Ryder, the company behind the Ryder One hardware wallet, said it has closed a $3.2 million seed round led by Tim Draper of Draper Associates. Other backers in the round include Borderless, Semantic, Smape, VeryEarly, along with angel investors Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, and Joe McCann, CEO of Asymmetric.
The company said the capital will go toward increasing production, expanding its marketing and engineering teams, and continuing development of Ryder One, its flagship device. Ryder also said the round will support a larger brand and marketing push.
Ryder One centers on faster wallet setup and backup
Ryder describes Ryder One as a hardware wallet designed to make self-custody easier to use, saying customers can create and back up a wallet in 60 seconds or less. Co-founder and CEO Louise Ivan Payawal said the company was built from direct experience with how fragile and intimidating self-custody can feel, arguing that crypto has relied too long on seed phrases, where a single sheet of paper can determine the fate of an entire wallet.
Co-founder and CTO Marvin Janssen said the goal with Ryder One was to make crypto interaction feel as natural as tapping a phone. His comments focused on simplifying the user experience and rethinking wallet recovery so more people can hold and use crypto with confidence.
TapSafe splits recovery across phones and NFC tags
A central part of Ryder One is TapSafe, the company’s recovery system for crypto wallets. According to Ryder, TapSafe backups are distributed across mobile phones and coin-sized NFC Recovery Tags. If wallet access is lost, those backups must be physically brought together to restore access.
Ryder says the setup is redundant, remains self-custodial, and removes the single point of failure tied to seed phrases. In a statement, Tim Draper said the crypto sector needs products that do not demand deep technical knowledge while still keeping a high security bar, and pointed to Ryder’s sub-minute setup and offline design as key features.
Next step targets everyday crypto payments
Julien Neree, Ryder’s CPO, said the team spent three years and went through repeated iterations with one objective: making self-custody easier for everyone. The company said its roadmap now extends beyond storage and recovery into everyday use cases, including tap-to-pay and other transactions through Ryder’s companion app.
Ryder said it was co-founded by Louise Ivan Payawal and Marvin Janssen, both described as crypto veterans, with Julien Neree joining the team with more than 10 years of consumer electronics experience. The company is continuing to build around its tap-based approach as it tries to simplify both securing and using digital assets.