Katie Haun’s path to cryptocurrency enterprise capital started with a prosecutorial project that might problem standard knowledge about digital forex. 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 instances. Her work creating the federal government’s first cryptocurrency process power offered firsthand publicity to each legal exploitation and bonafide innovation in blockchain expertise, expertise that might later inform her funding method.
Haun’s group traced cryptocurrency transactions that led to profitable prosecutions, together with corrupt federal brokers on the Silk Highway process power and the investigation of the Mt. Gox hack. These instances helped reveal blockchain’s inherent transparency and assuaged some issues in regards to the expertise’s potential for use for corrupt functions.
From Prosecution to Funding
Haun’s transition to enterprise capital got here by way of 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 basic associate to co-lead crypto investments alongside Chris Dixon.
At a16z, Haun confirmed how conventional enterprise investing ideas might 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 really an entrepreneur,” Haun instructed Fortune. This realization led her to launch Haun Ventures in 2022 with $1.5 billion in capital, the most important debut fund raised by a solo feminine founding associate.
Haun Ventures
Haun Ventures operates with distinct early-stage and acceleration funds however maintains a extra compact group than typical enterprise corporations, at present at 10 folks with a deliberate cap of round 15. This construction displays Haun’s perception in staying nimble whereas offering centered help to portfolio firms.
“Inside operations groups scale very huge and typically you get bounced round,” says Haun. “Not like another corporations who carry their community in-house and have an operations group, what we love to do is have this broad exterior community, so we will actually join you to the world specialists in any given area.”
Haun emphasizes what she calls “hero moments” — cases the place the agency can present essential help to portfolio firms. “We wish to have the ability to ship on these hero moments by way of our personal group, small but nimble, but in addition by way of our huge vast community,” she says. This will vary from treasury administration challenges to regulatory points or technical expertise recruitment.
The agency approaches crypto investments by way of a number of lenses. Past conventional enterprise metrics like market alternative and group high quality, it evaluates elements particular to crypto tasks together with tokenomics, regulatory issues, 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 method to regulatory danger 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 customers secure?”
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 functions 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 somewhat 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 attitude shapes her agency’s method to each early-stage investments and later-stage acceleration alternatives. Somewhat than chasing market traits, they give attention to tasks constructing important infrastructure for the following technology 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 method 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 latest podcast interview. “I believe the societal advantages that I see with crypto are vastly outweighing among the downsides. However it’s essential to have the dialog round these downsides.”
