Forming the PoolTogether Marketing Working Group

23

I think much of my thoughts would be echoing what’s already stated, to summarize.

  • The budget seems high for the metrics trying to be achieved, +$20MM deposited and +3k depositors seems low for a 6 month period, quadruple it and I’m more onboard.

I’m equally shocked with @StarTreeTV being removed from the list, they were active in many of the discussions both in voice and chat, and seem to have some amount of experience in marketing. I’m also surprised that myself and @mkkoll were removed from the advisory role, Mkkoll and I had been involved pretty heavily early on and provided guidance on how to get these different working groups (marketing, treasury, grants) to talk to one another and align efforts. Grants had even passed opportunities that appeared to be adjacent to the cause only for them to be deemed out of scope.

I’m also shocked at the decrease in the target TVL of +$20MM, I’m fairly sure this was substantially higher in the initial draft I reviewed. I also believe the new depositors was substantially higher. I would so far as to say unreasonably high, maybe 10x what’s listed here, but this decrease seems too severe.

There’s also no description on how the initial $8k seed is being deployed. Many have worked hard on getting this document together and more than the 4 people listed should receive a cut of that if that’s what the initial $8k seed is for. To be explicit, I do not include myself in the group of persons to get a cut of the $8k seed. A final point, it would good to know if any initial discussions have occurred with any agencies through the Marketing Working Group (MWG), $8k for this document is a bit steep, but $8k for initial discussions with agencies and plans for output from the MWG would be valuable insight to justify that cost.

To echo some of the others above. Marketing is needed for PoolTogether, it’s out of sight of PoolTogether Inc. they are too busy being geniuses on the contract front and needn’t be distracted by marketing. PoolTogether holds a thesis in opposition to crypto right now, a safe location to SAVE rather than to play the market (I recommended PlannerDAO as marketing outreach for this reason).

All this being said, I want to ensure the Marketing Working Group is not discouraged. The Grants Committee drafting went through more than a dozen internal drafts and I believe 3 iterations in this governance forum before being passed. Keep up the good work!

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24

First of all: thanks to everyone who put in effort and work so far. Lots of good work has been done here already. I agree that 2022 is the year of scale for the protocol as for the DAO.

I feel the expectations are still not fully clear. What does the community think the group should do? What does the group think they will do? It seems there are a lot of different opinions on this as per now, and we need align those better.

Besides that there are 4 more aspects to me, which are also dependent

  • There was no “origin” project to prove the group’s worth
  • Most members of the group are relatively new to the community
  • The initial budget seems to high
  • Group’s structure is not yet finalised

Form what I observe at other DAOs there are a few things we can do, to support the formation of new working groups & committees in future. Some of this has been done, others are notable learnings for myself:

  • Start the process early
  • Build in the open
  • Ask questions before giving answers
  • Share thoughts & work regularly
  • Find your “market”
  • Collaborate with other committees & trusted community members
  • Expect problems & ideas to change (that’s what a process is for)
  • We’re international - keep it as simple as possible, but as detailed as it has to be

Every committee & working group has iterated on their proposals many times and I believe all of them came to success in the end. It looks like everyone who replied to this thread is generally in favour of a Marketing Working Group - so am I.

There is a lot we can learn for the formation of working groups and committees. I’d like to take this as a chance to create a “best practice” to be able to guide others in the future. It feels like there is also a lot of room for the DAO to better support the process.

Edit:
One thing I forgot to mention: I like the idea about employing someone to work on that full-time, as @Leighton presented.
Growing talent within the DAO seems to be really important for the future success.

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