TBR-Q2-2023 - Growth Team

Governance PT Budget Requests
1

TBR Growth Team 2023
Team Name Growth
Quarter and Year Q2 2023
Payout Address 0xd5b043Fb903f92b67a9985B771a34E1E9Fd63b3a
Total Payout Requested $56,833

Introduction

How does PoolTogether Grow?

If you’ve had a conversation with Milly Yearly, you’ve probably heard about the Growth Teams Three Pillars:

  1. Every Wallet Deposited
  2. Every Protocol Integrated
  3. Million Dollar Grand Prize

But how do we get there? The answer, of course, is in the pillars themselves.

Every Wallet Deposited

If you have an EVM wallet, you should have $10 in PoolTogether. Like wallets should come with it built in. The larger the prizes, the more this will be the culture.

But it’s not just the large prizes that woo deposits. It’s the community, and PoolTogether’s Community is unstoppable.

The community is generous, service oriented and wants to see DeFi defended, good financial decisions being made, and crypto benefit everyone. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?!

Partnerships are a great way to achieve this goal, because when PoolTogether works with a protocol, wallet, or project, those communities are compelled to deposit into PoolTogether because PoolTogether is investing attention into their community.

Every Protocol Integrated

Speaking of Partnerships: The tipping point to every protocol integrated is moving from a “Hey can we work with you” conversation to a “how can we use the PoolTogether protocol in our product/community/project” conversation.

Again, this comes from the value that the PoolTogether Protocol provides, sure. But it also comes from a desire to be aligned with the PoolTogether Community.

With Hyperstructure coming soonTM, the Growth Team will collaborate with the protocol team to pursue Tokens and Yield sources that will lead to a successful and diverse launch across chains/layers.

Million Dollar Grand Prize

But how do we get to a Million Dollar Prize? We need TVL to grow significantly. How do we grow TVL significantly? Here’s what we’ve tried so far:

  1. Quests and Rewards - The Optimism Quests along with OP drip grew PoolTogether to the ATH users (75K) and brought TVL up to $50+ million. We will continue to pursue Quests and Rewards as a key strategy for the growth team, including rolling our own.
  2. Whale Depositooors - We’ll pursue any project that has a treasury or whale support. Lots of conversations have been had, and it seems like a good idea to most projects, but PoolTogether has been demonstrating the power of delegation for the past two quarters, and projects are starting to see the impact!
  3. Continued Partnerships/Hyperstructure Unlock - We’ve seen the power of what PoolTogether can accomplish with Optimism, but what coudl PoolTogether accomplish with Optimism, Rainbow, and Juno or with Lens, Philand, and Starbucks? When we stack partnerships, resources are POOLED bb! The next version of PoolTogether will allow anyone to plug in to the prizes.

Q1 Results

Podcast

  • 7 Episodes this Quarter so far
  • 800 Downloads
  • Highlight videos on Lens for each episode
  • DenicioDelToro editing and producing

Twitter Spaces

  • Darby and Allanon running the show featuring the PT Community. Episodes once every two weeks.
  • <10 listeners per episode

Campaigns/Integrations

  • PoolyCon complete!
  • Number 3 in DAUs per Token Terminal
  • Polygon Degen Quest
    • To date this quarter: 836 unique depositors from referral link
  • Layer3 Polygon/Optimism Quest
    • To date this quarter: 6.2K unique depositors from referral link
  • Juno
    • PTaUSDC Spending Card approved and in development
  • Aave
    • Stani at Poolycon!
    • PoolTogether massive influence due to Lens Interns
  • Rainbow
    • App Icon and Prize Notifications
  • Tacit
    • ETHDenver Referral System test
  • TaHo/ Daylight
    • in wallet prize notifications
  • The Deep End
    • Allanon and Darby hosting Bi-Weekly Twitter Spaces featuring the PoolTogether Community
  • Tide
    • Allanon Researching DIY Quests

Q2 2023 Goals

  • Launch PTaUSDC Spending Card
  • Launch PoolTogether Quest using Swim Points
  • Improve Distribution and Reach of PoolTogether Community Podcast (continue to build Lens presence)
  • Continue to recruit NFT Project/Treasury to use Delegation
  • Curate Hyperstructure Token,Yield Source and Integration Partnerships
  • Explore PoolTogether Quarterly Hackathon Layer

Performance Metrics / Milestones

  • Launch homegrown Quest strategy to increase Daily Active Users
  • Increased Lens Activity and Community Presence
  • Meetings with
    • Wallets
    • Protocols
    • Influencers
    • New Projects
  • Produce one podcast per week including a highligh video to be posted on Lens Protocol
  • Host Twitter Spaces Bi-Weekly
  • Number of Deals Closed (Rainbow, Juno, Polygon, TaHo)
  • Number of PoolTogether Protocol integrations

PoolyCon

PoolyCon was a success! We’ve received 15 responses for feedback and all respondes said they would come to the next PoolyCon.

The speakers were great, the room full, the attendees engaged, and Vitalik’s mom Natalia visited for a split second.

One commenter wrote, “Great content, easily digestible for new poolers, high energy from speakers throughout the event kept the atmosphere welcoming to newcomers.” Check out the rest of the Survey Results from Tjark’s PoolyCon Survey Recap.

The merch, though towels weren’t as good in quality, was well received, and lasted throughout the week.

BeersTogether brought in 350 RSVPs and we had a well attended event with the Amex crew staying for the whole party.

PoolTogether’s time at ETHDenver was good for community building, partnership building, and demonstrated the gathering power of the PoolTogether Community.

Compensation

The Growth Team lead will receive $28,000 USDC per quarter and will recieve a quarterly POOL allotment instead of distribution via Coordinape Circle.

In March, the Growth Team lead will receive 300 GIVE to distribute each epoch, which will allow for more accountability with team member deliverables and most likely less POOL compensation for the team lead. The Growth Team Coordinape Circle is an experiment and the lead along with Coordinape lead evaluate compensation weekly.

There are 9 team members on the Growth Team, and anyone can join! After a trial period, all team members will recieve 100 GIVE to distribute to others in the circle.

The Growth team is requesting 21,000 POOL which is ~180 POOL per person per week.

You can see a list of contributions per epoch as well as a summary of POOL Distributed in both the Main and Growth Circles on our team tracking spreadsheet.

Appendix

Based on governance post interactions, I’ve adjusted the commitment percentage to 80% (4 days a week).

Upon completing the CAP form - link - and discussing with Brendan, The Growth Team needs to be more B2B and Sales focused in Q2 to have a solid Hyperstructure Launch.

This involves working with Protocol Team to define the PoolTogether Hyperstructure Growth Strategy and develop a Vault/Integration Playbook, recruit and train a Sales team to take the playbook and onboard more Tokens/Yieldsources, EVM chains and layers, as well as encourage bots development, wallets and apps to feature PoolTogether Hyperstructure.

We’ll need to tweak our strategy and playbook post launch, but Q2 is all about launching strong with key tokens, yield sources, wallets, and integrations. LFG!

Team Members

Role Yearly Total Compensation Commitment Percentage Quarterly USDC Quarterly POOL Contributor
Lead $176,720 80% 28,000 7,268 Tim Cox
Contributor Coordinape N/A various 0 21,000 Coordinape Pool

Team Expenses

Description Amount
Lead Compensation $28,000
Lead Compensation (in POOL) 7,268
Coordinape Pool for Growth Contributors (in POOL) 21,000
USDC for Delegation $100,000
Token Amount
POOL $1.02
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Hello Tim.

Some thoughts on the post:

  1. I’m worried about trying to increase the number of users using the protocol. The numbers you’re showing are true, however, I’m not sure that those are significant. For example, taking a look at Optimism depositor (info courtesy of Pooly Bot from underthesea), you can see that we have around 2,000 users over $100. However, we have more than 33,000 users below $100. This strongly suggests that most of the activity is just bots or people looking for an airdrop. I believe that it’s important for the Growth Team to understand this facts and look for sustainable growth in real users.

  2. I’d like to see some results on “Whale Depositooors”. I know that this is no easy task, but I know the idea has been floated for some time but as far as I’m aware we have not been able to get other protocols on board.

  3. Parnerships for Hyperstructure is a key point, so thanks for highlighting that one.

  4. I’m unsure if continuing with the podcast and Twitter spaces is profitable for the protocol. I do think that building a good presence on Lens while it’s still early is a good movement though.

  5. I find the lead salary a bit high compared to other leads, which makes me be more demanding when it comes to getting results.

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Yes! Some feedback!

My premise is every wallet deposited, which prioritizes users over TVL and other metrics like Daily Active Users. And this assumes that any wallet is a good wallet as long as it’s deposited and as long as we get more of them deposited. Would love to see a figure like 50% of all EVM wallets have a deposit in PoolTogether.

Whales meaning treasuries/project patrons… yeah I think with the current yield/prize structure this is pretty difficult, but as we pursue tokens and yield sources, I think this gives us more traction on the whale front!

xoxo

I would love to see these take off in terms of traffic, but the primary purpose of the pod is to initiate and mature Growth conversations with other projects, and the goal of The Deep End is to inform as many people as possible of the PoolTogether Community and developments within the community. We’ve only had Spaces running regularly for a quarter. I want to keep it going and help it mature.

This is the minimum USDC that I need to commit to 100%, and I would like to remove myself from the Growth Team Circle Coordinape. If the community wants me to keep running at 60% I can edit the proposal, but seems like hyperstructure = foot on the gas more than maintain current pace.

I, too, will be more demanding when it comes to getting results. I think we all saw the power of the PoolTogether Community at PoolyCon and I’m pumped to see that Community unleashed.

Really appreciate your feedback ser @BRONDER

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Hey @tim thanks for this proposal!

Can you tell me more about the move away from DAU as a north star metric? You seemed really convinced about it last quarter, and I wondered what had changed in your thinking.

I ask because I am still unsure about the north star metric/mandate of the growth team, and it’s hard for me connect the dots with your proposed actions this season. While it’s important to update focus as understanding changes, it would be a bad outcome to have a new north star every quarter. If a KPI is selected at the right level of granularity (tricky sometimes!), it can really help focus internally and communication externally

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@links!

Thanks for asking, and yes I don’t want to keep changing KPIs either. I think that DAUs will go down with the advent of auto-claiming, wallet notifications, and reduction of prizes distributed. If you don’t need to keep coming back to PoolTogether to see if you’ve won, those DAUs are going to reduce significantly. Also, I’m really not sure how Token Terminal is tracking DAUs.. I’m setting up a convo with spindl to see if there’s a better approach.

I think our primary target is growing number of wallets, secondary target is TVL, and tertiary target is Number of Integrations. With Hyperstructure, I can see Token/Yield Source replacing integrations in priority (as hopefully the integration part becomes super attractive).

Check out the Addresses Holding Tickets sections of @sarfang 's magnificent award winning Dune Dashboard. That’s what I’m tracking rn.

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I can see how Addresses Holding Tickets is a desirable metric, although I will say I’m a bit disappointed in the move from DAU. I really like the idea of PT as the poster child for a daily usable web3 product. Ultimately it depends on the product goals as you mentioned…so it feels like I may be missing some context on the product strategy itself.

Thanks for sharing the Dune dashboards, and I hope you’ll share the impact you’ve had on the 3 metrics you’ve surfaced as your most important. Makes me wonder - any thought to attribution of your initiatives to increase in addresses? A lot of your goals could be overlapping, how will you know which efforts you push out will have been the most helpful?

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Currently, the Layer3, and OP/Polygon Galxe Quests have contributed to increased ticket holders even through the USDC depeg.

The price of POOL pumped directly after PoolyCon, which was a nice bit of feedback!

Our initiatives for Q2 are to launch the PoolTogether Debit card with Juno (@tim), roll our own Quests (@Allanon ), optimize delegation use to encourage growth (@Allanon and @thumbsupfinance), pursue integrations (@tim, @rliriano, @poptones), continue to pump out podcasts for more BD conversations/partnerships (@tim and @DenicioDelToro1), and use Spaces as a place to grow the community on Twitter (@poptones and @Allanon). We’re also still desperately trying to encourage treasuries to deposit into PoolTogether (thanks to @McOso for his latest proposal on demonstrating this for those treasuries), and figure out a way to make referrals work for PoolTogether.

I think all of these together will have a stacking effect and grow our holders, treasury and token/yield partnerships will grow TVL, and the hackathon/partnering with EVM friendly L1s will help in the integrations area.

I think I answered your question!

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Hi. In an effort to be more transparent with council discussions I am posting here first instead of the private discord channel.

A few points & questions:

  • What was your previous Quarterly USDC compensation at 60% that was covered by PT Inc. Last quarter

I understand a lot of work has gone into getting those potential partnerships this far (and are likely to occur) but I don’t believe they should be a performance metric for a future quarter. It’s already set to happen right?

I find the lead compensation to be extremely high, some of the highest compensation we have seen yet. Business development does have a high salary range (which you shared here) but these are also very large & funded projects. To me we are not at this point yet.

Take a look at intropia biz dev job listings Yes there are still some 150k+ positions but you’ll find a lot more range and lower end salaries.

The hyperstructure partnerships is definitely important but with the low to none dev work required from both PT & potential partner side I don’t anticipate much work needed on this. Unless you meant building marketing campaigns around these partnerships.

Overall I am supportive of the Growth teams efforts but the current salary has me concerned.

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@tim I am happy to see your enthusiasm to grow the protocol. I know you have a real passion for PT and ability to excel at this work.

We have had a lot of discussion about this proposal and I’m not going to summarize it all but instead address where I have an issue specific to the lead salary.

We have discussed it privately and on council. I’m not ok with where it has landed here. We have addressed the topic of cost of living in early council discussions and came to what I thought was a firm decision that compensation should not be determined by location or lifestyle. We looked at Business Development roles and saw large ranges of salary. Being that this your first quarter going full-time I think it should be in-line with the other non-dev leads - Tjark, Lonser, and myself @ $120k. As it stands I will vote no.

To jump in on the discussion in this thread - I think # of wallets are a bad thing to be focussing on. The protocol doesn’t care how many wallets there are. The protocol wants yield to make prizes. If we knew one wallet is one person then sure I can see that as a great growth metric, but in this case it’s quite the opposite. If we want to look at # of users we could filter wallets for actual wealth, not just deposit to PT but more generally using something like the zapper API. But personally I would like to see it prioritized more to look at yield which ultimately means prize.

And some sugar for balance - I love the incorporation of Coordinape to have a growth team.

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$7,000 USDC a month for 60%

What’s already set to happen? Juno? Still needs a ton of followup/haggling/product tweaking.

Not from PT Inc. but yes, definitely from the community.

Salary includes a lot more than base pay for these positions. You can generally mark them up by 30%+ to cover employer stuff.

Also, I realize that we’re not talking salary for teams and me. We’re really talking about PT Community giving a grant to Timothy Cox, LLC to provide BD services to the DAO and using a salary model to find an acceptable range.

Also, Also, I’m talking to a recruiter and other protocols about BD positions and consulting (not necessarily team leading). I’m happy to consider dropping down time commitment or maintaining my current 60% time commitment, but with hyperstructure it seems we need to pedal to the metal rn.

Just because people can do it themselves doesn’t mean they will. Def need hand holding here, and to encourage/pitch the product (and provide feedback on tweaks).

Appreciate your feedback, ser. What would you be comfy with? I can also consider going less than 100%. I want to come to something that works for the community, for sure.

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hearts!

Not sure what lifestyle means. I do have many cats. Not saying I should be paid more because of NYC, but it does create a minimum rate for me to take on full-time work.

Didn’t know this was the base until now, though this might have been communicated and I missed it. Why is PT Inc. different?

Hoping to get something launched with Coinbase where number of wallets is a v good thing thanks to KYC!

I understand sybil, and farmers and all that, but at some point a massive number of wallets is so much better than a gaggle of whales floating the whole thing.

WHO CAN BUILD THIS

When you say this, you mean focus on TVL? Not sure how Growth can improve yield until Hyperstructure is in place.

Thanks for the sugar bb

Would love to hear suggestions on improving Coordinape. Do you think the comp has been fair for the output of the team thus far? I’m about to write a little something on the Coordinape thread, and would love to incorporate your feedback in my thoughts

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I will keep this brief. While I think a growth team is absolutely necessary, I am not in favor of this proposal for three major reasons:

  1. I think the yearly salary request is not reasonable compared to the other community-based roles whom all value their time at a $120k yearly salary. Your rate is roughly 50% higher compared to the other team lead requests. I cannot think of a good reason why the community should approve such a massive difference. Furthermore, as I understand from below quote, you’re essentially asking for a 25% markup compared to your PT Inc salary.
  1. The goals you have defined are, in my opinion, quite vague. Having meetings with or chasing an unknown number of PoolTogether integrations is not a metric / milestone anyone can evaluate to decide if this proposal is a proper request. I understand putting numbers on many of them is hard, but as it stand right now any progress made in the next quarter is acceptable.
  1. This point builds a bit on the previous one, but I wanted to highlight it. According to the PT Inc TBR, the Hyperstructure won’t be properly online until after this quarter. Your goal, as quoted above, is simply no measurable or achievable during this quarter. You cannot have extra yield souces (which is a very technical engagement, by the way) or integrations if the Hyperstructure does not exist yet. I understand that you will likely spend time on reaching out to and curating partners, but none of that is remotely measurable until some initial implementations or engagements are delivered and, to the best of my knowledge, that will simply not be possible this quarter.

As it stands right now, I will not support this proposal.

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Appreciate the feedback, @drcpu! Really, I do.

A point of clarification, we’re not talking salaries, but grants from the treasury for entities to complete work for the DAO. I have to continue to remind myself of this, as @Leighton frequently reminds me as well.

Regarding the POOL comp (which is the entirety of the 25% markup)… a couple things: 1. The Inc. agreement was created in August. A lot has happened since! One big different is that I’m managing a team now.

Also, 100% time commitment is much different than 60%, and I’m trying to compensate for the extras that are needed to be covered with 100% commitment. I’m also shooting 50% POOL of what the now defunct? compensation formula says.

I’m not clear on what a community based role is. Aren’t they all community based? That’s the point, right? The 120K number seems to be something that’s firmed up this week, so it’s news to me. I can’t do that for 100% commitment. Happy to work out what that looks like through this process. Also, I think the full-time roles all look different between what @underthesea, @Lonser, @Tjark and I do (or will be doing) day to day. Not sure a flat rate is something we want to pursue across roles.

This is the quandary with BD. We’ll have to decide if the integrations that have been pursued and landed are worth the expense to the treasury based on Wallets deposited, TVL, and the value of the integrations as they increase wallets/TVL.

Since August, we’ve increased ticket holders from 20K to 55K wallets. We’ve also gone from 40m to 35m deposited. We’ve had shoutouts from Token Terminal, a Rainbow Wallet Pooly App Icon, a day long conference that had a 100% would attend again survey, and we’ve got Coinbase on the line for potential collab.

We also have a whole Growth Team now! We need to focus our team efforts into Delegation optimization, healthy growth Quests, the long slog of Recruiting Treasuries, and creating growth focused content.

BD convos are going to take months to years to land the plane on deals. Gotta start talking now. We need launch partners. I’m pumped to work with @Brendan on this.

Can you tell me what you would support?

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Semantics aside, the TBR requests an amount of money based on a yearly total compensation and it’s that amount I have a problem with.

Well, yes, but so is every other team lead.

I’ll admit this is a muddy definition, but that’s who I classify everyone who has not been with PT Inc for multiple years and started from the community.

I fully understand that, as I said, but if at the end of a quarter no one can measure any progress compared to some predefined goals, I can also not accurately measure whether the compensation was correct. I’m not saying it has to be a 100% layed out deployment plan like the Hyperstructure, but you need to give target numbers.

While you are arguing that a flat rate accross all roles is not worth pursuing, I also don’t think a 50% difference is workable for two reasons:

  1. It will inevitably lead to friction between contributors.
  2. I think it will result in a precedent and “game of one-upping” next quarters: why not me?

I cannot see me supporting more than a 10% to 15% full-time renumeration difference between roles because I think that will be bad for the DAO long term. If you don’t see that working for a full-time position, than I would still support a part-time position like what you had before with PT Inc. Given that Brendan and Leighton will have a lot of interactions with different protocols too, I think the Hyperstructure growth goal is somewhat shared anyway.

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Again, really appreciate the feedback here and your time.

Gotcha, but this team is ~8 people newish people (non OGs) and was not part of my Inc. mandate

Ok, but @alxx is newer than me, so not all OGs. Shouldn’t coming from the community be a plus and not a reason for a pay-cut?

Ok so like, 200 sign ups for Juno Card, 3 external meetings per week (36 per quarter), weekly podcasts, one hackathon, 6 Twitter Spaces Deep Ends, 1 quest, and 2 Monthly delegation campaigns… and shoot for 50m TVL and 50K Wallet Addresses

Keeping in mind that the effort we’re putting in now will pay off 6 months+ from now.

This is already happening with Inc. comp isn’t it? At least I’m trying to have that conversation. And I definitely don’t want to create friction with my coworkers. And you’re not saying, I don’t think, that this is unreasonable for a Business Development role. You’re saying we should pay everyone, no matter the position, within 10-15% of each other no matter the role/responsibility, correct?

Appreciate the clarity here and I appreciate you supporting the part time position. I think that will probably end up be what I’ll do given the push back in this thread. This is totally fine with me! I’ll just need to continue to work with other projects, which might even help me contribute to growth of PoolTogether based on these connections/exposure.

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I’m excited to work more closely with you Tim!

I want to mention to everyone that while we don’t have any specific, actionable goals for the hyperstructure yet, we’re going to start working on the go-to-market strategy soon. We’ve been very focused on the testnet and getting the system working and proven.

Once we’re ready, PT Inc will be working closely with Tim to get aligned on how we’re going to push the hyperstructure.

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Quick question, is there an advantage to be in NYC for Growth PT?
I know we said in the past that it should not be determined by location but if NYC where he need to be… We need to take that in consideration, this is why i’m asking

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Thanks for the detailed proposal.

I think this is where PoolTogether lacks, marketing and growth. This is a big weakness for PT. To grow we need to spend money. We also need trust.

I fully support this team with the budget laid out.

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I would be more comfortable supporting a salary rate in the 110-125k range.
There’s nothing wrong with doing a smaller time commitment as well.

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Yes for sure. NYC is a big crypto town, and I’m able to have in person meetings regularly (two in the past week).

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