Announcing the IDEO Founder Collective
A community of crypto founders investing in each other
Today, IDEO and a group of 20+ IDEO Founders are excited to announce the formation of the IDEO Founder Collective, a community of entrepreneurs investing in each other’s success, via a Syndicate DAO.
All members, including IDEO CoLab Ventures, are contributing an equal amount of equity or tokens in return for shared ownership in the collective—more importantly, they’ll offer their time, expertise, and connections to one another to help each other succeed. Future IDEO portfolio founders will also be able to join the collective and tap into their expertise as a part of IDEO’s investment into them.
We’ve wanted to do this for years, but it seemed too difficult to implement. However, with the launch of Syndicate, we can now easily form and run on-chain DAOs and collectives. This is an exciting step to strengthen the bonds in our community and establish a new, crypto-native model for IDEO and its founders to invest in and support one another.
“The entire IDEO CoLab Ventures portfolio is one of the most giving communities I know,” says Will Papper, Co-Founder of Syndicate. “We already help each other immensely — so we’re excited to launch a Syndicate DAO that enables us to share in the upside of each other’s success as well.”
The Future of Venture is Community-Led
We believe that the future of venture building will be collaborative — and that venture building networks and communities of founders, investors, and builders who have an ownership stake in each other’s mutual success will be the most successful in the long-run. We also believe deeply that this shared ownership model will be uniquely powered by crypto technology.
IDEO’s community of founders has been organically helping each other with their projects — code reviews, design feedback, hiring, and much more. They already have a stake in each other’s success as humans, friends, and family — the IDEO Founder Collective is now formalizing this and taking our shared ownership in each other’s success to the next level.
“There’s value in collaboration and coming together as a community,” says Jess Sloss, Instigator at Seed Club. “Initiatives like the IDEO Founder Collective help make that value tangible, aligning both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. It’s hard not to get excited about a future where Founders succeed together.”
Progressively Decentralizing Venture Capital
We’re building a very different kind of venture firm at IDEO. With the creation of the IDEO Founder Collective, we are beginning our process of “progressively decentralizing” and “exiting to community” as we share a small, but meaningful amount of equity to honor the deep connections, alignment, and support that already exists amongst the IDEO Founder community.
“I’ve been working with the IDEO team and community for over three years on Rally, Forte, and now SuperLayer,” says Kevin Chou, Co-Founder of SuperLayer (as well as Rally and Forte). “I’m excited to help bring the IDEO Founder Collective into the world — and be a part of this talented community of founders and projects that build with, support, and invest in each other.”
In the coming months (and years!), we’ll share more on how we’re transforming IDEO CoLab Ventures into a “venture collective,” with network-native connections not just for our founders, but also for our investors, designers, developers, contributors, experts, users, and more.
Engage With Us — On Email and Clubhouse
If you’d like to be a part of this collective, please reach out. We’re always excited to talk to more values-aligned entrepreneurs in the crypto community who are helping build the future financial system and decentralized internet.
We’ll also be hosting a room on Clubhouse today at 4pm PT to share more on the IDEO Founder Collective, hear from some of the IDEO Founders, and talk about our broader plans for the future.
Click here to join our Clubhouse room today at 4pm PT.
Founding Members
The initial members of the IDEO Founder Collective include:
- Adam Jackson, Founder, Braintrust
- Alexander Angel, Founder, Primitive
- Anastasia Andrianova, Founder, Akropolis
- André Allen Anjos , Founder, RAC
- Arif Khan, Founder, Alethea AI
- Blake West, Founder, Goldfinch
- Dillon Chen, Founder, Commonwealth
- Gabby Dizon, Founder, Yield Guild
- Gabe Luna-Ostaseski, Founder, Braintrust
- Gavin McDermott, Partner, IDEO CoLab Ventures
- Ian Lee, Founder & Partner, Syndicate & IDEO CoLab Ventures
- Jazear Brooks, Founder, Sifchain
- Jess Sloss, Instigator, SeedClub
- Joe Gerber, Partner, IDEO CoLab Ventures
- Joris Delanoue, Founder, Fairmint
- Kate Kurbanova, Founder, Akropolis
- Kenny White, Founder, Shell Protocol
- Kevin Chou, Founder, SuperLayer (and Rally & Forte)
- Kevin Nielsen, Founder, Boardroom
- Leighton Cusack, Founder, PoolTogether
- Mahesh Vellanki, Founder, SuperLayer (and Rally & Forte)
- Matt Galligan, Founder, XMTP
- Matt Wisniewski, Founder, Satellite
- Reuben Bramanathan, Partner, IDEO CoLab Ventures
- Shane Mac, Founder, XMTP
- Tara Tan, Partner, IDEO CoLab Ventures
- Thibauld Favre, Founder, Fairmint
- Will Papper, Founder, Syndicate
