Blockchain Capital backs Catapult’s $5 million raise: Exclusive

London-based Catapult raised $5 million in a seed round led by Blockchain Capital. 

Investors in the round also include Eden Block, Orange DAO and Reverie as well as several angel investors from leading crypto startups, including Aave’s Stani Kulechov and Teller’s Ryan Berken, according to an announcement. 

The startup, which was co-founded in 2021 by Rav Singh Sandhu and Greg Wilsenach as part of the Entrepreneur First program, aims to provide infrastructure that will enable better coordination in decentralized organizations by providing more context about their members in a pseudonymous manner. 

How does Catapult work?

Catapult started as an onboarding tool for Index Coop, a decentralized community that provides access to complex crypto investing strategies through tokens. Catapult made it easier to capture information about new joiners and guide them to the right starting point, according to the announcement. 

Now, Catapult uses data from the onboarding process to build rich pseudonymous friendly member profiles that are searchable and allow for better coordination and communication amongst members. 

Catapult Labs community screens

The platform just completed a closed alpha phase with Index Coop and Aragon DAO. It’s now extending its platform to Krause House, Lex DAO, Biconomy DAO, Spectral Finance, Algovera AI, Popcorn DAO, and groups within Bankless DAO. 

“Removing the friction and creating a web3 native, intuitive onboarding platform is a game changer for us, and what I believe will soon be a game changer for many other DAO’s and Web3 native organizations,” said Brad Morris, community co-lead at Index Coop, in the announcement. 

Encouraging productive contributors

The fundraise closed in July and was a combination of equity and token warrants, said a company spokesperson in an email statement to The Block. The funds will be put toward product development.

“DAOs have demonstrated the potential to supercharge community-led growth, but they often struggle to convert community members to productive contributors,” said Aleks Larsen, general partner at Blockchain Capital, in a statement. “Greg and Rav have brought an awesome team together at Catapult to arm DAO operators and community managers with powerful tools that provide context and drive meaningful collaboration and connection between members — helping unlock the potential of DAOs and Web3 communities.”

Catapult’s tech stack uses web2 technologies Node.js, for the back-end, and Next.js for its front-end. 

“We are excited about the future of decentralized databases, and monitor their progress closely,” said the company spokesperson. “However, for now we are using Firebase for privacy and security reasons.” 

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