Coordinating Capital and Community: Powering the next wave of investing with Syndicate
Broadhaven Ventures' investment into Syndicate
If money is what makes the world go around, community is what keeps it turning.
Money is essential to powering innovation. Capital creates companies. But if capital creates companies, community keeps companies.
Community and capital colliding together collectively form a powerful combination. But capital and community must be coordinated effectively and in a regulatory compliant manner in order to create change.
Syndicate is the infrastructure that powers the coordination of financial and human capital on the internet.
Syndicate represents the next wave in the natural evolution of market structure that we are undergoing in investing.
Robodvisors like Betterment and Wealthfront have enabled investors to cost-effectively and passively invest into the equities markets.
Retail brokerage firms like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Public have enabled investors to invest into equities and crypto in a self-directed way.
Investment platforms that enable aggregation of capital from non-accredited and accredited investors alike such as Republic, AngelList, Party Round, Seedrs have enabled investors to actively direct their capital into startups and private companies that they care about.
Private investment infrastructure like AngelList, iCapital, and Allocate have enabled accredited investors to invest into private funds and companies at lower minimums than previously possible.
With the emergence of DAOs, the market is witnessing the entrance of a mechanism that enables online communities to form and coordinate economically.
Access is being unlocked all the way DAOn as alts go mainstream — and downstream.
The idea of DAOs are not entirely new in and of themselves. Organizations have existed for years. The LLC has existed for over 100 years. But a decentralized organization run by code on the internet and controlled by its members, who have economic ownership and incentive to contribute and create value, has not existed for long.
And that’s where Syndicate come in. Syndicate is creating the infrastructure to power the next generation of investing.
Investing is becoming more open, more accessible, and giving more people more access to ownership.
DAOs are a quite promising way to achieve the goal of a more open world of investing, powered by the strength of the collective, the community.
But DAOs need legal pathways that can protect the purpose, mission, and members of DAOs, much like LLCs protected individuals running or investing in companies. These legal frameworks have served to protect individual liability and in turn have powered meaningful innovation through the unfettered creation of companies.
Syndicate is creating the rails to enable the creation of new forms of collectives and companies by coordinating financial and human capital in a way that is faster, cheaper, and more transparent.
We have long been believers in the idea of community-driven capital – it’s why we were participating in Kickstarter projects in 2010, building some of FinTech’s biggest investment platforms in 2013 and 2014 at Mosaic and iCapital, and investing into some of the startup and crypto world’s biggest investment platforms like Republic in 2017 and CoinList in 2021.
We believe that Syndicate is the next natural evolution in market infrastructure – one which includes DAOs as a way in which financial and human capital is coordinated to invest into meaningful commercial creation.
That’s why we are thrilled to partner with Ian, Will, and the team at Syndicate, who are tremendously thoughtful, passionate, experienced in both financial services and Web3, and driven to change the way in which we invest, to help them create the future of investing.