Economy, investing in Web3 builders, businesses, and digital assets since 2012. He is also a Member of the Council of the NEAR Foundation. ^[1][2]

Education

Muirhead attended the Westminster School in London where he studied Maths, Further Maths, Physics, and Russian from 1985 to 1990. In 1991, he was accepted into the University of Cambridge for an MA in Engineering and graduated in 1994. ^[2]

Career

In 2002, Richard Muirhead founded Tideway System and served as its Chairman. He built Tideway up to $20m in revenues and hundreds of enterprise-class customers. He served as a Technology Pioneer at the World Economic Forum from September 2008 to October 2009. ^[2]

In 2012, he was an Interim CEO, an Advisor, and a Board Member at Automic Software (now acquired by CA Technologies) until 2016. He served as a Member Board of Directors at Outlyer, HeavenHR, Thimble, and Bitrise until 2019. ^[3]

Founded in 2009 by Muirhead, he serves as the Chairman & Managing Partner at Firestartr, a company that helps the most promising Internet and software entrepreneurs take their companies from seed stage to Series A and beyond. ^[4]

He is an Advisor at Ocean Protocol, a Director at Moralis, and a Member of the Board of Directors at Cronofy^[5]. He is also a part-time Industrial Professor at UCL (University College London). ^[2]

Fabric Ventures

Richard Muirhead founded Fabric Ventures in 2012 and he serves as the Chairman & Managing Partner at the company. Fabric Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in scalable decentralized networks. Fabric backs the founders of the Open Economy, investing in Web3 builders, businesses, and cryptocurrencies. ^[6]

Fabric invested in Polkadot, Ocean Protocol, Orchid, Sorare, 1inch, The Graph, and NEAR. ^[6]

NEAR Foundation

In September 2019, Richard Muirhead was appointed a member of council of the NEAR Foundation. The NEAR Foundation Council (NFC) is the governing body of the NEAR Foundation (NF) (similar to a board of directors) which is responsible for ultimate control and oversight of NF and for making significant decisions for the organization. ^[7]

The NFC is separate from the NF’s executive team, which is empowered by the NFC to manage the NF’s day-to-day operations and reports back to the NFC (and seeks NFC approval where necessary for significant decisions). ^[7]