Inside the Accelerator of the Encryption Field: Insights from Will, a Core Contributor of Alliance DAO

Alliance DAO is a leading Web3 accelerator and founder community, established in 2020. It aids outstanding Web3 founders in starting and growing their companies through a 10-week program. To date, Alliance DAO has hosted 14 startup accelerators, incubating companies with a total market value of $11 billion. In this conversation, Will Robinson, an early employee of Alliance DAO, shares his experiences in the Web3 field and insights on how to select projects and founders.

Personal Experience

Will was originally an academic researcher, studying the history and culture of video games, tabletop games, and sports. His research focused on independent games, particularly those that are challenging and artistic. In early 2017, he was introduced to Bitcoin through his cousin Dan(, the head of research at Paradigm), and decided to switch to the encryption field.

He initially worked at a cryptocurrency auditing company, responsible for marketing and auditing tasks. After that, he joined Alliance as the first employee, responsible for establishing the accelerator program. He worked at Alliance for nearly four years, trying out multiple roles, including fundraising, mentoring, marketing, and research.

Will particularly enjoys helping the team prepare for Demo Day, teaching them how to tell their entrepreneurial stories to attract investors. His academic background has taught him how to handle ambiguity and questions without ready-made answers.

Decision-making Process of Alliance DAO

When screening projects, Alliance evaluates from two aspects: whether the team is excellent and whether the idea is outstanding. Will believes that the importance of the team is 2-3 times that of the idea. Alliance is not obsessed with specific fields but focuses more on outstanding founders.

Will believes that excellent founders need to have extreme drive. In interviews, he will delve into the motivations of the founders until he uncovers some deep-seated reason. Typically, there are two rounds of interviews, the first round lasting 15-20 minutes and the second round lasting 30-45 minutes.

Alliance will interview 20% of the applicants, then interview 20% of those, and finally admit 20% of that group. Will mentioned that they sometimes miss out on some excellent founders, such as the Monad team.

Business Model of the Accelerator

Compared to self-incubating VCs, Alliance's advantage lies in being able to fully invest in accelerator projects. Will believes that operating a complete accelerator goes beyond the scope of most VCs and is not financially viable. Alliance's annual operating cost is about $5 million, requiring 15 full-time employees.

Alliance primarily seeks projects through recommendations from previous founders or alumni. They have spent a long time accumulating a large community of founders to spread word-of-mouth. Excellent founders typically do not go through accelerators, as they already know how to create companies. Alliance attracts outstanding founders by building trust and providing real value.

Alliance will not invest in the subsequent rounds of teams they have accelerated, but will invest in other teams that have not been accelerated. This helps avoid being perceived as having favoritism.

Evaluation of the Founders and Team

When evaluating founders, Alliance will focus on several aspects:

1. Is there a strong cooperative relationship among the founders?
2. Is there a strong desire for success?
3. Is the team size appropriate ( prefers small teams )
4. Is there a strong motivation and fewer employees?

Will believes that small teams are more capable of transformation and finding product-market fit. They often teach larger teams how to downsize in order to better focus on finding the right problems and solutions.

Currently, Alliance has received many AI-related project applications, especially for tokenized AI projects. Will is excited about this and believes that encryption technology may solve financial service problems for AI.

Will believes that the most interesting project at the moment is Pump.Fun, as it changes the way people think about meme coins. Another amazing project is Glow, as it incentivizes the production of solar farms in a fun way.

Overall, Will emphasizes that entrepreneurship requires creating lucky conditions for oneself while maintaining a continuous focus on a certain field and constantly changing direction to ultimately discover something truly useful.