DAOhaus Flywheel: How We Grow

[arentweall]

Overview & Objectives

The initial objective of this exercise was to define a revenue strategy for DAOhaus. However, to identify a positive-sum revenue model for the DAOhaus product, economy and community, we cannot just focus on revenue in isolation.

We must first understand the DAOhaus flywheel (i.e. user personas, product offerings, growth metrics), so that we know how to move towards our desired end goal as an organization. Some questions I’m aiming to map out include:

1. Problem: What problems are we solving?
2. Product: How are we solving them?
3. Usage: Are we solving them well? Are we growing?
4. Revenue: How are we earning revenue from usage?

While the following questions will not be answered in this document, I hope the framework can help frame the following conversations moving forward. The framework should also help us achieve greater organizational efficiency.

1. How do we manage core vs periphery apps?
2. Who should manage which core / periphery apps?
3. What is our revenue model?
4. How do we accrue value to our token (Discussion by @ceresbznsii)

Framework

I will use the following framework to do this analysis.

1. Persona: Who is the user facing the problem?
2. Problem: Every product or initiative (i.e. non-software human-run processes) starts with a problem faced by a user persona.
3. Product: Once the problem and persona has been identified, Product teams can build products or Community teams can build initiatives to solve the problem.
4. Usage: When a product / initiative has successfully solved the problem for the user (not binary), we will see more usage in the product. Usage can be split into acquisition-type and retention-type numbers.
5. Revenue: Finally, when the product has delivered enough value that people are willing to pay for it, the product can start earning revenue from its users.

A product should go through all 5 phases in the above general order (sometimes concurrently) in order to become sustainable.

Understanding the DAOhaus Flywheel

We start from the Persona and Problem columns (i.e. who and what we are solving), followed by the Product column (i.e. product offerings)

The third column is the Usage column, which lists the desired outcomes that show signs of usage and growth.

• We state the desired outcomes (e.g. Number of Users) instead of the initiatives (e.g. Socials / SEO / Twitter Spaces, etc.). This is because we should understand our desired outcomes before brainstorming, testing and executing on initiatives and products.
• The different shapes define different personas in the ecosystems (i.e. squares = DAOs, circles = users, rounded squares = Boost developers)

Finally, the fifth column displays the revenue streams which we earn Revenue from users and customers using our Product.

Caveats

As an initial exercise, the framework does not:

1. Define clear and specific user personas (currently loosely defined)
2. Include personas beyond core DAO personas (i.e. Boost developers, etc.)
3. Define clearly each intended outcome / growth metric

Once the framework is sound and ratified by Warcamp, we should start work on the above three areas to optimize the framework.

How we can use this framework

Organizational Efficiency

As the DAOhaus organization and product grows, we need to introduce better ways to measure and plan our roadmap to success. Understanding our intended outcomes and their relationships helps us:

• Better understand where we are headed to
• Prioritize and access different levers to growth
• Leverage on synergies to achieve more with less
• Optimize more efficiency in our use of runway, time and contributor bandwidth

Since the framework maps out all interactions and value flows in the DAOhaus ecosystem, DAOhaus as an organization and a product should move in the right direction if all intended outcomes are achieved.

Also, this helps map the intended outcomes to Circles, providing a framework for Circles to own and drive certain outcomes.

1. Rangers: Persona and Usage (Acquisition / Retention)
2. Alchemists: Revenue
3. Paladins: operational outcomes (Not covered here in this framework, should be explored further)
4. Magesmiths: Persona, Product and Usage (Retention)

Why is this important? Why now?

1. The DAO space has been gaining momentum and accelerating in growth. We have done well, but we can do better. If we want to grow our footprint & impact on human coordination, we should act sooner rather than later.
2. We just raised our CCO - we should aspire towards efficiency and accountability to our community that has supported us
3. We want to grow the contributor base. Having clear goals and outcomes in mind will help us better identify, attract and retain the contributors we need.

To pilot this, we can start getting Rangers to own Acquisition-type numbers in the Usage section (e.g. Number of Users).

Who owns Growth?

With this framework, Growth is an important function for DAOhaus. Some organizations assume growth as a function of product, while others assume growth alongside product. We should not go too deep into organizational philosophies but find a model to move forward and iterate on.

In this vein, we should start with the following:

1. Rangers own the top of funnel - Growing content channels and acquiring new users (Outcome = Number of Users & new DAOs created)
2. Magesmiths own the bottom of funnel - Growing user / DAO activity and retention of existing users

As Magesmiths are focused on building v3, we do not need to start tracking for Magesmiths now. Instead, we can start piloting with Rangers. This gives us time to learn and refine the above model (e.g. who owns what? How to track? What is meaningful to track?)

Revenue

First understanding the value flows and growth outcomes for DAOhaus enables us to explore revenue models in a more grounded manner. Revenue exploration will be done in another study.

How we could take this forward

It would be great if Warcamp members could discuss, give feedback and help refine the thoughts over the next week or so.

Since this is a complex problem with many ambiguities, we should test and implement this gradually. In the short term (next 1-2 months), we can start a simple pilot within Rangers to start owning certain outcomes, helping us trial the process and figure out what works / doesn’t. With the learnings, we can start rolling this out in other Circles gradually.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to your comments!

P.S. Shoutout to @spencer and @ceresbznsii for providing feedback and helping refine my thoughts

[burleebau]

@arentweall

The DAO space has been gaining momentum and accelerating in growth. We have done well, but we can do better. If we want to grow our footprint & impact on human coordination, we should act sooner rather than later.

I really appreciate the urgency that you are imposing in this proposal on rangers. I think the circle is ripe for running a pilot in this vein while also navigating the internal structure/setup of roles in a “Holocracy” like structure, creating more definition, accountability, and focus in the group.

@arentweall

Rangers own the top of funnel - Growing content channels and acquiring new users (Outcome = Number of Users & new DAOs created)

Personas and acquisition/product usage seem like two areas we can drastically improve on in the Rangers circle.

It seems there is abundant opportunity in a few areas:

• engaging existing projects that have shown interest in DAOhaus in the space and sharing what tools we have made available to their community / project through the DAOhaus app.
• creating content that is relevant for specific communities that we feel would benefit from using DAOhaus products.
• create a form submission through the website that allows projects to sign-up for a demo of the DAOhaus app

Focusing on the above three items as a test might prove worthwhile, as there is no comprehensive strategy geared toward those specific efforts.

Overall, I am in support of this proposal. Thanks for putting this together @arentweall

[spencer]

Overall, this is an important step for us to take. We need to hold ourselves and each accountable to the outcomes we want. Thank you @arentweall for getting it started!

I have some thoughts that hit on a few different areas.

Is flywheel the right analogy?

My understanding of the flywheel analogy is primarily related to network effects. Platforms, especially those with multi-sided networks or marketplaces, need to put in a lot of work to start the flywheel moving (cold start problem), but then once its going it kind of keeps spinning based on its own momentum. In other words, the effort required to bring in new DAOs goes down as the marketplace grows in size because the value prop grows with it.

Given our vision of a boost marketplace and general facilitation of developers to build on DAOhaus, we certainly do have a flywheel that we need to better understand how to get spinning. But doing so requires mapping out both (all?) sides of our marketplace.

On the other hand, we do have HAUS value accrual potential that doesn’t necessarily rely on DAOhaus as a marketplace. Its possible that we can drive revenue/value simply by attracting and retaining more DAOs onto our platform. Or another way to look at is that we might decide that the best way to start our marketplace flywheel is by focusing primarily on the demand-side, ie more DAOs.

Without the other side(s) of the marketplace (developers, service marketplace, etc), however, the effort involved in bringing in new DAOs does not necessarily decrease as more DAOs come in. Yes, there will be benefits from word of mouth and other community growth, but the core value prop of DAOhaus will be roughly the same. The system we build to support growth in that scenario would look more like an engine than a flywheel.

This may sound like trivial semantics, but I would suggest the following:

• A) If we are going to focus on just the “more DAOs” side of things, we should re-conceptualize this framework as a “growth engine” rather than a flywheel.
• B) If we want to lean into our DAOhaus-as-marketplace vision, though, its important that we bring the other side(s) of the marketplace into the model before we start using the framework.

Additional personas

"Demand"-side – more DAOs

• New communities without any existing coordination mechanisms
• Young communities
• Mature-ish communities with existing off-chain coordination mechanisms that are exploring managing shared resources on-chain
• Existing DAOs looking for ways to define/manage/support subDAOs or working groups

"Supply"-side – more developers

• DAO tooling projects looking for distribution (ie DAOs to use their thing)
• Developers looking for a new project ideas

Stray Rangers ideas

A bit out of scope for this specific conversation, but as I was thinking about the Rangers side of things I had some thoughts about how Rangers can drive more growth. Leaving them here for now.

• More community engagement initiatives. I suspect there’s a lot we can be doing to actively engage the existing DAOhaus community and bring new people in.
• More DAOhaus product content. We have a lot of amazing stuff that many people don’t know about. We should be constantly pushing out content about DAOhaus features, such as overviews, explainers, tutorials, examples, etc – articles, videos, gifs, tweets, live demos. Too much content of this type is better than not enough. Repeating is ok!

[spencer]

All of this said, I would like to underscore how important it is to tie clear, outcome-based goals to our endeavors. This is particularly important for Rangers, which currently has the least clarity about its purpose.

I fully support orienting the Rangers purpose around driving more new DAOs each period (say, monthly).

[dekan.eth]

I think this is a great start to getting more process and accountability to our core work streams.

Rangers:
primary personas to engage

• Current ‘daos’ that would like to upgrade a Safe by layering on a more nuanced governance structure with Moloch Zodiac and the flexibility of the rest of our v3 stack.
• Current daos that would like to add more subdao/workstream structure to budget distribution.
• Large communities with some influence which community members are dao curious or dao demanding

These are great communities to go after, in some cases they have already made the leap to market themselves as a dao, we can help them actually become one, one that truly is sufficiently decentralized and community managed.

To achieve this we may need to change our narrative a little, instead of now, what feels like ‘launching your first dao’ to something like ‘upgrade your community’. Getting more public big wins here will kick off the flywheel of network effects.

I also feel like Rangers need a stronger sales presence. We need someone that can slap the haus and say “this fucking thing can fit so much spaghetti in it!” We gotta bring the sexy back to decentralized governance.

Alchemist and revenue:
I still feel it is too early to focus on revenue before growth. Any revenue from core products or incubated products should flow into the HAUS token. It’s a more sustainable model for ultimately what we are building, a public infrastructure and a community of dao missionaries. the HAUS token should be entangled into everything we do and that will power the fly wheel.

Magesmiths:
Number one priority is the core sdk and app stack. The flexibility of this new structure we are cranking on has already started allowing other projects to emerge and be incubated by us (flywheel power). We should double down on this but must keep focus on the core offering. WIthout the core the fly wheel doesn’t exist.

[alexkeating.eth]

One thing that I think would be helpful along with the personas, problems and product would to also put some numbers to our revenue targets. Where do we want to get to in order to be sustainable or growing? Answering that question could help us narrow our focus on some initial problems and personas that have a large enough market for us to become sustainable.

I think the personas are pretty good, but the problems seem a little general and non-exhaustive. It may be good to break some of these down and add a couple more.