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. Is there a legal entity, and what does it hold?
A raise with a has a real company holding the intellectual property, the domain, and the accounts, and that company answers to the DAO. Without one, a successful raise funds a treasury attached to nothing you can point at. Check the raise page for the entity name and jurisdiction, and check the founder's IP disclosure — a founder who says the code lives in a personal GitHub account and has not been assigned to the entity is telling you something important.
2. Did they file a transparency disclosure?
The covers prior token sales, market-maker arrangements, insider allocations, and known risks. Filing is optional, which is exactly why it is informative: a founder who files is volunteering the things that would embarrass them later. When you see a filing, read the risks section first, not the summary.
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.
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.