[DAO: bafkrei] Partner Support Squad

Governance
1

by 0xd11a019a70986bd607cbc1c1f9ae221c78581f49 (Yemel)

Should the following Tier 5: up to $120,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Community category be approved?

Abstract

Create a task force to develop and maintain a public registry of individuals and organizations offering their services to build content on Decetraland’s platform. The goal is to connect brands coming into the space with talented builders who can help with events production, wearables making, 3D modeling and SDK programming.

Grant size

118,200 USD

Beneficiary address

0x444327160dC3e72F3146b7F95e7D77Ca9aBF6172

Email address

yemel@decentraland.org

Description

As the Metaverse concept goes mainstream there are more and more brands coming into the space willing to build a presence in Decentraland. However, creating 3D content can be a daunting task and most organizations will prefer to hire experienced professionals.

Decentraland creators are one of the most valuable audiences Decentraland has at this point. It is crucial to have a dedicated team to support them and promote their services, effectively helping them to grow into a sustainable business.

Creating a public and official registry of Verified Partners will promote transparency between brands and creators. With this initiative, we aim to democratize access to qualified suppliers and generate new sources of business opportunities for them.

The first goal of this team is to survey all creators in the Decentraland community and list them in a public registry of creators, the Verified Partners Registry. The team will also provide support and foster networking opportunities between the partners community.

A second goal of the team is to do an outreach to brands willing to invest in their online presence. The team will create a strategy to market the services provided by the verified partners, onboarding brands, and position Decentraland as a great place to build.

Specification

This grant will set up a budget to run this team for the next 6 months. This grant could be extended upon a further decision of the DAO if the grant succeeds in its objectives.

The proposed Partner Support Squad will be implemented under the same non-profit foundation created for the DAO Governance Squad. This foundation provides a flexible vehicle to manage a budget with autonomy while still giving authority to the DAO to steer its direction.

The grant will be provided as a vesting contract of stablecoins assigned to a 2-out-of-3 signatures wallet. The key holders are Bianca Monti, Yemel Jardi and maraoz in their respective capacities as Squad Lead, DAO Committee Member and Trusted Community Member.

The public registry will first launch as a dedicated page on Decentraland’s documentation site, a testing version of it is already available here. Once a substantial number of providers are included and the services they provide are surveyed, the team will plan the migration of the directory to its own domain for a richer experience (searching, filtering, applying, and more).

Personnel

The team is made up of two departments and a project manager to coordinate their efforts:

  • Business Development: Two experienced producers will dedicate 60hrs per week to verify partners and create business opportunities for them.

  • Marketing: Two experienced marketers who will be working 20 hrs per week on designing and implementing communication strategies to onboard new partners and brands. They will manage a monthly budget to produce content and advertise it.

Team members:

  • Project Manager - Bianca Monti ( Linkedin )
  • Producer - Agustin Pagano - ( Linkedin )
  • Producer - Alejandro Escoda ( Resume )
  • Marketer - Matias Basile ( Linkedin )
  • Marketer - Ramiro Valverde ( Linkedin )

Total Hours: ~440 monthly hours or ~110 weekly hours.
Budget: $19,700 USD per month or a total of $118,200 USD

This includes:

  • Team compensation: $97,200 USD
  • Marketing Budget: $18,000 USD
  • Operational expenses: $3,000

Roadmap and milestones

During the 6 months of this project the team will focus on:

  • Bootstrap the Verified Partners Registry.

    1. Contact all Decentraland creators and survey the services they provide.
    2. Develop a process/criteria to verify the partners and previous experience.
    3. Review applications from potential partners to join the registry.
    4. Evaluate results and propose a definition for the next version of the registry.

  • Market the Verified Partners Registry to several audiences.

    1. Reach out to all studios and freelancers already providing services for other metaverses in the industry.
    2. Educate brands about the possibility of building a presence in the metaverse.
    3. Create business opportunities by connecting brands with relevant verified partners.

  • Support the partners’ community & foster networking opportunities

    1. Discover the needs and opportunities to empower/boost the partners’ community.
    2. Host regular online meetings between the partners’ community to share knowledge and present relevant initiatives.
    3. Collaborate with the DCL Foundation Marketing team to amplify partners’ announcements and achievements.
    4. Collaborate with DCL Foundation Engineering teams to provide technical support to verified partners and summarize feedback about DCL tools usage.

Finally, the team will plan the next iteration of the registry, which might include the migration to its own site and the inclusion of the DAO in the process of adding/removing members of the registry.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like
2

Hi community! I believe this project is very much needed.

I see the need to make the industry of creators and service providers in DCL more visible. It will be very usefull for any project coming into the space, being able to do their own research and don’t be locked up into one provider.

Please send your feedback and questions :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Only one question. Are you personal friends with all of the people who will financially benefit from this proposal or just most of them?

1 Like
4

i also question the budget requirements here :thinking:

1 Like
5

I would say there are two projects here which should be separated.
1: A public registry of Decentraland creators
2: Marketing and business development activities around this registry

The first is a worthy proposal, although it brings up some of the issues we’re already facing re gatekeeping/VP in DCL. And the maintenance of the registry would require longterm funding.

The second is more problematic, as projects of this size would usually go to public tender for marketing and business development services. The two marketing linkedin profiles shared are notably low on web3 marketing experience or connections with major brand partners. For example, they have only 181 linkedin connections combined - most professional digital marketers have 500+ and a significant social media presence.

As far as I can see from the links provided, no one on the team brings proven business development experience - even though it is a key part of this proposal.

For a $100k+ project, we should seek the same level of proven professional experience in our marketing and business development teams as we demand of our coders/devs.

3 Likes
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Hi Frank, thanks for raising the question about my relationship with the team.

They came from my own professional network, as a recommendation from a colleague, or I had the chance to work together on a previous project. That’s why I can trust their professional skills and the potential to cooperate well together, which can be a risk when assembling a new team.

I have checked for background references and each of them was interviewed by a DAO contributor and/or a DCL Foundation contributor.

7

Voting yes, supporting studios providing services around Decentraland is top priority to ensure high quality content!

Relaying on the Decentraland Foundation to partner with high profile brands is not sustainable long term. And third party studios from the community already proved to be able to create amazing experiences.

8

So for full transparency you or HPrivakos interviewed them? Strange, He just told me the DAO committee and foundation have nothing to do with each other. It’s interesting to see them working in such close collaboration for a project which hasn’t been launched or approved.

It’s almost as if the foundation knew that between you and HPrivakos’ VP this would pass regardless. Thanks for your response. As I’m sure you know, I and nobody else has the power to stop this proposal from passing, so I’ll just wish you luck.

1 Like
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I dax, let me clarify the budget for you.

The team will be working for 6 months for an average of 37 USD/hr. That’s where most of the budget will go.

The marketing team will have a budget of $3,000 USD per month to operate. Part of it will be spent on the creation of content pieces (articles, images, videos) and the rest will be spent on paid marketing campaigns.

Part of the campaigns will aim to bring more traffic to the Verified Partners Registry, this could be in the form of Google, Linkedin and Twitter Ads.

Other campaings will be for lead-generation targetting a particular audience and services provided by the Verified Partners Registry. Just as an example: “Do you want to host a party in the Metaverse? Check out this venues!”.

Finally, there is a budget of $500 USD per month to cover any tools and services to run the business (CRM, Hosting, Mailing, Automation) and any legal costs to operate.

The team will publish a monthly update with the progress, ad spent, and results of each campaign.

10

Hi Bay, thanks for your feedback. There are two main activities in this project and they could be separated as you mentioned. However, the boostraping of the registry requires a survey that will generate valuable information to understand how to market such services. I see great benefit in the close collaboration on both fronts during this starting phase.

Once the registry is running and the criteria for validating partners are laid down, the registry shouldn’t require a lot of funding to keep running. It could evolve into a new proposal type inside the governance platform and/or find a revenue stream to cover the costs (like a annual registration fee).

I vouch for the team and their qualifications to kickstart this registry, give it visibility and generate business opportunities for the partners in them. Foundation is doing a great job partnering with high-profile brands but there is a huge portion of the audience still left unserviced.

I would love to see a proposal to define a process for the DAO to open a public tender for valuable projects. But at the moment the Grant Program is the best path to fund initiatives from the community.

1 Like
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I’m really excited for this and feel like it’s definitely something required for the space, I would also much rather a trusted member from the space launch this platform then a third party corporate body that can take advantage of creators in the space. It will also prevent people claiming to be creators taking on clients and not being able to deliver or outsourcing at a cheaper cost ~

:clap:

12

@michi I certainly wouldn’t advocate for a third party corporate body either. But I would advocate for the very qualified marketing and business development professionals who already contribute inside DCL - rather than agreeing to a high marketing spend on new names. Again, I believe we are talking about two projects here, and more time should be spent on gathering a strong team for the second. It’s what we would expect if this was a startup with 120k investment.

2 Likes
13

Hey everyone, lots of great conversations happening in the comments and in discords about this proposal.

I, 100%, agree with @bay on a lot of the same thoughts and concerns. These are two separate pieces that should not be lumped together.

On top of that the first part, the directory, is already in the works by @Tobik. With the help of many community members, he has been building a sort of DCL wiki, and one of the main sections he is creating is a directory of creators/builders/etc. And based on this proposal I’d also say we should def have marketers/advertisers in that section too, as it seems, just by looking at the comments, there’s a lot of us here!

Now the second part of the proposal for marketing, is a bit wild to include here IMHO, especially from a member of the DAO committee. It says conflict of interest to me.

Also upon looking deeper into the people listed on the team, and their company websites(or lack there of in some cases), it seems like a very niche market/target they’ve worked within. And if the directory and the subsequent marketing is to reach global and mass audience appeal, and big brands — I feel there should be a more well rounded team from all over the world to better suit the intentions of marketing the directory and the people and cultures it is to appeal to.

While I do agree with @Eibriel and @michi that we dont want 3rd party companies to come in and do this wrong and take advantage, I do not believe this proposal is the right one either.

Can I also ask if there was a pre proposal poll for this? And what other community engagement or insights has happened to find out what the community would like from this, aside from submitting this proposal?

Regardless of the outcome — which unfortunately as others have pointed out, sort of doesn’t matter if most of the community disagrees since a lot of us can barely make a dent VP voting wise(whole other topic we’ll get into in the DAO town halls) — this is a great jumping off point for conversations. And I hope we can continue to talk and be involved, as this affects more than the 5 people listed in the proposal, and is really for the community of the platform as a whole.

2 Likes
14

After careful consideration I’ve the following concern: A team of 5 people working half time for 6 months with a $18000 budget for advertisement will be able to find lots of clients.

  1. Do the community of creators have the capacity to tackle all that work?
  2. In the talent hub there are 15 professionals, from 3D modelers to full production houses. Are they able to take additional work?
  3. How many other professionals able to develop for Decentraland could be added to the hub in this time?
1 Like
15

Thanks for mentioning me. Yes, I’m building something similar and I think it will be available super soon.

Regards,
Tobik.

3 Likes
16

Why are the people listed in this proposal the best arbiters of determining who a qualified person is?

You are proposing a Verified Partners Registry. I am an illustrator, modeler and animator. Is anyone on your team qualified to verify any of my skills? Who are the officials or authorities that will vet the builders, developers, designers, creators, event planners, promoters, artists, and performers?

Your proposed Partner Support Squad will be marketing the capabilities of the creators listed in the directory. Will you be presenting any guarantees of quality of a finished product? If a creator presents themselves as skilled in one area and it turns out that a dissatisfied client claims that they are not, how will you resolve this dispute? How might the poor performance of a few listed creators impact the reputation of every “verified” creator?

I am a licensed educator in the state of Minnesota. There is a rigorous process to verifying my capabilities. You wrote “Develop a process/criteria to verify the partners and previous experience.” I see no mention of any verification details in this proposal. I need to read about these processes and criteria before considering voting yes.

Compared to a voluntary, user generated, directory of creators, what value would your team add?

2 Likes
17

As I commented in private to @yemel, I share some of the concerns mentioned in this thread. I’d definitely vote yes if the proposal didn’t include the marketing team and budget.

Agree with @bay here:

Additionally, instead of doing marketing and biz dev to brands, what I think the DAO needs at this stage is to do matching funding for brands investing in Decentraland content creation. For example, if Coca-Cola wants to create their space in Decentraland, and they get a quote of 100k USD from a Partner from the registry, they pay 50k USD and the Partner Support Squad can match with 50k USD. This would lower the barrier of entry to brands. Marketing at this stage wouldn’t help, in my opinion. Instead of spending the $ on a marketing budget, I’d use this money for the matching funding.

18

To clarify, I agreed to hold the 3rd key for the multisig but I’m not part of the team making this proposal.

19

Hi everyone,

Thank you for taking the time and attention to give feedback on this project :pray:

I’m withdrawing the proposal (voting no to myself). I’ll submit a revised proposal soon, but first I want to highlight my takeouts from this conversation.

  1. Reduce the scope of the project and focus on the building of a verified registry of creators. No marketing, nor biz dev for this stage.

  2. The criteria to include a partner in the registry shouldn’t be a matter of taste, but instead a list of verifications about the partner company and the services they claim to provide. Making sure they are correctly clasified under different categories/filters. On top of that a layer of verified reviews from client could increase transparency and be signal of quality.

  3. Thanks for bringing up Tobik’s initiative, I wasn’t aware of it but thanks to the comment we had a call and chat about the similarities and differences between projects. One is a user-generated-content site and the other is a standarized verification mechanism. I believe there is a need for both platforms in the ecosystem, and even potential for collaboration.

Thanks again for your contributions!
Yemel

4 Likes
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UPDATE: Here is the follow up proposal based on your feedback.

1 Like