Arbitrum Ecosystem Pitch Day - Final Report

DAO Programs & Initiatives Domain Allocator Offerings (prev Questbook)
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Arbitrum Ecosystem Pitch Day - Final Report

Executive Summary

The Arbitrum Ecosystem Pitch Days Program was designed as a pilot to address a critical gap in the Arbitrum ecosystem: connecting builders with investor networks. This pilot program was designed to test the concept before scaling to regular quarterly pitch days and monthly training workshops.

What We Delivered:

Key Achievements:

  • 55 projects participated in pitch training workshops

  • 10 Arbitrum projects pitched live in the Pitch Day

  • 10 projects participated in 1-1 Pitch Training Sessions

  • Database of 62 investors created

  • 118+ Arbitrum-aligned investors joined the Telegram group chat

  • 225 registrations for pitch day, with 64 attendees at the live event

  • Achieved Net Promoter Score of 56

  • Generated 21,000+ social media impressions

  • $225,500 in capital secured ($75,500 executed, $150,000 committed)

How the grant helped us: The grant enabled us to execute this pilot program successfully by covering front-loaded costs for investor network development, expert pitch training facilitation, and outreach efforts. Without this funding, the project would have simply not happened: we would not have been able to engage specialized pitch training experts (Yatan Blumenthal and Bianca Praetorius) or conduct the extensive outreach necessary to attract investors and Arbitrum projects to participate in this initiative.

Performance Against KPIs

  • Pitch Training Attendance: Target of 20 projects → Achieved 55 projects (275% above target)

  • Pitch Day Project Participation: Target of 10 quality projects → Achieved 10 projects pitched (target met)

  • Curated Investor List: Target of 50 investors → Achieved 118+ investors (236% above target)

  • Live PitchDay Investor Participation: Target of 50 investors → 13 verified investors attended (other attendees can also be investors)

  • Net Promoter Score: Target of 45+ → Achieved 56 (exceeded target)

  • Social Media Impressions: Target of 10k+ impressions → Achieved 21,000+ impressions (210% above target)

  • Pitch Day Registration: No specific target set → Achieved 225 registered participants (strong response)

  • Pitch Day Attendance: No specific target set → Achieved 64 attendees (good conversion from registration)

  • Fundraising Impact: Target of $250,000 raised → $225,500 secured ($75,500 executed plus $150,000 committed), as self-reported by participants in the 2-month post-event survey. (90% of target)

Qualitative Impact & Community Feedback

Most Significant Non-Quantitative Outcome: The program promoted Arbitrum as a serious ecosystem for builders seeking investment, creating relationships between projects and investors that extend beyond the single event (we facilitated connections between projects and investors after the event). Most importantly, we established sustainable infrastructure (investor database, pitch database, and ongoing investor group chat) that can support future fundraising activities and similar initiatives in the ecosystem.

Pitch Day Projects Testimonials:

Among the 8 (out of 10) respondents to the post-event survey (projects that pitched):

  • 5 projects rated the program as “Very valuable”

  • 2 projects rated it as “Somewhat valuable”

  • 1 project rated it as “Not valuable”

Pitch Training Participant Testimonials:

Overall, the feedback was highly positive. Examples include:

  • “Great feedback, definitely helped me shorten my pitch and focus on the important parts. Yatan was honest and told me what parts were strongest and what was missing.”

  • “It was great - we discussed slide changes, flow that would be most natural, as well as some questions that we need to address.”

  • “We got really insightful information on how to make our pitch and product clearer and reduce the noise.”

Social Media Impact:

We drove traffic to the Pitch Day initiatives through multiple channels, including co-promotion with our partners, direct outreach campaigns to our target audience, events, the RnDAO newsletter, and other marketing initiatives.

The most notable Social Media posts generated a combined total of 21,000 impressions. Some highlights below:

Financial Summary

Total Grant Amount: $24,959

Budget Breakdown by Category:

  • Investor Outreach (41.2%): $10,280

  • Pitch Trainings (23.0%): $5,740

  • Pitch Day Event (17.9%): $4,480

  • Overhead (9.1%): $2,269

  • Reporting (8.8%): $2,190

Budget Performance: No meaningful differences from the original budget plan. All funds were allocated according to the approved breakdown.

Future Plans & Continued Ecosystem Alignment

This pilot provided a foundation that can be leveraged in future similar programs with significantly reduced setup costs. We identified what works (pitch training, multi-timezone accessibility, investor outreach) and what needs improvement (earlier pipeline development, event timing considerations, longer conversion tracking periods, etc.). These insights from the pilot, together with the assets we created (investor network, program structure, etc.) can inform more effective future initiatives.

Arbitrum showed a bottleneck in the number of quality early-stage projects, making it unviable to do quarterly pitch days as originally hoped. However, the pitch day supports attracting builders to Arbitrum by offering a supportive environment and investor connections. As such, we recommend a semestral cadence for pitchdays instead of quarterly, while simultaneously investing more in “upstream” programs.

Additional remarks

We feel there are important barriers to the success of the Arbtrum ecosystem in attracting capital. These gaps constitute valuable opportunities for improvement:

  • Limited support from other organisations in the Arbitrum Ecosystem

  • Limited number of quality early-stage projects (sustained impact requires more “upstream” programs to generate a stronger pipeline of Arbitrum projects ready for fundraising, and broader collaboration with other ecosystem organizations to provide comprehensive builder support.)

  • Mixed brand image amongst the investor community (some outright declined interest in investing in the Arbitrum ecosystem)

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@danielo Do you know when alloc8 will be generally available? Right now it’s still hidden behind an invite code system.

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sorry no idea. We’re not incubating that project beyond some pitching training so I’m not familair with their product roadmap.

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