Announcing Chainforest: A community-native web3 VC fund

Written by: Amit Mukherjee, Chainforest Founder and Managing Partner

I’m thrilled to announce Chainforest: a first-check web3 VC firm supported by the Chainforest DAO and its community. We differentiate ourselves with our curated community of exceptional web3 leaders, who are incentivized to support our investments with the $RAINDROP token, which is backed by carry in our fund. 

Chainforest is the New Standard in Community + Capital

Chainforest began as a Telegram chat where I brought together my friends who were spending a lot of time in web3. Quickly, several members commented on the uniquely high quality of the network and discourse, and that we should turn our Telegram chat into something more. Today, over 400 exceptional, curated web3 leaders (dubbed “The Rainmakers”) have come together to engage in daily discussion and a myriad of community activities. With an anti-maximalist mindset, we conduct guided deep dives on the most interesting and substantive topics in web3 and host meet-ups at major crypto events. 

With the encouragement from many Rainmakers, I dedicated myself to Chainforest full-time. As I explored different business models to allow our community to sustain itself and grow in magnitude and impact, I realized that we had the opportunity to become a highly differentiated VC firm, leveraging the insights and network of the community to identify, evaluate, and support web3 founders as no community has before. After spending nearly a decade at the multi-billion dollar VC firm NEA, I knew nothing like Chainforest existed, and that its ethos and model perfectly fit the needs and culture of the web3 ecosystem. 

We aspire to create one of the most powerful ecosystems in the world to support our investments by leveraging an exceptional group of leaders to build, grow, and invest together to create the future of web3. We leverage our collective power to create incredible value for our investments, Rainmakers, the ecosystem, our LPs, and other partners. The outsized performance creates a flywheel effect, allowing us to coalesce an enviable ecosystem that attracts, develops, and inspires high-caliber talent to be their best selves and to invest in building the future of web3.

Our Thesis: The Best Is Yet To Come

Chainforest writes the first check into companies harnessing the power of blockchain technology to disrupt trillion-dollar markets. We back technical founders with web3 operating experience who focus on the application layer. We expect that each product we back can disrupt a $10B+ market.

We’ve already invested in some amazing companies: 

How We Help

Chainforest offers unique support to founders. As our community strengthens, we expect to create more offerings over time. Today, founders receive multiple benefits from the community:

• Access to the Superpowers of 400+ Rainmakers: Founders have partnered with community members for support with marketing, code auditing, and beta testing. Because Rainmakers receive tokenized carry supporting our companies, they have a powerful incentive to help our founders.  

• Founder Coaching:  We’ve partnered with Diana Chapman, founder of the Conscious Leadership Group, to lead Forums for our founders to level up their own skill sets as they lead world-changing organizations.

• Outsourced CFO: Every founder receives our “Treasury Roots” package, led by Chainforest’s Head of Finance Vasanth Thiruvadi. to ensure strong financial discipline from Day One.

The Rainmakers Replace The Traditional VC Partnership

Over time, I realized the uniqueness of this community. I asked myself, "how can we create more impact through this community?" We realized that a VC firm supported by this community would leverage the talent, insights, and support with a unique organic power.

Our Rainmakers can earn $RAINDROP by supporting our investing process. $RAINDROP reflects carry earned in the fund. Unlike most Investment DAOs, Rainmakers are not required to invest their own capital.

How did we create such a win-for-all design? Chainforest's legal structure deviates from most Investment DAOs. We’ve legally structured ourselves as a VC fund. In contrast, most Investment DAOs structure themselves as Investment Clubs. This structure creates three advantages: 

1. We can scale faster. 

2. We invest with greater efficiency. 

3. We can invite the absolute best people into our DAO, regardless of their ability to contribute capital.

We’ve been working with our friends at Syndicate by leveraging their software to distribute $RAINDROP to our community members. We’re thrilled to have partnered with such a great group to create the future of investing together. 

It’s Already Working

So far, we’ve found that the Chainforest DAO has been an incredible source of deal flow for us: 

• 50% of our investments thus far come from founders who were Rainmakers (Arkive, Stelo, STATION, Zestworld)

• As a DAO, Chainforest is frequently asked to beta test products, which has led us to investments in 2 of these companies (Utopia, Syndicate)

• Two additional investments (Autoverse, Magna) were sourced by Rainmakers

This community-native design is the future of VC, particularly for web3. Community is a core value of web3, and it is something that Chainforest knows in its bones as few other investment firms will. The sector moves too fast for a traditional, small partnership of investors to keep up. By leveraging the hivemind of the Chainforest DAO, we have greater access and insight than any seed fund before us has ever had.

Join Our Community

The Chainforest community is the ideal place for:

• Web3 operators

• Aspiring founders

• Moonlighters and hobbyists

• Non-natives who bring superpowers from other sectors (TradFi, web2, etc)

We’re always looking for new members. We seek Rainmakers who embrace intellectual rigor. Rainmakers also tend to want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Come join us. You'll explore, learn, and build with greater power and joy. And earn $RAINDROP along the way! Click here to apply

Come Celebrate and Learn More

Join our community: Apply here using this link

Attend our Twitter Space @ 12pm PST / 3pm EST today: Celebrating our launch, we’ll be having a Twitter space today at 12pm PST / 3pm EST with a few of our Rainmakers, discussing their experiences and how they’ve benefitted from being a part of the Chainforest community: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1ZkKzXwymgrJv 

Launch Party: Tomorrow, we’ll be hosting a launch party at 8pm at the Standard Biergarten in NYC. If you’re in town, please stop by! RSVP here: https://par.tf/AfKy

Subscribe to our Substack: To get a flavor of our community and our events, and to keep up to date with our investments, subscribe to our Substack

Closing Thoughts

I’m thrilled to publicly launch Chainforest. This represents a major phase shift for our DAO. Expect to see and hear much more about us over the coming months. If you’d like to connect directly, don’t hesitate to reach out via Twitter DM (@AmitMukherjee) or via Telegram (@AmitMukherjee).

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Interested in joining Chainforest? ⛓️🌴

• How to apply: You can apply to become a member by completing our application on Typeform. We will review your submission and grant access after approving your profile.

• Apply here: https://chainforest.typeform.com/apply