Community-building Web3 project CrowdPad raises $2.5M seed round from Infinity Ventures Crypto, Coin Operated Group & Balaji S

Solana chain-based community building project CrowdPad today announced it has raised a seed round of $2.5 million led by Infinity Ventures Crypto, joined by Coin Operated Group, Serum Incentive Ecosystem Foundation, DXB Fund, Morningstar Ventures, Creator Led Ventures, Kosmos Ventures, and Ocular VC.

Notable angel investors included Balaji Srinivasan, Lily Liu, Furqan Rydhan, Joyce Yang, Anirudh Pai, Julian Weisser, Akshay BD, Tanmay Bhat, Shradha Sharma, Ali Abdaal, and Wong Joon Ian.

CrowdPad, which was part of the inaugural cohort of On Deck’s accelerator programme 'ODX', claims to be one of the first companies out of ODX to announce a seed raise.

“This investment enables us to accelerate our progress towards facilitating 1,000 tokenised communities that have meaningful token-based interactions, wherein communities can create opportunities for members to earn, reward, and spend in social capital. We’re excited to enter the next phase of our journey with some of the best strategic investment partners in the world on all things creator economy, crypto-native, and geographic expertise across core markets,” said Joel Alexander, Co-founder and CEO at CrowdPad.

CrowdPad is a tokenised community-building tool for everyday creators to create, discover, and manage their tokenised communities all in one place, with a simple TikTok-esque video-first approach to community discovery.

In other words, CrowdPad is creating an operating system for Creator DAOs (digital-native communities with a shared purpose and a shared bank account).

By comparison, in order to set up the same today, communities need to undergo a six+ step process that’s disjointed, inclusive of setting up a wallet, multi-sig, voting, community management and others, according to the startup.

The project and its founders believe social tokens "allow creators to monetise social capital by facilitating tokenised communities". Fans can buy a community’s token for access to exclusive posts, events, bounties, and broader decision-making."

CrowdPad is utilising the Solana ecosystem and pushing the status quo on Web3 DApps by building CrowdPad on a mobile-first basis. The most notable DApps today are for custodial and non-custodial wallets only. CrowdPad will be one of the first to take a giant leap into Web3 social on mobile, the founders say.

“We are focused on building an easy-to-use, beautiful platform that will make entering the Web3 ecosystem seamless and exciting. We are continuously exploring ways to truly provide value to our users and put the power back in their hands; this has involved exploring the intersection of ownership, staking and engagement as the underlying principle for access to communities, multisig and quadratic voting for decision-making, and so much more.” said Drishti Chawla, Co-founder and CTO at CrowdPad.

Focusing on strong communities

The seed funding will facilitate the team’s operations across the Indian and EMEA markets, with a core emphasis on hiring top talent and building strong communities.

“We at IVC believe incorporating community ownership in the existing Web 2.0 paradigm will empower content creators to take ownership and develop stronger ties with their followers. Cue CrowdPad. An operating system for Creator DAOs that allows creators to build an ecosystem that rewards them and their audience as it grows.

"Being one of the first few companies to pioneer this paradigm shift in the EMEA and Indian market, we believe, gives CrowdPad a significant headstart in the space. Powered by a solid team and solid partnerships, including Solana Labs members and eminent KOLs, CrowdPad can surely alter the creator economy for the better," said Brian Lu, Founding Partner at IVC.

Anirudh Pai, Investor at ODX, said, "Crowdpad is making it possible for everyday citizens in emerging markets, starting with creators, to fund their work using social tokens. If programming was the core competency for Web2, understanding how communities operate is the essential skill for Web3. and Crowdpad is one of the best teams taking this challenge on.”