It's a bit of a chicken and egg, where you don't know how much to request from the DAO, if it isn't funded. It's hard to have people softly commit (unless it is

It's a bit of a chicken and egg, where you don't know how much to request from the DAO, if it isn't funded. It's hard to have people softly commit (unless it is a guaranteed commitment), as they could always renege on their promise when it came time to provide money. Also, the vision seemed to be to create many VC funds to consider projects, which required an aggregation of capital. An alternate way is having each investment opportunity publicize it, but that is a marketing challenge for each project, and may not raise the requisite amount (there may also be greater legal risks to soliciting capital from retail investors directly). There are a lot of issues with the DAO (long before the hack), so I don't mean that as a justification for launching the current DAO, but rather a potential reasoning for that one aspect. (the bigger question is why didn't they do many proof of concepts + then restrict the amount of money collected with the first production version).