VC firm HackVC launches a community round investment group on Echo

Recently, the well-known blockchain venture capital firm HackVC announced the launch of a community round investment group on Echo.

Recently, renowned blockchain venture capital firm HackVC announced the launch of a community round investment group on Echo. Aiming to take this opportunity to make Hack VC a truly community-oriented VC, they are among the first regulated U.S. crypto fund management companies to introduce a "community round" on Echo.

After the Crypto market gradually lost trust in VCs, it seems that VCs are also seeking transformation, hoping to be closer to the market.

HackVC, known for its early bets on promising projects like Berachain, EigenLayer, Morpho, Grass, and Soon, is hoping to engage more closely with the community in this new chapter.

As one of the earliest investors in cryptocurrency, Pack began his journey at 22 in a fintech venture capital firm in Hong Kong, where he witnessed the nascent stages of the cryptocurrency industry and envisioned its future potential.

Later, returning to the U.S. to join Bain Capital, Pack assisted them in investing in crypto assets. In 2018, Alexander struck out on his own, co-founding the crypto venture capital fund Dragonfly Capital with Bo Feng, serving as the first managing partner. Dragonfly Capital has since become one of the largest crypto funds in Asia.

In 2020, Alexander left Dragonfly Capital and founded Hack VC with managing partner Ed Roman, best known for his role in the hackathon event hack.summit(), and research partners Christopher Maree and Sean Brown, both from the oracle team UMA, with the former being a member of the Ethereum Foundation Devcon V Scholar and the latter serving as a senior advisor at IBM Blockchain. Together, they form a team with deep technical expertise.

This allows HackVC's investment preferences to focus to some extent on the feasibility and scalability of technology.

This has allowed HackVC to achieve quite good results in this round of investments, having invested early in high-quality projects such as Berachain, EigenLayer, Morpho, Grass, and Soon.

However, with the emergence of investment ecosystems like Agency's research and KOL rounds, which feature shorter financing cycles, deeper project participation, and higher success rates, VCs seem to need to find better investment logic and models.

The dialogue between Pack and Echo's founder Cobie on Monday at noon reveals their purpose for this cooperation. Cobie believes that the current cryptocurrency community's disdain for venture capital "VCs" stems from a dislike of unfair games. When individuals can invest at the early stages, projects backed by high-signal VC firms usually have higher demand.

Cobie believes that a community-friendly VC may emerge, which would enhance its investments through community rounds or community access. If community alignment can indeed help blockchain projects succeed, it would allow VCs to make positive selections from good founders aligned with the community.

This undoubtedly aligns with Pack's philosophy. He stated on Twitter that he entered the cryptocurrency field 11 years ago because he believed that cryptocurrency could democratize the channels for technology investment.

Early in his career, Pack participated in the crowdfunding platform AngelList and became their first analyst, helping AngelList legalize crowdfunding through the CROWDFUND Act in 2012. However, it did not meet Pack's expectations, as regulatory red tape hindered progress, and most Web2 founders and venture capitalists did not see the value of bringing their "community" into financing rounds.

The Echo model is different from traditional ICO platforms. Echo was founded by crypto KOL Cobie "@echodotxyz" in March 2024.

Cobie was previously the growth lead at Lido and hosted the popular Web3 podcast UpOnly. The core of Echo lies in the "lead investor recommendation mechanism," where users can create investment communities as lead investors, share projects with members, and earn a share of the profits.

Compared to the model of the established ICO platform Coinlist, where investors directly support projects allowing project parties to raise funds quickly, Echo's business model promotes the formation of community capital in the "token economy," allowing on-chain native users to invest in startups through group investments. The process involves lead investors creating investment groups, and group members can choose to follow the investment, with funds flowing indirectly to the company through intermediary investment tools. The investment may involve not only token rights but also company equity. In simple terms, Coinlist invests in the tokens of companies/projects, while Echo invests directly in companies through intermediaries.

Since its launch, over 30 crypto projects have raised funds through Echo, including well-known projects such as Ethena, Morph, Usual, Hyperlane, Dawn, Monad, and MegaETH. In one year, a total of $100 million was raised, with MegaETH completing $10 million in funding through the Echo platform in two rounds in December 2024, the first round of $4.2 million completed in 56 seconds and the second round of $5.8 million completed in 75 seconds.