A Retrospective on EthCC

[Viriya]

Thanks for spearheading this @CoachJonathan

Here are most of my thoughts coming out of Paris. I’m really hoping the people tagged read these in addition to @Sov @benwest @connor @nategosselin

FTC, Cult Marketing & market expansion

• I think it was a really good idea to sponsor FTC. I have heard from folks on the core team that we keep talking to the same people but our biggest fans are still having trouble understanding what we’re doing.
• We haven’t very clearly articulated nor communicated why and how all of the pieces fit together.
• FTC was our chance to showcase our work further and the excitement around what we’re creating was palpable. Having a booth at the conference was a huge win – the booth was almost always surrounded by curious attendees. As someone who isn’t constantly talking to potential users, MMM’s work in clearly articulating the value propositions for each of the products and seeing them resonate was exciting to see in action. I can’t wait to partner with BD & DevRel to calculate the ROI of this activation over time – I hope we can create a tag in SimpleCRM to document first contact in the pipeline.
• Opportunities:
  • Understand the ROI of FTC Paris activation. We had a booth, 1 mainstage talk (well attended), 1 panel appearance and 1 workshop (which was a great presentation but not very many other people attended)
  • Go deep instead of wide with our market expansion: I have a hunch that our future expansion in the short term should be in new demographic markets (like regen communities of APAC or Africa as an example) vs. new psychographic markets (like DeFi or web 2.5) – all of the ppl and communities inside our gravitational pull or just beyond it should know who we are and the impact we’re trying to make. As a marketing lead, I would like to receive more information on blockers for adoption so we can speak directly to those pain points and build out additional support materials for our users (like our work on the Manager Toolkit). We have also discussed doing a TAM analysis and I think it would help to address TAM of these different verticals to sanity check this hunch.
  • Continue to position Gitcoin as a tech for good org: I’m weary of trying to shift public opinion of Gitcoin as a “tech for good” org to one that stewards a neutral protocol. I feel strongly that we should be continuing to position ourselves as a tech for good org. This direction feels most directly linked to our history, is values-aligned with the core team (+ our community) but also because having a resonant “why” is essential as we wade through the bear. This is the time to double-down on our “cult”, bring our friends in and co-create together in anticipation of the next bull. It feels like there is momentum here and I think it is unwise to abandon our roots.

Reception for Allo & Grants Stack

• Allo was received incredibly well and the regen community is very excited about its possibilities. About 75% of the content in Juan Benet’s talk at FTC about the future of funding PG can and will be made possible by Allo (will link the talk here when made available). It’s very exciting to see.

• One thing I noted to Zakk was that there’s an opportunity and need to communicate the vision of Allo v2 internally. We need to find ways to articulate what we’re doing much more clearly and on an on-going basis.

• Other reflections on Allo:

  • We need more resourcing for DevRel for Allo – the current organizational structure isn’t supporting our needs in this area. I was going to make some suggestions here on how we might do that but I think we should have a conversation around that come the next budget cycle.

• Grants Stack was also received well. I think Meg’s presentation at FTC (will link when available) was very powerful and answered a set of specific questions that we often get asked, all in the realm of: “What type of grants program is appropriate for my stage of growth?”

  • The marketing team will be following up with this narrative and building out content around it for Grants Stack’s Manager Toolkit
  • I do worry about Grants Stack adoption a little bit. I know that the team is juggling a wild amount of priorities and competing needs. Between UX upgrades, an incoming migration to Allo v2 and work on deploying on PGN (and everything in between), it feels like GS is a bit at risk as anyone can build another grants platform UI for Allo if they so desire. I don’t know if this point is helpful and I’m not exactly sure how to approach this but I think it’s worth having a conversation about if we’re going to rely on GS as a main source of revenue for the DAO.

Grants Program & Grantee User Journey

• What makes our QF program different is our grantee community: I spoke to many grantees over the course of the week and a few of them had also participated in other QF rounds beyond Gitcoin. The thing they said that put Gitcoin on top was the “instant community” they felt and benefitted from during their rounds. Specific mentions of the Grantee Twitter Spaces and other calls to have them feeling supported and also help them raise money are extremely beneficial. I don’t think this is news to the Grants Ops team but wanted to state it here for further reflection by the DAO
• On-going participation creates more success: Another reflection that was shared by grantees who participated in multiple rounds was the more a grantee participates in the program & reports impact, the more value it provides over time – we should be focusing on depth instead of breadth with the program. How can we support and incentivize grantees to return & report on impact to show their donors that they have momentum? How can we talk about this and educate grantees about the journey they are on?
• Difficulties w/ Gitcoin Grants: Most had an incredible time with Gitcoin Grants but some noted that QF can feel like a popularity contest (again, I don’t think this is surprising to hear). Some also noted that the cadence of the program feels burdensome – it takes a lot of prep to apply and participate in a program and some grantees feel overwhelmed by the process.
• Opportunities for us to reflect on: support grantees with best practices on community engagement and impact reporting as marketing best practices. Educate more on the grantee journey. Create opportunities to easily opt out and then re-opt in when desired.

Purpose of the program:

• Gitcoin Grants program is not the typical use case for Grants Stack: For me personally, the purpose of Gitcoin Grants is becoming clearer and clearer every day. GG is not a model for any other organizations’ grant program. We fund the Ethereum ecosystem. We help identify, fund and signal new and emerging projects and verticals in our space. We champion key infra, public goods and tech for good projects. This is not how our users are using the platform.
• Contrarily, typical program managers of Grants Stack are:
  • identifying specific areas of growth in their ecosystem and rewarding builders who they feel can meet those needs
  • retroactively rewarding builders who have added value to their ecosystem (similar to the Gitcoin Citizens Round (will link case study when ready))
  • More focused in their investment in (and ROI of) their grants programs
  • In fact, I think one of the most interesting pieces of public perception that is working against us is that a program manager needs hundreds of thousands of dollars to allocate in their grants program (like Gitcoin Grants) in order for it to make sense. The opposite is actually true and we need to create and communicate more use cases to show how QF can actually multiply a small amount of matching funds (like in the Gitcoin Citizen’s Round use case)
• This leads me to conclude that, at least in its current state, GG is actually a community/brand activation that creates vibes and future opportunities (although those opportunities are mostly undefined). I don’t see a problem with the program being a brand activation (in fact, I think the freeflow nature of it is kind of beautiful) and I can see how the grants program COULD create a flywheel for our products if the participants have an incredible time and we educate them more about Gitcoin’s product throughout the process.
• I think we could more intentionally design the program from that perspective if we wanted GG to link more clearly to organization outcomes. Just wanted to state my observations here for those who haven’t been thinking about GG in this way.

Citizen’s Round & RPGF narrative

• I had an opportunity to speak to Owocki to gain some more insight on emergent/overarching narratives that are currently dominating the space. We got to talking about Vitalik’s interest in RPGF.
• One thing I pointed out is that QF is actually one of the most interesting use cases for RPGF and that the success of the Citizen’s Round very much demonstrates this.
• With a $20k matching pool, Gitcoin Citizens 4x’d our available funds with the Citizen’s Round having distributed over $80k to retroactively reward contributors who had supported the Gitcoin Beta Round.
• I can’t wait to experiment with the Citizen Rounds more, like Vitalik, I’ve been bullish on retroactive funding for Gitcoin community members for quite some time and am happy that we not only have the tech to make it truly crowdsourced but also have access to tech that makes the execution of this much much easier than before.

Schelling Point Successes & Opportunities

• I think @CoachJonathan already articulated a lot of what I would say about SP wrt ROI and wanting to more clearly understand the nuances there.
• Although the events did very well (as in, attendance was solid every day) and EVERYONE who attended had an incredible time, guest list attrition was very very high. I wonder if this is because this event series was hosted at EthCC (a conference with over 200 side events) or because of general fomo that might happen at any conference.
  • Would really like to experiment with GTC staking and/or ticket sales to encourage attendance. This is mostly so we know how to resource food and drink orders/reduce waste.
• The format was beloved. Everyone I spoke to said that these were the kinds of events that are missing lately. Most people wanted to chat but I think the small intimate sessions paired with networking time was a huge hit.
• I loved having access to a house where we could interview grantees, community members and our product folks IRL. We hired a videographer for a few days and we now have a library of professional-looking content with actual faces that we can use for promotional and storytelling purposes.
• I’d like SP to experiment with being more closely linked to our products in some way. I’m not sure what this looks like but I think it would be neat to explore.
• The most engaging conversations I attended were ones that were facilitated sessions vs. presentations of ppl’s tech. I don’t want demos, I want to talk about what your demo enables IRL.