Empowering Web3 Startups at Orange DAO - Anton Mishchenko | Interview #techukrainiansinlondon

But we learned how to make it sexy. We learned how to talk about it to investors and clients. We are not an investor; we are a private members club, a community. Some companies approach us as investors, but then they start interacting with everything we do. Can we say, 'Look, we are Ukrainians, there is a war, but despite that, we are building'?

Well, that's a long story, but let's be very concise. Briefly: by education I am a musician, a pianist. I realized very early that this is not for me. I don't want to sit for hours at the piano playing music. I lived in the UK since 2006, so I've been here a long time. After that, I moved to America, worked, returned to Ukraine, moved back to the UK—so a lot has happened. Secondly, I am the co-founder of the company YouTeam, which in 2018 participated in Y Combinator. It is a marketplace for hiring engineers and building distributed remote development teams. And most importantly, what I do now: I am a venture partner in a community called Orange DAO, which is an investment DAO and a community of web3 builders creating cool projects in crypto, blockchain, and metaverse. We build this industry, help founders build startups, invest in them, and do a huge number of cool activities in this field.

Real Life MBA. That's how I imagine what an MBA should be for an entrepreneur. That was Y Combinator. They don't expect you to come and learn something; they already consider you an expert. Their task is to boost you as fast as possible, so you get the right people around you, the right knowledge, the right opinions from all the successful YC partners and network—people who have already done what you are doing ten times over. All that significantly shortens your path to potential success. Their ultimate goal is to shorten your path to the next round and give you the expertise to achieve that. What did I scale up after YC? I think everything shifted to another level. Starting from understanding the product and the process of building a company—not just a business, but a company—on top of the technological part we had. It boosted us in building organization and culture. We gained many insights about the product because we constantly experimented. We realized how much we could push ourselves and work hard. After that, we also boosted our understanding of how to work with both investors and customers—how to pitch correctly and talk about our product. We used to joke that our product was unsexy—it's about outsourcing, hiring people, not some AI startup that's on everyone's mind. But we learned how to make it sexy, how to talk about it to investors and clients—basically everyone.

Orange DAO is a community of top web3 builders creating products in crypto, blockchain, metaverse. It is very early stage—founders with previous success in building a cool startup. We invest a certain amount of money, roughly following Y Combinator's thesis: we invest a small amount of money in a large number of startups. Our average check is about $100,000—small—but besides that, we provide a huge community of 1,500 members, 3/4 of whom are YC alumni. We provide lots of connections, member benefits that help founders boost themselves. But they must be builders with previous successful experience, building something in web3. That's the most important part.

Partially yes, but with the difference that it is mostly remote, although we do see IRL events. I just had a call discussing how important that is for building a quality community. We constantly organize conferences, meetups for members. But in some ways, it is indeed similar to YC.

We do follow-ons relatively rarely, but we do them. Of course, we support our portfolio companies because we are not an investor; we are a private members club, a community. Some companies join us as investors, but then they start interacting with everything we do, and it's a different story. So we give intros to other investors and help with many other things constantly. We have various programs, from treasury management to a mini-accelerator every six months for companies to boost themselves and set goals.

Yes, we plan to increase both the check size and the number of companies we invest in. An insight we've seen in the last six months: we are a relatively young organization—officially launched in November 2021, so almost two years. We plan to scale everything, but the main insight is that it's relatively hard to compete with investment funds that already run acceleration programs. When a big fund like a16z launches something similar at the seed stage, everyone goes down the pipeline to invest at seed. It's hard to compete. So we go one step lower—we are essentially a program and support for founders who are just starting to build their new company. We can really help them during this pre-seed phase. We see now that after we started our fellowship program for early-stage founders in web3, many organizations have launched very similar programs. But in this niche, we can dominate, own the niche, and be the best to build the product and move forward.

We don't specialize in that; we don't have a focus on Ukrainian companies. There are several companies where I accidentally found out that there are Ukrainian co-founders or founders. I don't know if they publicly advertise that. For example, there is a Ukrainian CTO, but the rest of the team might be Americans, British, etc. So such companies exist, but it was not a focus for DAO. However, it's always nice to see compatriots. Just last week I spoke with a founder of a portfolio company, and he said that their entire development team, CTO, and part of the team are Ukrainians. He booked a call with me to introduce the CTO. It's a large company that works with Coinbase and other big players in web3.

Of course, I feel great love for my compatriots. I cannot say that a Ukrainian company or one with Ukrainian founders stands out in a specific way. The task of a startup is to survive, to grow the pie or capture a piece of the market. I cannot say that by nationality you can distinguish that a Ukrainian startup is more resourceful or less. We always have the problem that it's hard for founders to enter foreign markets, but I think in recent years that has been changing for the better. I remember when we got into Y Combinator in 2018, it was huge news—we were the second company from Ukraine to be in YC. Now there are so many. I think things are moving in a positive direction. Ukrainian startups are becoming more global, competitive, serious. Founders are getting better and better. I see a portfolio company from Ukraine—great, cool.