Doing your own research
Nobody vetted these teams. Here is the checklist we would use.
Every raise on Backable is . Nobody read the pitch, called the references, or checked that the demo works. The mechanism protects your money from being stolen; it does nothing about a project being wrong, early, or simply not very good. That part is your job, and this is the checklist we would run.
1. What did they sign over to the entity?
Every raise here forms a before it can submit, and that company answers to the DAO. This is the part that has no equivalent on other token platforms, so it is worth knowing what to look at: not whether the entity exists, but what the founder actually assigned to it. The IP checklist on the raise page lists each asset class and what they declared for it — code, brand, designs, domain, accounts. A founder who assigned everything is handing the company the thing you are funding. A founder who left the code in a personal GitHub account and said so is telling you something important, and one who marked a class “not applicable” when it plainly applies is telling you more.
2. Did they file a transparency disclosure?
The covers prior token sales, market-maker arrangements, insider allocations, and known risks. Every raise files one, so the question is not whether they did — it is how much they said. Read the risks section first, not the summary: a filing that names something uncomfortable was written by someone volunteering it, and a filing full of “none” is a claim you can check.
3. Who is actually funding this?
The backers module on every raise page ranks commitments by wallet. is not automatically bad — an anchor backer can be a genuine vote of confidence — but it changes the picture. If one wallet is 60% of the raise, the “142 backers” headline is mostly one person, and their later decisions move the token far more than yours.
4. Do the numbers describe a real plan?
- Budget vs goal. Divide the treasury by the monthly budget. If the answer is three months, the team is planning to come back for more money almost immediately. If it is ten years, the budget is decorative.
- Valuation vs stage. A pre-product raise at a $50M is asking you to pay a Series B price for an idea.
- Team share and unlock ladder. Look at what fraction of supply the team holds and at what price multiples it unlocks. A large package that unlocks only at 4× and above is aligned. A large package with a short lock is a countdown.
- Supply to backers. If backers are buying 5% of the supply, the other 95% is an overhang that will eventually be sold to someone.
5. Read the risks the founder wrote
Backable asks every founder to write their own risk case, in their own words. It is the highest signal-to-noise section on the page. Vague risks (“market conditions”) mean the founder either hasn't thought about failure or doesn't want to discuss it. Specific risks (“our supplier contract is month to month and they could raise prices 30%”) mean you are dealing with someone who has looked at the problem.
6. Verify the identity claims yourself
Domains and X accounts on a raise page can carry a verified marker, which means the founder proved control of them. Verified means the account posted the proof, not that the person behind it is who they say. Click through. Look at whether the X account existed before the raise, whether the GitHub has commits from before the pitch, and whether anyone outside the raise has ever mentioned the project.
7. Let an agent do the first pass
Every raise publishes an agents.md — the same page as plain text, built for AI assistants — and each raise page carries a copy-a-prompt button that hands your assistant a diligence brief. The machine-readable set also includes llms.txt and the raise-sizing and GTM & pitch skills. An agent is good at the checks above that are mechanical; the judgment in 4 and 5 stays yours.
A reasonable way to size a commitment
Decide the number you would be able to write off entirely without changing anything about your month, then commit that. There is no informational edge to gain by committing more, since everyone pays the same price per token regardless of size.