How Former DOJ Prosecutor Katie Haun Emerged as a Main Voice in Crypto Enterprise Capital 

Katie Haun’s path to cryptocurrency enterprise capital started with a prosecutorial task that may problem typical knowledge about digital foreign money. 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 job drive offered firsthand publicity to each felony exploitation and bonafide innovation in blockchain expertise, expertise that may later inform her funding strategy.

Haun’s workforce traced cryptocurrency transactions that led to profitable prosecutions, together with corrupt federal brokers on the Silk Street job drive 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 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 expertise. 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 instructed 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 companies, presently at 10 individuals with a deliberate cap of round 15. This construction displays Haun’s perception in staying nimble whereas offering targeted help to portfolio firms.

“Inside operations groups scale very huge and typically you get bounced round,” says Haun. “In contrast to another companies who carry their community in-house and have an operations workforce, what we love to do is have this broad exterior community, so we will actually join you to the world consultants in any given subject.”

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 via our personal workforce, small but nimble, but in addition via our huge huge community,” she says. This will 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 initiatives together with tokenomics, regulatory concerns, and group alignment. 

“We overlay a crypto lens over it. We take 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 threat 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 maintain customers protected?” 

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 reasonably than short-term market actions.

“Web3 is the brand new period of the web and it deserves a brand new period of traders,” Haun instructed CNBC. This angle shapes her agency’s strategy to each early-stage investments and later-stage acceleration alternatives. Slightly than chasing market developments, they concentrate on initiatives constructing important infrastructure for the subsequent 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 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 strategy to constructing what she sees as the subsequent chapter of digital infrastructure.

“Any expertise that I’ve been conscious of has particular execs and cons,” Haun instructed 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 crucial to have the dialog round these downsides.”