Background
Name: 1sla.eth
Position I am applying for: Council Member
TG: @ftwisla
Twitter: @0xisla
Affiliations (Currently I am working with, invested in, etc.):
Association President / Co-founder / Founding Member of @FTWDAO
Fellow backed by the RNDAO Arbitrum CoLab Fellowship to research community-led grants and investment governance, and coordination mechanisms for grants / venture DAOs.
Joined @Safe as Grants Lead in 2023 and established the grants program.
Council member at @DAOSuisse
Founding Member at DAOVOZ
Why You
Why would You be the best candidate for this position?
Ikigai: I have been thinking about designing better (more founder and ROI-friendly) capital allocation systems (particularly focused on venture finance) for almost 10 years. Very recently joined the RnDAO Arbitrum CoLab Fellowship researching investment curation, community-powered decision-making and reputation in investment DAOs via the RnDAO fellowship, so that anyone, anywhere can easily build an investment track-record on-chain.
Our research and solution ideas were also recently supported by the Swiss Blockchain Federation Innovation Booster grant, and aim to result in applications that enable syndicates, grants and in particular DAOs to effectively leverage their community in capital allocation decisions.
- Mindful capital allocation is my co-called ‘zone of genius’ or ‘ikigai’
Qualifications: My academic background started with a degree in economics covering topics such a game theory and environmental economics, and led to a deep interest in innovation’s role in long-term job creation, which I followed up on by studying towards an M.Sc. in Strategy & Innovation. A large part of the work during the M.Sc. looked at strategies for community-led / open-source innovation, and incentives behind them, and I plan to eventually write my thesis on decentralised capital allocation.
- Formally qualified for this role, which spans strategy, governance, finance, and innovation
Experience: In 2015, I started my career and venture capital, but quickly realised there were many issues with our current models for venture finance and decision-making. Since then, I have largely dedicated my career to designing better, more effective forms of capital allocation. 10 years’ experience in the venture ecosystem, three years of which in web3.
In 2021, I co-founded FTW DAO, and since established a genuinely diverse community of investors, builders and thinkers who believe in bringing more transparency, diversity and meritocracy to global capital allocation.
In 2023, I joined Safe as Grants Lead in 2023 and have worked closely with the team in the Gnosis ecosystem building up the grants program from 0 to 1
- The experience and insight required for the thoughtful design of grants and incentives
What do you think a good incentive application looks like?
- A strong and long-term viable use case for their application
- Demonstrable alignment with the values and vision of Arbitrum
- Clear, measurable and realistic goals for adding value to Arbitrum ecosystem
- Concrete and convincing plans for go-to-market and growth leveraging the incentives
- Well articulated plans for their own financial and operational sustainability
- A diverse set of skills and backgrounds in the team: these teams tend to perform better
- Credibility, track-record and commitment to the space they are building in
What are your goals for this program?
1. Observe
- Collect and document observations from the past STIP phase and from the upcoming pilot phase
2. Interpet
- Translate observations into actionable insights for STIP grantee scoring
3. Act
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Improve scoring rubrics and grants processes
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Ensure open, transparent and on-going dialogue on learnings with the Arbitrum ecosystem