Building Conviction In Magical Founders and Projects

I often get asked what we look for at Delphi Ventures as we hunt for new investable projects. The dream would be to have unlimited time to due diligence every project and founder, but given the ever-increasing speed of the space, investing in crypto and DeFi often requires you to vet projects extremely quickly. Let’s dive into what’s important. 

This is far from an exhaustive due diligence list, but four key areas I look for in any new project are the team, community, its products, and its tokeneconomics. 

Founders are the lifeblood and energy behind every project. Their ability to remain proactive, and overcome obstacles in near real-time given the pace of crypto is of vital importance to their success. Founders have to be able to tell a memorable story and gain the trust and love of their communities and have the technical chops (or a co-founder has, or the project is able tor recruit someone who does) to out build the competition. 

While there are numerous examples of anon founders (Bitcoin, Thorchain, Tezos, Saffron, etc), having a team with a public face could grow increasingly important as these members have social skin in the game and can’t just pack up and leave as easily. Anon founders can push the boundaries that constrain known founders, but extra caution has to be taken to understanding their history and motivations. The exception here is when a project needs an anon founder to push the envelope where regulations may hamper known founders. 

As a project grows, it’s vital for founders to open the door and sign their own resignation for responsibilities and cede these to an incentivized community which could crowdsource the future of a project in real-time, growing faster than one or a few founders ever could by maintaining their throne. 

Vitalik invented Ethereum and never called himself a CEO, opening the door and his arms to an immeasur