API3 DAO BD Team Proposal
Team: Unified Business Development Team -
(dApps & Platforms BD, Enterprise BD, dAPI/Beacon BD)
Operations cycle: #7
Period: 1 May 2022 – 31 July 2022 (3-months)
Amount: 50,362.00 USDC
Destination: Gnosis Safe (Multi-sig wallet)
address 0xE2279B907f027CC89fE744B2b5cf46F978e502d3
signers:
Dave - dav3.eth
Gio - 0x3afB3530Da3CBa4d8B278Af63872FAA80F1fC87D
Alex - 0xDF3801FBf19C1Bd0af6D24C483A3781129Eee65d
2/3 Multisig
Scope
The Unified Business Development team drives holistic organizational-wide value within the DAO. Sub-teams consist of Enterprise Development, dApps and Platforms and dAPI/ Beacon focused Business Development teams.
Each sub-team is self-driven, targeting various elements of business development as it translates into the achievement of quick-wins. This is achieved through smaller actions and accomplishments on the micro level. This gives the team the ability to zoom out/in while aligning on the greater unit’s collective goals on a macro level. The team cross-pollinates ideas, synchronizing areas of overlap which leads to greater coordination and utilization of resources.
API3’s vision is to be the first choice, in open-source software infrastructure as it pertains to data oracles and data feeds for Web3. Thus, achieving ubiquity in the API3’s product-use, remains key in achieving traditional industry standardizations similar to that of QWERTY keyboards, USB, Bluetooth etc.
The BD team remains lean and is focusing on scaling-up and expanding the adoption of beacons and dAPIs up-take. This translates into direct DAO value, pushing ROI and revenues from beacon and dAPI subscriptions which is explained more in Section 3. BD – dAPI/Beacon Focus.
For the purpose of this proposal, the Business Development Teams responsibilities encompasses customer-specific tasks and overarching responsibilities that relate to:
Sales process
- Outreach
- Continuous improvement of outreach processes
- CRM structure
Recruitment & HR (In-line with product growth)
- Onboarding
- Training
- Practice
- Ongoing support
Reporting
- Accounting processes
Coordinate with the marketing sub team
- Projects in the ecosystem
- General networking
- Articles, blogs and content
- Liaising with other relevant API3 sub teams
- Attend conferences and workshops
R&D
- Technical-side feasibility of integrations
- Business-side feasibility assessment
Internal workshops and meetings
- Attend mandatory sub team and team meetings
- Knowledge dissemination and internal knowledge workshops or materials
Team Movements
Over the course of the cycle, there has been a personnel reshuffle based on need.
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Jacob, now moves into the Integrations team with a specialty in dApps integrations. He will assist the integration teams with other technical needs in addition to his specialization.
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Rob, still leads the Open Banking Initiative, but has now spun out a separate proposal around LATAM and Open banking. He will be putting forward a proposal around these objectives and as to why they are of strategic importance.
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Joeri, has moved into an advisor capacity from his previous part-time designation in providing ad hoc introductions, strategic guidance and networks where needed. His grant compensation has been removed.
1.BD- Enterprise Focus:
The Enterprise team has the following responsibilities in addition to general business development activities. The business development scope of the project will expand over time, and this list represents the current state.
- In conjunction with the dApps team lead, the Enterprise team lead sets and implements strategic actions within the BD team
- Meet the general business development framework, outlined above
- Oversee and support the BD team sales funnel
Host Enterprise workshops:
- Enterprise consortia technical integration workshop to explore Airnode integration feasibility across consortia members
- Product demo of Airnode-enabled product developed by Technical Integration Engineer
- Enterprise use case workshop with Enterprise prospects
Proof of Concept development with Enterprise customer(s)
- Enterprise Airnode integrations
- Custom solution development
- Link enterprise customers with implementation partners for any smart contract or dApp development
Completed Deliverables (Cycle #6)
During cycle #6, the following progress has been made from the last Enterprise Team Quarterly Report.
The Enterprise team in close coordination with the technical team hosted three new workshops with:
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a Large banking financial institution;
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a Nation-state federal department and lastly;
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a Large reinsurance institution.
Our goal with PoCs/Pilots is to demo live use-cases of the Airnode and make large TradFi (traditional finance) players feel comfortable with the technology, while reducing any risk vectors (regulatory, tech or DeFi-wise).
Following-through from the previous quarterly update:
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Update 1: a Medium-size market data provider;
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Update 2: a Large market data provider;
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Update 3 : a Large weather data provider;
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Update 4: Open Banking and LATAM.
Rob will expand more on the Open banking strategy with a separate LATAM DAO proposal.
Finally, the team continuously has ongoing efforts on researching and outreaching other relevant industry associations, enterprises and consortia.
You can view the current quarterly progress report here , for further insights. We will also endeavor to update the community, as soon as large deals are signed and legally possible – due to some of these large interactions being of strategic importance or impacting brand reputational aspects.
Previous quarterly reports:
API3 Enterprise Development Report, November-December 2021, January 2022
API3 Enterprise Development Report, September/October 2021
API3 Enterprise Development Report, August/September 2021
Deliverables (Cycle #7)
For business development cycle #7, the enterprise-facing business development team’s goal is to focus on growing the number of high-quality providers to connect to beacons/dAPIs and user subscriptions.
As for the last two cycles, we are following-through with
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a Large market data provider,
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a Large reinsurer and
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a Large financial institution.
Large corporations have extensive governance processes and sign-offs, and as before, we hope to move this as fast as bureaucratically possible while ensuring a pilot/PoC that adds the most value to the provider and API3’s adoption.
For the next cycle the Enterprise team will be attending (virtual and/or face-to-face) events and finding opportunities to partake in various Industry-focused conferences as delegates or as speakers: Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) and Consensus Austin are currently on our schedules. If you will be there, we would love to meet you. Please send us a discord DM!
You can view the current quarterly progress report here , for further insights. We will also endeavor to update the community, as soon as large deals are signed and legally possible – due to some of these large interactions being of strategic importance or impacting brand reputational aspects.
Previous quarterly reports:
API3 Enterprise Development Report, November-December 2021, January 2022
API3 Enterprise Development Report, September/October 2021
API3 Enterprise Development Report, August/September 2021
2.BD – dApps and Platforms:
In addition to the above business development responsibilities, the Platform/dApps BD team will focus on building-out the dApp and Platforms ecosystem. The overarching aim is to improve the options for developers looking to use API3 data by deploying on as many platforms as possible, and reach out to the projects being developed on these to find consumers for our beacon, dAPIs and Airnode-enabled APIs.
Outreach (Platforms & dApps)
- Communicate with projects and platforms identified through R&D
- Identify areas for collaboration
- Propose a deliverable and mutually beneficial solution
- Establish integration potential and discuss marketing to developers
Communicate with development team and integration team for integrations
- Smart contract platforms
- dApps
Communicate with Marketing sub team to raise awareness among the general community
- Co-author blog posts
- Ensure technical content of posts correct
- Schedule announcements, verify content and timing with partners
- Discuss and align publicity requirements with prospective partners and marketing
Completed Deliverables (Cycle #6)
At the end of cycle 6, API3 has a total of $400k total value secured (TVS). This is currently entirely composed of production request-response protocol usage. We anticipate this to significantly increase over the following cycle as Beacons/dAPIs are launched and available to use. The BD team plans to collaborate with the marketing team to ensure the TVS will be accurately tracked by DeFi dashboards like DeFiLlama.
Announced partnerships:
- Kassandra - currently live on AVAX mainnet
- Silta Finance
- Telos
- Milkomeda
- CRD Network
- Metis
This cycle also involved some work on pricing for upcoming products, and building the commission structure for the new hires as part of a switch to more of a Beacons/dAPI focus, as detailed below.
Deliverables (Cycle #7)
Partnerships will continue to be a deliverable, but TVS will also provide an objective indication of success. The BD team will liaise with the marketing team to ensure this is available as a metric on existing DeFi dashboards.
3. BD – dAPI/Beacon Focus:
The API team has evolved towards a fluid team that expands and contracts based on demand. The team leads of dApps and Platforms and Enterprise are managing and guiding this team’s success.
This is the general team that new joiners start in and if they prove their abilities can move into other critical or needed roles within the wider DAO. Thus, this unit will have a high turn-over rate with those proving their BD skill and grit.
In addition to the above general Business Development responsibilities, the BD-dAPI/Beacon team responsibilities relate to growing the number of new and active subscriptions for dAPI’s and beacons.
Customer Relationship Management and growth
- Lead generation
- Lead engagement
- Account management
Qualifying dAPI opportunities
- Researching and lead generation
- Following up on open or not outreached interactions within the database
- Aiding other business development teams through the sales funnel
Completed Deliverables (Cycle #6)
During the cycle #6 Cycle, the API team pivoted to focusing on dAPI/ beacon outreach providing assistance across BD verticals.
The API team signed an additional six providers that consisted of NFT projects, crypto DEX exchange data, and company financial data:
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Metabridges
There was also a focus on a new random number generation product whereby two big sign-ups are on board with API3. There will be marketing communication in the next few weeks around this exciting development.
The next cycle’s focus will be on driving ROI through dAPI/beacon subscription uptake.
Deliverables (Cycle #7)
The next cycle’s focus will be on targeting dAPIs/beacon uptake in active subscription sign-ups.
There is now a need to grow active subscriptions and the number of users utilizing beacons and dAPIs. For this reason, the BD team is reinstating success commissions with a model that aligns directly to revenues in to compensation payments out.
New BDs will be given a small grant for the first three months, thereafter, the grant base will fall-away and rolling subscription commissions will be the primary source of BD commissions.
The initial grant given is to give the BD the opportunity to build up their rolling subscription book to a sustainable point and show their BD acumen and skill. This incentivizes high-performance without a continuous grant outflow. It further aligns as when API3 receives subscription revenues; commissions are paid. Thus, a core focus is achieving a balanced cash-flow and sustainable approach to BD.
Business Development Budget
| Amount (USDC) | |
|---|---|
| Grants | 34,125 |
| New BD Grants | 30,000 |
| Expenses & Success Commissions | 23,600 |
| Grant Sub Total | 87,725 |
| Total Credit Roll over from last cycle (UNI-BD) | -37,364 |
| Grant Total (Less Roll-over) | 50,362 |
Team and Grants
The team is composed of Business Developer personnel.
| Core tech team | Role | Focus | Monthly Grant (USDC) |
|---|---|---|---|
| *Dave | Team Lead & Business Developer | dApps & Platforms | 2,000.00 |
| *Gio | Team Lead & Business Developer | Enterprise | 4,375.00 |
| Mo | Business Developer | dApps & Platforms | 2,000.00 |
| *Alex | Business Developer | Enterprise, dApps & Platforms, APIs | 3,000.00 |
** The destination will be a multi-signature wallet address managed by Dave, Gio & Alex .*
Requested compensation levels are as per the API3 DAO Compensation Guidelines
Expenses
The team will be recruiting new business developers on a contractor basis in order to highlight the non-performers from the skillful hunters. Thus, there is an allocation for BDs in order to ramp-up active subscriptions for beacons/dAPIs.
The business development team will also be attending events as indicated as critical to drive new partnerships and ecosystem growth. Conferences and events that fall outside of large Marketing team sponsored events will be funded by the business development teams grant budget as per the Travel Reimbursement schedule.
In addition to the conference expenses, the team will potentially need access to tools to help streamline the BD pipeline. Some specific examples (not an exhaustive list) are:
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HubSpot
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Docsend
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LinkedIN Premium (Prospecting or Job Posting)
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Hunter.io (Prospecting)
When tools or features are chosen, receipts will be kept for production at the end of the cycle. Any remaining expenses will be rolled over to the next cycle.
The final category of expenses is for on-chain transactions in disbursing grants payments and such as creating proposals in other DAOs. Transaction IDs will be retained for these and produced at the end of the cycle.
Any unspent amount will roll over to the next cycle. A supplementary proposal will be made if we end up being able to make more hires than expected or see a larger-than-estimated number of business development outcomes generated.
Explanation of Proposal Parameters:
Target contract address is the USDC token contract address, which is 0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48
Target contract signature: transfer (address, uint256). This is the function to call on the target contract, which triggers a transfer of USDC tokens.
The parameters stated include the address these USDC are to be sent to, which should match the proposal address, followed by the number of USDC. USDC has 6 decimal places, and solidity is unable to deal with decimal places - hence we add 6 zeros after the proposed USDC number. The number of decimal places can be verified on the USDC contract page of Etherscan - https://etherscan.io/token/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48