Crypto Notebook

NotFellow - Memo

Memo for NotFellow

Product ————————————

>NotFellow is a builder community for the young (≤23 yr old) but talented, with future prospection of building a cross-border talent-powered web3 brand/platform.

>Host virtual & irl events with crypto OGs, host hacker house for events like DevCon with the intention of housing award-seeking builders, manage a carefully curated talent network

>Value-add to founders through 1. Network, 2. Capital (mile-stone based small check), 3. lifestyle (co-space), 4. technical knowledge on building/web3, 5. labor and special task force

Team

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Rebecca Dai, CEO

>Physics, History major. Yale undergraduate class of 2021.

>Researcher & Generalist at Tally, a DAO tooling protocol. Researched DAO landscape and business opportunity. 2021 - now

>Research intern at Pantera Capital. 09/21 - 11/21

>Summer intern at McKinsey. Advised a major company on crypto strategy and an insurance company on organizational transformation. 05/21 - 07/21

>Growth Product Manager at ByteDance 09/20 - 11/20, summer analyst at Point 72 06/20 - 08/20, summer analyst at Merrill Lynch M&A 06/19 - 08/19

Pros

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>Brand: Rebecca is very serious with her brand-building approach to working NotFellow out, and I share this vision. Even though web3 exhibits a quasi-disperse way of talent interaction, builders, especially young folks, coherently want to be part of a high quality, belong-able group; no obvious winner has emerged yet in this effort. Rebecca believes a good brand with substance equals insane mindshare, put business in an attractive position to pursue a wealth of monetization strategies, which will allow NotFellow to do things like take allocations in deals, issue NFTs (if ever), and so much more to bootstrap growth.

>First mover’s advantage: NotFellow was born out of Paradigm’s Fellowship, which was a prestigious yet under-facilitated program, according to insider feedback; on the other hand, many rejected by this fellowship are equally insightful and technical people who are just not in the inner circle. Being the first to weaving these talents together, and pivoting with this rejected-but-better spirit on future expansion, is NotFellow’s core advantage. Also, contrasting to many young-people starting a DAO or community in web3, NotFellow’s endeavor has some starter perks: they market against Paradigm which was a big name in itself, they have a lot more people to begin with than most DAOs, and their founding story is the best echo of the web3 grass-root spirit

>Hustle: NotFellow was only 1 month old but managed to achieve a lot. 1.5K follower on Twitter with numerous OGs (eg Jason Choi), ranked 22nd in the Paradigm CTF (a smart contract security competition) which is 36 places above the Paradigm Fellows and 19 above the OpenSea team, hosted fireside chat with Austin Griffith, Kyle Samani, Scott Sunarto, and much more (by the way, quality is pretty good from my experience). They also hosted a hacker house at Devcon Bogota.

>Conviction: I initially met Rebecca virtually before she started NotFellow, and irl later on. I’ve found joy in our conversations on technical and philosophical debate, but what won my lean-in is her aggressive yet aligned endeavor in building a NotFellow community and careful maneuver around a NotFellow NFT or token. She is also very social and likable in the US crypto space; Jesse Huang (previous Zhenfund intern), Brian Cheng (Stanford, a16z), William Robinson (Alliance DAO), and all other numerous DAO leaders I’ve physically met all gave her high remark. In conclusion, she is a unique in vision and convicted in action young person working on something she believes in.

Cons

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>Revenue model isn’t different from traditional accelerators, and since Rebecca is so far taking a non-predatory approach on (future) NotFellow portfolios, should the bear market of 2022 extends to a prolonged period, NotFellow may observe operational stringency. Rebecca also is in the process of formalizing what and how much should NotFellow take from builders it financially supports, but so far it’s still work in progress

>Technical risk is low which means NotFellow’s marketing risk is high. Should a16z, dragonfly, Multicoin, or other big-name web3 funds start a similar fellowship, people can just re-make another NotFellow and enter the competition.

>NotFellow is only one month old, and although it is showing promising data, all its fundamental growths rely on the quality of builder it attracts and retains. Rebecca and the subsequent NotFellow management team she onboards still face this utmost challenge

Competitive Landscape

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Quasi-competitors like developer community, talent-centric DAOs, and hacker houses are no little in number, but none has claimed the grail so far. For those born after 2021 bull, none had such an advantage in terms of brand-building and starting friction.

The closest direct challenger to NotFellow is a European Gen-z DAO called The Symmetrical who also intends to connect the best young talent in web3 across the globe, but still they don’t have a brand-driven approach and advantage. I’ve also interviewed The Symmetrical, and although they have a dedicated marketing and outreach team, quality of partnership and progress so far (born 2 months before NotFellows) are not as exciting

Term

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Asking for $250k strategic investment. Raising 1M-2M in total. Open for more.

So far, they have three angel investors: fire eyes, reverie, libevm. The first two are specialty boutique consulting service in crypto, and libevm is a twitter influencer and smart MEV searcher. Funds are soft commitment right now.

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notfellows deck.pdf

457.6 kB

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Resume_Rebecca Dai_2022_Jan.pdf

321.4 kB

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our deck:

https://pitch.com/public/dced51e8-6568-46bd-b540-5b37ccaf66c7⁠

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