40: Funding Proposal - Helmass BD Residency

Hello everyone - before diving into this post I would like to thank @amphiboly.eth ly for the amount of time he spent with me on this post. It’s very unnatural for me to A) think about my needs B) look beyond 3 months in Web 3 (I often feel work can feel week-to-week) C) place reasonable expectations around my time commitment (there is so much opportunity in Web 3).

Summary: I think it’s important to start this post with why I joined Diamond DAO. I originally started working/contributing to DAOs as a way for me to better understand products I was interested in and to make investments. I shortly realized the complexity around coordination, and the people making things happen in the DAO. As an investor, I came to believe that the greatest risk and opportunity when investing in projects is understanding/defining community health. I started working on a large project at the Index Coop (here) to better understand these dynamics. After spending a good chunk of time working on this problem, I came to believe my approach was very rudimentary and could be greatly improved upon. One of the articles that resonated with me is called, the life and death of online gaming communities (here). Thankfully my learnings led me to Diamond DAO. I can’t remember exactly how we met but I instantly hit it off with @amphiboly.eth, @steffbrowne, and @lemp.eth. I was passionate about the vision and Diamond DAO is highly aligned with my interests.

Since joining Diamond DAO I have led multiple initiatives, including:

  • Establishing a bi-weekly community call
  • Revamping (ongoing) the discord server
  • Suggesting a grant from MetaCartel (here) and creating the deck, leading to an investment from MetaCartel ventures. Shoutout to @steffbrowne’s clutch, last-minute pitch.
  • Drafted Diamond DAO values
  • Held multiple 1v1s to help engage contributors
  • Formulated a very high level BD strategy

I am sure there are more, but I list the above to show that I am 100% committed to this project, the core team, and the community.

Key Responsibilities:

Over the next three months, I propose to lead BD efforts within Diamond DAO. While the areas of contribution will be dynamic, key responsibilities include:

  • Creation of materials that clearly define Chainverse offering.
  • Creation of a framework for evaluating potential customers and partners.
  • Prospecting and prospect categorization.
  • Lead customer outreach.
  • Design customer onboarding process and help create processes around collecting and analyzing customer feedback.

Methods of community communication include:

  • Forum post outlining BD strategy
  • Regular updates (summary of progress in the bi-weekly community call around progress)
  • Forum post outlining customer onboarding and feedback

I will consider this project a success if we are able to onboard 10-15 strategic DAOs by the end of January 2022, assuming no delays around the deployment of MVP. Successful customer onboarding thereafter.

Time commitment:

Time commitment will ebb and flow, with some weeks requiring more work than others. I estimate that the average time commitment will be 10-20 hours per week, averaging 15 hours per week through February 2022.

Thereafter, and hopefully, I will have greater visibility to increase my level of contribution at Diamond DAO. One of the reasons for me estimating 10-20 hours per week is my active involvement in other DAOs in the Ethereum ecosystem. This also gives me confidence to deliver the above objectives.

Compensation:

I request 8,100 DAI (2,700 monthly).

I request 0.3% guaranteed shares from Diamond Bank. I request up to 0.4% additional shares. For each customer I successfully onboard from our (pre-agreed upon) list of strategic customers, I will receive 0.4% shares (if before February 1) and 0.2% shares (if before March 1).

2 Likes

Can you explain what .3% / .2% means in terms of Diamond Bank shares?

@helmass thank you for putting this together. You’ve been a key contributor in building out our community and processes, and have been engaged since the beginning.

I want to support your proposed pivot to Business Development but I have reservations before committing to the full request you outline here.

Prior experience
I know you for your community development work, but am unfamiliar with your track record in business development - either in the DAO space, or elsewhere. I’m fully supportive of exploring new paths in web3 but I prefer a process of incremental delivery and success as we explore; this is aligned with our activation and contributor processes at Diamond DAO.

What I read in some of your leading sentences is in conflict with the strategic position you propose to fill. For example:

Confidence in asking for what’s needed, long term strategic planning, and managing commitments are crucial skills for business development. This post and request to Diamond DAO required you to go beyond your comfort zone a bit, I recognize and celebrate that, and want to champion for more. However, these skills need to be your comfort zone before taking on such a high pressure and strategic role.

Time commitment
Business development is art, science, network, and grit. With your other commitments, how can you guarantee that you’ll be able to meet potential customers where they’re at, at the time that is available to them? For me to support this proposal, what I don’t want is Diamond DAO to fit in at hours 60-75 of your already quite busy schedule - I just don’t think that sets any stakeholder here up for success.

Next steps
In context of my reservations above I would not support 0.3% of Diamond Bank shares up front plus cash comp, plus the incentive structure you outlined above. I still want to support your growth, engagement, and career exploration within Diamond DAO. So let’s talk about how we get somewhere closer to what you’re proposing.

Would you accept a smaller commitment with this new focus before accepting this proposal in full?

For example

  • One month paid comp + shares in Diamond DAO in exchange for delivering:
    • Business development process
      • How do we generate leads, and then prioritize them?
      • What does intake look like?
      • What do you need from the product team to onboard customers?
    • Revenue model/strategy
      • How do we price/exchange value with customers for our web3 product?

I would be much more comfortable committing to an incremental pivot toward Business Development through a scope like this, and then if successful (and you actually like it) we follow up with a larger, more strategic role in Diamond DAO.

1 Like

+1 to this post.

I would prefer to enter into a larger BD engagement with a more detailed plan from the candidate than what is included in this post.

The text in the center of this proposal was prepared by Jordan, so I have little to go on in terms of understanding Ryan’s experience in a business development capacity & how he would approach this project. It’s not Ryan’s fault that this proposal isn’t very in depth as I think the deadline suggested was unreasonable.

I would support paying fair comp to Ryan for him to start working 15 hours a week and delivering BD strategy plan and actionable plan that he leads in X number of weeks. We can give feedback and refine the plan together. After a rotation of planning, I think we could return to an assessment for comp + shares.

Ryan’s opening statement did introduce a lot of doubt that we would want completely cleared up before signing someone up for an obligation with substantial ownership in Diamond Bank, since that is more-or-less a permanent obligation that they are the right person for that role and that they will be there to lead us through every hurtle in that area for the long term.

What are your thoughts on the above Ryan?

2 Likes