Katie Haun’s path to cryptocurrency enterprise capital started with a prosecutorial task that will problem typical knowledge about digital forex. As a federal prosecutor in San Francisco in 2012, her investigation of bitcoin revealed surprising insights about blockchain know-how’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 drive supplied firsthand publicity to each prison exploitation and legit innovation in blockchain know-how, expertise that will later inform her funding strategy.
Haun’s workforce traced cryptocurrency transactions that led to profitable prosecutions, together with corrupt federal brokers on the Silk Highway process drive and the investigation of the Mt. Gox hack. These circumstances helped reveal blockchain’s inherent transparency and assuaged some issues concerning the know-how’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 know-how. 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 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 advised 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 corporations, at the moment at 10 folks with a deliberate cap of round 15. This construction displays Haun’s perception in staying nimble whereas offering targeted help to portfolio corporations.
“Inside operations groups scale very massive and generally you get bounced round,” says Haun. “Not like another corporations who deliver their community in-house and have an operations workforce, what we love to do is have this broad exterior community, so we are able to actually join you to the world consultants in any given area.”
Haun emphasizes what she calls “hero moments” — cases the place the agency can present essential help to portfolio corporations. “We wish to have the ability to ship on these hero moments via our personal workforce, small but nimble, but in addition via our huge broad 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 tasks 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 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 preserve 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 corporations constructing important companies round them. Nonetheless, 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 elementary technological progress fairly than short-term market actions.
“Web3 is the brand new period of the web and it deserves a brand new period of traders,” Haun advised CNBC. This attitude shapes her agency’s strategy to each early-stage investments and later-stage acceleration alternatives. Slightly than chasing market tendencies, they give attention to tasks 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 traders view crypto know-how. Her expertise prosecuting crypto-related crimes supplied perception into each the know-how’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 know-how that I’ve been conscious of has particular execs and cons,” Haun advised Ezra Klein in a latest podcast interview. “I feel the societal advantages that I see with crypto are vastly outweighing among the downsides. Nevertheless it’s essential to have the dialog round these downsides.”
