Executive Summary

Zbra DAO is a game changing new approach to community-based impact investing, combining the core DAO principles of decentralisation, democracy, fairness and transparency, with the legal and accountability protection of a traditional fund framework.

Zbra DAO harnesses the power of community collaboration, shared values, inclusivity and diversity and purpose, to more effectively direct, support and drive the multiple functions of a seed venture fund and empower the portfolio businesses to solve meaninful global problems and challenges, improve lives and create a sustainable future and an equitable society that works for all.

Our goal is to impact 100 million lives over the course of this project. Our initial target is to invest £10m into 30 high potential, impact focused startups within 4 years.

As a Web3 native investment DAO, we will bring together a vetted community of visionary, like-minded investors, game-changing entrepreneurs and successful business experts to create a framework that rewards contribution and provides stakeholders with token gated access and governance based on their level of contribution and membership type.

Introduction

We have a Litepaper and a Whitepaper (to be released soon) which aims to provide an overview of our current position and our long-term thinking, vision and the strategy we envisage will enable Zbra DAO to thrive and scale.

We share with you, the detail and thinking behind our ambition to create an Impact Driven Investment DAO that changes everything. One that demonstrates how an expert community with aligned values, that reflects the diversity of the society we live, can unlock the diverse-led startup opportunity faster, where stakeholders actively contribute to the creation of the constitution, participate in decision making, and where expert contributors and the effort of supporters, is rewarded fairly.

To start with, like many entrepreneurs and those who support incredible start-ups and founders, we need and expect venture capital to be more accessible to more founders and be used to create more impact, enabling those who are passionate and focused on addressing some of the world’s biggest challenges, to share their magic with the world. Investing should be about more than just increasing personal wealth and creating unicorns.

We believe that the most effective and meaningful opportunity for real and scalable change for diverse founders and investors who are driven by purpose, will come by leveraging networks and the networked power of like-minded global communities and ecosystems.

Uniting their knowledge, ideas, and capital to invest in diverse founders outside of traditional venture funding structures, will drive innovation and value creation at scale. We are confident that Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (“DAOs”), even at this early stage of mainstream adoption, will be the business model for a better future for Venture Capital (“VC”) that is more inclusive, accessible, and transparent for all stakeholders.

Vision, Mission and Values

Our Vision

Our Mission

Our Values

Our Goals and Investment Themes

Increased Diversity and Inclusion

Unlike a traditional VC fund, Zbra DAO will be made up of a carefully curated and diverse community of investors, domain experts, connectors, advisors, and supporters which initially will be supported by community managers, fundraisers analysts, and coordinators, who facilitate the operations of the DAO. Our ambition is to eliminate bias and to ‘live and breath’ equality, fairness and transparency, accompanied by empathy, understanding and care.

Through this community, we will pool ideas, identify and build exciting deal flow opportunities, share expertise and connections and as we evolve, Zbra DAO will enable new talent to gain exposure to the investing and venture capital world, learn and perfect new skills and capabilities, and build strong networks and experience.

We will leverage and reward all contribution so that anyone can contribute value in a flexible and mutually beneficial way.

Radical transparency and accountability

DAOs are transparent by default because, virtually all transactions are publicly recorded on the blockchain. Anyone can analyse the wallet address of the DAO to tract decision and identify where the funds are going.

Transparency is also manifested through the public release of proposals, white papers and governance processes. If the DAO chooses to share these documents, anyone can see exactly how the organisation operates and how decisions are made.

From the outset, Zbra DAO will default to a position of radical transparency in order to build trust with all stakeholders and contributors.

We believe that Zbra DAO is a business model for the future. By dismantling the VC obsession with exclusivity and creating a new form of VC that is open to everyone and built on the values of fairness, transparency, openness and continuous improvement, we can invest in a variety of founders to create real change.

Community

Zbra DAO is a decentralised community committed to promoting and advancing diversity and mental health among game-changing and successful startups.

With global ambitions and a core objective to drive accelerated growth in multiple international territories by leveraging the power of a global community, our initial focus will be on three regions - the UK, India and New Zealand, due to our founder networks and the fact that each region has unique attributes that can be leveraged.

Several layers need to be established in order to create the full operating model of Zbra DAO.

Community Building

At the heart of Zbra DAO is a community of intrinsically motivated people wanting to do the right thing and make a positive impact on people and the planet. This is “layer zero”.  This group will start small, be built on “real world” relationships and trust and the majority will fall into the following profiles or somewhere in between.

Aligned Target Audience

• Founders: purpose-driven entrepreneurs and teams in the early stages of building their startups
• Investors: individual LP’s and angel investors, small venture capital firms, VC DAO’s, and managers of family offices
• VC talent: aspiring VC’s and professionals with expertise in a wide variety of areas.
• Thought leaders: an engaged and active network of the brightest minds across sectors like health and wellbeing, the future of work and education, finance, community building, and ecology and the environment.
• Secret Sauce: industry, domain and tech experts, world class coaches, mentors and advisors.

The community can be further grouped into a number stakeholder groups which for the time being, we have identified as follows (note that any individual can be part of more than one group):

1. Navigators: The small founding group who began the project. Will initially make most of the key foundational decisions and look after day to day ‘business as usual’ requirements. This will include building dealflow, due diligence, Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) processes, updating and advising the community on developments relating to law, regulation and compliance. Typical attributes of individuals in this group:

• Investing significant time and committed to refining and communicating the overall vision, setting up the entities and community, and remaining focused on the long term success of the project.
• Appropriate networks, skills and depth of knowledge/experience to connect the dots.

2. Contributors and Supporters: Wider network of entrepreneurial, likeminded individuals. With multi-layered expertise and experience that immediately adds significant value to the community (e.g. time / passion and energy / perspective / reputation / network / resources etc). Typical attributes of individuals in this group a. Specialist skills, expertise and networks (e.g. webs3 devs, finance, coaching/mentoring, international connections) b. Help to shape the DAO structure, expectations and operations, solve problems and make things happen c. May be an investor d. Can offer flexible shorter-term / part time engagement / commitment

3. Hatchers. The small group of early adopters, impact innovators and investors. Initial investment will finance the set up phase that includes administrative and legal advice and entity structuring, onboarding investor and LP’s, initial ‘live’ launch, development of the community. Members will also be active connectors and will benefit from preferential investment terms and benefits.

4. Investors / LP’s. Larger group of people who invest capital in the second phase.

5. Founder Entrepreneurs. Businesses seeking financial help and support to launch projects that have the potential to deliver profit and impact. We aim to make venture capital accessible to diverse talent wherever it is based and fund the bold and diverse founders building the future we all want to live and work in.

Our Impact and Success Framework

Zbra Fund

Investment Themes

Our primary goal is to empower purpose driven entrepreneurs to deliver on their potential to improve the quality of life and life outcomes for individuals and communities across the world, and to create an equitable, caring and fairer society.

We expect solutions to be driven by a web 3 approach to innovation and technology, be sustainable, scalable and offer the potential for global adoption and impact.

Whilst sector agnostic, areas of initial focus will include:

• Health and Wellbeing
• Education and Work
• Climate and Nature

The Way Forward

We have recently started our community on Telegram and WhatsApp and we currently have over 175 people who have joined and are supporting us in our endeavour. We will be launching our initiative on Twitter and other social media channels very soon.