1. What is Steel DAO?


Vision

Steel DAO (the DAO) was born to rethink portfolio services to support web3 founders and operators — both within and outside of the Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) portfolio. Our long-term vision is also to help democratize access to private markets, starting by bringing together a mix of founders, operators, and investors who can trade ideas on talent, product, business development, investment themes, fundraising and more.

We don’t know what the DAO will ultimately look like, but by pooling a differentiated and high-caliber set of web3 ecosystem participants, we believe we will be better positioned to collectively catalyze the growth and adoption of web3 by investing, supporting, or building disruptive and enduring businesses.

Mission

The DAO seeks to support web3 builders by providing them with funds, expertise, and talent to partner with them on the path to success. We seek to bring together a unique community of investors, founders, talent, and ecosystem participants to form committees that will accelerate the mainstream adoption of web3.

We are entering a phase of experimentation, starting by creating a curated and decentralized Community-as-a-Scout program, where the goal is to position the DAO to become a first mover in the web3 space by leveraging the unique and diverse insights of our members. We plan to play a role in democratizing access to investments in private markets. Lastly, as our community grows we plan to create many more committees that could serve to incubate, service, or staff web3 startups and more, as well as evaluate progressive decentralization of operations, governance, and ownership on an ongoing basis.

Defining Success

The DAO will be successful if first and foremost we are able to attract and retain engaged community members.

Given we are starting with a curated Community-as-a-Scout program, we will measure success based on the following criteria:

  1. Members are participating (i.e., engaging in discussions, voting on proposals)
  2. Number of investments, opportunities, roadmap proposals are growing
  3. Number of investments ultimately chosen by BVP is growing
  4. Talent is being placed both within and outside of the BVP portfolio
  5. Operational expertise and review by DAO members provides value to BVP portfolio companies

Values