The rise of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) – which are in essence a member-owned and decentralized community in which anyone can collaborate online and invest pooled funds – is one of the most significant tech investing trends taking place since the dawn of the internet, in our view.
DAOs aren’t the future of venture capital. They’re here now, disrupting how investing is conducted. The notion of a DAO impacting traditional investing as a group of strangers come together to collectively put money into a startup sounds far-fetched. But that vision is a reality. Participants in DAOs rose from 13K in January 2021 to more than 1.6M by the end of last year, a 130x rise, according to DAO data provider DeepDAO. Arguably, DAOs have already helped create more technical and developmental innovation than any other blockchain sector.
And that brings us to Syndicate. Today, we’re excited to share the news that Syndicate has announced that more than 50 customers, partners and DAOs have strategically invested $6M into Syndicate, bringing its total raised to over $28M since it was founded in January 2021 by Ian Lee and Will Papper.
As part of this latest round, the Silicon Valley startup – which operates a DAO platform and social network – announced it is partnering with more than 10 mission-driven organizations and investors representing diverse communities, including Transpose Platform, Flourish Ventures, Evolve, Reach Capital, Unshackled Ventures, Ulu Ventures, We3, Afropolitan and Players Company, among others. The latest funding news comes as Syndicate reports that over 1,100 Web3 Investment Clubs have been created on its platform since it launched in January 2022.
We at Transpose Platform support the vision that within the next decade, investing will be decentralized, democratized, and community-driven. The infrastructure is being built to enable this at scale, including development of decentralized investing and social networking protocols, with advanced legal tech solutions, and next-gen social networking platforms that aim to empower communities to raise, coordinate, and invest capital like never before.
We believe this “democratization of investment” will have a profound impact by expanding what is funded and built in the world, by whom, for whom, and where. We see the playing field becoming level, with communities of builders, creatives, influencers, and friends empowered to invest in new ideas and potentially world-changing technologies, and to introduce radical new models for investing that are fundamentally more open, free, and fair.
We have known Syndicate’s co-founders for 5 years, and we are now delighted to partner with them after following their progress since their inception. Syndicate is a perfect example of how diverse communities and capital can come together in the new web3. Since Transpose Platform was founded by two immigrants, and our investment team is half female and 90% minorities, the inclusion of diverse groups excites us.
We are big believers in the vision of DAOs and their potential to disrupt traditional investing. DAOs represent a strong form of community if they are structured in a manner that truly incentivizes engagement and decisions beneficial to all of the network’s participants.
As we congratulate Syndicate on their latest funding and momentum news, we are deeply interested to follow how this new form of governance and business model develops.
By Alex Bangash and Trang Nguyen
