PROPOSAL NAME:
The Public Bored
Twitter: @publicbored https://twitter.com/PublicBored
PROPOSAL CATEGORY:
Ecosystem Fund
TEAM DESCRIPTION
I’m Eric (Twitter / Linkedin) and together with my Co-Founder Bhargav (Twitter / Linkedin), we are repeat founders, CEO/CTO respectively, and long-standing participants in multiple DAOs. We built the treasury transparency dashboard for AIP-267 as a public service which is live now on the official ApeCoin website.
TEAM DESCRIPTION - EXTENDED
MemeBrains a.k.a Eric Gilbert-Williams
I’m a lifelong entrepreneur with a background as a repeat founder, operational leadership, and contributor at multiple DAOs. I host a DAO podcast as well as a philanthropic Mental Health podcast. I built an ERP software in a previous startup that helped me scale as a solo-founder to a team size of 60 with $6M+ ARR, then exited in 2018 to deep-dive into Crypto. I believe DAOs are the natural evolution of human organization, and I see the ApeCoin community as a rallying point for the ecosystem, here’s a Keynote presentation I did on this topic. A brand this big that succeeds raises the ecosystem with it. As the saying goes; a rising tide lifts all boats. I’m inspired to be a part of this community and am here to do what I can to help us all keep moving forward. I also participate in ApeComms regularly, voted on the most recent 100+ AIPs consecutively, and am an ambassador for the 8DAO delegate.
Linktree: memebrains | Twitter | Linktree
0xTheBosDragon a.k.a. Bhargav Patel
Bhargav is a Web3 Builder, Founder, and Entrepreneur with a passion for startup energy. His last successful venture as a founding CTO, Performance IQ, reached over 20 million users, prior to being acquired by Battery Ventures. He has experience developing complex frontends, backends, smart contracts, etc., and is an excellent developer.
Linktree: thebossdragon - Latest Twitter Links
ABSTRACT:
This AIP supports the MVP launch of an outdoor digital billboard network, with a primary objective of establishing a long-term sustainable business model that; helps fund the ApeCoin DAO treasury, establishes new use cases for $APE, expands the community of $APE builders, while providing the world with a progressively decentralized platform to showcase messaging and art.
We’ve bootstrapped this startup on our initiative, with our own money, and designed it to provide numerous direct benefits to the $APE ecosystem. We’re asking the $APE community to help us accelerate the concept and increase its chances of success. We hope that by leading with actions instead of promises, with our skin in the game first, and by placing a high priority on driving direct value to the DAO, the Ape community will choose to support this.
If this AIP passes, then; 20% of all top-line revenue will be sent into the ApeCoin DAO treasury until the full cost of this AIP is returned. Anyone can earn a 10% rewards payout from all referrals. Every wallet hodling at least 5k $APE as at January 1st, 2024, will receive free display space on a first come first serve basis. Furthermore, for however long the Ape community continues to support this initiative, a further 1% of all revenue will be sent into the ApeCoin Treasury on-going, plus a quantity of TBD display space will be reserved for use by the ApeCoin DAO, and our Network of frens and fam, such as those at Mocaverse, BAYC, MAYC, JRNY Club, Surreal Guild, and Ape Delegates, for life.
The outdoor digital advertising industry is ripe for disruption and we’re all positioned to spearhead and benefit from this for years to come. Our modernized approach to this old-school industry offers the potential to generate substantially increased operating margins than competitors and opens up the total addressable market (TAM) by an order of magnitude. The conservative financial request in this AIP covers six months of runway for my team and I to carry out up to two consecutive MVP engagements aimed at positioning this initiative for sustainable revenue generation and future scaling.
I initiated this project in Q4 2019 with a personal investment of approximately $40,000. However, the onset of the Covid lockdown in Q1 2020 forced me to put the project on hold. I have now re-commenced the project with @thebossdragon as CTO, having injected a further $10,000 of my own capital in recent weeks.
The first MVP engagement takes place over a 10-day period during the Ethereum Denver Blockchain/Web3 Event scheduled for February/March 2024, with an anticipated attendance of approximately 15,000 Ethereum-related enthusiasts. We’ve leased a truck equipped on 3-sides with sizeable digital display screens to roam the streets of the event area. Its mission is to display messages and art, while recruiting more builders into the Ape ecosystem, and providing all hodlers of at least 1 $APE with an opportunity to help drive value into the DAO treasury while earning rewards for themselves too. If successful, the model will then scale beyond mobile advertising to encompass highway billboards, transit vehicles, bus stop displays, elevator displays, and more.
Accessibility and speed are key features of this initiative. Anyone can purchase a display spot at any time for the minimum purchase price of 0.001 ETH, and have their messaging displayed within 60 seconds or less. Anyone holding 1 $APE can earn referral rewards, and anyone who pays with $APE receives bonus display time for free. Furthermore, a portion of all ad space will be reserved for free use by the ApeCoin DAO as it sees fit, and for our ecosystem frens. One such use could be the promotion of a ‘Build with $APE’ introductory guide and promotional video, which is included in the budget of this AIP, and which would be integrated into this project’s website: publicbored.com.
The proposed budget encompasses technology development, website development, display rental expenses, marketing efforts, and a total of twelve months to transition into a self-sustaining model.
Subsequent MVP engagements are TBD in 2024.
BACKGROUND & WHY THIS
In 2015, my former construction company achieved the #20 spot among Canada’s fastest-growing businesses. As a solo founder and CEO, I bootstrapped the company from scratch. During my tenure, I had a strong desire to run billboard advertising campaigns while major storms were causing damage to neighborhoods, however, I was deterred. The billboards I wanted were consistently booked, unavailable, or too costly. In other words, I was the perfect target market for outdoor billboard advertising, and I experienced the pain points of that market firsthand. This frustration led me to identify an opportunity to disrupt the industry.
I envisioned a platform offering instant access to a coordinated network of digital billboards through an on-demand pricing system, allowing advertisers to pay for 10-second ad slots whenever they wanted, at whatever the live pricing would be at that time. This model would increase operating margins while simultaneously opening up access to the same billboards to anyone at any time at a much lower rate and in a more targeted manner than ever before.
The system would capture max supply/demand rates (think Uber surge pricing), in a monthly recurring targeted manner (think Google ads), while offering the lowest possible rates during slow periods (think cheap flights to fill up empty seats), ultimately providing equal, and nearly instant access, to almost anyone at any budget, any time.
Imagine; as easy and fast as a tweet, but on massive digital billboards, everywhere.
Scenarios could be a construction company advertising during a storm, a sunglasses brand targeting sunrise and sunset commuters specifically when the sun is in their eyes while driving to and from work, or a club advertising Friday night specials exclusively on Fridays. Anyone could afford a brief message at a fraction of traditional costs. Advertisers save big money overall, by only advertising when it benefits them the most, while simultaneously paying a relative premium to advertise at those times. The win-win scenario.
While exploring this concept, I discovered that I’m not the first person to think of this. BlipBillboards.com has been making strides with this general concept since 2015 and is growing fast. This serves to increase my confidence in the viability of this market opportunity, so I decided to dive in, do it better, and battle for market domination. As of the time of this writing, I’ve been spamming them for weeks to test out their service and get some ads up with them, but they keep denying me due to their clunky tech, confusing requirements, over-promised results, and poor customer support. Ie: I’m trying to give them my money, but they keep getting stuck with old-school systems and processes. They have some good market presence, but clearly, the market is still wide open.
In Q4 2019 I hired an assistant, partnered with an engineer, and early in 2020 made the move to Silicon Valley. I landed a public presentation with the City of San Mateo, began preparations for the installation of a highway billboard from a prime contractor, created early marketing material, and established a verbal agreement with local authorities to give free ads in exchange for goodwill support in my presentation. But then…Covid lockdown struck. Companies stopped buying ads everywhere, so I opted to pause my investment in the initiative. Bad timing.
This led me down the path that you find me now, that of deep work with numerous DAOs, winning at the ETHDenver hackathon event earlier this year, and active involvement with the ApeCoin DAO community.
With the ETHDenver 2024 event of another 15,000 attendees coming up soon, I opted to secure a 3-sided digital billboard truck with my own money. It’s time to pick up this initiative where it left off, in the name of Ape, and with the power of the Web3 ecosystem.
The time feels ripe to progressively decentralize digital billboard access and disrupt another old-school industry.
We’ll start with a simplified MVP of the model at this ETHDenver event, then one or two more follow-up events TBD afterward. We’ll give free ad space to the ApeCoin DAO community and our select degen frens, recruit builders into the Ape ecosystem, and help them write their first AIPs—all the while sharing revenue directly back into the ApeCoin DAO Treasury.
HOW IT WORKS
Anyone can purchase as little as 10 seconds of display time on any digital billboard at any time, and be live instantly, for as little as 2 $APE.
In 3 short steps:
- Pick your budget
- Fund your account
- Upload your messaging or art
Then we handle the rest.
In summary, our approach grants us exclusive, real-time, live access to 100% of the advertising space on digital billboards. We then divide this space into small, easily affordable segments. This allows us to charge the lowest possible price, as low as 0.001ETH, for a single display spot on a digital billboard.
EXPLAIN THIS TO AN APE USING BANANA MATH
While many Apes can’t afford an entire shipment of bananas on a giant boat, most Apes can easily afford a single banana. Naturally, the cost per banana when purchasing a large quantity on a boat is lower compared to buying a single banana at a store. However, most Apes only require one banana, not an entire boatload of bananas. Our approach involves taking that boatload of bananas and selling them individually. This way, everyone has access to single bananas at an affordable price. The difference between the wholesale cost of a banana and its individual sale price becomes our extra operating margin above and beyond the current industry norms, which is then reinvested into the scalability of the model and shared also into the ApeCoin DAO Treasury. We repeat this process with more boats of bananas, and then even more boats of bananas, and continue until we account for all the bananas everywhere, ensuring everyone can enjoy a banana whenever they want.
EXPLAIN THIS TO AN EXECUTIVE USING BUSINESS MATH
The ETHDenver Event spans a full 10 days, during which we’ve leased a truck equipped on three sides with large digital screens for visual messaging and art display purposes. These screens will run display messaging for between 8 to 16 hours each day throughout the entire event, totalling up to 160 hours of advertising space. If we break these 160 hours down into 10-second intervals, we get 57,600 individual display slots.
The cost of leasing the truck, plus misc expenses, amounts to approximately $25,000. This translates to a hard cost of roughly $0.44 per 10-second ad slot.
The minimum budget size anyone can setup is 0.001 ETH, equivalent to approximately $2.20 at the current exchange rate. When compared to a single 10second ad slot, this represents an approximate 5x markup on costs, the equivalent to approximately 80% margins on the costs of goods sold (COGS), and this is before we consider the added margins that can occur during surge pricing moments, which could see margins further double, triple, or more.
The potential use cases for these display slots is nearly unlimited, ranging from company ads, NFT art, selfies, tweets, birthday wishes, expressions of love, memes, political campaigns, philosophical quotes, favorite books or movies, charity promotions, pictures of pets, pictures of feet, trolling your friends, newborn babies, aliens, chupacabra and Bigfoot sightings, and much more. Anything your heart desires, all for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. Display spots can go live instantly too, for instant gratification vibes.
Our purchasing system functions similar to Google Ads. People pick their max budget for the 10-day event, and a couple of personalizations, and our system automatically optimizes the display opportunities within these parameters and budget constraints. We anticipate most individuals setting budgets ranging from the minimum $2.20 up to $200, while companies may allocate budgets between $200 and $2,000.
We aim to generate up to $50,000 USD equivalent in sales during this first event. This outcome would position us well with positive momentum and a reputation for sustainable growth once the event concludes as we carry the initiative to other events and outdoor digital screens across the globe.
MARKETING
To kickstart the buzz, we’ve allocated approximately 6,000 of the total 57,600 display spots for various groups within the ApeCoin community such obviously our own token holders, and also our friends at BAYC, MAYC, Mocaverse, JRNY Club, Surreal Guild, and Otherside, along with every $APE wallet or delegate holding 5k $APE or more as of January 1st, 2024. This strategy aims to raise awareness of The Public Bored initiative and boost website traffic, ideally turning into some pre-sales.
Here’s a partial summary of the reserved ad spots being considered, up to:
- 2,000 free display spots reserved for the ApeCoin DAO to recruit more builders from ETHDenver.
- And then, on a first come, first serve basis, to be used however they like, up to;
- 1,500 free display spots for every wallet hodling 5k $APE as of Jan 1st, 2024
- 500 free display spots reserved for BAYC or MAYC NFT holders.
- 500 free display spots reserved for Moca NFT holders.
- 250 free display spots reserved for Otherside NFT holders.
- 250 free display spots reserved for JRNY Club NFT holders.
- 250 free display spots reserved for the Surreal Guild
- 100 free display spots reserved for each and every separate ApeCoin Delegate holding 50k $APE or more
Early participants receive a 25% bonus for all display time purchased before January 31. Pre-sales are available on the publicbored.com website.
Our affiliate program allows anyone holding at least 1 $APE to receive a referral URL so they can earn direct rewards on all revenues from all display spots purchased by anyone they refer. Everyone with $APE is enabled to earn rewards and help us spread the word.
As part of our commitment to public good, 1,000 display spots are reserved for the local Denver Police Department, to be used at the City’s discretion, particularly in emergency and high-priority situations during the 10-day event.
BENEFITS TO THE APECOIN ECOSYSTEM:
- 20% of all revenue will be sent into the ApeCoin DAO treasury until the full cost of this AIP is returned.
- Anyone can earn a 10% rewards/payout for all referrals who purchase display time on the digital billboard
- On-going royalties plus free ads: for as long as the Ape community continues to support this initiative, a further 1% of all revenue will be sent into the ApeCoin Treasury on-going, plus a quantity of TBD ad space on all billboards everywhere shall always be reserved for use by the ApeCoin DAO, and our Network of frens and fam, such as $APE hodlers, Mocaverse, BAYC, MAYC, JRNY Club, Surreal Guild, and Ape Delegates hodling 50k $APE or more, for life.
- Bonus, free display time is also given to everyone who pays in $APE.
- Free display space is reserved exclusively for ApeCoin DAO use, such as for recruiting more builders into the Ape ecosystem.
- We also aim to help recruit more $APE builders, via a guide for new AIP authors posted directly on the Public Bored website to help direct website traffic towards the DAO, or similar.
- 25% of all revenue generated will be converted into and held in $APE on-going, until the funds need to be used, in which case we will actively seek to pay expenses in $APE wherever practical. For example, part of the cost of the billboard truck has been paid for directly using $APE. This was their first time accepting $APE as payment, and only happened because I specifically asked them to. It was a fun discussion, and they are excited
KEY TERMS:
A number of items within this AIP may be novel to the ApeCoin DAO. We are committed to working with the Foundation legal team(s) in a productive, friendly, and diligent manner to sort out those finer details should this AIP pass a successful vote.
PLATFORMS & TECHNOLOGIES:
Online marketplace to buy ad space and upload art
- The online marketplace will be a web-based portal that will live on publicbored.com website, which allows users to buy ad space for billboards, events, etc.
- Integrated payment options with APE, ETH, USDC, and Credit Card(for the muggles)
Ad algorithms
-
Supply/Demand pricing model
- Since ad space buyers will buy at market rates, the rates will constantly change based on supply/demand at a given time on a billboard
-
Ad impression algorithm
- Based on the total budget & other preferences selected, our algorithm will determine which ad to prioritize at a given time on a billboard
-
Billboard display software
- Display software will connect with existing billboards to display ads based on the ad impression algorithm
Mockup Designs
STEPS TO IMPLEMENT & TIMELINE:
December:
- AIP Drafting
- In-Depth Research
- Early Design Concepts
- Outreach Initiatives
- $10,000 expenses incurred
January:
- Website Development
- Back-end Engineering
- Pre-sales & Sponsorships
- AIP Process Continuation
February:
- Site Coordination
- Truck Setup
- Pre-sales Acceleration
- Snapshot Voting Conclusion
- First MVP Event commencement
March:
- First MVP Event Completion
- Contract Finalizations
- Site Operations Conclusion
- Reward payouts
- Debrief & Analysis
Note: Processing time of this AIP will not affect timelines prior to Q2 2024.
Q2 2024:
- Regroup & Reflection
- Strategic Planning
- New Initiative Formulation and Implementation Roadmap Development
Q3 2024:
- Second MVP Execution
- Cost and Time Permitting, Third MVP Execution
Q4 2024:
- Preparation for Scaling
2025:
- Scaling and Expansion
OVERALL COST:
Total Budget: 75,000 $APE
Approximate allocations:
- Digital Display Truck: 15k $APE
- Acquisition of cutting-edge mobile canvas
- Website & Technology Development: 20k $APE
- Advancing innovation through web and tech
- Marketing: 10k $APE
- Strategic campaigns to amplify impact
- Staffing and Related Expenses: 15k $APE
- Committed to nurturing a skilled team for twelve consecutive months
- Transportation & Rentals: 5k $APE
- Facilitating logistics for seamless execution
- Direct Sales: 5k $APE
- Hands-on engagement for strategic growth
- Miscellaneous Expenses: 5k $APE
- Navigating unforeseen challenges with resilience
- Possible Second & Third Event Budgets (TBD, based on revenues generated)
