A community lead version of Shark Tank exclusive to the ApeCoin community.
Abstract
The future is only limited by the number of new ideas people are willing to experiment and execute. Let’s build a decentralized future idea generation model that rapidly scales the ApeCoin ecosystem.
The ApeCage is a program to allow new ecosystem ideas to be quickly funded, develop global awareness and provide networking support. ApeCage will be hosted by a panel of elected community leaders who are passionate and knowledgeable about the ApeCoin community, mission and have experience developing companies. They will host an online program to listen, debate and fund new ideas that push the ApeCoin ecosystem forward.
Ecosystem ideas that are presented to the ApeCage Panel should be early, innovative, provide a solution to an identifiable problem and able to become a self-sustaining decentralized business.
Motivation
We need a streamlined process to fund new ideas that are very early and need a small amount of resources (both network and financial) to get started with an execution strategy.
New ideas should be rapid experiments that require smart, motivated people to operate. We should accept that ideas are just thoughts that may or may not succeed based on the team executing them. Ideas are easy, execution is hard.
Ideas that do not succeed are as valuable as ideas that do succeed. Failure provides valuable lessons for future iterations. It is important for us as a community to support everyone trying to build our future regardless of the outcome.
Ideas should clearly identify an ApeCoin community problem (broadly defined as anything that brings more people into the ApeCoin ecosystem), provide a hypothesis, articulate a potential scalable solution, and have knowledgeable people who have the time, willingness and ambition to execute.
Rationale
Everyone has ideas. People with new ideas need a supportive environment where they can feel comfortable to publicly present their ideas to a large collective community like ours. It takes a lot of bravery to be right or wrong at scale.
Assemble a panel (via a nomination and voting process) of crypto leaders who have some experience building companies, running experiments and supporting successful entrepreneurs. The elected ApeCage Panel will listen, opinione, support and approve funding for people that want to build a business based on their ecosystem idea.
This could have multiple positive consequences:
- Provide an environment for the people to present early stage ideas
- Quickly secure minimal funding (up to 100K, maybe a lower glass ceiling?) to prove (or disprove) an idea
- Provide a marketing opportunity for people pitching ideas to build support for their experiment
- Provide an immediate addressable market of early adopters who are willing to test the viability of an idea
- Provide access to mentors who have done this before and therefore break down access barriers to entry
The net effect of the ApeCage is that the ApeCoin DAO could spawn a sub DAO, called the ApeCage DAO, and in turn help quickly provide more funding and growth for the ApeCoin ecosystem.
Specifications
Ideas should be defined as:
- A problem statement encapsulated in a short introduction
- A hypothesis statement, what does the author believe would happen if X, Y
- A prediction statement
- An experiment to test the thesis statement and a funding requirement
Post presentation and approved funding, the idea should be tracked and required to present a post experiment report of
- An analysis of the experiment
- A conclusion on how the experiment worked and how to scale any identified provable solutions
The ApeCage Council should be defined as:
- A five member council made up of various leaders in the crypto industry.
- The council will listen to member ideas, problem statements, hypothesis statements, predictions and experiment to test hypothesis
- The council will debate the idea with the presenter and test that the hypothesis and experiment can be accomplished
- The council will use their best judgment to validate the presenter has the skill, passion and knowledge (or ability to acquire the knowledge over the course of the experiment) to execute the idea
- The special council will approve a payment schedule to the presenter not exceeding $100K
Steps to Implement
- Approve this AIP
- In parallel:
- Setup a nomination process and then have a vote on nominees, ApeCage Panelists should have experience with
- Our community
- What we are building towards
- How to build a business
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Find and hire a production company
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Work with the elected nominees to plan the show format
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Work with ApeCage Panelists to create an idea submission process that clearly demonstrates how to get in front of them
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AgeCage panel decides what ideas will be presented based on submission process
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Liaise with legal to make sure funding structure / process is compliant
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For all ideas that are approved to be funded, provide the presenter with a ApeCoin Grant Agreement (legal)
- Define the type of ideas that can not be presented, based on jurisdictional legal requirements and Cayman Islands law (we don’t want anyone doing anything illegal and should not fund projects that are unclear what legal requirements are)
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Create a marketing campaign to spread awareness about the program
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Track the ideas that get funding and report back to the ApeCoin community on their progress
Timeline
My timeline is probably a bit ambitious and would need to be subject to a professional production firm opinion, ultimately, I suspect it will take 4-6 weeks to identify, interview and engage a production company and then 3-6 months to strategize, plan, film and edit the content.
- Nomination and Election process - 2 months
- Interview and partner with production company - 2 months
- Designing a transparent idea submission process - 1 month
- Marketing the program to attract pitches - 2 months
- Reviewing submissions and approving pitches - 1 month
- Recording the shows - 1 week
- Edit the shows - 4 weeks?
- Streaming the shows once a week for 12 weeks?
- Renew the process for another 12 week run (including nomination and election)
Overall Cost
There are several costs associated with this AIP but they can be broken down into successfully reaching some predetermined milestones.
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Assemble the ApeCage Panel - 7,000 ApeCoin per panel member
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We will need to provide some base incentivization for the panel to commit their time to running the ApeCage
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Marketing the show - let’s say US$100K
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Hire a production company to produce the ApeCage show on YouTube - Let’s set a budget per show of $40K, this should include script, setup, production, post production and distribution (I might be very wrong on the cost)
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We should start small, let’s create a YouTube channel where the ApeCage broadcasts their show
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This cost should be subject to
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Let’s think big, maybe one day Netflix calls us to stream our show
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Let’s set a 1 season funding budget
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Each idea funding should be capped at 100K (it would be up to the panel if ideas get funded and at what level, with what milestones)
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We should pre-record each show so production quality can be maximized (both for the presenters and the professional quality of the show)
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The show can be 1 hour and have 3 presentations per show with a cap of 20 minutes of time (presenters and the council can spend longer while recording but the producers should have the artistic freedom to ensure maximum exposure for ideas)
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We should have 1 show stream per week for 8 weeks (all shows would be pre-recorded, timeframe TBD)
All comments, ideas, questions and constructive criticism is welcome and strongly encouraged. If you have experience, would like to be directly involved or co-author this AIP, feel free to reach out to me directly. Please note, all costs (as submitted here) are subject to change on the final draft and I am really hoping the community helps me figure these out.
Some logo ideas for fun:
Proposals submitted to the AIP Ideas category can be vague, incomplete ideas. Topics submitted here are not required to be submitted as a formal AIP Draft Template, however, you may still use the template if you wish.