Web3 Accelerator Alliance DAO Founding Team Member Will: How to Select Outstanding Founders

Recently, we interviewed Will Robinson, a founding team member of the Web3 accelerator Alliance DAO. He shared his career experiences, the operational model of Alliance DAO, and how to evaluate and select outstanding founding teams.

Personal Experience

Will was initially an academic researcher, with research areas including video games, board games, and sports, focusing on the history and culture of games. In early 2017, influenced by his cousin Dan(, the research director at Paradigm), he began to engage with the field of cryptocurrency.

Since then, Will worked for nearly 4 years at a crypto auditing firm, providing auditing services for various crypto organizations. He gradually became an expert in the field and eventually joined Alliance DAO as the first employee, responsible for establishing the accelerator program.

At Alliance DAO, Will has tried various roles, including fundraising, mentoring, marketing, and research. He particularly enjoys helping teams prepare for Demo Day, teaching them how to tell their startup stories and attract investors.

Will believes that his academic background is somewhat helpful for his current job. The most important thing about his doctoral studies is that it taught him how to deal with ambiguity and face questions that do not have ready-made answers.

Decision-Making Process of Alliance DAO

When filtering projects, Alliance DAO mainly 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 DAO is not obsessed with specific fields, but rather focuses on excellent founders. Will explains: "Excellence does not necessarily mean having attended prestigious schools, does not necessarily mean having worked at large companies, and does not necessarily mean that the start-ups they founded have successfully exited. What we are looking for is extreme drive."

During the interview process, Will will deeply guide the founders to reflect on themselves and understand their motivations. They call it finding the "heat".

Project selection usually requires two rounds of interviews. Alliance DAO will interview 20% of the applicants, then interview 20% of those, and finally admit 20% of that group.

Business Model of Accelerator

Will believes that compared to VCs doing incubation themselves, the advantage of professional accelerators lies in their ability to fully dedicate themselves. Operating a complete accelerator requires about 5 million dollars each year, while management fees are far from covering these costs. Therefore, accelerators need to have a broader vision.

More than half of the applicants for Alliance DAO are recommended by previous founders or alumni. Will stated that this is because excellent founders are usually cautious about accelerators and require recommendations from peers.

Alliance DAO will not invest in follow-up financing rounds of teams that have been accelerated, to avoid showing favoritism. However, they will invest in follow-up rounds of other teams that have not been accelerated.

Evaluation of Founders and Team

When evaluating founders, Alliance DAO will focus on the following points:

1. Is there a strong cooperative relationship among the founders?
2. Do the founders have a strong desire for success?
3. Is the team size appropriate? ( prefers small teams )

Will indicates that they usually recommend newly joined teams to lay off employees in order to focus more on finding the product-market fit.

Regarding the most interesting projects currently, Will mentioned Pump.Fun and Glow. He believes that Pump.Fun has changed the way people think about meme coins, while Glow innovatively incentivizes the production of solar farms.

Will emphasizes that a key to entrepreneurship is creating lucky conditions for oneself. By continuously focusing on a certain field and constantly adjusting direction, one may ultimately discover something truly valuable.