Syndicate, an ‘AngelList for DeFi,’ Raises $1M Seed Round Led by IDEO CoLab Ventures

Decentralized investing protocol Syndicate has raised $1 million in a seed round led by IDEO CoLab Ventures to decentralize crypto investing from the ground up, according to a blog post shared with CoinDesk.

Although still in private beta, Syndicate co-founder’s Will Papper and Ian Lee described Syndicate as a social graph for the rapidly decentralizing investment economy. Both Papper and Lee were employed at IDEO prior to Syndicate.

“We have a strong hypothesis that the next frontier of decentralized finance and crypto is social networks,” Lee said in an interview with CoinDesk. “The only thing that can't be forked is the community, and we take that to the next level with the only thing that can't be forked," which is "the social network.”

Syndicate is already connecting aspiring founders and investors, such as for non-fungible token (NFT) projects, according to Papper. The protocol enables founders to raise funds and conduct on-chain governance such as airdropping tokens, he said.

The team will use the funds for hiring more engineers as well as launching the protocol in the coming weeks.

See also: Crypto Has Another Unicorn as Bitpanda Raises $170M at $1.2B Valuation

The round was joined by Electric Capital, Delphi Ventures, CoinFund, Robot Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, DeFi Alliance and Nascent plus 18 individual investors.