Proposal - Attracting Partners, Writers, & Other Talent

[joh]

Summary

PubDAO should establish a business development/partnership role and/or guild, with this new role and/or guild focused on evangelizing PubDAO and networking with publications and DAOs incl. their contributors to bring in DAO product partners (i.e. decentralized wire adopters), and new PubDAO contributors, with a focus on writers, from across all of crypto.

Motivation

In order for PubDAO to reach its potential, there’s a clear need for two core things: 1) demand for writers, and 2) supply of writers. Currently, PubDAO has a supply and a demand problem.

There are not yet enough journalist-level writers within PubDAO, with the composition of the DAO currently being heavily weighted towards editors, translators and other talented people, but who require stories to be present in order to provide value to PubDAO most effectively. This uneven weighting of non-writers was recently highlighted by the need to pause translation bounties.

In essence, the motivation for this proposal is to solve the central supply and demand issue that lies at the heart of making PubDAO a success. This proposal is one potential way for the DAO to take steps towards just that.

Proposal

PubDAO should devise, launch and onboard contributors into a new role and/or guild focused on business development/partnerships. This would be dedicated to bringing in publications and DAO partners, as well as new contributors to PubDAO with a focus on writers with a journalist level of quality.

Contributors assigned the role would not spam random journalists and Discord servers — the purpose of this role would be to craft relationships tactfully as an extension of PubDAO, requiring oversight and careful selection of contributors for the role. Additionally, contributors with this role would be compensated based on guild compensation frameworks, or with one-off bounties.

Getting in the “cream of the crop” of writers can be argued to be predicated on a couple of factors: 1) their compensation, 2) the reputation and reach of PubDAO. Currently during the pre-token launch period, compensation is in the form of IOU’s for PubDAO tokens. This in itself is not an issue, but requires evangelization of the DAO and buy-in to PubDAO’s mission from the writers in order for them to accept an IOU as compensation for their time and work. And as for reputation and reach, having more prominent publications and DAOs working with PubDAO would satisfy this point.

Getting high-quality writers is just one of the ingredients needed to achieve PubDAO’s success formula. For PubDAO to deliver on its mission, there needs to be relationships crafted with additional publications to place content with, as well as with DAOs and project teams wishing to leverage the decentralized wire offering of PubDAO. To achieve this level of adoption, and especially to achieve “market penetration” and utilization amongst DAOs, there’s a need for crypto-natives to actively conduct outreach and relationship building on behalf of PubDAO.

Now, imagine if we had talented, incentivized business development/partnership contributors from PubDAO in large DAO Discords, and out there networking with journalists, as well as essentially anywhere they can be present to bring in talent and to craft relationships on behalf of the DAO. That is the crux of this proposal, achieved through establishing a business development/partnerships role and/or guild.

[rezadecrypt]

I love this. 100% in support of some form of a biz dev guild or role. Let’s dive into what this would look like exactly and start setting it up.

I can’t think of any downsides.

[Berg]

Re-posting this from Discord to keep the discussion around this central

Hey @joh, I think your proposal provides an excellent analysis of the challenges for getting PubDAO’s two-sided model started (journalists <> publications / supply <> demand). Gave it some more thought over the holidays and this is what came out:

• Value thesis: In 5 years, the majority of PubDAOs value will be its talent.
• Supply-driven market: The supply side (talent + content) will probably take most time and resources to develop, but once operational, will make it 100x easier to develop the demand side. Once PubDAO positions itself as the go-to web3 onramp for “cream of the crop” journalists and content, biz dev on the demand side will become much easier.
• To attract A-player journalists, we need to provide A-level support: Web3 is an emerging journalistic field and presents a huge opportunity for journalists. But it’s also complex and often requires deep (technical) knowledge and networks. PubDAO offers journalists that knowledge and network.
• Talent Agents: Talented journalists who are new to web3 could really benefit from a Talent Agent who guides them through onboarding, connects them with the right domain experts, and helps uncover story opportunities.
• Recruitment: Web2 talent acquisition models have shown that a coordinated and continuous effort to source and select talent, works well to rapidly expand the talent base (i.e. “cream of the crop journalists”).

To structure it a bit more I took the liberty to pour it into the Ops model I usually use:

Will include the publisher side soon. And, happy to discuss this further. For now: Have a happy NY ahead!

[rodrigodecrypt]

I’m in with this one too @rezadecrypt . Without partnership with other media publications willing to publish PubDAO writer’s work, we will face a wall somewhere in the near future. The sooner we address the issue, the better. Great contribution @joh . Thanks