Great question. The design notes paper [1] does an excellent job explaining this:
## Financial Contributors and Pricing - 7.5%
A total of $10,200,00 USD have been allocated to purchasers to price the
initial value of the coins for 7.5% of the total supply, with a total valuation
of the initial coin supply at $136,000,000.
100% of the dollars raised are being given to non-profits and FOSS projects,
and FOSS communities such as hackerspaces. This is effectively a one-way
non-destructive "proof-of-burn" on the dollar side to price the coins.
The role of coin purchasers is critical as an initial stakeholder in the growth
of the project. The purchasers have been curated to maximize effective change by
primarily allocating funds to Venture Capitalists and Token Funds with specialty
in the cryptocurrency and decentralized internet ecosystem. Many of these
purchasers have been effective in disrupting entire industries and have been
involved in large-scale growth of internet services (some even across
generations).
The existence of these participants are necessary and fundamental in pricing the
tokens, as the distribution event requires real value to be established (a sale
of 1% of total initial supply is not credible in pricing the tokens).
Additionally, the sale has occurred as close to launch/announcement as possible.
Other projects replicating this mechanism may require greater capital to fund
development and/or greater claim to the Pre-Launch Development allocation. This
may result in not having a one-way "proof-of-burn", and instead use the
capital to fund development of the project.
The role of pricing the coins for distribution is necessary as the coins need to
have understood value during the distribution process. While it would ostensibly
be ideal to spin-up projects and deploy blockchains without this mechanism,
there may be insufficient coordination and ex-ante expectations of value. The
role of the high-reputation Venture Capital provides a tastemaker function which
provides a signal and Schelling Point for potentially economically and socially
valuable projects. These entities are a significant stakeholder in the current
ecosystem and a continuing game for project selection and curation may persist
as a result ("putting your money where your mouth is"). [1]
[1] https://handshake.org/files/handshake.txt