At a glance

• Explosive DAO market growth, expected to go from 5k to 1M+ orgs in 12mo
• Opportunity to build the category-defining DAO infrastructure company
• Entry point: DAO formation, "Stripe Atlas for DAOs"
• Why we win: upstream positioning, high-end creators, culture of speed
• 100 discovery interviews, list of flagship customer candidates
• Y Combinator alum founder, team of 17
• Raised $1M preseed from Shima Capital, Fundamental Labs, Lemniscap, Fifty Years, Magic Fund, Jesse Clayburgh, Thomas Chen, Matt Brezina
• Raising $4M-$8M seed now

Market

What's a DAO?

A DAO is a new type of organization that uses some/all of the following ideas:

· Ownership recorded on blockchain, anonymity is ok · Fast track to liquidity and trading (unlike ~7 years for C-Corps to reach IPO) · Large memberships, e.g. 1000+ equity owners at launch · Ownership = financial benefits + voting power + status benefits

Classic DAOs = full-decentralized, high stakes, focus on protocols and DeFi Modern DAOs = progressive decentralization, high variety of use cases

Further reading: DAO canon collection, curated by A16Z

Brief history of DAOs

2014 · Ethereum conducts token sale, introduces the concept of a DAO 2017 · ICO boom, early growth problems 2020 · DeFi Summer, most DeFi projects choose DAO path 2021 · NFT Summer, successful NFT artists choose DAO path 2021 · Constitution DAO attracts mainstream media coverage to DAO space

Why create a DAO?

Growth incentive = give DAO equity for usage, referrals, social media activity Collective action = resource building, advocacy, co-marketing, standard creation
Status systems = private communities with public display of membership Labor equity = share financial upside and governance with platform workers Liquidity = package assets to be traded on crypto exchanges, e.g. IP rights Investment = find, fund, and promote winners together: startups, tokens, NFTs

Why the DAO space is exploding now