VC and Former Prosecutor Katie Haun’s Framework for Evaluating Crypto Investments

The emergence of cryptocurrency as an institutional asset class demands sophisticated evaluation frameworks that bridge traditional venture metrics with crypto-specific considerations. Katie Haun’s approach at Haun Ventures offers valuable insights into institutional-grade crypto investment methodology, combining rigorous venture analysis with specialized blockchain technology criteria.

Haun spent her early career as a prosecutor for the Department of Justice, focusing on fraud and cybercrime, and eventually leading teams that investigated the Mt. Gox hack and corrupt agents on the Silk Road task force. That work led to a deep analysis of blockchain and crypto that made her a believer in the technologies’ long-term potential. She has since become one of the first and leading crypto-dedicated venture capitalists, beginning at a16z and eventually launching her firm in 2022.

A deep dive into Haun Ventures’ evaluation and investment strategy can provide a helpful window into the crypto industry’s path into mainstream adoption, both in terms of present conditions and long-term outlook.

Investment Architecture

Haun Ventures structures its $1.5 billion in assets under management across two distinct vehicles: a $500 million early-stage fund targeting pre-seed through Series A investments, and a $1 billion acceleration fund focused on established protocols and infrastructure plays. This bifurcated approach enables the firm to maintain different evaluation criteria appropriate to each investment stage while creating synergies between early and growth-stage portfolios.

The firm’s evaluation framework operates through parallel analysis tracks. Traditional venture metrics examine criteria such as total addressable market, team quality, and business model defensibility. Simultaneously, a crypto-specific overlay will assess considerations such as token economics, regulatory compliance architecture, and network effect potential. The goal is to identify and support projects with long-term potential, whether at an underlying infrastructure or user-interface level.

“We said we were not going to be one of those funds that deployed in months. We would pick years,” Haun said at a CNBC roundtable when describing the more patient deployment approach.

Early-Stage and Later-Stage Methodology

Early-stage investment evaluation at Haun Ventures emphasizes technical capability paired with a certain level of pragmatism and the potential long-term viability as a legitimate blockchain use case.

“We think of some traditional things that you would want to see when you’re looking at evaluating an investment,” says Haun. “You would look at the [total addressable market], the market opportunity size. You would look at founder quality, the team quality. Are these very technical founders, but also are they pragmatic founders?”

The firm’s investment in Chaos Labs is one recent example. The protocol risk analysis platform provides risk analysis for decentralized finance protocols, helping determine parameters like collateral ratios and liquidation triggers. Recently, the firm launched its network to automatically inject risk parameters on-chain.

Haun’s later-stage investments currently focus on financial services, financial infrastructure, and established protocols like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The firm also invests in companies built to service these protocols, such as Chainalysis and Fireblocks.

When evaluating protocols, Haun’s team carefully examines factors such as token distribution and incentive structures.

As Haun explains, “When we’re investing in a protocol, we examine if tokens are being allocated in ownership of a network sensibly. Are they too overdone in a particular category? What is the lockup schedule? Are incentives aligned with the community, with the users of the network and contributors to the network in the long term?”

‘Hero Moments’

Beyond the investment frameworks, Haun’s operational philosophy emphasizes deep founder relationships and hands-on support. Her team aims to be “first call” partners when portfolio companies face challenges, offering rapid response regardless of the situation.

“When something goes wrong or good, they tell us we’re often one of their first calls,” Haun explains. “We’re going to answer the phone and be all hands on deck regardless of what the situation is.”

This approach stems from her experience as a federal prosecutor, where building trust and solving complex problems required both analytical rigor and human judgment.

The firm calls these moments of critical support “hero moments.”

“We want to be able to deliver on those hero moments no matter the challenge, whether it’s a challenge facing treasury management, legal or policy or regulatory or business or hiring technical talent,” says Haun.

The firm maintains a lean structure with approximately 10 employees, with plans to grow to no more than around 15. This approach allows Haun Ventures to remain nimble while deploying capital across both early and later-stage opportunities in the crypto ecosystem. Rather than maintaining a large in-house operations team, Haun Ventures leverages a carefully cultivated network of external experts across security, legal, technical talent, and executive recruitment.

It’s a network-driven model that reflects Haun’s belief that specialized expertise should be precisely matched to specific challenges.

“Internal operations teams scale very big and sometimes you get bounced around,” she says. “Unlike some other firms who bring their network in-house and have an operations team, what we like to do is have this broad external network, so we can literally connect you to the world experts in any given field.”