During April 2024, members of our group all attended different contributor sessions hosted by ArbitrumDAO Onboarding. After a couple of weeks, we were placed in this group to tackle Business Development from an Arbitrum DAO perspective. We have met twice on our own accord, and have the broad mandate for formalizing a group objective and deliverables should we find the working group well positioned to add value to the DAO. We aim to do so by advancing ArbitrumDAO through an organized business development capacity.
Important documents:
Document explaining the purview of our Fellowship Group
Our ArbitrumDAO | Biz Dev Fellowship Group is composed of 7 people from 4 countries that is currently split into 2 sub-working groups. @RichCL is the Gandalf of the group which helps organizes our volunteer efforts. We have included our profiles in our Notion page.
Objectives:
At present, we are following the guidelines of the Fellowship, and performing basic analysis of what is currently being done for BD internally and externally. We are scheduled to meet at least 5 times over the course of 2 months to propose formal objectives for the group. At the end of the 2 months, we are expected to draft at least 1 proposal to add value or disband the group. Any proposals should be vetted by at least 3 delegates.
Meetings
The group has regular meetings w/ the following virtual meeting details: https://meet.google.com/oie-cbfa-ckc . At present we meet every Tuesday at GMT 4 (or 11AM EST for all months of the year). We use this time to provide updates from sub-groups and keep each other accountable for deliverables.
Update for 05.13.2024
Current status:
We have split into 2 groups for initial fact finding missions.
We have started scraping forums from different ecosystems
Polygon
Arweave
Mantle
Optimism
Gnosis
Base
The goals are to:
Collect forum and blog posts that describe ecosystem and business development strategies from other L2s
Outline what each chain is focusing on
Uncover potential gaps among the other strategies that the BD fellowship can focus on
Next steps:
In the next 2 weeks, each team will be providing updates from our respective sub-groups at our weekly meeting. We aim to wrap up our respecitive tasks by June in advance of our 5th meeting when the fellowship concludes.
What can you do to help:
Please help us with contacts.
We are connecting with the BD or Partnership people from both Offchain Labs and the Arbitrum Foundation. Just to make sure we are exhaustive in our outreach, please put anyone you know in those capacities in touch with us. You can start by mentioning them in this thread.
Additionally, feel free to respond to this thread with specific alpha and resources for us to get this group off to a great start.
Arbitrum Business Development Fellowship Update 5/15/24
Yesterday, we had our 3rd of 5 weekly calls and we’re joined by a few members of the Arbitrum community. Thank you Q, Sinkas and ZER8 for being present.
Team A shared updates on their Internal Analysis, which included learnings from conversations with Peter Haymond, who’s time and knowledge sharing is much appreciated. You can stay up to date by referencing the working doc.
Team B shared updates on their Competitive Analysis, which included learnings from forum and blog posts from other L2s. You can stay up to date by referencing the working doc.
The second half of the call was dedicated to brainstorming, during which potential focuses were discussed, including APAC and localism. We are open to building multiple proposals.
The next call is May 21, 2024 and details can be found on the Arbitrum calendar.
Raam: you mentioned the arbitrum Venture initiative. There’s also obviously the m&a initiative; both of these are still in the pipeline of the governance process. But have you already spoken to the folk leading those initiatives about potentially working with them or conducting BD or them if and when they are approved by the DAO?
Sam: I think that’s some super low hanging fruit that this group could potentially reach out to different security providers. Let them know about the opportunity offer them help to actually make their applications and then getting a really competitive applicant pool that can be selected whitelisted security providers that could ultimately contribute to the dial that would be pretty cool in my opinion because that’s like an organic Working group here kind of filling a whole need in the DAO
Don: I think that’s a great way for an organic group like this to pitch in one of the things we talked about earlier on was an idea of is there a place for the DAO just to provide BD support to smaller teams
Wrap-up:
Next steps:
Continue our follow-up with OCL (next call scheduled for Friday May 24)
explore if there are any other working groups that could leverage our skills
Yesterday, we had our 5th Fellowship meeting. There were 4 members of the core group and several outside members who gave us support and new ideas. We also welcomed a new participant @SpikeWatanabe.eth !
We are at Week 5 and expected to have some idea of whether we want to continue to be working together
A recurring idea that we keep coming around to taking the lead on expanding Arbitrum’s Business Development presence in new markets
This does not exclude any market, but we have gotten signal that 1) there is a gap in our partnerships, apps, and users in countries like Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, 2) we probably don’t need any additional effort/resources in North America and Europe, and 3) we can test a playbook for the DAO to have a presence in new countries and regions.
Next Steps: Rich Cuellar-Lopez will take the lead on crafting a draft proposal w/ the help of GitSmol, Christina, and Pranav
We aim to work on this for the next 2 weeks, and discuss the merits of the proposal during our next meeting
In the interim, we will start to reach out to delegates to get feedback and ultimately ask for support
Thank you @RichCL for being our Gandalf and @git.smol, Brian Adam, Caesar Premia, Dev Swaroop, Joseph Axisa, Pranav Khanna and RikaGoldberg for joining the call! For reference, here is this week’s meeting recording and transcript.. The BD fellowship meets again on Tuesday, June 11, 2024.
The update this week is we are drafting a proposal! The focus is to bring Arbitrum into APAC regions, specifically South Korea, Japan and Vietnam. To do this, we are developing a strategy around distributing funding to local projects and bringing on small dedicated teams in these regions. We are also discussing the potential of building out a playbook that can be used for regions beyond the 3 we are focusing on.
Yesterday, we had our 7th Fellowship meeting. There were 2 members of the core group and several outside members who gave us support and new ideas. We also welcomed new participants @whizwang and @EdgarLopez !
Caesar Premia, Christina Kirsch, Dev Swaroop, Edgar Lopez, Liz Yang, Rich Cuellar-Lopez,
Recap of the last week (for anyone new)
Update of Fellowship and structure of group
Agenda:
Sunsetting of the Sub-groups
No longer needed now that we are at the proposal stage
Proposal discussion
Suggested that we put up a signal vote before next week’s meeting to decide which authors will be on the proposal (s)
The 4 core fellowship members are to vote in TG chat by Monday 6/17, a day before our next meeting
We decided to add some definitions to each of the 3 strategies, and added a 4th one (essentially running Option 1 and 3 concurrently)
@whizwang offered to ping OCL to see which Metrics they track and then add to our Proposal doc
We discussed what ArbitrumDAO can do for more LatAm market as @EdgarLopez brought up the fact that he was forwarded here from the DevRel Fellowship group
Caesar Premia, Christina Kirsch, Dev Swaroop, Liz Yang, Rich Cuellar-Lopez, Don Lee, Klaus Bravenboer
Recap of the last week (for anyone new)
Recap of Fellowship progress to-date (e.g., in the process of putting together a proposal to create BD presence in markets where Arbitrum doesn’t yet have a strong presence)
Don Lee will no longer be able to join the BD Fellowship meetings going forward because of demands from his day job (and we wish him every success and thank him for his contributions to date)
Agenda:
Proposal discussion
@whizwang suggested focusing on just one region (instead of three) for the BD pilot + suggested that we think through how to wind down / iterate on pilot after the pilot period is over.
@KlausBrave organized GovHack and encouraged the BD Fellowship to have a product manager mentality (e.g., why specific regions to focus on from a BD standpoint; why the four options laid out in the proposal; is it desirable or feasible to implement these strategies)?
Discussion on proposed regions for the BD pilot program (options floated so far include Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, Hong Kong, and China).
Proposed team structure includes one senior oversight role per region and three junior to mid-senior team members, and the duration of the pilot is potentially 6 - 9 months.
Proposal will be shared with delegates soon for feedback before soliciting broader feedback from the DAO in the forum.
Discussion on whether the BD pilot is more focused on onboarding more regional teams into building on Arbitrum vs regional corporate partnerships (e.g., Robinhood x Arbitrum). We decided that the former will be the focus, but we are open opportunistically to the latter.
Hi all! We had our 9th BD Fellowship meeting on Tuesday, June 25th. Below please find the notes from the meeting:
Agenda for Jun 25, 2024
Recording. Due to administrative changes, unfortunately no transcript is available for the week.
Participants:
Christina Kirsch, Liz Yang
Agenda:
Based on feedback from both @klausbrave from the last meeting and an anonymous Arbitrum DAO delegate, Liz suggested conducting more research to evaluate the current gaps in the Arbitrum ecosystem and structuring the concrete goals of the BD Fellowship to meet those goals. Previously, the BD Fellowship has already created a research document to inform the direction, and we will be continuing to add to the same document.
Liz mentioned working and getting feedback from Arbitrum Foundation and/or Offchain Labs, as well as DAO members, to identify what the current ecosystem needs are and how the BD Fellowship is best equipped to meet these needs.
@borrowlucid concurred that more research was needed to optimize the efficacy of the BD Fellowship Pilot Program.
Next Steps:
Liz to add to the ongoing research doc to gather more data on gaps in the Arbitrum ecosystem, what potential solutions would be the most value add, and how the BD Fellowship can help address the gaps
@BorrowLucid to look through the Arbitrum DAO Forum for any information regarding the above
The fellowship has been a useful learning experience for me, and I expect my fellow participants feel similar.
Although no longer in this role, while @RichCL was our Gandalf, we had consistency and reliability, especially around communication and continued progress.
While the onboarding team has been very supportive, we did struggle with collecting information from Offchain Labs and Arbitrum Foundation, thus leading to challenges about how best to move forward with a proposal. With these setbacks, and members of the team leaving to work on other responsibilities, our proposal is still in the drafting phase and not expected to be pursued further.
Thank you for the opportunity to learn about the DAO and its processes.
trying to add to the ecosystem without detracting from already existing efforts
was laudable. While there was some progress, there is still a lot more that is required to get a proposal agreed upon, passed and ultimately actioned upon.
I support this group and all new comers who work to make this happen. I am happy to step back into the fold to contribute in specific ways if the need arises. We shared the vision that Arbitrum is building the best tech, community, and impact to everyday users; that vision still holds.
Appreciate the transparency and insights shared. Special thanks to @RichCL , @BorrowLucid , @whizwang, @checkfit, @git.smol , @Caesar and everyone else involved—I’ve learned a lot from you all. Despite the challenges, the fellowship offered invaluable experiences, particularly in understanding the DAO’s intricacies. It’s inspiring to see the dedication of everyone in pushing forward, even when the path isn’t always clear. Let’s keep this momentum and find new ways to collaborate and strengthen our community.
