Panel - Funding for DAOs and Startups: Grants, Investors, and Beyond

So this is a very near and dear topic that's very close to me. I uh I've been in the startup space for 15 years. I saw the space kind of go from VC institutional VC only kind of some smaller angels to like widespread industry to now alternatives means of funding and it's been cool to see like Dows raise money. It's been cool to see like ICOs happen back in 2017 then NFTts being used to raise money now memecoins being used to raise money. There's like many many ways to raise money.

Um and also grants both kind of in web two and web 3 have been a thing for a while now. Um, so I'm uh I'm really excited to have such a kind of diverse panel um to talk about what funding looks like today, what you can uh expect when going out there to raise money and what are different ways to do it. Uh but before we dive in, I would like each of you guys to introduce yourselves like one minute, tell everyone who you are, what projects you're working on, why you're here, and then uh we'll jump into questions.

I can start.

Uh I'm Alena. Um, Alena Yudina, head of growth at ICP Labs. I'm based in Switzerland and in the space since 2017. So, yes, we've seen quite a lot uh what was going on and what um how it transforms radically transforms now with AI and thanks to your uh speech. Now, um at ICB Labs, we're building the ecosystem.

So when we invest into something from from from our group of companies uh one of the key point is the ecosystem compatibility with us but since we are in Ethereum community and uh it's it's pretty easy to match the criteria. So I would say this uh conversation can be pretty wide and open and I can't wait for it.

Pass the mic.

Press the button. There you go. Hello, I'm Daniel. Um, I'm in crypto since 2017, working full-time. Uh, I was with Consensus.

I was a developer, security auditor, um, founder. Uh, now I'm working with a VC. Uh, we, uh, which with Idenblock, we invest in decentralized AI. Um, still very very technical. I'm happy to be here.

Do we need to start with I mean crypto since what? Yeah, this is a pattern now.

I think I think it's I think it's the def facto introduction in in conferences. Um I am Paulo. I'm uh a designer by training and by uh professional experience. I was doing design stuff and then I was trying to manage a company of designers and I figured out I didn't know how to do it. So I found out about Dows and that's how I got into Ethereum in 2016 with the first DAO.

Um and um I'm not in crypto because of the uh financial speculation. I'm in crypto to try to solve governance and um how we govern ourselves as human beings without killing each other. And um I'm doing um Dow tooling um apps right now. Um an app called proposals.app uh that's focused on DAO governance specifically for arbitrum dao and I'm also a delegate at arbitum dao.

And um my life is basically arguing with people on the internet about how to decide stuff. And um yeah, that's that's me. Hi everyone. I'm Danny. Um I've been in games since 2007.

Engineer at heart. And since 2019, I'm building WHAM. Since 2021, I decided that my life was too easy. So I started doing stuff in crypto and blockchain. And um as you can see, I'm actually 23 years old, but I look like I'm 60.

Um our purpose is to build the next generation platform for games where people can have fun and have the benefits of web 3 at the same time. Um we've been the number one DAP on BMBB chain when u when we actually launched. I think it it was 2023. We grew quite a bit and now we're preparing for the next iteration of what we're building uh which is tooling and a real platform where games can combine web3 technology to reach audiences that love this type of uh evolution.

Great. Thanks guys. Lots of diverse experience backgrounds here. So I'm excited about the questions I'm going to ask. Um so if you were to advise startups today like what's the most effective way for Ethereum based um projects startups to approach funding in 2025 and we'll I mean we can start with whomever has a strong opinion on it or one wants to go first.

I have no kind of preference. So yeah, I can start um related to funding since we are the ones who uh try to fund projects uh we've gone over the um protocol first launch uh it's this is not necessarily exciting anymore at least for us. Uh we now want to see a lot more traction. You want to see a lot more need in the market and not necessarily like developers a lot of times try to solve problems for people who um are not actually there. They don't really feel that problem um strong enough in order to pay for it and and use it and and maybe change their behavior a little bit.

Um so traction traction is important. Um, we've seen a lot of projects doing partnerships, but then you don't really know exactly what the level of partnership is. Everybody is, you know, partnering with optimism, but yeah, you're an L3 on optimism. It's not really partnership. You're paying them.

Um, so partnerships don't really mean that much, but traction, users, growth is important. What I really like to see is also technology. We love to invest in uh difficult technology problems and people who can actually solve them. And then it's extremely important that you have good business development uh people and you know how to sell to your users. Um those are extremely important things.

Marketing and other things can come after that. But if you can provide these two, I think that's great. Awesome. You can leave the mic on. I think

I want to answer as business developer. First of all, thank you. And but I disagree with you about the partnerships. It is important to mention what level of the partnership and how you actually integrated what it gives to your community. Yes.

But the partnerships matter because that literally gives you the uh the horizontal growth uh for the community engaging with other communities and you can see how the project actually interacts with others and whether it's capable of finding your own place in the Ethereum ecosystem and uh working with Ethereum community is pretty easy because uh we all support each other pretty well I think. So I absolutely agree with you with everything besides that little point.

I I love it when panelists disagree. I live for it. How how about you guys?

I'm on the project side. So, uh from this respect, um I would tell you how I would do it again if I were to rewind time. Uh given that crypto is all about community and now we have AI agents. By the way, we have AI agents that can solve the business development problems. If you're devs and hate doing business development, just create an agentic business developer and pray for good stuff.

Um, I would do community first and that's it

and solve. There there are two ways to solving problems and then addressing them. Either I have the problem or you guys have the problem. The easier way for an engineer is to be really really frustrated with a lot of things and just pick one and solve it. And by solving it, you just address the community and then see how many people share your problem and also want to pay you for the problem that you have solved.

And uh going in in this stepped approach, the need for funding comes at a bit later date where uh the people that do the funding also can see this traction. I I would call this traction actually because you're you're gathering people that um see value in what you do. And then um the discussion about okay how the funding works, what's its structure and what's its value is is a lot easier. So this is if I were to pick how I would get funded, these are the steps that I would take in order to get these guys to give me a lot of money.

Awesome. [Music]

So um conclusion, you either trick a VC into giving you money or uh you trick um public public a community public goods funding a DAO a grants program to give you money. So that's those are the two bets. Um I've been through both actually. So maybe I can I can I can do a comparison. Um um yeah, I would say that uh there's a lot of dumb money in in crypto.

Um a lot of people investing just because um they have spare money to invest, which is not a good thing to do as a founder. if you uh take that money, you should be aware that you're doing it with a lot of uh strings attached and a lot of debt um with that as well. Um so you should look for VCs that are aligned with what you're doing and that actually would support you and would fight for you and would um bring more value than just the money. Uh there's not a lot of those um um in my opinion from my experience. Um also if you go to the public roots public goods route or public funding or trying to get grants it's also a mess and it usually defaults to oh you need to know who is the person on the council that decides the grant that would approve the grant and apply in this particular way in this particular time and so on so forth.

So it's also tough. Um um either way for founders that are building stuff I would suggest highly to um have a hard look at what you're doing and think if there's really a business model there or not. Most of the times there isn't especially in crypto where people build stuff just because they want to scratch their own itch. Um so try to figure out the business model first and and then go looking for funding as well.

Thank you. So I I just one thing to add here is even if you figure out your business model, the market might change on you as you're building. So that's something to consider as well. Um but moving on to kind of the specifics of it. We have we have we've mentioned Dows a few times in in the conversation already.

We have it in the title of the uh like the panel itself. How like how do people approach Dows versus startups especially from a VC perspective like how and how should funders think about like choosing a DAO path versus startup path what are some of the pros and cons of each can I start uh from perspective of Switzerland I can tell you that uh uh we can see we we've seen their all possible variations of structure in DA and one of the most appreciated now from from the VC perspective I don't know about all the VCs but at least those which we were in contact with and we saw the feedback is when you have the actual DAO structure but at the same time you have a certain centralization part which is has the legal entity behind in Switzerland it's possible to do so and Switzerland is a super crypto friendly jurisdiction you know all Ethereum foundation is our uh at home there uh so the structuring of DAO I think one of the key components and if you have done it right if you went through this unpleasant legal process then the rest is uh less of a problem and then you actually bridge both because you have uh one component over another

but is there any advant like are is there any preference of a DAO versus a traditional startup from your perspective

it very much depends on the project and business model how they see themselves I think when it comes to the governance that the DAO is crucially important

and it it is a mess so um I'm uh I'm both a delegate in arbitum DAO. Arbitum DAO is might be the biggest most the DAO with most proposals with most people engaging and so on. Um so it's a good representation of what the DAO could be. It's going through some changes right now. So that's another conversation.

But um I'm also a builder for arbitrum DAO. So the app that I'm building is to serve Arbitum and it is funded by Arbitum. And we just posted a proposal two weeks ago to get more funding that was rejected. But basically the process from the builder point of view was put the proposal on the forum answer to 60 comments saying that it's too expensive and explaining why we are charging this amount or asking for this amount for a week. During that week of discussion with delegates that were trying to undercut us and get us to do it for cheaper.

We actually started building the thing and we almost did the thing that we wanted to propose. Then it went to a vote. The small delegates voted for. the big delegates still don't want to spend money uh because you know we're not in a good place in the market right now. Um, so it's a very frustrating process as a builder to try to get money from Dows to fund what you're building, even if you're super aligned with the DAO and you are building something exclusive for them in this current time because since um um the regulatory space around D got more uh let's say um less affair uh because someone got in power in the US and you know crime is legal um Dows are being um through a restructure in general because the main reason why uh protocols created Dows a few years ago was to you know have legal um shielding um as in we don't control the protocol the DAO controls the protocol um but now they don't really need it since you know the president of the United States is launching memecoins I guess it's okay to be overt about controlling the protocol so yeah uh Dows are going through a restructure So it's also very tough for a builder to get uh funding from right now.

I would say

um ourselves as VCs we care mostly about equity when we invest. Um tokens or Dows are kind of a let's say a bonus. Dows are very messy. there are lots of people who have to agree and there's always uh something difficult when you have to make decisions. It's it's annoying and um I agree with you saying that you can create two different entities.

One that controls the equity and one that controls the DAO or is a representation of the DAO and and that that works mostly fine. I think I saw this first with uh unis swap. I think that was very smart. How about you Denny?

Can you please re repeat the question so I'm sure?

So should people go with Dows or startup classic way? Is that like something that matters when it comes to raising capital?

Okay. My expertise is with crypto VCs. Uh that translates into PTSD. Uh so there's no dows in uh in my expertise, but I've researched quite a bit. We've researched it.

uh we we were thinking in approaching Dows but when we saw the process and also the the the amount of effort plus the potential revenue we kind of quit uh now given that we just spoke about agentic stuff agentic dowels that can make decisions uh this is one of the thing because they're messy right so people have to make decisions I would say that if you're a startup today the need for funding is not that stringent at the beginning but it also depends on how you want to start. If you want to start like the uh traditional VC style where you have like uh I don't know big amounts of cash at the beginning you can hire a team and go punch the idea or you can go the other way around where you start solving the problem get the traction and then you can figure it out. If you go this route dows I would say are not necessarily useful in the beginning because they can be messy. the I just did the research and the acceptance process or the the the approval process about 20 to 30% and it's quite messy. It takes a lot of time and it it can actually hinder your product development.

Plus, if you're doing uh like uh grand hopping from Dow to Dow to see which one bites again this uh kind of steals your time and focus and you have to do that. I would I would say neither at the beginning if you start with the problem and uh iterate small enough just to prove point after point after point and then it's a a bit more streamlined in getting people on board and then I would say money comes one one guy from the US I met told me this when I thought I needed US money he said Look, money always finds good companies and good projects. I would I would agree with that. But I have a question for you in the audience. Who is building and looking for money?

Okay. So, these are actually great points in the panel. I hope they're useful to you guys, but I would go with the smaller route also because the the type of pressure, by the way, community pressure sucks. Makes no sense. And crypto community pressure, not building community pressure.

It's like living with uh I don't know uh rackets in your house, like like 10 rackets in your house, and they watch you when you go to sleep and when you go to the bathroom and when you wake up and they're there. They never sleep.

You owe me money. you you owe me not money. You owe me like like

the moon the moon.

You I I put $100 when's my Lambo. So in in this respect, funding from from uh the public before it's time can be detrimental to a project.

So I think that's a good segue into kind of the misconception. Yeah,

I have a counterpoint to that.

Go ahead.

I have a counterpoint to that. So I I understand like we kind of discussed like two ways. You either start small or you go to the VC. Um, you can start small and you can self-fund and you're going to own everything and you just keep building it. There's a big risk if there's another team that they start.

Maybe they don't even start building. The idea is good enough. they know how to sell it and then they raise $10 million and then you're fighting people with $10 million in their bank who can start hiring and start hitting um like much fighting this much faster than you and it becomes really scary to find that team. Uh we've we've seen we have had teams that were pretty well funded. They still had money in the bank but they started to see other teams in in the space uh raising tens of millions of dollars and they became scared.

So what they had to do was raise even more.

Fair point. I had this fear. I honestly had this fear. And there's a belief when you're building that the bigger team that gets the funds will outsmart you, out compete you out out whatnot. And it might happen.

But what I meant when uh when I said starting small, it's just for the the the first steps. Uh by the way, just to build the confidence that you can do it. So this is really important. you solve things. You you uh you get to the next level and then the next level you kill the next boss, you know, difficulty.

I'm doing game references because this is my life. And u once you do that until you you are a certain point, nobody cares. Nobody in the VC world, nobody competes with you. Nobody absolutely cares. And then you can do that.

But one thing that I I experienced is no matter how wellunded a team is, especially if they're they're good at selling, they're really really good at selling and they brought in a lot of cash, but the audience or the people that they're doing stuff for is uh does not connect with what you're building, that money can be thrown out the window. Of course, you will always have competition. Just think of it like this. Smart contracts are like building blocks. You can you can make a smart contract and then I can use it and you can use it and everybody can just build on top of it.

So in terms of competition, it's always there, right? But what I see differentiates crypto and and and blockchain development and and the entire philosophy is that um if you build it properly for the right audience that just loves the way you do it. Of course, how you do it is important, they will stick around. And that funding that funding in crypto is is not like everybody's building a blockchain. That's where you need like a lot of funding, right?

you need liquidity and you need a lot of engineers. Most of the times there are simpler things that don't require that amount of capital. Of course, having a big partner with funds is absolutely crucial, but in crypto finding the right partner is just like finding a unicorn with not one horn, two horns, because most of them are are in the game for the short games, right?

Yeah. I I feel like this going to be like a recurring theme is like find the right partner. Like I've heard it four times in the past like 10 15 minutes. Great great interesting kind of way of looking at it. It's like well you can take money from anyone but you should choose where you take money from.

Are there other misconceptions that uh I know maybe Alena can share some or or Paulo um that people know about like raising funding and we should stay away from or you have a different opinion on like what are common misconceptions that you hear in uh in the space. Um, I think I I think a lot of people think it's easy to raise money in crypto or uh depending on the the market cycle, right? If it's a bull market or a bare market or or whatever. Um, last time um I raised funds. It turns out it was in August 2023 and it was the worst month to raise funds in crypto in the last eight years.

But we only figured out

it was the worst to raise money in general. in general, but we only figured out it was the worst month after we did. And so we're like, "Oh, okay. This is interesting." Um because we just went with a brute force approach to, you know, um um to try to do it.

We did um 80 80 versions of the pitch. We pitched 130 something VCs. Um and it's and it's not as easy as it sometimes looks. So one misconception is that oh in crypto it's really is easy to raise VC and uh I don't think it is. Yeah,

Elena or Danny

so I think grants don't mean validation. Uh winning a hackathon also doesn't mean validation. I'm I've I've judged a few hackathons. I'm very happy to give uh first prizes to fun interesting projects but that don't necessarily translate into products after that. Uh but you know it's it's a different type of uh contest there.

Um it's I agree with you. It's very hard to hear 129 times no and then still hope for the next yes. I would add uh uh partnerships. We talk a lot about people and one of the misconception which is not yet that that strong but it's definitely coming that way is using technologies AI especially uh can help you to uh use less manpower or team means less because you kind of are technically strong by AI. I think this is absolutely wrong and uh as you just were just saying AI needs a double check and proof and literally all the technology still needs I don't know how long but still at the moment needs the human proof.

So the team matters no matter how many technical tech technical agents you have or or technically strong you are team matters and this is something that nobody should forget. I would I would call it that way in the future.

That's a great great point. Um so we talked about team. Let's talk about community a little bit. Um we talked about kind of the was it rackets that you sleep with if you have if you're raising from a community like where what are some of the ways uh that community plays a role in fundraising? Should they play a role in fundraising?

Do you want to have that kind of dynamics where that where does that make sense versus not make sense? So you're asking if the community you should raise from the community or not?

Not necessarily. No, you can like how can you involve the community like okay asking them for money is like the most straightforward thing but like how else like can people work with the community to help them raise capital? Definitely I would say and you guys can contradict me if I'm lying or talking Uh but community engagement and community involvement in the project matters a lot because then as a VC as a a as a an entity that gives you money to make more money, they can actually foresee what the risk of giving you money is. If you have an engaged, active community that has been there not because of the token launch that you just did and they're hoping to make a million bucks, then the value actually is higher than doing it without the community. But the reality is there are all sorts of flavors in doing startuping and doing uh the work with the community and with the VCs.

I would say I would say to get money from a VC is a lot more important to know the people personally and for I don't know how to have a personal relationship is a lot more important than uh all these things. Why? Because then there's a connection being formed. They can smell if you're bullshitting or you can smell if they're not the right fit. And when these two check out, there's then there's a higher possibility and chance that a deal might happen.

Of course, it's not guaranteed, but at the same time, doing the opposite, I've did the opposite and not knowing people, right? Just knocking on doors. Uh well, it's a good way to be frustrated for quite a bit of time. Yeah,

I think that community is uh very often underestimated because community is that engine that helps you to test all the ideas to help you to test um the the scale of it, how quickly it can grow, market feed, literally anything you want to do, community comes and helps you to see whether yes or no, how how it really would fit in all possible scenarios. technology, social proof, uh acceptance, market feed, uh even financial understanding because to raise the money from VCs, you need to explain the idea. If you can explain this idea to your own community, then you can see whether they really understand it, how it's understandable. And then you go already to financial professionals and if they tell you, oh no, your idea is not good, you already have the answer because you actually you have the feedback from your own community. And this dialogue is is crucially important and it needs to be not one time before you raise the funds.

It needs to be all the time coming over and over again when you build up the product. So at ICB labs community is one of the strongest things we have and we have communities in different regions because we tested over there and there are certain as I as I was mentioning uh there is the ecosystem that we have so uh each product of the ecosystem has own community because literally it's the own target audience and uh in in my personal understanding as professional business developer and working from community perspective with the ICB labs I can tell you it helps so much and I think When the VBC sees how you work with the community, they can see whether they can trust you the funds or whether you see the future and how you see the future. It proves a lot. Um I would add that from um a builder perspective or a product development perspective um you kind of need three things. You need the technology to work to do what it says it does.

You need a good user experience so that people can use it and enjoy it. And you need distribution. And that's where I see the community part fitting in on the distribution part because uh in the old web 2 startup days for you to have distribution you would have to you know hire people to do uh SEO optimizations and Google ads and Facebook ads and whatever and spend a bunch of money in acquiring users. In web 3 we figure out this way of oh let's build a community first and they will be advocates for our product and they will be uh the ambassadors and evangelizers and so on. And I think um a lot of teams in the space um don't do that because they think oh if I just build the product and it works it will be enough and people will come but that never happens.

So we do need to think about distribution from early on uh when we're building new stuff because um otherwise we we build stuff but nobody uses it. And having a community that likes your product and uses it and provides feedback and uh helps evolve it. It's it's actually like a third of the whole thing I would say. So, um, building community is mostly posting memes. Um, but community sometimes doesn't matter if you're selling to businesses.

Like your community is other companies. So, you're you're not going to talk to them the same. You're not going to have the same kind of relationship. So, it's it's it's very very different. And we shouldn't forget that the businessto business exists and it's still very very valid.

You mean you mean posting memes on LinkedIn then?

Yes. Posting memes on

Yeah, exactly. Like uh video in the morning like I had breakfast. Here's my hot take on like B2B sales. Sales. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally get it. But like seriously like coming back to the B2B side like no one got excited and said I want to like build a community around this API that does this like optimization for this. No, that's not that's not community.

Totally agree. So, I think there's there's flavors and ways to do it.

Now, you made me curious to find out if there's an API enthusiast community.

There there is in San Francisco. I can I I can show you one. There's an MLOps community that's thriving right in San Francisco. And MLOps is one of the most incredibly difficult things that you can do like server side kind of engineering. So, anyway, you can find communities for everything.

And I think that's the the the take that I would bring to like this particular topic is find the community. Don't build it initially. If you can find it, if you can like help it and it'll help you back. It'll give you back rewards as a consequence of you helping them. Um so we've mentioned a few funding methods.

I've heard hackathons. I've heard grants. I've heard like DAO raising money from the community. I've heard VC money. How can people building in this space navigate like how to choose your right funding method?

Like beyond kind of the the chemistry and like the I know are you aligned on objectives? Is there anything else beyond that you guys want to add? How should builders think about that?

Um making like building something that actually generates profit. I think it's a wild idea, you know.

Hot take hot take profit. like build build a business that actually generates profit, you know, as transaction fees that you get or whatever.

Add value.

It's funny that you you introduced the the subject with all the ways of uh companies getting money except like the one that we know for a thousand of years, which is build something that has value that people pay for. Um it's it's actually it it bothers me a lot that in crypto even crypto users just assume that everything should be free and they don't they shouldn't pay for anything, right? So as a builder when you're um trying to have your own revenue source and your own uh business model and you try to charge people for their service, it's always like ah there must be a free alternative to this as that's the usual um uh reaction from users. And I think it stems from the huge hype that we had in the beginning of our space of everything was VC funded, everything was subsidized um and users would get everything for free and we got uh you know hooked on this uh on this u this idea and therefore builders followed that um mindset and now they don't think so much about oh I'm I'm building something and maybe I should find our own revenue source on things and that's not good.

All right then prioritize profit. I want to add something to that to the to the free part. There's free and then there's pay for each engagement. There's something in between that actually works really well. So, because like for me it's it's very painful for the user to pay for each kind of interaction.

You have to decide, okay, I'm going to use this. I'm going to pay a fraction of a cent or a cent or a dollar for this again. Uh, and there is one thing that works. I hate it, but it works. It's subscriptions.

So you pay once but then you don't have to decide every time to to pay for each interaction again that the interactions are included. Um and sub subscriptions seem to work really well.

Thank you. I uh would lead it slightly different direction. I would think about it and I meet very often actually uh this kind of people which are like usually it's this kind of profile. A person is about like in in 20s beginning or mid20s and says oh I have this and this idea and I have this and this team and uh we are almost ready we want to raise funds now uh so how can we raise like I don't know 200,000 1 million 10 million everybody has their own expectations then uh first thing I ask is uh what do you do where do you go to actually meet people to to pitch your idea or to test the pitching of your idea and then they say oh but um actually there are different answers many people go everywhere but many people don't go and one of the problems that I see is the founders it it's pretty difficult when the founder can't talk can't pitch can can't uh be uh socializing can't socialize and can't network himself and leaves it all to investor relations or business developer guys because they all don't matter if the founder can't talk and this is number one because when you can talk then you come to every conference you are here today that means that you want it you are there you are at every single opportunity you see to pitch your idea to test to see whether you find the right partner and then you will see whether it will be the accelerator uh whether it will be some community funded program or community itself or VCs or something else or will be strategic investor who will be just like that's exactly what I wanted to invest my million into in you and your team I was waiting for you and maybe he doesn't have more than that million but he wanted exactly that and only way to test it is to be out as a founder and there is no other way there is no alternative to that I would say there are two types of funding you either build build a B2C or a B2B depending on which type of startup you're building the necessity of funding is different and the people that you're addressing for funding are different people with different objectives, different risk appetites and and if you summarize okay what funding is some guys trusting you with money that they most of the times don't take from their own pockets they take from other people's pockets and they have to invest responsibly to get a return now depending on the type of uh fund if it's a really risky fund if it's something that is very I don't know invest in visionary things. Um they may fund really huge amounts of money but for hard problems not for simple ones.

So there's there are a lot of variables into okay what am I building who do I need money from? And based on these variables you can better attune yourself with the people that give out the money. So you can actually filter out, okay, it makes no sense, for instance, for a B2C guy that builds a product to speak with funds that invest mostly in B2B. You're wasting time. And one of the things that I've noticed is that you're wasting time if you're talking with people that don't decide the money that's being given.

This is one other thing. So there are a lot of u uh dos and don'ts, but we're in web 3. If it's a B2B product, you need you may need funding because you need access to other companies and you need sales. Basically, this is what most likely you need money for. Now, with AI, engineering is important, but you have a big help and costs go lower.

And if you build a B2C product, the community way, you have some people that cheer for you. You go show the VCs, okay, we have uh we have people that use us, love us, give money. So, then this is how I see it. Cool. So, let's assume that everything went well.

You raised money. You raised money from like all these sources, maybe like VC, maybe grants, maybe hackathons, maybe all of the above. You have money in the bank, in your wallet, wherever you raised. What happens next? Like how should a like a founder or a team should approach treasury management?

Because I think that's a lot of the hidden or silent killer, especially in our space. What's your take on this? Um so continuing on the story that I was telling before that we raised money and so on. Uh the follow up on the story is that we realized that the three founders couldn't get along and so we shut down the company and we gave the money back to the investors. So, one of the things that I would uh advise and warn about is um starting a company and funding a company with other people is like a marriage and so you should really um vet the people that you're building stuff with and and uh um not do it after raising funds ideally.

Um but uh the number one reason why startups fail is uh founder issues, right? And so um most of the times it's not the technology is not the product is not even the distribution of the users and so on is the human relationship between the people that are leading the company and that they if they have or not an aligned vision and aligned values and so on and I think that's something that uh in this space where there's a lot of stories of oh we just met aon and we built something on anaton we won the we got some validation then we started talking to VCs and we got some money and now we're going to build the company for the next 10 years. Uh actually maybe not with these people. So uh you should watch for that first. Yeah.

Treasury management is usually um this is a a topic I've seen. So one of the biggest problems I I've noticed in crypto and with ICOs is that the events were not seen as funding. They were seen as sale events because let's uh

token sales

token sales. So there's a big difference in terms of responsibility. We sold an asset. Now we have money in the bank, but we don't need to use all that money for what we're doing. I can just buy the Lambo that I always wanted.

And with a bit of the money, I can

maybe or like

two of them or Okay. So, this type of treasury management is actually stupid. It it makes no sense to I mean, it's

it's illegal as well.

Well, well, no. No. And this this is this is why it happened because it wasn't illegal. You sold an asset, you got the money and the perception was we didn't fund raise, we sold an asset. So from this perspective, it is a different thing how you do things.

And uh this shaped the behavior of treasury management. Now if uh let's say you get older and you've been through several companies and you managed your own money, it it's easier to understand okay how do you manage at the end of the day? It's the the make it or break it. So either you settle for 1 2 3 million or you make the company or the project be 500 million a billion or what not. That's the end goal.

So in terms of uh how do you manage this? Okay, you have dows I'm not in favor of those because it's easily distracting. So okay, you make a dowo and then a group of people decide what happens with the money. But in terms of a startup, that's suicide because you need to make decisions. And it's not that money gets wasted.

It's for them not to be wasted on stupid things, but they will still be wasted because you take bets. And usually bets don't work out regardless of your intention. You have a good intention. you have all the cards played out and then you have like uh bombs dro being dropped off somewhere and all your plans and your money that was spent go out the window. So there are events like this

make makes sense. I want to hear from uh from the VCs as well like what do you guys see in the like treasury management space? We're almost out of time so going to keep this moving quickly. So I think first you need to manage the expectations of your partners and in this case partners is also users but VCs since you're talking to them first. It's totally fine from our point of view to maybe spend two years doing research building the team and then launching the product if the problem is big enough and you think it's going to be there for at least 10 years.

uh some other VCs maybe are happy with uh or they desire a token launch in the next six months. That's also totally fine. So like make sure that you what you plan for and what you say you're going to do, you're going to do that. So like mostly managing expectations.

Yeah, makes sense. How about you?

I would only add the legal again legal angle since in Switzerland everything is pretty clear. So there are clear types of tokens that you issue. So whether it will be the sales or investment or this or that it will be pretty clear and then when it comes to the big amounts it doesn't matter that it will be the corporate structure or the DAO with a certain corporate or association angle you can always have a treasurer and treasurer is the role which keeps you uh for the audit for the investors what whatever you want it can be again structured different ways but since we don't have much time I won't go in details but I think the to have a treasure in company if you have significant amount of uh externally uh inflowed funds is uh important. So the treasure is like the dragon guarding the treasure.

Uh no but like uh thank you guys this great insights. I know we're we ran out of time. Uh do we have time for questions?

Yeah.

Yeah. Great. So let's take some questions and then uh

we can wrap.

We already have one amazing question. So, let's just go to the next slide. What I going to do though is this is like four questions in one question. So, it's going to break it down and we'll start with Danny asking him the first part of this question and we're going to make our way to Alina to answer the last part of this question. Right.

So, Danny, VCs want to fund familiar things that have traction and ideally don't need funding. Do you think it's a problem? And do you think that VCs should diversify their portfolio or is it just a normal occurrence?

I can tell you a little bit about how a VC works. When you start a VC fund, you venture into a specific type of industry and then you have to invest in that industry. You have to like the people who gave you money to invest, you have to work for them. And you promised you're going to invest in X, you have to invest in X. you cannot start changing because you start drifting and then you start investing in uh embroidery or like weird things.

So you have to be uh responsible with with your purpose and you also have to manage expectations on your end.

Perfect. And then let's go to Alina. Alina, how do we fund new narratives? Because if VCs have to stick within a certain domain, how do we just as a new project, how do you uh find a way to convince them to invest in you before you your narrative becomes popular?

I think all the whole line of these questions come to one one thing is understanding and trust. So whether the VCs understand actually the product whether it's a new or old idea and trusted and that trust can come from the product line and problem solving as we were talking here all the way or from the team and personality who is behind that. So but one or another thing you need to give a clear understanding of what exactly that is. So clarity, transparency and if you want education uh of the topic and uh trust uh from technology and team personalities.

Uh Paul is venture funding uh venture capital still venturing? Um yeah, one one advice that I would give there is that um venture capital is like the most professionalized way of investing, right? But there's other people investing. There's angels, there's funds, there's grants and so on. One one thing that I would recommend for people that are trying to build innovative things and uh feel that venture capital doesn't um doesn't pay attention to them is to find a founder that has done something similar before and has made it and would now become an angel because uh as a founder and as a builder you would need to you know have mentorship about what where are you going and there are some um exited founders or successful founders that are looking to find a younger version of themselves and mentor that person and uh even fund them uh and advise them.

So, I think it's much more um it's much smarter to look for angels that would uh be in your line of business in your area and that would look at what you're doing and be like, "Huh, yes, that's innovative. I want to bet on you." Um other than the more professionalized version of VCs where they have, you know, um LPs to report and all that. Yeah. And then the final part of this question is are they like are VCs evolving their understanding or just risk minimizing maximizing

are they evolving their understanding or evolving their understanding of what

their understanding of the industry sorry it's actually linked to the first part I guess like the question is are they involving their understanding of the industry and new narratives or are they just trying to capitalize on emerging narratives and they're not trying to diversify.

Okay, let me give you an example. At WHM, when we started out, we had we still have two great guys doing business development and they were very ex we still have um no no we still have uh and they were experienced in M&A and they told me this joke. Um a VC walks into a bar and he um the bartender asks, "What are you having?" And the VCs, this was a VC bar by the way, and the VC looks around and says whatever they're having. Okay.

Um, it's more about risk minimizing because usually VC money is for growth. When you figured out what works, you need a lot of money to just push the pedal and that means d-risking is already in in the books. So, this is my answer to that.

Nice.

Just got another question if you have time. I like it. Nice. Who Who is Alex M? Raise your hand.

Don't Michelle organizer Alex. Nice.

Not a question but great comment.

Good.

Can I take a Can I take a stab at answer the new question?

Yeah, of course.

I I think that um especially technical founders have this uh idea that oh if I build something cool uh I'll be successful. But um building a network and uh being recognized in the space and having a public persona and you know coming on stages and talk about stuff and pitching your product is also part of building a business. It's not just you know the commits that you did on on GitHub or the things you designed and so on. Um I think that uh a lot of technical people um underestimate how hard it is to actually build relationships in the space and to you know go to conferences and meet people and pitch your thing and so on. And in a space where we're all u um trying to minimize trust.

So that's the we can only trust the smart contracts and the mathematics behind it. It's really ironic that uh most deals and most sales and most um success comes from human relationship and people meeting each other and getting drunk at conferences and talking

and and tweet and like do a podcast, go on podcast, just talk to people.

Does anyone want to answer the question about technical founders? Do you want me to read the question guys or

the second question now? Like how can builders without the strong network still get noticed?

That's what I was trying to do. Yeah,

that's what we're just answering.

Yeah. Yeah. But does anyone else want to answer that question or is it just

Yeah,

we can open the floor though. It's okay. We'll open the floor. Does anyone else have any any

Have no shame.

This is my advice. Have no shame.

So you're building you think it's awesome. You're building some cool stuff. Hello.

That's good. That's like lights on. Have no shame. I love that.

That's like the ultimate. Yeah, that's the that's the advice. Oh, so bright. Okay. Do you have any more questions?

Now that the lights are on, everyone's like, "No, no, no." Oh, the lady there. Nice. Uh, may I have your mic, please? Thank you, sir.

It's a good or a bad moment to try to raise money right now.

Can you repeat the question because we're recording it? Thank you. You know at the beginning the panel was a little bit is this a good or not? What's your feeling? It's a good moment yes or no.

I know your experience in 2023. I also had a similar one and I was like oh my god that was the last year I could raise money and so on. So right now how's the situation? It's a good money for me as a builder to stop to.

I think it depends what you're raising money for. What kind of industry? What kind of type of traction? We are very active. Sorry,

real work assets.

Uh we haven't dipped into RWAs. Uh we're a lot more focused on AI right now. So if you're in AI, we've been very active there. Um that's my take, but you have to find the right partners for you and the people who are active in that space and kind of see what their what what their cycle uh step is in for them. I made my research before this, so I have numbers for you.

Okay. Um, yeah.

Yeah, I was going to say, did you just chat GPT that?

Um,

100%.

$16 billion was the token fundraising in 2024. VC investments in crypto, 2 billion. 40 billion are in DAO treasuries in 2025. So that means there's capital, right? Well,

token prices are going down, so it's like 20 billion now.

Well, well, um, and you said, okay, public token sales accounted for 83% of crypto public events in 2024. So, in terms of it's if it's a good market or not, I would say it all matters who you know and then the market is less uh disfavorable. If you just go head on, even in a good market, you might not find the right money. I would say but there's never never

yeah I would say there's there's not the right time to raise like it's almost like saying oh now is the perfect time for me to get married or now is a perfect time for me to have a child or it's the same question just go for it. Yeah.

It's never the right time.

It's never the right time. Just go.

One more question. Have time for one more question. Anyone else? Okay. I'll ask the final question.

Can you Oh, give me quickly one piece of advice, a practical advice for founders that they can do right now once they exit this room and improve their like fundraising probability.

I'll just say it again. Have no shame.

Yeah. Tweet about it. Like actually say it publicly that you want to raise money and how much and by when. and tag Paul.

Um I think this is very similar to uh Paulo's um advice is become a key opinion leader in that space like become a thinker. Um write as much as you can about those types of ideas and those types of problems.

Exactly the same what I wanted to say. So I'll try not to repeat educate. Do all this be public but educate. Talk about why you do this what it actually gives. uh but don't sell.

Really show why you love it, why you do it, why you waste, spend or dedicate your time to this.

And I would say talk to your customers or your pro future customers and hear about their problems every day if you can.

Thank you. Thank you so much guys. Please put your heads together for the amazing panel.