Hello Defiers! In this week’s interview, I spoke with Gavin McDermott. He's an investor at IDEO CoLab Ventures, the venture arm of design firm IDEO, and he’s one of the creators of Fair Launch Capital. While the name might suggest otherwise, Fair Launch Capital isn’t an investment firm, or at least it’s not a traditional investment firm. Instead, it gives startups no-strings-attached funding so that they can afford security audits and launch their projects in a safe way. They’re asked to consider paying it forward by returning at least the same amount they got but ideally more, to fund the next project.

The idea came after the team saw that many founders in crypto were feeling forced to either sell tokens before their platform launched or raise venture capital as one option to pay for audits, or release their projects without the proper security checks. Gavin is hoping fair launch capital provides a viable alternative to venture capital, even if it does end up disrupting his fund's own business model. Since the group unveiled this new funding mechanism late august, the term “fair launch” has taken a life of its own, becoming a gold standard for any new DeFi venture.