Bridge Funding for Bankless Consulting Back Office Contributors

Grants/Funding
1

Title: Bridge Funding for Bankless Consulting Back Office Contributors

Authors: @chuck25#4313, @RunTheJewelz#7931, @RA#1839, @DSide#0019, @MC10#8599
Date created: February 22, 2022
Date posted: February 24, 2022

Summary

We are requesting 1,180,000 BANK so that BanklessDAO members who are contributing to the Bankless Consulting back office can earn closer to the bDAO-standard 1,000 BANK/hr rate for their work. Dozens of BanklessDAO members are contributing to marketing, talent coordination, operations, and other projects that are required to start up the world’s first web3-native consultancy.

But these valuable contributors aren’t getting paid because (1) Bankless Consulting did not request a budget for Season 3 and (2) Bankless Consulting is not yet generating enough revenue to pay the back office contributors.

We believe that the BanklessDAO members who are working to build the infrastructure for Bankless Consulting should be paid equitably to contributors in the other BanklessDAO guilds. There are over 3 dozen extremely talented individuals that we want to retain in BanklessDAO, and so we need to reward them for their contributions.

BACKGROUND

As the Bankless Consulting Back Office team works to get the first web3-native consultancy off the ground, we have several roles, projects, and tasks that BanklessDAO members are excited to take on. But Bankless Consulting doesn’t have the financial resources yet to pay people what they deserve to be paid. The result is that contributors to our Operations, Go To Market, Innovation, Legal, and Finance offices are earning far, far less than the 1000 BANK/hr rate that has been standardized across the DAO.

For our January Coordinape round, we had 26,000 BANK to allocate to 17 Back Office contributors who had collectively contributed over 200 hours to our five offices that month. That’s an average of less than 130 BANK/hour. Across BanklessDAO, contributors are earning 1000 BANK/hour. Bankless Consulting contributors also need to be paid for their contributions.

In recognition that our contributors are coming from all corners of the BanklessDAO, we are requesting an allocation from the Grants Committee to compensate our Back Office contributors. The 7 elected Representatives to the Bankless Consulting Governance Board - RunTheJewelz, Omen, DSide, Puncar, MC10, RA, and Chuck - will not receive any of this allocation. The seven of us reached L1 status during Season 2 based on our contributions to Bankless Consulting that season, and we now want to spread the wealth to others who are working to grow this business.

This 1,180,000 BANK allocation will provide Bankless Consulting with bridge funding while we work to bring in enough clients to pay these back office contributors.

The benefits of this allocation to the BanklessDAO community will include:

  1. More BanklessDAO members getting paid in BANK and staying in the DAO
  2. More BanklessDAO members earning L1 status (a huge majority of Bankless Consulting contributors are Guest Pass holders)
  3. More BanklessDAO members gaining exciting web3 business experience in marketing, operations, finance. Many professionals come into BanklessDAO looking to gain work experience, and Bankless Consulting has great opportunities for them
  4. Less attrition from people who can’t find paid work in the DAO and leave us for other web3 opportunities
  5. More capacity for Bankless Consulting to get its flywheel going so that it becomes a profitable and sustainable business, advancing the BanklessDAO’s mission

MISSION & VALUES ALIGNMENT

Bankless Consulting helps the DAO achieve its mission of being the on-ramp of choice for talented people from all professions, walks of life, and corners of the globe to begin working in web3. Since the start of Season 3, over 100 BanklessDAO members (majority Guest Pass holders) have joined Bankless Consulting meetings and expressed interest in lending their talents to one of the back office functions of this business.

Bankless Consulting is attracting people who want to work and who have skills that we need. We just don’t have any money yet to pay them.

One of BanklessDAO’s values is paying people for their contributions. We don’t expect newcomers to perform unpaid internships before landing a role. And yet, this is the case right now in Bankless Consulting.

Another of BanklessDAO’s values is to enable Guest Pass holders to earn enough BANK to become L1 members. With 1,180,000 BANK for Bankless Consulting back office contributions, we can help a large cohort of Guest Pass holders meet the 35,000 BANK threshold for L1 status in Seasons 3 and 4.

Finally, Bankless Consulting is embodying the BanklessDAO’s value of generating revenue and becoming self-sustainable. We are the world’s first web3-native consultancy, and we’ve signed multiple paying clients in our first month of operations. This Grants Committee allocation for the people who are building Bankless Consulting will help the business build better marketing, operations, financial management, and strategy.

SPECIFICATION

We are requesting 1,180,000 BANK for Bankless Consulting back office roles, projects, and tasks. All of this funding will be used to pay BanklessDAO contributors who are building the Bankless Consulting infrastructure. None of it will be used to compensate the Bankless Consulting Governance Board members.

This funding will enable Bankless Consulting’s five, elected Office Coordinators to name contributors to roles and post bounties for projects and tasks.

Here is a breakdown of the work and human resources required in Season 3:

Role Very brief description Est. people Total hours Total BANK
Social Media Manager Weekly salary for someone to tweet 1-2 threads a week, grow the account, connect with the right people and promote events 1 48 48000
Pipeline Manager Salary for someone to help us close deals, develop processes, and avoid delays. 1 60 60000
Collateral Creator Coordinape for people who are creating collateral for pitching work to prospective clients. 4 240 240000
Case Study Bounty for someone to interview BC team and potentially clients and write a case study 1 12 12000
Product Development Coordinape for the people who are developing the products and services we are trying to sell 20+ 420 420000
Tokenomics Research Bounty for someone to write a research paper on tokenomics to turn into consulting offering 1-2 40 40000
Talent Coordination Lead Salaries for people to onboard, evaluate, and allocate talent for offices and projects 2-4 240 240000
Tooling Lead Salaries for managing existing tools + evaluating and implementing new tools for managing the business 2 120 120000

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

True to the nature of startups, we underestimated how much work it would take to build the infrastructure for this business and were overly optimistic about how quickly we could sign clients and receive payments from them.

We are asking for a grant of 1,180,000 so that we can support the many BanklessDAO members’ contributions to the building of this sustainable, revenue-generating business. We believe that this will give us a runway through the end of Season 4.

Between now and then, this funding will help dozens of new BanklessDAO contributors reach L1 status. It will increase the number of people holding BANK and bring more utility to the token, putting upward pressure on its price.

SUCCESS METRICS OR KPIS

We aim to support at least 30 BanklessDAO Guest Pass holders to reach L1 status through this initiative while providing them the opportunity to gain valuable web3 business experience.

NEXT STEPS

The five elected Office Coordinators will use this allocation to fund salaries, bounties, and Coordinape epochs for work being done in Season 3.

There are people already performing many of the roles outlined above. For the roles that have not yet been initiated, they will first be posted, and then we will evaluate who is the best candidate among those who express interest.

SQUAD BACKGROUND

  • Chuck25#4313 is the Finance Office Coordinator for Bankless Consulting. Prior to falling down the web3 rabbit role, his career was in public education and nonprofit management.
  • RunTheJewelz#7931 is an at-large Representative serving on the Governance Board of Bankless Consulting. He is also PM of the DAO Dash project, and involved in the Analytics Guild. RTJ has 20 years of experience in Big 4 and Boutique technology strategy consulting.
  • RA#1839 is the Go To Market Office Coordinator for Bankless Consulting. He also runs a design and branding agency, and has spent 20 years in marketing.
  • DSide#0019 is the Operations Office Coordinator for Bankless Consulting. In addition to overseeing internal governance, talent coordination, and tooling projects, he is currently sponsoring 2 NFT-based client projects at BC and is the Podcast Hatchery Project Manager.
  • MC10#8599 is the Innovation Office coordinator for Bankless Consulting. Has been a Management and Technology consultant for almost 20 years. Has experience in forming and managing teams of consultants, starting and scaling businesses globally, running business development and P&Ls.
  • Approve
  • Reject

0 voters

3 Likes
2

To explain the edit that was made to this post: I forgot to add a poll when I originally published this. The edit was to add the poll.

3

This is a lot of BANK, I would then like to know how this is intended to be paid back? Will Bankless Consulting ensure bDAO gets a larger portion of their future profit now?

You’re making the start-up /seed investment comparison, where the investors get a larger part in the company. This should work in the same way for the DAO (imo) larger investment larger cut of future revenues.

3 Likes
4

Not against the funding request, but can I ask if you’ve considered minting your own token? This would allow contributors to accumulate something for the work they’ve put in (regardless of the outcome of this proposal), and could create a way to align your team long-term behind a Bankless Consulting brand+token.

If people were getting paid BANK+BANKc, would it change the need for 1000BANK/hour? Maybe! Especially if you think Bankless Consulting will be a success.

Anyways, just a discussion point.

4 Likes
5

Thanks for raising this and sharing how you see the funding request. What precedents are you aware of in bDAO for projects repaying the DAO for helping the project get started? It would be great to know in case we need to restructure this proposal to get more support.

I know of many cases where projects request funding for bDAO members to be compensated for the time they’re spending on building the project, but I’m not aware of any cases that the projects have paid the DAO back for the funding.

2 Likes
6

This is a really cool idea. We haven’t considered minting our own token because so many of us are based in the US and our legal advisor has cautioned us against being involved in any token issuances given the current regulatory environment we’re in.

2 Likes
7

Most, if not all, project generating revenues pay some back to the DAO. My feeling is that the more you get in grants from the DAO the larger the kickback should be. Examples being DAOPunks, Flipper.Tool etc I think IMN’s shared their grant with the DAO treasury. I think writers also did share revenues?

This is something we lack with most projects in their early stages, IMO, we should be setting this is the first funding request. We expect to give X% of revenues back to bDAO treasury after we meet these KPIs.

Since you’re asking for more funds then we voted and the driver is that youre revenue generating capabilities are less than expected or harder to achieve it increases the operational risk for the DAO investment and as such it would make sense to understand “whats in it for the DAO”.

4 Likes
8

From what I gather there seems to be a lot of interest in the services this group could provide. Funding this, could be a major cornerstone of the DAO’s revenue, out reach, reputation and source of talent in the future. Right now BDAO is basically a seed stage vc fund (not really SEC I was just joking), and I think this is worthy seed to plant.

My understanding is a portion of the revenue will come back to the DAO, what is that % again? 10% to the DAO, 20% to the Guild and 70% to the consultants? If so they only need to generate about $400,000 of consulting fees to return this nominal investment.

2 Likes
9

No clue as to the reasonableness of this request but when I first read about the bankless consultancy immediately thought, heck yes. Let’s Go! We have so much talent assembled here are are creatively working together to show the world how it can be changed and improved. My two big concerns were how do we recruit and retain these big brains. Of course, acceptance, fairness, rewards and compensation goes a long ways. Then the reality of runway and how long we have until we generate revenue. Sell our 9 months of success and develop more. The consultancy under the bankless banner and established success via HQ helps us as 1st DAO market makers and movers. Yes it is a lot of bank but seems fair and possible to obtain results if/when supported and implemented. I support it and think it a starting point toward fairness of effort. Risky, yep, but it is an experiment I am betting on.

4 Likes
10

I am for this. You guys did great jobs and contributors in bankless consulting should be compensated. But @tommyolofsson makes a good point. As DAO supports the project in the first place, we will expect some returns.

Why did not request a budget for Season3, are revenue expectations too optimistic or there are other reasons?

1 Like
11

Thanks for raising this post. While I generally agree that contributors should be compensated for their work, there may be more merit to @tommyolofsson 's view since projects such as IMN work not on hours = BANK but KPI = BANK and we do allocate a % of our revenues going back to bDAO treasury.

In theory, it is possible for folks to participate in endless pods and meetings and claim 1000s of BANK in return despite those efforts leading to no revenue for bDAO. Piling billable hours is a common practice in ‘TradCon’ (traditional consulting) and we should attempt to structure web3 in a fundamentally different way than TradCon imo, otherwise we’ll end up reconstructing the exact same system.

A better way(imo) would be to incentivize activities that directly contribute to the success of a project. I am not an expert on what these activities might be, but generally rewarding folks for achievements is more aligned to working as missionaries as opposed to working like mercenaries.

Many contributors in bDAO end up working way more than the 1000 BANK/hr rate, IMN project folks (roughly 50-100 regular contributors) work at 80-250 BANK/hr rates. If we all start asking for this ridiculous amount of 1000 BANK/hr under the terms of fair compensation, we will not be left with a treasury to fund our activities.

4 Likes
12

Bankless Consulting is doing amazing things and it’s important that guilds have the funding they need to succeed. Perhaps more importantly that contributors are compensated adequately and fairly. However, I agree with @Jengajojo in that not all compensation must be standardized across the DAO at 1000 BANK/hr, and there could be a better approach that involves contribution rewards based on task or activity for some of the work. As an example, Bankless Academy content creators are compensated at a flat rate for each Knowledge Check question they create, regardless of the time it takes them to come up with a given question. IMO hourly rates as high as 1000 BANK are often associated with specific roles in proposals that are up for vote, and in my experience, while clearly-defined guild roles are compensated ~1000 BANK/hr, most contributors are compensated well below this level.

In terms of the Success Metrics & KPIs, I think supporting 30 GP holders to reach L1 isn’t an appropriate metric of success. It could be a great secondary success metric or outcome, though.

Overall, I agree with @TheMarvel and feel that a lot of what is going on in bDAO is exciting and should be supported without hindrance, but I think it’s important we’re accountable to ourselves and each other in the process. I have no concern about whether or not the project will be successful as we clearly have some very talented people involved, but I think the financials need to be reviewed and the KPIs better reflect the project.

1 Like
13

I don’t think it’s helpful to compare a funding request for a public good or community interest project , and BC which is a pure profit seeker.

When I act as the intermediary for start up profit seeking ventures I often see as much as 30-50% given away In return for the risk of funding the venture. When they go over budget or schedule they give away more. That being said DAOs are supposed to disrupt extractive investment models towards group ownership.

While I am not against funding BC , i’m not a fan of how the proposal is presented.

I prefer to be shown the value proposition , not rumblings about inequity or fairness. Framed this way, to me at least , the proposal is presented as a risk seeking opportunity for a few people, that want to shift the risk of failure into the DAO with no reward for taking on the risk. That may not be accurate, but that’s how it reads to me.

I think it’s more helpful to be candid. If BC was a good idea , and is still a good idea it should easily sell itself. If it wants a huge allocation then it might look forward and suggest how much it will bring in for the allocation and when and how far away in time it is from success, and not so much backward focus on what somebody else got some other time for some other purpose . … everybody has an opinion, that’s just mine…

I would support bridge financing , but not because of the reasons given.

2 Likes