(Updated Dec 28 2021)
Summary
Create a temporary growth working group and operating budget to boost partnership and marketing activities for Inverse Finance.
Background
Inverse Finance today boasts a small but growing number of partnerships along with some efforts to formalize marketing within the DAO. Activities like @Akarin’s newsletter operate purely on a volunteer basis however this model does not scale very well and good talent can be poached. As Inverse turns toward a more protocol-to-protocol focus and prepares for multiple announcements in the near future, we need to begin putting up scaffolding to assist us in our objective to reach $1 billion in DOLA circulation in 2022.
More recently, planning for a significant overhaul of the tokenomics of INV, internally referred to as Inverse +, points to a need for an increase in marketing support to launch that project, assuming it passes an upcoming on-chain vote.
Proposal
I propose the creation of a temporary Growth Working Group (GWG), responsible for promoting and executing partnerships but more generally driving the marketing of “DOLA Everywhere”, which will be largely partner-driven. A working group allows us to leverage the resources and talents of lots of part-time contributors who want to be more involved with Inverse but who want more organization structure and compensation for their efforts. The working group approach is common in many DAO’s and given our need to move quickly and cost-efficiently, I recommend we give this a try! Note that I am in favor of a permanent group but suggest we launch the GWG as a test and also as a potential model for other working groups (e.g. Treasury, Governance, Community).
This initial BD/marketing focus of the GWG could be split into multiple WG’s in the future, but given the above, I recommend a combined group for now.
Responsibilities for the GWG include:
- Partnerships/Business Development
- Drive Inverse Protocol Ambassador Program
- Manage Inverse Partnership Bounty program for DAO members who bring in especially notable partnerships
- Conduct weekly partnership funnel review
- Propose and discuss new partner model experiments/revenue models
- Create Notion or similar board to track BD/Marketing efforts
- Competitor analysis
- Monthly reporting to the DAO on partnership progress
- Marketing
- Drive partner marketing activities/coordination with new partners like Concave
- Drive new campaign around content development - blog, medium, video, podcast, etc.
- Improve Inverse’s content marketing / impression mining - Twitter/Linkedin/etc.
- Content optimization - SEO, recommend updates to inverse.finance and related sites to optimize awareness of Inverse and attract new partners.
- Layer3/Coordinape program to reward extraordinary one-off partnership or marketing achievements like “Get Elon Musk To re-tweet Nour” or “get INV listed on Coinbase”
- Create new INV presence on LinkedIn, Reddit, Youtube, etc.
- Revisit DOLA logo, merchandise
- Recommend or manage events where INV team members should speak or attend
- Outreach to content projects like Coingecko, aggregators like Zapper
- Monthly reporting to the DAO on marketing programs
- Inverse Finance Launch
- Hire design talent for updated inverse.finance landing page, app, documentation
- Hire INV+ project manager for 90 days
- Hire full-time marketing manager to drive all aspects of marketing communications leading to launch of project
- Influencer marketing
I propose a weekly GWG Discord meeting that is open to anyone in the DAO and of course other GWG meetings can occur at any time. At the end of 90 days we can determine how best to modify or extend the GWG charter and budget for a subsequent 90 day period.
Budget
I propose a budget of 140,000 DOLA for this effort for the time period of Jan-Mar 2022 with an additional allocation of 10,000 DOLA for the time period of November 1, 2021 thru Dec 31, 2021 for GWG rewards earned during that time period and before this proposal could be voted on.
Specifically:
| Item | Description | Total Quarterly Budget (DOLA) |
|---|---|---|
| Protocol Ambassador and Partnership Bounties | One-time bounties for especially significant deals that a protocol ambassador or other INV DAO member helps us identify and, in some cases, help us close | 15,000 |
| Layer3 Rewards | Bounties for specific “long shot” bd or marketing wins like “Get DCF God to tweet about DOLA” | 5,000 |
| Content development | Medium posts, blog posts, video production | 30,000 |
| Impression mining rewards | Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube impression mining bounties | 15,000 |
| Project Manager | Full-time project management consultant to drive INV+ launch | 20,000 |
| Design Consulting | Website, logos, documentation layout, brand guidelines in support of INV+ and DOLA | 20,000 |
| Full-time INV+ Marketing Communications Consultant/Mgr | Drives all marketing communications for INV+ launch | 30,000 |
| Miscellaneous | Online subscriptions, event registration, contest awards | 5,000 |
| Total | 140,000 | |
| Item | Description | Total Budget Nov-Dec 2021 |
| Content, BD, impression mining | Contributor payments for content listings, content development, impression mining and other GWG activities during Nov-Dec 2021 | 10,000 |
Unused budget, particularly budget allocated for INV+ specific activities, can be returned to the Treasury or extended into a subsequent 90 day epoch of the GWG. This program is new and the idea is to try multiple approaches/experiments so actual allocations will likely vary from this but the total budget will not exceed 150,000 DOLA.
Organization
The GWG will be led by @patb (me) and should ideally include at least one additional co- leader, perhaps a marketing manager. Participants in the GWG will have opportunities to propose new GWG projects and experiments, which the GWG can discuss and if necessary conduct internal votes before proceeding. For “major” projects a proposal can be vetted within the GWG and then moved up to a vote by the full DAO.
Transparency Commitment
Each month the GWG will share a report with the INV DAO that provides updates including
- Summary of funds spent
- Updates on funded experiments
Action:
- Deposit 150,000 DOLA to Growth Working Group multisig wallet 0x07de0318c24D67141e6758370e9D7B6d863635AA