EcoSystem Expansion Accelerator via a KPI based payment

Withdrawn AIPs
1

Abstract

The $APE token must expand its reach and appeal to the wider web3 community.

While I am a MAYC holder (689 and 2549), many other communities have yet to learn of Ape Coin beyond enriching BAYC holders from an airdrop (semi-true) and potential use in gaming and future merchandise/drops.

I want to encourage those outside the Yuga ecosystem to adopt $APE using the token as the lifeblood of their dAPP, loyalty programme or payment solution. The ApeCoin DAO must expand beyond existing Yuga asset holders.

Having previously worked for Outlier Ventures (Web3 Accelerator) and since left to form W3S, I support a major stablecoin and developed a token rediscovery plan that has been implemented and produced token holder growth on several occasions.

While at Outlier Ventures, we helped Fluf expand and extend by working with infrastructure partners and complementary projects.

I want my team and I to run a quarterly project recruitment drive; we’ll source deal flow and find new and exciting projects to support.

This approach works well, spotlighting the project and the underlying protocol/token.

Author

I’m mayc689.eth or Jonathan Pullinger in the real world. I’m the managing partner of the W3S Group (https://w3s.group). I have been working in crypto for just over a decade. I began as a Bitcoin miner before attempting to mine Ethereum but deciding to purchase it instead; since then, I have gone on to create tokens for several projects, including the fourth largest ICO of 2017 (https://www.tatatu.com/); Tatatu has since converted into a publicly traded company.

I also developed an NFT platform for the now-defunct RedKite before joining Outlier Ventures (https://outlierventures.io/) as a Token Marketing Expert in 2021, helping several projects launch and raise more than $25m.

I have also worked within traditional finance; I worked for JP Morgan on the Beeline project, which involved researching every department spend on contractors and building an assessment of needs matrix to reduce headcount while reducing the number of approved agencies for staffing, reducing percentage-based commissions and helped to introduce a fixed fee model.

My Twitter handle is @ApedLate, and My Discord name is JPinWeb3#1211.

Motivation

My motivation behind this AIP is to increase the value proposition for the Ape Coin Community and DAO to achieve various objectives, including improving token awareness, fostering ecosystem partnerships, and supporting existing working groups.

Our plan prioritises growth, efficiency, and sustainable development, focusing on aligning payments with results and adapting to the current macroeconomic environment.

Rationale

The rationale is simple; I love the web3 ecosystem; I’m a huge fan of what they did to get things started and their amazing storytelling ability that has bound us all together on this mad-cap adventure.

I recently became disillusioned with some aspects of the community and the management of the DAO but didn’t want to join the nay-saying fudders and wanted to use my experience, my team and our combined skills to help drive the DAO forwards; complaining is easy, rolling up your sleeves and pitching in, is harder but ultimately far more rewarding for all of us.

I want to help contribute, and while my company will profit if we achieve all of our goals, the key for me is that we are being paid on a results-based model. We’ll be working with the DAO to help achieve shared goals while growing an ecosystem we can all be proud of.

Specifications

W3S (Myself and my team) will look for exciting new projects that will benefit the entire ecosystem. We will deep dive and complete due diligence on projects and their technology, helping to ensure the project is best placed for investment and incubation.

Using our experience from Outlier Ventures and our deep understanding of the traditional investment market and access to family/private office funding, we will help the project prepare for further investment.

Upon identifying a suitable project, we will apply for a project stipend to the Ape Coin DAO;

We should set aside $500,000 per quarter for stipends ($100,000 each), but the funds are only released upon the agreed criteria being satisfied.

Based on the teams’ experience, we would suggest the following criteria;

  1. A pitch deck that meets the expected standards of A16Z, Outlier Ventures and Animoca Brands. Demonstrating the following;

  2. Project Overview

  3. Problem/Solution/Secret Sauce

  4. Competitive landscape

  5. Competitor analysis

  6. Initial traction/results

  7. Financial overview/Investor benefits

  8. Tokenomics

  9. Community growth/exposure

  10. Team structure and experience

  11. Advisory board

  12. Conclusion

  13. A functioning website that enables the investor or customer to register for updates.

  14. Social media accounts that demonstrate genuine engagement.

  15. A basic overview of the project’s tokenomics and how they plan to provide a unique utility to the broader community.

  16. The beginnings of a go-to-market strategy and understanding what is needed to execute.

  17. A strong core team with the relevant skills to achieve at least 60% of their planned roadmap.

  18. Certificate of incorporation and token/share allocations, including a detailed cash flow forecast for the next eighteen months and other investor documentation were available.

Additional Benefits for $APE holders

  1. More projects that drive the adoption of ApeCoin

  2. Ape Coin holders are eligible (based on terms specified by the project to co-invest and invest in future rounds.

Steps to Implement

  1. Agree with the DAO and the participating members on the projects qualifying for stipends during the quarter.

  2. Develop a go-to-market strategy to attract the agreed project types.

  3. Agree on events and travel budgets with the ApeDAO special council.

  4. W3S will attend networking events and conferences, create events and run social network lead-generation programmes to attract top talent to the ecosystem.

  5. Once leads have been generated, the ApeDAO special council will vote on them receiving a stipend; upon approval, W3S will be paid a commission of 20% of the value of the stipend.

  6. Additional follow on options will be made available to the ApeCoin holders on an ad-hoc basis.

  7. The W3S team will monitor and advise the projects to help them achieve their roadmaps, raise further funding, and develop a working product/service to benefit all ApeCoin holders.

  8. Quarterly investor updates will be produced by W3S and submitted to the ApeCoin Special Council for further dissemination/sharing.

Timeline

The agreement should be reviewed quarterly for twelve months to ensure W3S continues to add value to the ApeCoin community.

Overall Cost

The maximum cost to the DAO is $2m plus carry, although this assumes W3S meets all agreed KPIs and a minimum of sixteen projects are approved for stipends, triggering drawdowns.

The initial payment to retain W3S is $25,000 to cover the set-up and integration costs for W3S.

Some projects that I have worked on during my time at Outlier Ventures and Since with the W3S group that has benefitted from this model include;

  1. Dimitra.io - I worked with the project to retrofit a project utility, communicate this clearly and re-engage with their community. We helped their token price recover through marketing and tokenomics from $0.002 to $0.08

  2. Archblock.com - Archblock is the white glove service for TrueUSD and TrueFi we have advised on their product launch, launch strategy, regulatory changes, and jurisdiction changes from the USA to CH. W3S created high-quality brand guidelines and materials/processes to enable family offices to invest in them.

  3. We launched several tokens/NFTs at OV, including;

  4. Altered State Machine/Fluf

  5. Unique Network

  6. Cryptowalkers

  7. CoinFX

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.

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Reserved for updates.

4

I totally agree with you, we should use social networks to expand Ape Coin.

1 Like
5

We need a combination of things, but yes, I agree it would be part of the program for sure.

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we are too niché to be seen by the greatest number we need to popularize Ape Dao so that a large number understand and join us

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Thank you for your comment, but I respectfully disagree; when chosen carefully, the additional 16 projects a year generate new use cases for ApeCoin - their PR and the users they bring help drive the wider ecosystem. Look at Polka.

8

I have some questions. Are the projects you invest in going to use $ape directly? Would that be the base criteria?

While your carry is in line with standard VC firms the way you are structuring the carry payment is not. You are asking for your carry to be paid as soon as the deal is approved. This is pretty preposterous and it doesn’t work like this in the real world. VCs get paid when the fund makes its money back, or typically gets over a hurdle amount. The incentives are not aligned at all.

With the fixed number of projects per quarter, you are incentivized to prep companies the best you can and send them to get funded by our SC. Our SC most likely are not shrewd VCs who can tell a bad deal, or can snuff out bad founders. They pretty much will have to trust you. Whether they succeed or fail, you get paid a cool $400k per year. No skin in the game.

I would argue this is centralizing the AIP system for projects and essentially outsourcing what the DAO should be doing to a central party for management. These projects, if they want funding, should come and apply using AIPs directly. Maybe your org can be part of the working group that does due diligence on this in return for a % given your firm also invests. Some sort of matching (doesn’t have to be equal), so that we know there is skin in the game.

As the proposal stands, this feels like a great deal for you and a pretty bad one for $ape holders. This would be more palatable if you also invest an equal amount so we know you have skin in the game. That way it’ll look your investing fund doubled, and you get to keep carry on part of it, while we have a little bit of peace knowing that you stand to lose as well so we can trust you completely.

7 Likes
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Yes, the projects would use $APE directly and should offer a real benefit to the ecosystem.

The $400k would only be paid to W3S if they have introduced 16 viable projects that the DAO approves.

The only initial payment we receive is $25k.

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Historically, we have co-invested, I would be happy to make that part of the deal. Normally, we also include a sweat equity element but I agree this needs to be clarified further.

2 Likes
11

Hey man, welcome to the forums!

@ssp1111 and I have discussed venture activities in the past - it would be cool for the DAO to be able to invest. However, there are legal challenges to this. We can discuss some basics in voice chat, if you’d like, add me sashanft on Discord.

Here’s my feedback to this current version of this proposal:

There’s perhaps a misunderstanding about the role of the Council. They don’t get to define the vision of the community, only to serve it. They can’t serve in any VC-related capacity and can’t pick projects on behalf of DAO or centralize decision-making in any other way. As far as proposals go, their sole job is to verify their legality/compliance and risk to the DAO in terms of predefined DAO mission/values and major red flags (a scammer founder, etc.). So they can stop the bad ones; they can’t decide which are good ones.

Ape Assembly would be a better governing body for this. Or a new Ventures Working Group.

Who else invests?
You mentioned $100k/project. Where will they get the rest of money from? How do we ensure those other entities don’t have conflicting goals with the DAO?

Who gets equity?
Does W3S get equity from these companies on top of flat carry? Have you thought about some setup where the DAO treasury may benefit in the future?

Why not just refer these projects to submit AIPs?
You can take a headhunter fee / commission from finding them maybe, but why not push them through the regular AIP process?

Why so expensive?
I’ve ran an accelerator. There are companies that send you dealflow. They send a whole lot more companies for a whole lot less money than what you’re proposing.

Thank you for posting the idea.

5 Likes
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The $400k would only be paid to W3S if they have introduced 16 viable projects that the DAO approves.

This doesn’t make the condition any better for the DAO. Your incentive will be to get to these 16 project threshold within the year. Once you clear it, you get your payout. After that it doesn’t really matter if they add or subtract from the ecosystem.

The small initial payment is sort of irrelevant when the primary payment is for a vanity metric. As you have mentioned many times, you have a lot of experience prepping startups for fundraising. So you know how to make the initial deck look good whether you truly believe in it or not. So the only way I can see our incentives align is if you also have something to lose if none of the projects end up creating something useful.

4 Likes
13

Well, in short we won’t earn as our kpis won’t have been achieved and we will look for projects that help the DAO and widen its community reach, the terms of the project types would be agreed with the DAO.

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Happy to discuss on Discord.

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Here’s the community thread that Sasha may also be referring to:

2 Likes
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Hi,

Thanks for this, do you have a link to the recoding of the mentioned Twitter Space, if so, please share with me/group and I’ll review and add any additional similarities/differences.

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Sadly, the joys of venture mean what you are asking is impossible- nobody can run an accelerator for free. I’m sure you’re paid for your job and can agree people need to get paid for the work they do.

The payments being KPI based make this a fairer model than most and fees are aligned with most SPACs.

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“ the ApeDAO special council will vote on them receiving a stipend; ”

Not how it works, thankfully. We don’t need more incentives for hijacking highly-paid positions.

Only projects that only accept ApeCoin payments, or directly put ApeCoin into peoples’ hands, will drive adoption. All else is effectively marketing.

1 Like
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Sadly, the joys of venture mean what you are asking is impossible- nobody can run an accelerator for free. I’m sure you’re paid for your job and can agree people need to get paid for the work they do.

I didn’t say you needed to do it for free. I just mentioned that values aren’t aligned. Using your example, I’m sure you’re paid for your job because of the work you produce, and not just because you show up right? The current requirement of “we will send you projects, approve it, and I will get paid” feels a lot like you just showing up and expecting to get paid.

Maybe it would be clearer if you could give examples of the KPIs you keep mentioning? Maybe with the right KPIs, values could be aligned.

1 Like
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That’s a fair point, and I will amend that in the revised AIP idea.

Thanks, it should have been a working group that then directly releases funds to the approved projects.

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Wait, does the name Harish suthi ring a bell ?