Syndicate Raises $20M From Andreessen, Coinbase, Snoop Dogg and Others

Syndicate, a new protocol that enables anyone to set up an investment DAO,  announced a $20 million Series A funding round raised with participants led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Over 150 new and diverse investors were involved, including Bill Ackman’s Table Management; BNP Paribas Group-backed Atelier Ventures; Coinbase Ventures, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, and Snoop Dogg Ventures.

“Syndicate is is creating a decentralized investing protocol that enables anyone to create an investment syndicate on the Internet for less than $10 in less than a minute,” the protocol’s cofounder Ian Lee said in June while speaking on a panel on investment DAOs on Coinshares Conversations.

What are investment DAOs?

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are the latest tool to democratize investing and can take the form of anything from small groups that curate NFT art to investors that pool their capital, talent, and networks to seed early-stage projects. They are designed to operate globally, which means a much bigger, richer playing field than a traditional fund.

Syndicate aims to simplify the process and lower the amount of capital needed, thus encouraging new types of DAOs to empower and enrich the ecosystem they emerged from. And the protocol also contains the necessary legal components and infrastructure to support organizations should they choose to become full-on investment funds.

The vision is a powerful one. By blending investment with social networking, “Syndicate could potentially do to investing what YouTube did to film, or what SoundCloud and Spotify did to the music recording industry,” said Lee.

Making DAOs accessible to all

The funds from the Series A round will be used to develop DAO-powered technologies, integrate with Web3 projects and fintech startups, and for community support.

DAOs, such as Komorebi, which invests in female and non-binary founders, and Audacity, which targets Black and African founders, have pronounced the technology a game-changer.

The vision is an exciting one and involves technologies sure to evolve and develop over the years. But at its root is making investing, once reserved for a small, exclusive subset of insiders, a global, accessible, and fundamentally social activity, for all.

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