Interview with BuidlerDAO founder: Thousands of people are queuing up to enter, what's the difference between this DAO?
Compared to traditional corporate “management” concepts, Niels believes that what DAOs need is “governance” and “guidance.”
Interview & Summary: Babywhale, Foresight News
Web3 talent and project network BuidlerDAO announced at the end of August that it had received $2 million in seed round financing from institutions such as Sequoia China Seed Fund and SevenX. Three weeks later, on Wednesday, BuidlerDAO founder Niels and a number of institutions and important project founders in the industry jointly launched the Web3 startup accelerator Spring Xcelerator (springx.net), to provide Web3 entrepreneurs in the seed or angel wheel A $20 million funding pool and structured curriculum and founder network and resource support.
DAO has always been a controversial term, and people have never stopped exploring this new form of organization, yet the process has been extremely “twists and turns.” As a rising star, BuidlerDAO has received support from institutions including Sequoia China through the DAO concept at a time when the popularity of the financing market has almost reached its freezing point.
What's special about BuidlerDAO? What kind of development potential do investors see in this field? With many questions, the author interviewed Niels, the founder of BuidlerDAO:
Foresight News: What is the background of BuidlerDAO's founding team, and why did they choose the Web3 industry together?
Niels:BuidlerDAO's founding team is mostly an internet background. I myself attended Shanghai Jiao Tong University as an undergraduate and graduated from Yale University with a master's degree. I like to toss things around. Plus, I've been to 14 companies for internships and startups, including VC (Zhenge Fund), Consulting (Bain), and Data Engineer (Didi). After graduating in 2020, I worked as a product manager for trading links at Ali, joined the startup Yahaha 1 year later to do economic system planning, and later joined the Web3 startup team to do DID products, because my project received financing, so I chose to start a full career.
Other members of the founding team are from major Internet companies such as Tencent and JD, as well as from years of VC+ entrepreneurship, consulting+ entrepreneurship experience. Basically, they are all serial entrepreneurs with science and technology backgrounds.
As for why I chose Web3, I learned about blockchain technology because of the opportunity to work as an economic system at a startup, to study the economic model of games, and then I was shocked by the innovative nature of the technology after knowing the logic that the underlying layer is a distributed ledger. I believe that the characteristics of decentralization, transparency, and traceability will lead to new solutions to some problems and the birth of many new things. And I myself love to research and design complex systems.
Other people in the team also have their own ideas. Some people think that Web3 is more inclusive and not fully defined than Web2. Although it is more uncertain, it is also more challenging; others think that as an emerging industry, Web3 is very equal, has no qualifications, and may also be a post-90/95 structural opportunity worth risking; in addition, there are also people who think that Web3 has brought a revolutionary paradigm trend, giving ordinary people the opportunity to participate in the construction of a new ideal society, and that there are many explorations in fields such as underlying technology, social culture, and products opportunity.
Foresight News: Why did you choose the DAO circuit? What does BuidlerDAO want to do?
Niels:The DAO was chosen by chance. The initial entry was an NFT tool, then the market went into a bear market. After the product was finished, it was not launched, but it was discovered that the community gathered many Buidlers who wanted to build the industry like us, and discovered that DAO was a way to make the community productive. After studying the operating model of DAO organizations at home and abroad, we approved the DAO model.
As the name BuidlerDAO suggests, we want to build a community that Buidler co-owns and participates in, from the Chinese language and beyond. “Co-ownership” requires decentralization, and “participation” is accurately “autonomous participation.”
As for what BuidlerDAO wants to do, in summary, it includes:
Talent community. Researchers, developers, and market operators are the core forces of every project. They are responsible for the three key aspects of judging direction, implementation, and market promotion. A good project cannot be achieved without a single link. We hope that more such Buidlers will participate, connect with each other and achieve each other;
Content brands. This includes content formats such as articles, audio, and video. Buidler produces excellent content, attracts more talents to join, and then produces more high-quality content, forming a virtuous cycle to establish a hardcore, deep, original, and neutral content brand. In Web3, positive influence and word of mouth are more important;
Product practices. Experiment with innovative products around the elements of DAO, including DAO Tooling, creator products, etc., hoping to become a vehicle for DAO operation and a consumption scenario for tokens;
Project acceleration. Leveraging the advantages of DAO's talents, influence, resources and user quality, it provides support for early projects in terms of team building, product and economic system design, market operation and promotion, cold start, user acquisition, and resource docking, to help good projects develop and grow, and the community receives token benefits from the project.
In short, BuidlerDAO has become an “infrastructure” for talents and projects, bringing together researchers, developers, market operators, etc., an organization owned by Buidler and the project founder, where ideas collide and create valuable projects for the industry. The main purpose is openness and co-construction.
Foresight News: What is the current overall structure of BuidlerDAO, and what are the specific business lines?
Niels:Currently, BuiedlerDAO has established five major guilds (Guilds), each responsible for a specific business, namely:
Investment Research Association: Gathering talent from researchers. There are built-in economic model groups, second-level research groups, etc., which are mainly output in the form of articles;
Technical Association: Gather developer talent. Develop technical exchanges, community development, hackerhouses, etc.;
Operation Guild: Gather market operation talents. Guild operation, content media, marketing, external cooperation, etc., including Twitter, Discord, Podcast, Instant, Xiaohongshu, etc.;
Education Association: Video-based hardcore course output to help people who have already entered Web3 grow into Buidlers;
Incubation Guild: Incubate and accelerate projects within and outside the community, and introduce various resources and support for projects.
Members of the guild have four levels of status, and as their contributions increase, they are divided into: travelers, citizens, contributors, and builders. Among them, builders, as the highest status, are distinguished by field: researcher, engineer, operator, evangelist, navigator, and diplomat.
The Guild will set up a team (Squad), mainly to promote specific matters and ensure efficiency, and focus on implementing specific deliverables and goals, such as economic model groups, market brand groups, etc., and a special team has also been set up for this acceleration camp.
In addition to the above specific business-level architecture design, BuidlerDAO's “governance” architecture includes:
BuidlerLabs: BuidlerDAO's founding team all require full time.
Guardian (Guardian):
Swordsman (Resolution Guardian): It is also a multi-signatory to the treasury, has the power to veto any resolution, and is established to avoid evil;
Governor (Guardians of Governance): composed of guild and group leaders, responsible for community governance;
Partners (node guardians): Mainly key partners, channel resources, city nodes, etc.
Foresight News: Buidler and DAO aren't very positive terms in the industry. First, how do they actually count as a Buidler, or how does BuidlerDAO define a Buidler? Also, how do you cause a chemical reaction between Buidlers?
Niels:Buidler means builder. I think the meaning of builder and entrepreneur is similar; at least they need to do serious projects and not do evil in the Web3 industry. Also, I think that as a Buidler, you have to explore and try to solve some problems with blockchain technology. As long as you have subjective will, it's OK even if you don't have enough ability. After all, exploration is always tortuous, and even failure may bring some inspiration to latecomers.
How the chemical reaction takes place is a good question. As a community, people often start with people in the community. They think they can meet excellent or interesting people in it, with the exception of communities that make money. Just as we thought when organizing developer events, many developers have technical ability, but they also only have technical ability. They are repeatedly making products that are unlikely to work, or have made them, and have no ability to market; on the other hand, some researchers are deeply involved and suffer from not having a technical partner. In fact, we all need each other. We haven't actually done this yet, but we have some ideas ready to be put into practice:
Establishing shallow connections online. This one is relatively easy. We need to let the Investment Research Association, for example, open the Research Chain Game to some developers, and vice versa. Moreover, the requirement is open discussion, which must not be limited to a single output;
Build deep connections IRL or through projects. Many people think that there is no value in running many offline activities or online hackathons, but this is a great opportunity for people to have a deep connection. After talking in depth offline and working on projects together, I learned how unreliable they are, what kind of personalities they have, and whether they can work together. There are many key things that initially stem from a coincidence when it comes to creating dots. We will organize this kind of community event at city and industry conferences from time to time later;
The atmosphere is important. Communities cannot grow aggressively, such as fission; organic growth is needed. The number of contributors is much more important than the number of users. There is a saying, if a project can always have 100 die-hard fans no matter what happens, then this project will definitely not be bad.
Foresight News: (Taking on the previous question) Currently, many DAOs are essentially just companies without a corporate entity. Under a centralized corporate system, mature management systems have yet to be selected, and cultivating a corporate culture requires a lot of trial and error. What is BuidlerDAO's understanding of DAOs, and what are the unique features of organizations like DAOs?
Niels:In fact, there are entities behind many DAOs. The well-known DAO organizations you've heard of: FWB, BanklessDAO, and SeedClub all have corporate entities. BanklessDAO's first proposal was to set up a company and allocate 25% of the tokens to it. When it comes to financing, paying taxes, etc., you still need a single entity to make it more convenient.
Both companies and DAOs are forms of organization. The essential problems and needs have not changed; they only use different methods to satisfy different human personalities. DAOs will not replace companies; they will have an advantage and be more profitable in certain scenarios.
I would simply define DAO as a community whose rules are defined by smart contracts. Decentralization has gone to the center of people, but is centered around rules that are open, transparent, and cannot be tampered with at will. In this way, trustless and trustless is achieved, so everyone can spontaneously do things that are in the interests of the organization on the premise that they believe in the rules. I think DAOs are unique in that:
Bottom-up, emerging innovation, relative freedom: The same proposition, for example, SBT, in the company the CEO assigns a team to work; but in Web3, Vitalik proposed this idea, and then Ethereum builders around the world put it into practice with their own ideas, and who made it is amazing. This is a bottom-up, spontaneous act. People are more likely to think of this as their own business rather than an assigned task.
The relationship between DAO members and organizations is relatively loose, sacrificing efficiency, but it also makes the actions taking place within the DAO more proactive and more likely to generate innovative things. Ethereum can be understood as a big DAO. Vitalik has great influence, but objectively, everyone is still building it together. No one has assigned you to do anything, and it's incredible that so many people are building this ecosystem.
Incentives are compatible: Back to social DAOs like ours, the majority of DAO members should ideally be volunteers; they have their own jobs or are active in multiple organizations. Because DAOs don't require one person to continuously produce at a high density. Taking BuidlerDAO as an example, many investors, developers, CEOs, CTOs, etc. of startup projects are gathered here. They participate in the community and can link to projects and talents here, which can help them in their own work. Their own work also provides value in the DAO. This achieves incentives and compatibility, reduces costs, and makes the organization safer when efficiency and pace are relatively slow.
Consensus is important and will take longer: DAOs are built on consensus, and compared to startups, they also require love and faith in the early stages. However, DAOs will be in a state of “generating electricity for love” or “paying for dreams” for a longer period of time. In the early days of a startup, there was probably no money, so a few people just went in. However, after it gradually grew larger, more people were required to work full time and use cash to guarantee efficiency and output; however, the DAO concept is decentralization, respect for individuals, and is more a spontaneous and emerging process, so the pace is relatively slower, and everyone will share the benefits after getting things done together. Everyone's contributions will be recorded in the process, so “options” are used as incentives for more and longer. Of course, efficiency and decentralization can be balanced through progressive decentralization.
Foresight News: How does BuidlerDAO manage this large-scale distributed organization, and what experiences can you share?
Niels:I don't think it's appropriate to call it “management”; it's more about governance and guidance. Since the establishment of BuidlerDAO, we have summarized some principles that are relatively capable of solving a variety of problems:
The first is longevity and sustainability. Focus on what value the DAO is creating (where am I going? Why am I fighting). The early days of DAOs were more like being interested or believing in one thing. To be able to continue to attract everyone, we need to have a good mission and vision, so that everyone feels like they are actually working together towards an attainable and valuable goal; we also need to reach a certain place within a limited period of time, so that everyone feels that they can continue to move forward and maintain a good pace. After all, everyone has so many choices.
The second is effective governance. Balance efficiency and decentralization. Decentralization is a means rather than an end. The community must not be allowed to fall into internal governance. Most members join to go to one place; it is best to establish the governance structure and rules as soon as possible. Here are a few practical suggestions:
The combination of decentralized and centralized structures, as mentioned above, requires local centralization such as Squad to ensure efficiency;
Hierarchical governance voting (full, internal, individual decisions), where everyone votes together is a form of laziness in governance. It dampens enthusiasm, and at the same time, voting is not more correct. Instead, professionals are required to do professional work and vote within an appropriate range;
Progressive decentralization. Centralized initiation, weak centralized management, decentralized governance. The initiating team needs to establish a mission and vision at an early stage, attract early believers to join, and establish a relatively complete and upgradable governance mechanism as soon as possible, which can be used, then gradually spread consensus, attract talents, and release power.
Third, incentives are compatible. A good atmosphere is important. DAOs are unfit for fission; they are too aggressive. It's more like holding up a torch to attract people looking for flames. They may not be sure at first, but in the process of interaction, they gradually discover that everyone is one type of person, and then the flames get bigger and bigger. So we want to attract people who do what they want and the results are in line with the interests of the entire community, while reducing friction costs and upfront expenses. Therefore, it is necessary to speak out more so that people on the same frequency can hear this broadcast.
Foresight News: The participants in BuidlerDAO's latest round of financing include institutions such as Sequoia China. The projects invested by such institutions are generally projects with clear revenue models and expectations for issuing coins. For BuidlerDAO, which is biased towards the community, how did the team communicate with investment institutions, and what points might touch investors?
Niels:It is true that many people are unable to obtain this investment logic because the explicit part is limited, and some strategies that are still in progress are not easy to understand, and there are “false practices.” What you can see is mainly community and content, but in the end, our actual value is still based on products, our products, and accelerated projects, so in terms of material returns, everyone believes that there is a closed loop of logic and this expectation. In the current design, the value of the final token is not only the only governance right that most communities have, but also usage scenarios and revenue rights.
The general logic of investing can be understood as selecting excellent racers on a good track. DAOs are another opportunity given to humans by blockchain technology to define organizational forms, and they do have certain advantages in some areas. This is a race of opportunities, and some investors will appreciate the value and opportunity.
We have convinced everyone that this is a reliable team. Whether it's past experience or the fact that we have established influence in the industry within a short period of time after our establishment, it can reflect the team's underlying qualities, such as execution, strategic planning ability, and that the community really has many excellent builders and formed a good consensus; in addition, many investors mentioned that they really like the tone of our team, such as pragmatism, long-term principles, etc., and there are also feedback that they are very smart and have a sense of conviction, all of which should have played a positive role.
Of course, this trust is also very heavy. We still hope to get things done, bring positive value to the industry, and live up to everyone's constant support.
Foresight News: How to join BuidlerDAO? What are BuidlerDAO's plans for incentive models such as points and tokens in the ecosystem, and will Buidlers who actually pay get a blank check?
Niels:There are no barriers to joining. However, becoming a core contributor mainly depends on whether you actually agree with the DAO concept, plus your ability to act, so it's entirely up to you. If you have both, it's easy to become a core contributor. For example, Head of the Education Association, previously signed up via email, started with the smallest things, grew with the community, and finally was recognized by the community as one of the five swordsmen. Currently, there are more than 100 active contributors to the community, but the actual number of back-office registrants has exceeded 1,000, and most of them are still queuing up and unactivated.
The white paper was published in July of this year, and contributions from community contributors will be recorded on-chain ($BRP) and will necessarily be mapped to future tokens ($BUIDL). Contributors can receive USDT every month from the treasury due to their on-chain reputation, or they can choose not to receive them in exchange for more tokens. Here, $BRP is like recording options through PoW, while $BUIDL is a tradable stock. The operation of receiving USDT is analogous to cashing out part of the option value ahead of time.
When calculating benefits, community status is taken into account as a weight. The higher the status, the more weight, so as to reward long-term builders.
Foresight News: What are your considerations for participating in the launch of the SpringX Acceleration Camp? What differentiates SpringX?
Niels:BuidlerDAO itself is a community where talents and projects gather. Since its inception, many projects have been found and incubated. Over the past year of development, we have established industry influence, accumulated key resources, completed the DAO architecture design and governance white paper, and refined a series of standard benefits. As a DAO, we want to strengthen the links between projects, so batch (cohort) acceleration makes it easier for everyone to establish deep connections; due to the experience of Sequoia accelerator YUE, we feel that deep relationships are very valuable.
We believe that a bear market is not easy, and construction is not easy. Entrepreneurs should support each other, and we have been helped by many senior projects along the way. In particular, Chinese people are treated with some prejudice in Web3. We should also gather to warm up, learn from excellent projects that have already been launched, and give full play to the advantages of the Chinese people. After talking with some of the leading project founders, we discovered that everyone actually had this original intention, so we had the privilege of launching SpringX with more than 10 project founders and investment institutions. The agency will invest 20 million US dollars to accelerate project investment, and the project founder will also participate deeply in each phase of the acceleration camp to bring support to everyone.
In terms of differentiation, SpringX's features include:
Founder helps founder. Overall, we wanted to build a real network of founders. It was co-sponsored by the founders to better understand what founders need and what issues they have, including project development and founder growth, such as token model design, financing strategies, and even improving the founder's English proficiency.
Sponsor's deep link. The “lecturers” here don't finish speaking; this is too shallow. We will continue to have offline communication and activities with everyone, get to know every project and founder, and establish deep connections; and the course content is closed to ensure access to exclusive and key information, strategies, and techniques.
Control quantity and correlate.There are only about 10 projects per issue, which ensures that they are very familiar with each other; tokens sold during the same period will form a token pool, which will be jointly held by participants in the same period (equivalent to an exchange token) to establish deep binding. It is not a one-way link between projects and accelerators, but a network connection between all projects.
International layout and development.Courses, training and activities are conducted offline in several key cities around the world to help project parties open up local resources and establish connections with project parties. If Web3 entrepreneurs want to grow big, they must go out; at least take a look at this to have more options.
Community and resource network.There are 14 sponsors of the project this time, covering different segments of the race track, more geographically based overseas, and basically covering key markets around the world. These projects can provide technical, product, and other support for participating projects. BuidlerDAO, for example, can be used as a common talent community and resource gathering place to help design economic models, organize development activities, and promote content.
Overall, this is an accelerator launched from the founder's perspective, and a series of designs are carried out from the founder's personal experience, “By Founders, for Founders.” Overseas, including AllianceDAO and SeedClub, have done very well. The Chinese world also needs such a careful and serious accelerator to move to a larger stage with the project. It just so happens to be a bear market, and spring is between cold winter and midsummer. We hope that projects will be ready to move forward, innovate and take a brave leap forward here.
