How to Join Seed Club, which has been called the 'Y Combinator of Web3'

The next round of Web3's version of Y Combinator is now accepting applications.

Seed Club, like the well-known tech startup accelerator, runs a mentorship program that lasts for several weeks to help new organizations and communities get started. Seed Club only "invests" in projects that involve cryptographic tokens, which aren't really "investments" at all.

Jess Sloss, one of the co-founders of Seed Club, told CoinDesk, "We really want it to start in our own primordial ooze rather than indexing on what was going on in the startup space." She did this to downplay the YC comparison. He also said that they are not "reinventing the wheel."

Seed Club is both a bootcamp and a "network" of successful and new companies and founders (DAO). The goal is to support the crypto-native creator economy, which is growing quickly.

If that sounds vague, it's because crypto can now be used to start a nearly infinite number of businesses in a nearly infinite number of industries. This is a platform for platforms, a network of networks, and a DAO made up of other DAOs.

I talked to Sloss to find out what makes a good candidate and to find out more about what is quickly becoming one of the quickest ways to get recognized in the Wild West of Web3. The DAO offers a 12-week crash course on how to build a token project, which includes training in the law, advice on raising money, and help with development.

Teams apply to Seed Club, and if they are chosen, they agree to give 3 percent of the tokens from their project to the DAO. Once the projects are up and running, Seed Club's treasury will give them tokens. This gives them membership in Seed Club's DAO and a say in how it is run.

Sloss said, "We can be a lot more open in our early-stage work to help people who are building something new that the world might not know what to do with yet, but we think there's something interesting to look into."

In this way, Seed Club is a growing source of information, as more and more people learn how and where to use tokens in their businesses and communities. So far, it has helped start 65 projects, such as the Russian art group Pussy Riot's DAO and the publication DeCential Media by former Bloomberg reporter Matt Leising.

Sloss said, "Since we're not putting money into these things, it's less about getting the usual 100x or 1,000x return on an investment." "We're looking for projects that are on the cutting edge of something interesting and, ideally, have a way to keep going."

In a time of economic uncertainty, this is even more important because tech companies are cutting back on funding and stopping new hires. In fact, YC recently sent a letter to its portfolio companies called "Economic Downturn" to tell founders to "plan for the worst." Sloss said that the DAO, which has been around for two years, began with "11 people in a Telegram chat" and had to basically beg for its first eight applicants. It is now getting ready for its fifth group, and people can apply until August 15. In the last cycle, there were 300 pitches, but only 20 were chosen.

Sloss said, "If we get 1,000 applications and only 10 fit the bill, we would only work with those 10." He said that about 250 people had applied for SC05 (Seed Club accelerator 5).

Seed Club's mission has also changed and grown over time. The group used to focus more on social tokens, which are a way for people to make money off of their personal brands. Now, they are open to a wider range of technological uses.

"There are now more tools in the toolbox," Joon Ian Wong, another co-founder of Seed Club, told CoinDesk. This includes NFTs, which are tokens that can't be traded. The change in focus may also have to do with the regulatory risks that come with these tokens, as well as the loss of interest after Roll, a major platform for launching social tokens, was hacked. Sloss said that the application process is being changed for this group. It has released a new "decision-making tool" at seedclub.xyz, where club members can review and comment on pitches to help applicants "put their best foot forward."

Once they've gone through that long list and narrowed it down, they'll use a standard grading rubric to start interviewing each team and doing more research.

"We don't care about size. Sloss said, "We really want to make sure that we support great people and great products and get rid of as much bias as we can."

Sloss said that the "people behind it" are the most important part of any successful project in terms of what they're looking for. Seed Club is looking for people who have built products or led communities in the past. The "founder market fit" rule of thumb is still very important to us.

They are also looking for people who are willing to take a "call to adventure" instead of just copying and pasting existing code or making widgets. Given how vague Web3 can be, a founder's ability to "communicate" a vision may be the most important thing.

In Web3, there is sometimes a clash between people and technology. So much of crypto is about getting humans out of the decision-making process and automating things. Bitcoin wants to stop the Federal Reserve from moving the economy's levers, while smart contracts try to do something in a way that is efficient and reliable.

Sloss said that Seed Club is made of people and is for people. "Only people can do the valuable work that we do with early-stage projects," he said. Even though there are some things that can be "formalized," like tracking and rewarding development progress, it's a "mistake to jump right to smart contracts and software."