Katie Haun’s path to cryptocurrency enterprise capital started with a prosecutorial project that might problem standard knowledge about digital foreign money. As a federal prosecutor in San Francisco in 2012, her investigation of bitcoin revealed surprising insights about blockchain expertise’s potential and limitations.
Throughout her decade on the Division of Justice, Haun constructed experience in cybercrime, corruption, and arranged crime. She prosecuted Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations murders, jail gangs, and cash laundering circumstances. Her work creating the federal government’s first cryptocurrency process power offered firsthand publicity to each felony exploitation and legit innovation in blockchain expertise, expertise that might later inform her funding strategy.
Haun’s workforce traced cryptocurrency transactions that led to profitable prosecutions, together with corrupt federal brokers on the Silk Street process power and the investigation of the Mt. Gox hack. These circumstances helped reveal blockchain’s inherent transparency and assuaged some considerations in regards to the expertise’s potential for use for corrupt functions.
From Prosecution to Funding
Haun’s transition to enterprise capital got here via an invite from Andreessen Horowitz. The agency’s founders acknowledged the worth in her uncommon mixture of regulatory experience and deep understanding of cryptocurrency expertise. In 2018, they introduced her on because the agency’s first feminine common companion to co-lead crypto investments alongside Chris Dixon.
At a16z, Haun confirmed how conventional enterprise investing ideas may apply to crypto whereas requiring new frameworks for analysis.
“One of many issues I discovered within the final 4 years on the agency is that I’m truly an entrepreneur,” Haun instructed Fortune. This realization led her to launch Haun Ventures in 2022 with $1.5 billion in capital, the biggest debut fund raised by a solo feminine founding companion.
Haun Ventures
Haun Ventures operates with distinct early-stage and acceleration funds however maintains a extra compact workforce than typical enterprise companies, presently at 10 individuals with a deliberate cap of round 15. This construction displays Haun’s perception in staying nimble whereas offering targeted assist to portfolio firms.
“Inside operations groups scale very huge and generally you get bounced round,” says Haun. “Not like another companies who carry their community in-house and have an operations workforce, what we love to do is have this broad exterior community, so we will actually join you to the world specialists in any given discipline.”
Haun emphasizes what she calls “hero moments” — situations the place the agency can present essential assist to portfolio firms. “We wish to have the ability to ship on these hero moments via our personal workforce, small but nimble, but additionally via our huge large community,” she says. This may vary from treasury administration challenges to regulatory points or technical expertise recruitment.
The agency approaches crypto investments via a number of lenses. Past conventional enterprise metrics like market alternative and workforce high quality, it evaluates components particular to crypto initiatives together with tokenomics, regulatory concerns, and neighborhood alignment.
“We overlay a crypto lens over it. We have a look at issues like tokenomics for if we’re investing in a protocol. Are tokens being allotted in possession of a community sensibly?” says Haun.
Her prosecutorial background continues to form the agency’s strategy to regulatory threat evaluation, a course of that values questions like “Are they going to adjust to the legal guidelines or do we have to form new legal guidelines? Do any legal guidelines apply? And if not, how will this be regulated? How will we hold shoppers protected?”
Haun Ventures’ acceleration fund focuses on “what’s working now” in crypto, primarily monetary companies and infrastructure. This contains direct investments in protocols like bitcoin, ethereum, and solana, in addition to firms constructing important companies round them. Nevertheless, Haun emphasizes that the agency’s definition of crypto extends past monetary purposes to incorporate distributed computing and frontier applied sciences.
A Prosecutor’s Imaginative and prescient for Web3
Haun maintains optimism about crypto’s long-term potential whereas realistically acknowledging some present challenges. She compares the sector’s growth to the early web, stressing the significance of evaluating basic technological progress slightly than short-term market actions.
“Web3 is the brand new period of the web and it deserves a brand new period of buyers,” Haun instructed CNBC. This angle shapes her agency’s strategy to each early-stage investments and later-stage acceleration alternatives. Quite than chasing market traits, they concentrate on initiatives constructing important infrastructure for the following era of digital companies.
The event of Haun’s profession — from investigating bitcoin to investing in its future — mirrors broader shifts in how regulators and buyers view crypto expertise. Her expertise prosecuting crypto-related crimes offered perception into each the expertise’s capabilities and its want for considerate growth. These classes now inform her agency’s strategy to constructing what she sees as the following chapter of digital infrastructure.
“Any expertise that I’ve been conscious of has particular professionals and cons,” Haun instructed Ezra Klein in a current podcast interview. “I feel the societal advantages that I see with crypto are vastly outweighing a number of the downsides. Nevertheless it’s essential to have the dialog round these downsides.”