Interview with Ian Lee (Syndicate)

Democratizing Investing with Web3 Technology

On the latest Crypto Driven, I got to sit down with Ian Lee, Co-Founder of Syndicate. Syndicate is a decentralized investing protocol and social network. Syndicate’s first product, Investment Clubs, transforms any Ethereum wallet into a powerful investing DAO.

In less than a year since launching Investment Clubs, Syndicate has already grown to more than 25,000 DAOs on the platform. The company recently launched its second product, Collectives, which is a new social networking and community building primitive for web3.

To date, Syndicate has raised over $28M from its community as well as investors including Andreessen Horowitz, South Park Commons, Carta, Ledger, Circle Ventures, OpenSea, Uniswap Labs Ventures, CoinList, FalconX, Polygon, United Talent Agency, Xoogler Network, Yield Guild Games, PoolSuite, Global Coin Research, Chainforest, Sfermion, A* Capital, and Outliers VC DAO.

During our conversation, Ian discussed:

• how Syndicate is using web3 technology to transform the world of investing
• how different types of organizations and communities are using Syndicate to enter the investing ecosystem for the first time
• why investing is both a financial and social network
• why social networks in web3 will have fundamentally different interactions than in web2
• how Syndicate’s new protocol (ERC-721M) evolves with communities over time and is composable with other web3 technologies
• how investing in the future will be about not just capital, but also people, communities, networks, time, and expertise
• Syndicate’s long-term approach to value creation and value capture

Crypto Driven is a global community and interview series run by FirstMark Capital that dives into the latest trends, emerging platforms, and top companies across the crypto & web3 ecosystem. Crypto Driven is hosted by me (@lisamxu) and my FirstMark colleague Matt Turck (@mattturck).