Imran Khan (Alliance)

In a 2022 interview on The Inquisitive VC podcast, Khan recalled that he became interested in crypto around 2013, when an article by Marc AndreessenMarc AndreessenMarc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). While in college he helped develop the graphical web browser Mosaic, then co-founded Netscape and Loudcloud (later renamed Opsware), and has long served as a director of Meta; he has also published essays such as “Why Software Is Eating the World.”Open the full entry on bitcoin’s value proposition drew him in; he began investing in bitcoin and took part in the Ethereum ICO.⁠[1]

He interviewed with CoinbaseCoinbaseCoinbase is a U.S. operator of crypto asset trading platforms, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, whose listed parent is Coinbase Global, Inc.; it went public through a direct listing on Nasdaq (ticker COIN) in April 2021 and joined the S&P 500 in May 2025. It provides crypto trading, custody, staking, and stablecoin-related services, launched USDC with Circle, develops the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, and acquired the crypto options exchange Deribit in 2025; its venture investing operates as Coinbase Ventures.Open the full entry and, though not hired, completed a project for the company; he then worked at MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry. After Microsoft he launched the crypto venture firm Volt Capital with a partner and served as a venture partner there.⁠[1]

In March 2020 the Chicago DeFi Alliance was launched as a consortium of Chicago trading firms supporting decentralized finance projects, with Khan as project founder; at the time DeFi held roughly $500 million. In the 2022 interview Khan said he lived in Chicago, which he described as home to many market makers.⁠[2][1]

The group later became DeFi Alliance and began calling itself a “Web3 Accelerator” in October 2021; projects it incubated included Sushi and Olympus DAO.⁠[2]

On January 13, 2022, DeFi Alliance rebranded as Alliance DAO. Khan said about 300 contributors had provided roughly $50 million, among them Libra co-creator Morgan Beller and OpenSea’s Devin Finzer.⁠[2]

Khan described the new entity as “a founders DAO for the best founders in the world that are building for Web 3,” and said a liquid token could begin trading within six to 12 months depending on the regulatory environment, initially purchasable only by vetted individuals.⁠[2]

In April 2024 Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry announced a strategic long-term investment in Alliance. Khan, Alliance’s co-founder, said it was a minority stake, that the transaction took place in October 2023 with partnership details finalized in January 2024, and that Founders Fund had invested in the accelerator itself rather than in Alliance’s funds.⁠[3]

By then Alliance, founded in 2020, had run 12 cohorts and accelerated more than 200 startups, with a portfolio including ArbitrumArbitrumArbitrum is an Ethereum scaling technology and network family developed by Offchain Labs. Its Arbitrum One network uses optimistic rollups, Nova uses the AnyTrust data availability scheme, and the related technology is also used to build dedicated chains. Arbitrum combines off-chain execution with settlement on Ethereum and supports EVM and Stylus contracts.Open the full entry, Immutable X, Axie Infinity and Tensor.⁠[3]

Khan co-hosts Good Game Podcast, a weekly show for founders produced by Alliance, with Qiao Wang.⁠[4]

Alliance: Official website: https://alliance.xyz/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]

X: Public account: https://x.com/lmrankhan (opens in a new window).⁠[1]