  This paper asks why startups in the blockchain industry are exiting to
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), an outstanding phenomena in the
wider digital economy which has tended to retain centralized ownership and
governance rights of many platforms, products and protocols. Drawing on a
narrative analysis of three case studies, I find three possible drivers: (1)
exit to DAO is motivated by both financial and stewardship goals which it
simultaneously promises to realize via the issuance of tokens; (2) exit to DAO
adds an additional layer of ownership and governance rights via tokens, without
requiring existing rights to be relinquished, thus making it a lucrative
strategy; and (3) markets, laws and social norms underpinning the broader
environment in which exits to DAO occur, seem to play an important role in
driving the decision. This paper contributes to the academic literature by
situating DAOs as a hybrid (and perhaps incomplete) entrepreneurial exit
strategy and identifying plausible drivers of the phenomenon which warrant
further dedicated research.
