Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week\u2019s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, <\/em>subscribe here.<\/em><\/p>\n The bets are no longer just on Wall Street \u2014 they\u2019re in your group chats, book clubs and that awkward shuffle that happens when everyone\u2019s trying to get out of the door at the same time at the end of class.<\/p>\n Community investment clubs are nothing new, but a renewed interest in decentralization and the glittering \u2014 albeit now hungover \u2014 allure of getting in at the ground level of a rocket-ship venture has created a new wave of efforts around group investing.<\/p>\n Individualism is out. Collectivism is in vogue. And this week brought a whole slew of examples to prove that exact point.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with Stanford. Three years ago, a group of Stanford students began working with Fenwick & West law firm to find a legal structure that met their needs: no accreditation requirement or hard limit on the number of people involved. The effort eventually turned into Stanford 2020, an investment club that raised $1.5 million for its debut fund. Fast-forward to today, the leader of that club, Steph Mui, is trying to replicate that playbook in the form of a venture-backed startup. PIN, which stands for \u201cpower in numbers,\u201d recently raised a $5.6 million seed funding round led by Initialized Capital, with investments from GSR, NEA, Industry and Canaan.<\/p>\n Mui credited the growing mindshare around crypto-native DAOs as part of the reason that investment clubs are of more interest these days. \u201cWe started before DAOs became really cool,\u201d Mui said. \u201cWhen we started, the kind of DAO-like structure that we set up around voting was more of a necessity from a regulatory standpoint \u2026 now it\u2019s actually a huge bonus.\u201d<\/p>\n To go from helping Stanford students invest in their peers to trying to help anyone with a community do the same is a big bet on the future of investment. As Mui addressed, when Stanford 2020 first launched, some reacted that it was an unsurprising move for a privileged set of folks to participate in a privileged asset class. It almost stopped the startup from existing entirely.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat changed that divide for me was talking to literally over 100 groups \u2026 and realizing that\u2019s totally not the case,\u201d she said. \u201cNow that I\u2019m a founder, I realize that all startups have very different needs \u2026 all those groups benefit from having community clubs of all different sorts on their cap table because of the expertise they require.\u201d<\/p>\n While interest is certainly cemented, hurdles exist both when it comes to getting diverse beta users (and making sure that startups want a club\u2019s money in the first place).<\/p>\n For my full take \u2014 and for this headline to actually make sense \u2014 read my latest + piece, written alongside my work bestie Anita Ramaswamy: \u201cInvestment clubs are cool again, and maybe community is, too.\u201d And, to thank you for being a Startups Weekly subscriber, here\u2019s a little TC+ discount for you: Enter \u201cSTARTUPS\u201d at check-out for 15% off of your subscription.<\/p>\n
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