coindesk.com
Syndicate, a community-based investment system that simplifies the creation of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), has raised a $20 million Series round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Syndicate has already gathered a long list of backers via a seed round earlier this year, which was followed by a well-peopled community raise. The Series A round brings the total participation to 150 VCs, angels and founders, including people like Ashton Kutcher, Alexis Ohanian and Snoop Dogg.
DAOs are a way of locking up funds on a public blockchain and allowing a group of participants to transparently share governance decisions, often done by voting, as to how funds should be invested or used. The funding round is perhaps the largest stamp of approval on DAO creation from mainstream investors.
Read more: Decentralized Investing Platform Syndicate Raises $800K From 100 Investors
Syndicate provides communities with the tools to easily spin up decentralized investment vehicles, and thus far has seen the creation of DAOs such as Komorebi, a collective that invests only in exceptional female and non-binary crypto founders; Audacity, which invests in Black and African founders and emerging/overlooked markets; and Fiat Lux, which is funding scientific research.
The focus on ethical deployment of capital or underrepresented communities is where Syndicate co-founders Will Papper and Ian Lee see DAOs going next, but it’s just the beginning of the road.
“We hope that in the future, Syndicate is going to redefine what investing is and what it means,” said Lee in an interview with CoinDesk, adding:\
“So, not only a protocol for investing in venture capital, or other forms of private equity. But to also serve as a general purpose protocol for things like grant-making, nonprofits or donations.”
DAOmentum
The Series A funding will go towards building out the extensive tooling, plus various types of formal and legal structuring that Syndicate needs to take DAOs to the next level, including adding a team of securities lawyers.
It’s a grand vision. Papper sees in crypto infrastructure an analogy of what the internet has done for content creators; what the DAO space is doing to corporations is similar to what YouTube did for filmmaking, he said.
“When you reduce the cost of setting up an investment fund by 1000x, what happens?” said Papper. “The answer is that setting up an investment fund becomes as easy as sending a tweet – not that we recommend setting up investment funds via tweets. But when it becomes as easy as that, the world just looks completely different, because the creativity is just absolutely phenomenal.”
Full list of Syndicate backers:
Series A Investors
Andreessen Horowitz
IDEO CoLab Ventures
Variant
Table Management
Weekend Fund
Electric Capital
CoinFund
Sound Ventures
Scalar Capital
A Capital
Atelier Ventures
Thirty Five Ventures
Coinbase Ventures
Makena
Aave
Protocol Labs
True Ventures
Acrylic
Delphi INFINFT
The Council Fund
Ryan Hoover (Weekend Fund, Product Hunt)
Lenny Rachitsky
Todd Goldberg
The Council Fund
Alexis Ohanian (Reddit, 776)
Scott Belsky (Adobe)
Matthew Ball
Packy McCormick
Alice Lloyd George (Rogue VC)
Jalak Jobanputra (Future Perfect)
Biz Stone (Twitter)
Boris Wertz (Version One)
Ashley Tyson (Web3 Foundation)
Maple Leaf Cap
Ryan Junee (Electric Ant)
Jonathan Glick
Jonathan Hills (CabinDAO)
David Eckstein (Menlo Security)
Snoop Dogg
Bored Elon
130+ operators at Square, Google, Instagram, Stripe, Airbnb, Softbank, Snap, more
Seed Investors
IDEO CoLab Ventures
Electric Capital
Delphi Digital
CoinFund
Variant
Robot Ventures
Kleiner Perkins
DeFi Alliance
Nascent
Adam Jackson (Braintrust, ex Doctor On Demand)
Alex Pack (Pack Capital, ex Dragonfly)
Ash Egan (Acrylic)
Brad Holden (Amazon)
Brandon Cook (Proxy)
Crypto Dog
David Nage (Arca, Base Layer)
DeFi Dad (Zapper, Yield TV)
Don Ho (Quantstamp, Pioneer Fund)
Eric Wu (Opendoor)
Justin Mart (Coinbase Ventures)
Niraj Pant (Polychain)
RAC ($RAC, Six)
Ryan Sean Adams (Bankless)
Scott Lewis (DeFi Pulse, Concourse, Slingshot)
Stani Kulechov (Aave, Variant)
Tegan Kline (The Graph, Edge & Node)
Trevor McFedries (Brud, Lil Miquela, $FWB)
Community Investors
Alana Podrx (Eve Wealth)
Alex Masmej (Showtime)
Alexis Gauba (Opyn)
Ameer Suhayb Carter (Mint Fund)
Anastasia Andrianova (Akropolis)
Andrew Steinwold (Sfermion)
Aya Kantorovich (FalconX)
Baek Kim (Hashed)
Balaji Srinivasan (ex Coinbase, ex Earn, ex a16z)
Beryl Li (Yield Guild)
Blake West (Goldfinch)
Bo Shao (Evolve)
Bobby Ong (CoinGecko)
Brian Flynn (Rabbithole)
Calvin Liu (Divergence)
Carlos Gomes (Mint Fund)
Christy Choi (ex Binance)
Colleen Sullivan (CMT Digital)
Cooper Turley (Audius, Variant)
Courtney Chow (Battery, ex IDEO CoLab)
Cuy Sheffield (Visa)
Dave Kim (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)
Derek Hsue (Reverie)
Do Kwon (Terra)
Driss
Erik Syvertsen (AngelList)
Erikan Obotetukudo (Audacity)
Gabby Dizon (Yield Guild)
George Lambeth (Balancer)
Illia Polosukhin ($NEAR)
Jacob Horne (Zora)
Jake Chervinsky (Compound, Variant)
James Foley (Cowri)
James Young (Abridged, Collab.Land)
Jason Choi (Spartan Group, Blockcrunch)
Jazear Brooks (Sifchain)
Jean-Cedric
Jeff Garzik (Vesper)
Jeff Morris Jr. (Chapter One, ex Tinder)
Jeremy Allaire (Circle)
Jess Sloss (SeedClub)
Joon Ian Wong (ex CoinDesk)
Joris Delanoue (Fairmint)
Joyce Yang (Global Coin Ventures)
Julia Lipton (Awesome People Ventures)
Justin Ridgely (Syndicate, ex BlockFi)
Justine Humenansky (Playground, Fiat Lux DAO)
Kaito (Bspeak!)
Kazufumi
Kenny White (Cowri)
Kevin Chou (Rally, Forte, Kabam, Gen.G)
Kevin Nielsen (Boardroom)
“Fully Allocated” (Default)
Kieran Warwick (Illuvium)
Kinsa Durst (Republic)
Kristie Huang (Komorebi, she256)
Larry Sukernik (Reverie)
Leighton Cusack (PoolTogether, PleasrDAO)
Li Jin, Founder (Atelier Ventures)
Luis Cuende (Aragon)
Mark Roszak (1121 Law)
Matthew Roszak (Vesper)
Meltem Demirors (CoinShares)
Micah Johnson (Aku)
Mike Sall (Goldfinch)
Mike Zajko (CoinList, Free Company)
Mildred Idada (Open Web Collective)
Min Teo (Ethereal Ventures, ConsenSys Mesh)
Morgan Beller (NFX, ex Libra, ex a16z)
Nathalie McGrath (ex Coinbase)
Nathan McCauley (Anchorage)
Nathaniel Whittemore
Nitya Subramanian (Celo)
Noah Jessop (Nine Realms)
Patrick Chang (Dispersion)
Prabhakar Reddy (FalconX, ex Accel)
Rahul Vohra (Superhuman)
Raj Gokal (Solana)
Ramon Recuero (Babylon)
Regan Bozman (Dove Mountain Partners, ex-Coinlist)
Rene Reinsberg (Celo)
Robbie Bent (Ethereum Foundation)
Ryan Selkis (Messari)
Sasha (Aliaksandr) Hudzilin ($NEAR)
Scott Moore (Gitcoin)
Sebastian Delgado (Fei)
Sina Habibian (Ethereum Foundation)
Sriram Krishnan (Calm, ex Tinder, ex Spotify)
Stani Kulechov (Aave)
Steve Blank (Stanford University)
Steve Weinstein (Stanford University)
Thibauld Favre (Fairmint)
Todd Goldberg
Tom Bedecarre (Stanford University, ex AKQA)
Tyler Ward (Barnbridge)
Vanessa Slavich (Celo)
Wsbmod (Wall Street Bets)
Xochitl Cazador (Celo, she256)