Exclusive interview with the founder of BuidlerDAO: Thousands of people lined up to enter, what is so different about this DAO?

Web3 talent and project network BuidlerDAO announced at the end of August that it had received US$2 million in seed round financing from Sequoia China Seed Fund, SevenX and other institutions. Three weeks later, on Wednesday, Niels, founder of BuidlerDAO, and a number of institutions in the industry Co-launched the Web3 startup accelerator Spring Xcelerator (springx.net) with the founders of important projects, providing Web3 entrepreneurs in the seed round or angel round with a US$20 million capital pool, systematic courses, and founder network and resource support.

DAO has always been a controversial term. Everyone's exploration of this new organizational form has never stopped, but the process has been extremely "twisting and bizarre." As a rising star, BuidlerDAO has received support from institutions including Sequoia China through the concept of DAO at a time when the financing market has almost reached a freezing point.

What’s so special about BuildlerDAO? What kind of development potential do investors see in this field? With many questions, the author conducted an interview with Niels, the founder of BuildlerDAO:

Foresight News: What is the background of the founding team of BuildlerDAO, and why did they choose the Web3 industry together?

Niels: The initiating team of BuildlerDAO basically all have Internet backgrounds. I studied at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for my undergraduate degree and graduated from Yale University for my master's degree. I prefer to toss around. Including internships and entrepreneurship, I have worked for 14 companies in total, including VC (Zhen Fund), consulting (Bain), data engineer (Didi), etc. After graduating in 2020, I worked as a product manager for transaction links in Alibaba. , one year later, he joined the startup company Yahaha to do economic system planning, and later joined the Web3 entrepreneurial team to make DID products. Because his project received financing, he chose to start a full-time business.

Other members of the founding team include people from major Internet companies such as Tencent and JD.com, as well as people with many years of VC+ entrepreneurship, consulting + entrepreneurship experience. They are basically all serial entrepreneurs with science and engineering backgrounds.

As for why I chose Web3, I had the opportunity to work on the economic system in a startup company, study the economic model of games, and pay attention to Gamefi, so I learned about blockchain technology. After knowing that the bottom layer is the logic of a distributed ledger, I was attracted by technological innovation. Shocking, I believe that the decentralized, transparent and traceable features will lead to new solutions to some problems and the birth of many new things. And I personally enjoy researching and designing complex systems.

Others in the team also have some ideas of their own. Some people think that Web3 is a more inclusive environment than Web2 and is not fully defined. Although it is more uncertain, it is also more challenging. Some people think that as an emerging industry, Web3 is very equal. There is no qualification limit, and it may also be a structural opportunity for the post-90/95 generation, which is worth taking the risk; in addition, some people believe that Web3 has brought a trend of innovative paradigms, giving ordinary people the opportunity to participate in the construction of a new ideal society, and at the bottom such as There are numerous opportunities for exploration in areas such as technology, social culture, and products.

Foresight News: Why did you choose DAO as a track? What does BuidlerDAO want to do?

Niels: The choice of DAO was accidental. We started with NFT tools, but later the market entered a bear market, and the product was not launched after completion. However, we found that the community gathered many Builders who wanted to build the industry just like us, and found that DAO was a way to make the community productive. After studying the DAO organizational operating models at home and abroad, we recognized the DAO model.

BuidlerDAO As the name suggests, we hope to build a community jointly owned and participated by Buidler from the Chinese language and beyond. "Co-ownership" requires decentralization, and "participation" is precisely "autonomous participation."

As for what BuildlerDAO wants to do, a summary includes:

• Talent community . Researchers, developers, and market operators are the core strength of each project. They are respectively responsible for the three key links of determining the direction, implementation, and market introduction. A good project cannot be completed without even one link. We hope that more such Buidlers will participate, connect with each other, and achieve mutual success;
• Content branding . Including articles, audio, video and other content forms. Buidler produces excellent content, attracts more talents to join, and then produces more high-quality content, forming a virtuous cycle and establishing a hard-core, in-depth, original and neutral content brand. In Web3, positive influence and word-of-mouth are more important;
• Product practice . Conduct innovative product attempts around the elements of DAO, including DAO Tooling, creator products, etc., hoping to become the carrier of DAO operation and the consumption scenario of tokens;
• Project acceleration . Leverage DAO's advantages in talent, influence, resources and user quality to provide support for early projects in terms of team building, product and economic system design, market operation and promotion, cold start, user acquisition, resource docking, etc., and help good projects As it grows, the community gains token benefits from the project.

In short, BuidlerDAO has become an "infrastructure" for talents and projects, gathering researchers, developers, market operators and other organizations jointly owned by Buidler and project founders, where ideas collide and projects of value to the industry are born. The main theme is openness and joint construction.

Foresight News: What is the current overall structure of BuildlerDAO, and what are its specific business lines?

Niels: Currently BuiedlerDAO has established five major guilds (Guild), each of which is responsible for a specific business, namely:

• Investment Research Association : Gathering researcher talents. There are internal economic model groups, secondary research groups, etc., which mainly output in the form of articles;
• Technology Guild : Gather developer talents. Carry out technical exchanges, community development, hackerhouse, etc.;
• Operations Guild : Gather market operation talents. Guild operations, content media, marketing, external cooperation, etc. The carriers include Twitter, Discord, podcasts, Jiji, Xiaohongshu, etc.;
• Education Guild : video-based hard-core course output to help those who have entered Web3 grow into Buildler;
• Incubation Guild : Incubate and accelerate projects within and outside the community, and introduce various resources and support to projects.

Members in the guild have four levels of status. As their contributions increase, they are divided into: travelers, citizens, contributors, and builders. Among them, builders, as the highest status, are divided according to their fields: researchers, engineers, operations officers, evangelists, navigators, and diplomats.

The association will set up a squad (Squad), which is mainly responsible for promoting specific matters and ensuring efficiency, focusing on the implementation of specific deliverables and goals, such as the economic model group, market brand group, etc., and a special project was also established for this acceleration camp group.

In addition to the above specific business-level architecture design, BuildlerDAO's "governance" architecture includes:

BuidlerLabs: The initiating team of BuidlerDAO requires full-time work.

Guardian:

1. Sword Bearer (Resolution Guardian): At the same time, he is the treasury multi-signer and has the right to veto any resolution. He is established to avoid doing evil;
2. Governor: composed of guild and group leaders, responsible for community governance;
3. Partner (node ​​guardian): mainly key partners, channel resources, city nodes, etc.

Foresight News: Buildler and DAO are not very positive terms in the industry. First of all, what exactly is a Buildler, or how does BuildlerDAO define a Buildler? And how to create a chemical reaction between Buidler?

Niels: Buildler means builder. I think builders and entrepreneurs have similar meanings. At least they need to do serious projects in the Web3 industry and not do evil things. In addition, I think that as a Builder, you have to explore a little and try to use blockchain technology to solve some problems. As long as there is subjective willingness, it is okay even if the ability is insufficient. After all, exploration is always tortuous, and even if it fails, it may bring some benefits to those who come after. Inspire.

How chemical reactions occur is a good question. As a community, people often come first because of the people in the community, thinking that they can meet excellent or interesting people there, except of course for communities that make money. Just like when we organized developer activities, we also thought that many developers have technical skills, but they only have technical skills. They are repeatedly making products that have a high probability of not working, or they have made them but have no ability to bring them to the market; On the one hand, some researchers are digging very deep and suffer from the lack of technical partners. In fact, everyone needs each other. We haven't finished this yet, but we already have some ideas ready to be put into practice:

• Make shallow connections online . This is relatively easy. We need to allow, for example, the Investment Research Association’s research on blockchain games to be open to some developers, and vice versa. Moreover, it is required to be an open discussion and not limited to a single output;
• Build deep connections IRL or through projects . Many people think that holding many offline activities and online hackathons is of little value, but this is a good opportunity to create deep connections between people. After having in-depth conversations offline and working on projects together, we found out whether they were reliable, what their personalities were like, and whether we could do things together. Many of the key things in creating dots originated from a coincidence. We will organize such community events at city and industry conferences from time to time;
• Atmosphere is important . The community cannot grow radically, such as fission, and needs to grow organically. The number of contributors is much more important than the number of users. There is a saying that goes well, if a project can always have 100 die-hard fans no matter what happens, then the project will definitely be good.

Foresight News: (Continuing from the previous question) Currently, there are many DAOs that are essentially just companies without corporate entities. Under a centralized corporate system, mature management systems are difficult to find, and the cultivation of corporate culture also requires a lot of trial and error. What is BuidlerDAO’s understanding of DAO, and what do you think is unique about an organization like DAO?

Niels: In fact, there are entities behind many DAOs. The well-known DAO organizations that you have heard of: FWB, BanklessDAO, and SeedClub all have corporate entities. The first proposal of BanklessDAO is to set up a company and allocate 25% of the tokens to it. In terms of financing, paying taxes, etc., it still needs a main body to make it more convenient.

The company and the DAO are both organizational forms, and the essential problems and needs have not changed. They are just using different ways to meet different human natures. DAO will not replace the company, but will have more advantages and benefits in certain scenarios.

I would simply define DAO as a community with rules defined by smart contracts. Decentralization removes the center of people, and instead centers on rules that are open, transparent, and cannot be tampered with at will. This achieves Trustless and trustless, so everyone can voluntarily do things that are in the interests of the organization on the premise of believing in the rules. things. What I think is unique about DAO is:

Bottom-up, innovation emerging, relative freedom : the same proposition, for example, in SBT, in the company, the CEO assigns a team to do it; but in Web3, it was vitalik who proposed the idea, and then Ethereum builders around the world Use your own ideas to implement it, whoever makes it will be the best. This is bottom-up, spontaneous behavior. Everyone will regard this as their own business rather than an assigned task.

The relationship between DAO members and the organization is relatively loose, which sacrifices efficiency, but also makes the actions taking place within the DAO more proactive and easier to produce innovative things. Ethereum can be understood as a large DAO. Vitalik has great influence, but objectively everyone still builds it together. No one assigns you what to do, but it’s incredible to have so many people building this ecosystem.

Incentive compatibility : Back to a Social DAO like ours, ideally, most members of the DAO should be part-time, and they have their own jobs or are active in multiple organizations. Because DAO does not require one person to produce continuously at high density. Take BuildlerDAO as an example. There are many investors, developers, CEOs, CTOs of entrepreneurial projects, etc. gathered here. They participate in the community part-time and can link to projects and talents here, which can help them with their own work and their own work. Your own job allows you to provide value in the DAO, which achieves incentive compatibility and reduces costs. In the case of relatively slow efficiency and rhythm, the organization will be safer.

Consensus is important and takes longer : DAO relies on consensus to build, and compared with startups, it also requires love and belief in the early stages. But DAO will be in a state of "generating electricity for love" or "paying for dreams" for a longer period of time. In the early stages of a start-up company, there may be no money, so a few people just all in. But as it gradually grows, more people will be needed to work full-time, and cash will be used to ensure efficiency and output through contract constraints; but the concept of DAO is decentralization, respect for individuals, and more of a spontaneous and emergent process, so the rhythm is relatively Slower, and everyone will share the benefits after doing things together. Everyone's contribution will be recorded in the process, so "options" can be used as incentives for more and longer periods of time. Of course, efficiency and decentralization can be balanced through progressive decentralization.

Foresight News: How does BuildlerDAO manage this large-scale distributed organization? 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 can relatively solve a variety of problems:

The first is long-termism and sustainability. Focus on what value the DAO is creating (where am I going? What am I fighting for). In the early days, DAO was more based on interest or belief in one thing. To be able to continue to attract everyone, you need to have a good mission and vision, so that everyone feels that they are really working together towards an achievable and valuable goal; and you need to reach a certain place within a limited time, so that everyone feels that they continue to have something. When running, you need to maintain a good rhythm. After all, everyone has many choices.

The second is effective governance. Balance efficiency and decentralization. Decentralization is a means rather than an end. The community cannot be trapped in internal conflicts of governance. Most members join to go to one place. It is best to formulate the governance structure and rules early. Here are some practical suggestions:

• The combination of decentralization and centralized structure, as mentioned before, requires partial centralization like Squad to ensure efficiency;
• Hierarchical governance voting (all-hands, internal, individual adjudication) where everything is voted on together is a form of governance laziness that will dampen motivation and make voting less accurate. Instead, professionals are needed to do professional things and vote within the appropriate scope;
• Progressive decentralization. Centralized initiation, weakly centralized management, and 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 scalable governance mechanism as soon as possible that can be used, and then gradually spread consensus, attract talents, and release power.

The third is incentive compatibility. A good atmosphere is important. DAO is not suitable for fission and is too radical. It's more like holding up a torch to attract those who are looking for the light. They may not be sure at first, but during the interaction, they gradually discover that everyone is the same kind of person, and then the flames grow bigger and bigger. So we want to attract people who do what they want and the results are consistent with the interests of the entire community, while the friction costs and early expenses are low. Therefore, we need to speak more loudly so that people on the same frequency can hear the broadcast.

Foresight News: 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 currency issuance. For BuidlerDAO, which is more community-oriented, How does the team communicate with investment institutions, and what points may have touched investors?

Niels: It is true that many people cannot get this investment logic, because the explicit part is limited, and some ongoing strategies are not easy to understand, and there is a "false education". What everyone can see is mainly the community and content, but our final actual value is still in the products, our in-house products and accelerated projects, so in terms of material returns, everyone believes that it is a logical closed loop and has this expected. In the current design, the value of the final token is not only the governance rights of most communities, but also usage scenarios and income rights.

The general logic of investment can be understood as selecting excellent racers on a good track. DAO is another opportunity that blockchain technology gives humans to define organizational forms, and it does have certain advantages in some aspects. This is a track with opportunities, and some investors will recognize the value and opportunity of this.

We convinced everyone that this is a reliable team. Whether it is past experience or the industry influence we have established in a short period of time after our establishment, it can reflect the underlying qualities of the team, such as execution, strategic planning capabilities, and the fact that the community does have many excellent builders and has formed a good In addition, many investors have mentioned that they like the tone of our team, such as being practical and long-term, and some have reported that they are very smart and have a sense of belief. These should all have a positive effect.

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 continuous support.

Foresight News: How to join BuildlerDAO? What plans does BuidlerDAO have for incentive models such as points and tokens in the ecosystem? Will the Buidlers who really pay get a blank check?

Niels: There is no barrier to joining. But becoming a core contributor mainly depends on whether you really agree with the concept of DAO, coupled with your own ability to act, so it completely depends on you. If you have both, it will be easy to become a core contributor. For example, Head, our education guild, previously signed up through email. It started with the smallest things, grew with the community, and was finally recognized by the community as one of the five sword bearers. Currently, there are more than 100 active contributors in the community, but the actual number of background sign-ups exceeds 1,000, and most of them are still in queue and inactive.

The white paper was announced in July this year, and the contributions of community contributors will be recorded on the chain ($BRP) and will inevitably be mapped to future tokens ($BUIDL). Contributors can receive USDT from the treasury every month based on their reputation on the chain, or they can choose not to receive it in exchange for more tokens. Here, $BRP is like a recorded option through PoW, and $BUIDL is a tradable stock. The operation of receiving USDT is analogous to realizing part of the option value in advance.

When calculating benefits, community status will be considered as a weight. The higher the status, the more weighted it will be to reward long-term builders.

Foresight News: What are your considerations for participating in launching the SpringX accelerator camp? What is the difference of SpringX?

Niels: BuildlerDAO itself is a community where talents and projects gather. Since its launch, many projects have come to it for incubation. After one year of development, we have established industry influence, accumulated key resources, and completed the architectural design of DAO. and governance white paper, and also polished a series of standard rights and interests. As a DAO, we hope to strengthen the connection between projects, so batch acceleration makes it easier for everyone to establish deep connections; due to the experience of Sequoia Accelerator YUE, we feel that deep connections are very valuable.

We believe that the 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 stick together to keep warm, learn from the excellent projects that have been launched, and give full play to the advantages of the Chinese people. After communicating with some leading project founders, we found that everyone actually has this original intention, so we were fortunate to launch SpringX together with more than ten project founders and investment institutions. The organization will invest US$20 million to accelerate project investment, and the founder of the project will also be deeply involved in each acceleration camp to provide support to everyone.

In terms of differentiation, SpringX features include:

• founder helps founder . Overall, we want to build a real network of founders. This was co-initiated by the founder, who has a better understanding of what the founder needs and what the immediate issues are, including project development and founder growth, such as token model design, financing strategies, and even improving the founder's English level.
• Sponsor's deep link . The "teachers" here don't just leave after finishing the lecture. This is too shallow. We will continue offline communication and activities with everyone, get to know each project and founder, and establish in-depth connections; and the course content is closed-door, ensuring that you can obtain exclusive and key information, strategies and techniques.
• Control quantity and generate correlation. There are only about 10 projects in each period to ensure that each other is very familiar with each other; the tokens transferred by the projects in the same period will form a token pool, which is jointly held by students in the same period (equivalent to exchanging tokens), establishing a deep binding. Not a one-way connection between projects and accelerators, but a network connection between all projects.
• International layout and development. Conduct offline course training and activities in several key cities around the world to help project parties connect with local resources and establish contact with project parties. If Web3 entrepreneurs want to make it big, they must go global, or at least take a look so that they have more options.
• Community and resource network. There are 14 project sponsors this time, covering different market segments. Geographically, there are more overseas bases, basically covering key global markets. These projects can provide technical, product and other support to participating projects. Taking BuildlerDAO as an example, it can serve as a common talent community and resource gathering place to help with economic model design, organization of development activities, content promotion, etc.

Overall, this is an accelerator launched from the founder's perspective, with a series of designs based on the founder's personal experience, "By founders, for founders." Overseas, including AllianceDAO and SeedClub, they are doing quite well. The Chinese world also needs such a dedicated and serious accelerator to move to a bigger stage with the project. It happens to be a bear market right now, and spring is somewhere between the depths of winter and the height of summer. It is hoped that projects here will gain momentum, innovation will emerge, and brave leaps will be made.