Katie Haun’s VC Firm Leads $11M Round for Web 3 Community Platform Highlight

Highlight, a no-code toolkit that lets anyone create a Web 3 community with non-fungible tokens (NFT), is marking its official launch with $11 million seed funding round led by Haun Ventures, the new crypto native firm from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) alum Katie Haun. Valuation was not disclosed.

Haun, a Coinbase (COIN) director and former U.S. prosecutor, left a16z in December and raised $1.5 billion in March to split between an early-stage and an “accelerator” fund. Last week, Haun Ventures announced its first investment, leading a $50 million round for NFT tooling protocol Zora at a $600 million valuation.

“We have a vision of making Web 3 accessible and intuitive and simple for mainstream creators and mainstream fan bases,” Highlight co-founder and CEO Nathaniel Emodi told CoinDesk in an interview. “As a fan, there’s always been this idea of fan clubs. And we think with Highlight and with Web 3 you could build the music fan club of the future.”

Other participants in the funding round included venture capital firms 1kx, Polygon Studios, Coinbase Ventures, SciFi VC and Thirty Five Ventures.

Highlight offers an end-to-end solution for creators wanting to build a community without the need for crypto or coding experience.

With a few clicks, creators can customize the visual appearance of their community, deploy their own smart contracts on the Polygon blockchain, design and mint NFTs and then sell or distribute the tokens to fans through a variety of distribution channels. An example would be a musician creating QR codes for fans to claim or purchase NFTs at live events, explained Emodi. There’s also the ability to create token-gated Discord channels, merchandise sales and access to media content.

Read more: Katie Haun Leaving A16z to Start Own Crypto VC Firm