Optimizing the Goals and Aims of the Growth and Marketing Workstream: A Discussion

[Toasty]

Hey FOX community! As many of you know, our workstream recently got approved and just began on May 1. We’ve had some prevalent DAO community members reach out (Erik Voorhees and others) expressing concerns with past Marketing efforts and inquiring about our plans for improving results in the future.

We wanted to create a Forum post sharing some of those concerns while we work toward addressing them as new leaders for the marketing workstream. We agree that much of the previous Marketing efforts were not functioning optimally, producing stellar results, or tracking efforts appropriately, and this is in part why it has now been wrapped up into the new Growth and Marketing workstream.

We will share some of the concerns below as well as some of our responses, point by point. We will address what we will be working on in these next few weeks to rebuild or (create from scratch) the needed marketing plans, goals, and strategies to increase user growth and elevate our brand awareness.

Quote from Erik “Growth is not sufficiently measured… there has been no discussion of app usage in any form. All mentioned KPI’s in the recently passed Budget Proposal focus on community/social growth but not on actual product usage. It’s understood that advanced analytics are mostly absent until Pendo’s integration in Alpha, but we aren’t even tracking domain traffic or partner protocol growth via Yearn, Banxa, & Gem. How many users do we have, and how are we acquiring them? This is THE key question this workstream should be tackling, and there appears to be no focus on it. “ It’s unclear what the focus/priorities are for this workstream. Stated differently, there are too many focuses such that nothing seems to be the focus. What are the one or two most important metrics being focused on?”

Response: We agree app usage, growth data, and KPIs for marketing have been missing; it was not tracked in the previous workstream, and meaningful baseline data has thus been absent, so we will need to create it from the ground up. This is why, in the departure of Petecoin, we took over and brought it back into this stream. Our intent is to very quickly create a new direction/plan for marketing that aims to identify measurable goals that can be shared with the community. Establishing these KPIs will allow the community to see what is and isn’t being achieved from the themarketing stream. To the second point, we have several goals in this stream: we aren’t just Marketing, but Growth, Marketing, Partnerships, and PR. That said, we must and will create clear focuses and priorities for the workstream. We were lacking in time to do so due to the abrupt departure of Petecoin, in order to renew streams to ensure continuity of marketing operations. (edited)

Quote from Erik “Leadership of the workstream is unclear… the proposal establishes 2 or 3 “co-leaders” depending on how it’s read (the three of you). Who is ultimately accountable for the work stream? I know with Ops it’s Tyler. With Product it’s Diggy. With Engineering it’s 0xdef1. Marketing needs one leader who is responsible for the results and success of the workstream.”

Response: We have held many discussions around this topic from leadership calls, retros/office hours to Lunch AMAs. We are working toward a different structure for this stream and have been experimenting for a few months with this idea of dual leadership on a workstream with some success, and very little issues. We are treating running the stream as a discussion or a board rather than a direct hierarchy. This structure allows for two points of contact on leadership needs, collaboration on decision-making, and out of consideration of the ‘bus theory’: that if something were to happen to one of the workstream co-leads the stream would continue to function. We saw the need for this when PeteCoin left the marketing workstream for us to deal with. Multiple leads may not be a solution needed in a DAO, but we are working on this experiment to shake up traditional leadership in a company that’s not a traditional company—because it’s a DAO. With that being said we could do a better job of optimizing the structure, but how it’s presented here: is the clearest form of leadership structure - ShapeShift Organizational Structure This also brought up questions of how the whole stream should be laid out with the idea of one leader and 3-5 full time employees and the rest bounty. In the beginning this was tried with marketing, but as we quickly found out for marketing talent, just bounty work was not providing the results/ talent that we (the DAO) needed. People wanted to contribute with some sense of security, and bounties were going un-utilized while the stack of work piled up. I think large bounty systems work for technical positions such as engineers but were not proving fruitful for marketing roles.

Cost Concerns/ Erik Quote

“This workstream’s cost is too high at $126k per month.

• Three co-leads each earning $177k annualized is too much

• I’d prefer to see more emphasis on bounties (and their results) vs perpetual salary for so many people”

Response: We’ve attempted to address this in the forum/ ideation posts as well as in conversations in leadership/ other channels. By combining these streams, we are saving a substantial amount in salary over the separate streams alone—Workstream costs have been consolidated, removing 50%+ of marketing monthly bounty fund requests while further reducing salary where appropriate moving into the new term. Four of six LatAm contributors are compensated 1,000USD or less monthly, while Globalization runs lean, with the largest cost being LPX (project/workflow lead) and the new and developing Korea marketing initiative (weekly meetings at 6am EST, please attend!). Further, 20,000USD in one-time costs break down to 10,000USD utilized for a Bitconf sponsorship package, 5,000USD allocated to JoshF for training &/or refund to current workstream contributors that have already paid for training oop, and 5,000USD allocated to c4 for a bulk education resource package for ShapeShift DAO contributors/onboarding/marketing purposes.

We added LindsayLou, which incurred both more salary and a new function; but most would agree that external visibility of our efforts was sorely lacking, and this was needed. Still, our overall costs are less than separate streams combined. This dissolution of the marketing workstream, and establishment of Marketing, Growth, and Globalization, will resolve numerous points of confusion and overlap within the current marketing workflow and in doing so, This workstream merged Growth and Globalization with Marketing and will require a larger amount of leadership time in order to effectively manage the entirety of the team, including the projects within the workstream.

Between product launch coverage, partnership coverage (inbound and outbound), inbound requests for marketing material and coverage on various DAO initiatives (lunahawk NFT auction), web3/community development (US/English marketing), Latin American marketing web3/community development, Education project content production (help/onboarding-related documents, inbound partnership content; share, video content (via Twell’s production team), UI/UX and website content support, and Globalization activities – human capital necessary to sustain essential DAO functionalities demonstrates spend/budget is reasonable for all of the aforementioned positions/roles/projects.

We spent a lot of time on the budget and seeing the best way to trim where we needed and keeping it significantly cheaper than two separate workstreams while still adding some higher level positions. Summary: Talent costs money, and keeping/ adding higher level talent adds a cost. This doesn’t negate the fact that with a higher budget, tracking those higher results is needed, and that’s what we are working toward.

-If you have any comments or feedback of what the stream should be working more towards on the marketing side please feel free to leave a comment and chime in.

The biggest question we are trying to solve here in the short term is How can we measure success and what should the priorities be with this new leadership/ stream?

[thesmith]

Concerns are understandable given that we are dealing with a DAO but it’s important to endorse that a legitimate governance process has brought M+G down this path and that the present team is a collective effort to make everything work, especially valuing the human resources that we have - and that were entrusted to us. It’s very fair and transparent that points all topics here that raised doubts in the community.

However, i found myself wondering why so many questions were raised about a unanimously approved proposal.

Nowadays I’m in charge of Latin America operations, but i would like to back in the past for a personal reflection.

It’s 2018 and i’m probably doing my first swap in the protocol. I just looked for some information in Portuguese about ShapeShift and found a single authorized hardwallet dealer: End of story. No data, no information, maybe a paragraph here and there and that’s my memory of the brand’s presence in Brazil before decentralization.

Now back to 2022 again, I search about ShapeShift/or ‘DAOs in Brazil’ in any SERP, being in English, Spanish or Portuguese and find an expanding and vibrant universe! The impression I have is that a Web 3.0 community has just flourished based and actively participates in its governance process, some Brazilian wallets have grown and community members started to harvest some yield from DeFi operations - using a token called FOX. And I bet this also happens in Venezuela, Mexico. I don’t even need to talk about the success at Eth Rio and our 2022 event schedule (Bitconf, NFT.Rio, Ethereum SP) that projects us and connects us with all of Latin America big players, establishing authority in a continent unexplored by centralized ShapeShift.

Perhaps that’s the most valuable KPI of our very own Latam, the humans who interact with our smart contracts every day in search of financial freedom

But how much it’s cost to bring in a loyal, engaged and passionate audience these days, mostly, get out of the US comfort zone and expand globally? It’s not only about mechanized leads that a tool brought but its also about people, time, team and plans. Decentralization brought these people into the approved Workstream with the objective of working and not getting rich. Work is already lacking in many countries and the opportunity is widening on Web 3/On-chain environment. As also mentioned, LatAm salaries represent the smallest portion of the budget given the cost benefit that the team has been presenting.

The ShapeShift DAO Korean meeting takes place on may 11th! I’m looking forward to meet new foxes at 7AM in my timezone. The global incursion schedule starts early and ends late, maybe it doesn’t even have time to finish because it runs in different timezones nowadays.

Yes, we take on a sudden demand when the previous Marketing Manager left his team adrift: As I mentioned in some previous posts, there would be no better leadership than people engaged in the process to take on this demand… that’s why we empower employees and ensure they have sufficient authority to account several team processes.

That movement forced the Workstream Leaders to prove their ability in order solve a big noise, ensuring the stability of people who are interested in doing and promoting excellent work.

[thesmith]

Vlad is an true human KPI example, even before being a latam contributor he already advocated with Coinex about our FOX listing. His presence at Ethereum Rio literally enchanted everyone. I have no words to say how much Vlad strongly pushed ShapeShift in Rio de Janeiro, even getting involved with authorities and celebrities.

Particularly, I hope to do the same job as him in São Paulo… What I can guarantee is that we will establish the best possible presence on the RIo-São Paulo axis 1f525

[Josh_shapeshiftdemo]

Thanks , , and

1. . I appreciate you and everyone who is making efforts to grow ShapeShift DAO.

   While the proposal was in the governance process, I brought up in a private channel a concern that this budget seemed high. It would have been better if I did that publicly and I am glad this conversation is happening now in the public forum. I think it’s important.

   As I go through my thoughts, I will list as best I can the assumptions I am making, so that each can individually be challenged. I would welcome the debate. I am open to changing my mind based on new information.

   I don’t have a specific recommendation. Just sharing my current thoughts.

   The underlying concern I have is how much the DAO is spending every month. We currently have a gap in income vs expenses. The Tokenomics team has been doing a good job building stables, and we have a finite ability in doing that.

   So, I have recently been approaching many workstreams and asking the leaders to think about their budgets. I say this just so folks know that my concerns span multiple workstreams.

   The macro question I have been asking around this workstream is should we be spending $126k per month on proactively promoting and attracting users to our platform? So there is my first assumption, that the end product of this workstream is the proactive promotional and marketing efforts to grow the use of our products.

   My initial reaction to this question is “no”. I don’t think we have a product that yet justifies spending that much.

   One question that might bring more clarity for me is how much should an organization spend on these efforts when in our stage of product development? That would then lead to a question of where are we in our product development?

   I think most people would agree that we are looking for product-market fit. It seems to me that we are not in any kind of scaling mode. So, there is another assumption - ShapeShift DAO is currently looking for product-market fit for our products. We are not in scaling mode.

   If that is true, and I’m curious what others think, then I think that would mean we are not yet at the point of spending a lot on proactive outreach. That is another assumption - you don’t spend a lot on proactive outreach when in product-market fit stage of growth.

   I also don’t know what is a “healthy” amount to spend in these various phases. If anyone has data around this, I’d like to hear it.

   So this is how I have come to the conclusion that we are currently spending too much on Marketing, Growth, & Education:

   Marketing, Growth & Education’s primary purpose is to engage in proactive efforts that bring users to our products.

2. Our products currently do not have product-market fit
3. When organizations are looking for product-market fit, it does not make sense to spend a lot of time, energy, and money in proactive efforts to drive use
4. The current amount of $126k per month is therefore too much to spend in this area

If the workstream decided that it was spending too much, I don’t know what implications this would have. I realize these combined workstreams have grown organically over time, with good reasons each step of the way. A lot of thought went into combining them all together, and I appreciate that effort. Even though the budget proposal would’ve been a better time to discuss, I’m glad we are talking about it now.

I have made a lot of assumptions here, and am posting my thoughts as clearly as I can so we can engage in a healthy debate about it.

[0xdef1cafe]

I largely agree with Josh.

My main concern is we’re pre product-market fit (PMF). I’d like to understand first if people agree with this, as the rest of the argument is predicated on this.

Assuming we don’t have PMF, I believe marketing spend should be towards targeted campaigns with measurable outcomes to test ideas, to allow us to iterate towards product features that realize our overall vision.

Marketing in the current day is largely quantitative, and we should expect to see where the budget is being spent, and the results we get for it.

At the moment, it seems a lot of what we’re doing is higher-level brand awareness type spend, which works for the likes of Coinbase et al, but likely isn’t appropriate for us given where we’re at.

Perhaps it’s easier to think of marketing in terms of traditional CAC/LTV and GAAP methods, and first principles.

For $126k/month, are we getting that much value for that price? How do we substantiate this?

How many users do we have, and how much is it costing us to acquire them (CAC)?

How much are those users worth (LTV), and is it greater than the CAC?

I’m doing everything in my capacity to drive us towards PMF, but until we have it, the portion we are spending towards S&M, and the way it is being spent (broadly vs targeted) seems too large compared to R&D.

[Lindsaylou]

I’m going to have to disagree. We have to do both–targeted campaigns, which are direct response, and brand awareness. This is marketing 101; we already HAD a recognized brand, and that is crucially important. To let that brand fall into obscurity because we simply stopped and disappeared from the stage isn’t only losing that visibility, it has net-negative effect on us–it appears as if we are failing since we transitioned into a DAO. That, in my opinion, is what is precisely happening now. We had a strong external brand, voice, and direct marketing (because we had the staff and database). We stopped, and that is partly why user growth has suffered. I have always been in technology companies and have seen engineering-led companies make this mistake many times. Every successful marketing program is balanced, with a combination of tactics in appropriate balance based on stage, macro environment and changing needs. None of us can act as if we are a new product that doesn’t know anything about market fit; we are re-exploring this now, but the market knows who we are. What we do now, and how we change in our visibility, speak volumes to the market about whether or not we are succeeding in the DAO world. If we appear to drastically change course and go silent in all but direct marketing spend we look like a once great but failing brand.

[Toasty]

We do hear your feedback ( & ) and understand the need to be fiscally responsible. We have the clear intent to evaluate costs: reduce headcount through attrition/not backfilling, tightening functions, and becoming otherwise more efficient. Again, our top priority is setting new baselines, goals, and measurable metrics that align to user growth (as well as other important metrics that show engagement and brand building, market expansion, etc., which all lead to future revenues, not just immediate). We plan to do so with the input of this community.

We took over a failing stream and re-optimize that will not be easy but we are the team to do it.

We ask that the community understands that we do represent many years/ decades of combined marketing and communications experience, that we are a new team, and the we request the time to do this planning. Out of respect for the vote that was held and won, we believe it is reasonable to ask that these actions be trusted and executed, with the time needed (weeks not months), and under our leadership.

[Neverwas]

Great reply and the perspective that I feel the closest alignment to. Thank you for so eloquently presenting these thoughts. As stated this is an existing product, with years of history and customer interactions, this can’t be ignored or reset because of product or market discomfort. Outreach needs to be focused, addressed through concentrated efforts and direct messaging if we want to engage or even change perceptions.

[Josh_shapeshiftdemo]

Thanks - for listening to my thoughts, and for the team reviewing everything. Taking some amount of weeks sounds very reasonable to me. I look forward to the on-going conversation.

[Beorn]

Thanks for posting the concerns, and discussing them both in the post here (we also talked via DM and on the phone last week).

My overall viewpoint is simple: show clear strong results and I’ll approve and support any amount of money people want to ask for. But without clear strong results, I start leaning toward reductions and changes in leadership. True with any Workstream (though this scrutiny will be applied periodically, not simultaneously across all teams).

To address some specific points above…

hunt:

the community that is also curious as to why our workstream is catching heat after just two weeks of being voted in with 4m yes votes and 0 no votes.

thesmith:

i found myself wondering why so many questions were raised about a unanimously approved proposal.

This is a very fair point made by these two. My only answer is that by the time I started digging into this, the vote was already in process, and I couldn’t allocate FOX into a separate address to vote without torpedoing the whole proposal. I should have reviewed the proposal earlier and raised concerns earlier in the process. That’s on me. I’m similarly disappointed that zero people voted no… I don’t think it’s the case that I’m the only one concerned, but if that’s truie, why did nobody vote no? Those I’ve spoken with said they simply abstained, and I want to use this opportunity to encourage the community to affirm negative sentiments as readily as positive ones. Vote no unless you are very supportive of a proposal.

hunt:

I would further like to make reference to the fact that someone working full time makes ‘nothing’ effectively (40+ hours a week makes 1k/month) on latam beyond thesmith, and further the only serious target here on waste is marketing of which left us with to some degree in a serious mess. So if people are currently overpaid beyond marketing positions I think I need to reconsider my position as a leader.

This paragraph wasn’t clear to me. Can you clarify what you’re saying ?

thesmith:

Now back to 2022 again, I search about ShapeShift/or ‘DAOs in Brazil’ in any SERP, being in English, Spanish or Portuguese and find an expanding and vibrant universe!

This is a great anecdote. I love to hear it. What’s more important, however, is aggregate data at scale about the entirety of Latam users earned by our efforts. Show me that data.

thesmith:

As also mentioned, LatAm salaries represent the smallest portion of the budget given the cost benefit that the team has been presenting.

Agree, a few salaries of $1k/mo are very inexpensive. I’m not concerned with numbers of that magnitude, but of the whole of marketing/growth budget at $126k/mo. This is high level concern, not a questioning of particular line items (that’s more appropriately the domain of workstream leaders to figure out).

thesmith:

Yes, we take on a sudden demand when the previous Marketing Manager left his team adrift: As I mentioned in some previous posts, there would be no better leadership than people engaged in the process to take on this demand… that’s why we empower employees and ensure they have sufficient authority to account several team processes… “ensuring the stability of people who are interested in doing and promoting excellent work.”

I want to be hearing less about why the team believes it is valuable, and less about how hard people work, and more about the results of their work. What are the numbers? What is the effect of all that work? Some results can’t be quantified, but the focus should still be on results (qualitative or quantitative) not on input/effort/tasks/etc.

0xdef1cafe:

I largely agree with Josh.

My main concern is we’re pre product-market fit (PMF). I’d like to understand first if people agree with this, as the rest of the argument is predicated on this.

Assuming we don’t have PMF, I believe marketing spend should be towards targeted campaigns with measurable outcomes to test ideas, to allow us to iterate towards product features that realize our overall vision.

Well said! (both Josh and 0xdef1). The PMF question is core to this debate, and if indeed we don’t have it yet then it almost doesn’t matter what marketing does, because it’s too early to show growth results. If this is true, we shouldn’t be spending $126k/mo on marketing.

0xdef1cafe:

At the moment, it seems a lot of what we’re doing is higher-level brand awareness type spend, which works for the likes of Coinbase et al, but likely isn’t appropriate for us given where we’re at.

I agree with this. ShapeShift doesn’t have a brand awareness problem… most in the industry know the brand. This is a great asset. We have a user/growth/PMF problem and to the degree we have a marketing workstream, this is what I’d advise to be the focus. ’s point about not letting the brand fall into obscurity is absolutely correct, but while that justifies some level of brand work/PR, it doesn’t justify a $126k/mo mktg team focused on brand awareness.

[Beorn]

I’m glad the conversation is happening, even though uncomfortable (those are often the best kinds of conversations for organizational health).

We’re unlikely to solve all the concerns right now, but the Marketing/Growth workstream is aware of them from these discussions, and as a DAO, as a team, we can work toward addressing them.

I’m not advocating any drastic actions right now, but I am advocating that the workstream focus deeply on the demonstration of results for the amount of money being spent. It can’t happen immediately, but needs to happen soon and continually.

Further, I know the workstream is doing a Marketing retro next week on Thursday 12th, at 1pm MT. It’ll be a good opportunity to discuss all this further. Thank you to and for the dialogue and receiving the feedback professionally.

[BeDiggy]

I’m a little late to the conversation, but just wanted to add my thoughts in here.

I understand that the new workstream had to take on the challenge of migrating two together. What I also think would really make a lot of sense here is trying to determine ways to really trim the workstream into what is actually necessary to support the current needs of the DAO and the product we’re creating. It does feel like to spend is too high for the current needs. I also think it’s important that everyone of us being compensated on a workstream understand that we have a responsibility to the DAO and the FOX token holders. How do we prove and measure the effectiveness of what we’re doing? Are we successful? Are we building and marketing the right things?

While brand awareness is hugely important to maintain (totally agree with Lindsay there). I also agree with Defi when he says “Assuming we don’t have PMF, I believe marketing spend should be towards targeted campaigns with measurable outcomes to test ideas, to allow us to iterate towards product features that realize our overall vision”.

So I’m excited to hear from Toasty “Again, our top priority is setting new baselines, goals, and measurable metrics that align to user growth (as well as other important metrics that show engagement and brand building, market expansion, etc., which all lead to future revenues, not just immediate). “

On a different note, I’m just personally not clear on the education team, and why doesn’t this responsibility fall under support?

[Neverwas]

Beorn:

We have a user/growth/PMF problem

This very well could be an issue, but I haven’t seen any numbers or statistics published, are these numbers disclosed and if so who and how has the determination made? If it is web traffic based are we discounting the traffic to beta and mobile and focusing on just app.shapeshift. If this is the case I can see a possibility of product splintering and consumers attempting a combination of uses or being frustrated and choosing something else. Not knowing how Cloudflare is configured I would believe that it is or could provide some combined data. Is the determination based on tx or blockchain contract interaction? If this is opinion that is fine but what is the basis. From Pendo conversations I gather that additional user interactions and use is highly desirable for making determinations but limited data is likely available from different web sources and tools.

I think that the determination that I originally quoted has some additional complexity, Both Mobile and Beta have had long periods of broken state and core features inoperability. Some from maintainability and choice, and others, out of our direct control from third party interactions (Midgard and Chaosnet). In either case these do have a very direct effect on user behavior and the perception of product state and usability. The DAO has to recognize that we don’t have a singular product at this moment, we have versions of a product in different forms and to some extent with different looks, feels, and capabilities.

[Lindsaylou]

To further clarify, we are not just doing brand work now–most of our work is around giving visibility to our frequent product enhancements (and often partnerships) which is not a brand exercise, it’s product promotion. In an ideal world, I believe you would have omni-channel campaigns that support things like launches that include PR, social, targeted digital, email pushes, web banners (when the announcement warrants it)–a blend orchestrated in harmony with overall ongoing brand building. This can be done outside of launches as well around themes and capabilities. I just don’t think of this as an either/or proposition (brand work vs targeted campaigns) but a blend of elements orchestrated together. This can and has been done with nimble teams. The marketing effort has been missing elements, absolutely, but we are not doing only brand work now.

[Vladhzc]

I just want to testify that every time some action we wanna make need some support that we couldnt get from DAO structure yet, Hunt or other leaders were that to help us starting in a very difficult terrain, personal resources like time and money were spent, from leaders like hunt to compensate the existing fap and create the minimum viable for something like that to start.

I would not be able to start contribute here and leave my other operations if it wasnt for and making this personal extra effort to keep me here until this proposal passed. I made a leap of faith, and I trusted the DAO that with good work that moment would come, and it came with 100% YES and 4M quorum. I believe people that had felt the effect of the latam getting into the fox game were cheking closely our actions and analyzed carefully the proposal before voting.

Latam is one of the hottest markets out there, and our brand presence is being built with speed and grace thanks to the structure those team leaders has given to our team.

If we are getting 3 leaders, that comes from the fact that 2 WS are turning into one, and they are necessary to expand new terrains managing their teams. The DAO does not stop since I got here.

I would also love to see some numbers tracking on the application, following that is one of the main things I do working with growth, I am sure we are not many in PT may be a good amount of users in SP, but I can say for sure that SHAPESHIFT DAO is being seen in brazil, mexico, argentina, venezuela and Barcelona and thats the first step if you want people to use/invest in our web3 platforms.

and more importantly…

if you look carefully, what we are doing is not just build community for Latam, is using latam as a lab for causing a real global effect by setting a working framework for all regions we wanna aggregate. And our experiment is doing great, 70k views in spanish content in 3 months in a web3 streaming platform is a number that says something, what effect we could have in korea or china?

Do you know how many CEOs that didnt know or werent confortable with english I met?

What we are doing is learning how to brake barriers in a some regions (our latam lab) to soon the term globalization makes real sense to our DAO.

This approved funds will enable shapeshift dao to estabilish itself outside US , finally.

you guys, think the cost per year is big? but have you thought how many years we need to make this 1f680 ?

[thesmith]

I think it’s fair that the community that abstained or the people that couldn’t vote “no” to the proposal speaks. May this post serve as a reference as a dialogue and noise resolution. I believe that we are ready to absorb suggestions and quantify them in data for the community throughout the continuity of our work: an example of team integration.

I would like to say how valuable Latam is here, because this is a matter of collective construction, right? See, this team started from our pockets (I know it’s an unconventional method to establish a focused team but it worked) - specifically from pockets. We did our best to raise an strong brand’s portfolio because we worked for the DAO, it was a shoulder to shoulder build. The only opportunity that the Latam team got to participate here was through Workstream Growth and Globalization agents, excluding the previous marketing management: who took a stand against our work a few times.

Yes, we might lack on traditional - metrics - data due to the decentralization process, which is still taking place, in my opinion. It is not easy for a foreigner (consider me as an example) earn trust and confidence of an entire organization and mostly… and access data, people and information. Fortunately, in the current scenario these things are being built successfully, i was finally able to upload a professional video into DAO’s official youtube channel today (for the first time). Thats an opportunity to quantify numbers by combining access data on our platform with views on youtube and thus delivering numbers, without a doubt!

Most of Latam’s KPIs are social simply because we were at a ‘lower-level’ in the organization until M+G proposal and only with and support we were able to think about numbers through resources provided by the Workstream - access to youtube was an example , understand that now theres a multidisciplinary team ready to work on different fronts and add a working capacity that can be polished to perfection.

Finally, I believe that leadership decisions and efforts are directed towards securing and reinforcing ShapeShift brand authority, mostly increasing products visibility. Current marketing agenda is often technique and speaks from our power as Validators to dissect the V2 platform.

I appreciate this open dialogue and let’s keep building!

[Vladhzc]

Veey Well put. If marketing does not keep pushing. That built name over will fall in obscurity before anything metioned above happens. And shows failure in daoing process

[thesmith]

I know I wasn’t mentioned, but I feel obliged to respond with my opinions.

Yes, it is possible to optimize but the DAOnization process is a long journey. Right? We’re not dealing with a board of directors anymore, therefore, I also see no point in exposing a leadership that works hard to fix the problems created by someone centralized.

Discussions are healthy but the administrative issue of each team is up to the leadership that was responsible for the mission and not to a new process of questioning after the idealization imo

I must agree with on the point where he talks about DAO culture, are we doing it right? The Workstream is following a legitimate process, we expect community support and not a request for downsizing actually.

[Beorn]

With respect, I’m concerned with how you’ve started responding to this discussion (considering also the DM’s and chats/calls in other places that are going on). I know the emotion comes from a place of dedication and commitment, and you’re feeling attacked. Please know that I’m not attacking you, and your contributions to the DAO during our formative months are widely recognized within the community.

A few of your specific points are further addressed below…

hunt:

I have historically paid people too little. If I have to continue that action I refuse to lead the team out of pocket. I have historically paid 10k+ for LATAM efforts. I could ask the DAO for a refund for out of pocket spend up to and over 15k. I have not, but I could and think it would be petty of me. However there is a reality here: people are underpaid while people criticize overspending.

I don’t believe anyone has asked you to pay for anything out of pocket. If you’ve done that, that’s very kind of you, but please don’t use that to deflect a discussion around the budget and results of a DAO workstream.

If some people are feeling “underpaid” I’d encourage them to speak up to their workstream leader or to the DAO generally, and we can discuss those matters separately.

hunt:

That being said, I fear people working 100 hour weeks for 9 months without any public or monetary compensation or even acknowledgement can be devastating to talent acquisition and retention. I personally am offended by my compensation in the last 8-9 months.

Compensation is always a mutual contract, and both parties are responsible for their side of the agreement. If you are “offended” by what you’ve agreed to, that’s on you. If the DAO agreed to something that it hasn’t fulfilled, please let me and others know and we will get it corrected.

hunt:

I have received no offer for any sort of sablier stream while I’ve put in more value to shapeshift than many centralized employees that I’ve spoken to in terms of actual time and value addition to shapeshift as a brand did while at the corp./llc.

Sablier streams of FOX were established by the ShapeShift executive team to all ShapeShift company employees, based on a rubric of tenure & salary. They were granted all at the same time last summer, extending for 3 years in fixed amounts. Many of the ShapeShift employees had been dedicated to our company for years. The FOX grant was both a Thank You for that dedication, and also an incentive to remain economically interested in the long-term success of ShapeShift in DAO form.

Second, those grants were made with property of the ShapeShift corporation, and the bulk of remaining FOX was granted to the community and to the DAO. You’re welcome to submit a proposal to the DAO if you believe a FOX grant is warranted for you or any other person for any purpose at any time.

hunt:

If dilution is being discussed maybe we should be talking about the wild sablier distributions you’ve given people - which has crashed fox multiple times.

Dilution of the FOX token is not being discussed to my knowledge and I would not support such a thing.

“the wild sablier streams”… ShapeShift granted roughly 12% of all FOX to its employees in those streams. Is that a “wild amount”? Not sure, it seemed appropriate to us and I would’ve liked to grant more but we had competing concerns to deal with (tokens for community, foundation, DAO, all the shareholders, etc).

hunt:

( I am leaving in two months, completely, so that we can cut costs and sustain this team without them being shut down unfairly )

Nobody has proposed shutting down the workstream. I brought up concerns about spending level, efficacy, and leadership and when we discussed this a few days ago on the phone you seemed engaged and supportive of addressing the concerns as a team. Your tone here and in various DM’s to people is very different.

Again, I get that this is emotional for you and you’re feeling attacked. That’s not the purpose, and you’re not the only workstream leader who has heard comments from me urging greater financial discipline. I’ll continue to beat that drum periodically with different people, and I hope the rest of the community will help instill this discipline. It is always easy to increase budgets, and to believe every dollar spent is producing value (especially when it goes to people who you like and appreciate their work). It is always hard to decrease budgets, and there is a natural human tendency to avoid that process.

But we are here for the long term. ShapeShift has withstood numerous cycles, crises, and calamities, and we continue onward. Discipline is part of it (which I’m still learning), as are uncomfortable conversations.

Importantly, this conversation is happening, and I appreciate all the input and thoughts conveyed by the community.

[IrohDW]

That is a great question. Right now I think our purpose isn’t as clearly defined as it could be. This term we will carve out a more specific niche we will be filling so the community is clear on what to expect from us.

The education team will be meeting tomorrow to respond to the issues raised in this discussion and will make a post about our intentions then. As the new leader of the team I am responsible for making a plan that will define our goals and measure the value we provide to the DAO.