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Distinct shells carrying a filed role for this person — not every shell they have ever touched.
Of those vehicles, the ones that closed a merger.
Announced but not closed, and still hunting.
No closed vehicle here has both a stored price and a filed trust value to score it against.
1 vehicle on file, newest listing first
none appears on more than one
Vinodan "Vinny" Lingham is a distinguished South African-born serial entrepreneur, investor, and technology innovator currently based in Austin, Texas, with over 22 years of experience in establishing and scaling technology ventures. He is best known as the CEO and co-founder of Civic, a blockchain-powered identity verification and security startup that conducted a notable initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017. In December 2017, Lingham also joined Multicoin Capital as a General Partner, where he has been recognized for his early investments in major blockchain projects including Solana, Filecoin, and Render. His reputation as a pioneering supporter of the Filecoin and IPFS ecosystem, as well as a prominent Web3 personality, has made him a sought-after speaker and thought leader in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.
Lingham's entrepreneurial track record spans blockchain, artificial intelligence, and digital payments. He is perhaps most widely recognized for founding Gyft, a digital gift card platform that was acquired by global payments giant First Data Corporation in 2014 for a reported sum exceeding $50 million. Following that successful exit, he launched Civic to address identity verification challenges using blockchain technology. Across his career, Lingham has launched and sold several ventures, establishing himself as one of the leading technology founders to emerge from Africa before relocating to the United States roughly 18 years ago. He has also gained public visibility through appearances on television programs including Dragons' Den and Shark Tank.
In addition to his operating roles at Civic and his investment work at Multicoin Capital, Lingham serves or has served in directorial and advisory capacities within the technology and blockchain sectors. He is connected to the SPAC world through his role as an officer or director at Idea Acquisition (IACO). His investment philosophy has been described as that of a practical contrarian and armchair economist, and he has been an outspoken commentator on ICOs, proof-of-work dynamics, and broader cryptocurrency market trends. Lingham's early backing of projects that have grown into major blockchain infrastructure players underscores a strong track record of identifying promising Web3 technologies at early stages.
Lingham's personal brand extends beyond technology and investing; he describes himself as an entrepreneur, investor, biohacker, filmmaker, and semi-professional poker player. While detailed information about his formal education is not available in the provided sources, his career arc from South African internet entrepreneur to Silicon Valley–adjacent blockchain executive and venture capitalist reflects a self-driven trajectory across multiple technology cycles. His combination of founder experience, successful exits, and early-stage crypto investing positions him as a multifaceted figure in both the entrepreneurial and SPAC landscapes.
This record is keyed to SEC CIK 0002088931 — the identifier this person files under in their own name. Every vehicle above is a filing made under that CIK, so “the same person on two shells” is a fact about an SEC identifier rather than about a name that happens to match.
Roles are the strings the filings used, in the order they were filed. Nothing on this page ranks them, infers seniority, or offers a reason why any two of these names recur — a recurrence is a count, and the filings that produced it are linked beside every row. We also hold 1 institutional-holder rows on these vehicles, under 1 distinct name strings, and none of them is counted across vehicles: that table has no CIK column, and matching holders by name would merge firms that are not the same firm.