Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

Sydecar Director of Revenue Halle Kaplan-Allen goes in depth on her article about DAOs

10 Oct 2022 · 1 min

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In this interview segment, Halle Kaplan-Allen, Director of Revenue at Sydecar, reflects on her 2021 article about Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and how the rise of Web3 has reshaped venture infrastructure. She notes that DAOs have moved through a classic hype cycle—initial excitement followed by a cooling period and more critical scrutiny. Kaplan-Allen argues that the perceived benefits of DAOs—transparency, accessibility, and efficiency—are not exclusive to Web3; similar outcomes can be achieved using existing Web2 technologies. The conversation highlights her central thesis that while Web3 introduces novel structures, the underlying goals can be met without abandoning established tools, prompting a nuanced view of how venture capital should adapt to emerging decentralized models.

Chapters

One of my other favorite opening lines of yours is, I regret to inform you that today I'm going to write about DAOs. And I'm curious, you wrote this in 2021, but how do you think the emergence of Web3 has shifted venture from an infrastructure perspective? Yeah, it is important to note that I wrote this, what, like 10 months ago? Because I think DAOs have totally followed the hype cycle of kind of like huge wave of hype that's died down and people have become a little bit more critical in their analysis and evaluation of, of the structures. But the main point of my article was like, I felt like people were getting— were really emphasizing, you know, like DAOs are good because they automatically result in, in those things you said, like transparency, accessibility, efficiency. And what I did in the article was basically break down the way that existing technology, not Web3 technology, Web2 technology, if you will, can result in those same things. And in the same vein,