Innovatio Community & Services - (Spain & Andorra) - Attract new professionals, entrepreneurs, products and brands to the ecosystem and facilitate their adoption through networking, collaborations, consulting and development.

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Ayax-Julian Labombarda Ugarte

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Individual

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

5

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language

Yes

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

We'll bring a brand community-oriented to facilitate the adoption of the Cardano ecosystem and its technology through networking, partnerships, educational content, and business consulting.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

No dependencies.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

It's an open community, not software.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

What's Innovatio: Innovatio was born to facilitate the adoption of the Web3 ecosystem in brands, projects, products, and professionals, we decided to build a community where networking, knowledge sharing, and value generation are a constant. We want to form an ecosystem of B2B services as a brand that is leveraged on a valuable community and network of contacts that allows us to achieve our goals.

What's Innovatio Community and what are our intentions?

Innovatio Community is a web3-oriented digital community in Discord where professionals can connect, share business knowledge, start new products, and generate collaborations between brands, projects, and individuals without physical or temporal barriers.

To get back to pursuing this brand and community mission, we want to re-activate our home Discord with community activities and educational/informative content that facilitates the adoption of the Cardano Ecosystem. To do this, we have separated this plan into two stages.

First Stage of the Project: Community reactivation and update of the ecosystem overview.

In this first stage, our goals are:

1. Activate our social networks and content production together with an active Discord community.
2. Update the content of our database about the community, activities, products and providers of the Cardano ecosystem.
3. Update our community database about digital communities of entrepreneurs, proffesionals and web3 enthusiasts in Spain and Andorra.
4. Start the production of periodic educational, informative, community and business content.
5. Participate in other community spaces and develop new subproducts to potenciate the growth of the community and their members.

We currently have a Discord server with about 600 verified members and a distribution of text and voice channels, oriented to networking among members and sharing business knowledge in their different areas. For this first stage, we will analyze the Discord server and overhaul it based on our current objectives.

For our social networks (Instagram, LinkedIn & Twitter) we will hire a community manager and a written content creator, to interact again with other accounts and create educational, informative, and business content as in the past. We will return the bi-weekly Cardano newsletter about community activities, workshops, events, and more in Spanish. We will also bring back the ephemeris with historical dates and the weekly trendic topics with the most relevant cases and news from the business and technology world.

We currently have a database updated to January of 2022, a year ago, with the most important communities(54), projects and products(60) of the Cardano, Avalanche and Polkadot ecosystem and most importantly now, the main Web3 digital communities in Argentina. Our objective it’s update this database to know all the products, communities, events and providers of the Cardano Ecosystem to promote it to the most important entrepreneurial and web3 digital communities and physical events in Spain and Andorra.

Ayax has been living in the city of Madrid for more than 5 years, and is available to move to Barcelona and Valencia, pioneer cities of start-up and adoption of Web3 in Spain, as well as occasionally to Andorra. It should be noted that the team will probably be made up of people from each of these cities and locations, to cover a more complete physical presence. 

To finalize this first stage, we will carry out activities and content-oriented exclusively to the members of our Discord community with virtual events, pitches, interviews, etc. We will determinate what kind of sub products we can elaborate for attract the attention of more business opportunities and professionals after gathering more information about the ecosystem and the communities.

For example, currently in Barcelona is the Hotel de Cardano, we have regular contact with ambassadors of the Spanish-speaking community in Cuba, Spain, Mexico, Central America, we have contact with other entrepreneurs and proponents of years in Catalyst that could enhance this initiative and surely they would be great influencers in future sub-products that we launch.

Second Stage of the Project: Consultancy and Attracting brand and projects.

In this second stage, we will have already updated our Cardano ecosystem database and we will have added the most important business digital communities in Spain & Andorra, which will allow us to explore collaborations and new audiovisual and business content-oriented to attract more professionals and members to the community.

We have great opportunities in centers of innovation and start-up development in this countries, such as Google for Startups, StartupLabs of IE School in Madrid, Barcelona Tech City and Centre Blockchain de Catalunya, Lanzadera, a famous incubator and in Andorra, mainly HUBs and revolutionary start-ups looking to escape from great fiscal pressures.

With all the information we get periodically from our updated database, we will attend the most important community and digital business events in the region, through our community leaders or brand ambassadors, being in the ecosystem for many years, allowed us to meet many people and have their collaboration available.

To attract and retain our members, they need to feel that we are with and for them and that we truly add value to their career or business product.

In order for our community members to have interest and impact in the Cardano ecosystem, we will offer free consulting for Fund 13 and develop an incubator of ideas and proposals for this fund. In our team there are more than 5 years of accumulated experience in Catalyst and more than 8 funded proposals, Ayax can contribute from the product and business side and Daniel from the technical side, in addition to all the marketing and design team that will be hired.

Finally, we will take advantage of this consulting and development traction, events, community by-products, workshops and others, to offer our B2B services to companies and start-ups in the Spanish and Andorran ecosystem to adopt Cardano's web3 technology and add value to the chain. To do this, we will develop a small marketing and sales campaign for B2B lead generation and subsequent customer acquisition.

General approach of the marketing and growth strategy: Unlike LATAM, where most partners and ventures arise between professionals who connect digitally, Spain and Andorra have a great start-up initiative in their universities and public institutions, as previously mentioned, they have incubators and technology programs that encourage future professionals to face these industries and undertake their own ideas.

Therefore, despite maintaining our main digital HUB, we will have to adapt to the Spanish socio-cultural reality mainly, and contact with university and technological institutions, to integrate professionals and companies to the Innovatio community and the Cardano ecosystem.

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

To define the impact we expect to make with this proposal in the Cardano ecosystem, we will develop a series of OKRs and KPIs that will be able to quantify, measure and determine if we have met the objectives proposed in each stage.

The objective of the stage 1: Re-activate the Innovatio community, its social networks and educational, informational and business products to attract entrepreneurs and professionals to the Cardano ecosystem and the upcoming Fund 13.

KR1: Have a Discord with active members, weekly activities and a ranking system for members.

KR2: Fulfill the timetable of the Cardano Newsletter, Ephemeris, and Trendic Topics.

KR3: Update our internal database of the Cardano ecosystem, with its most relevant products, communities, events and vendors.

KR4: Update our internal database of the Spanish and Andorran digital entrepreneurial ecosystem, and the physical events related to digital entrepreneurship and web3.

KR5: Have launched at least 2 new educational, informative or business sub-products in addition to those already mentioned.

KR6: Have a bi-weekly report with the most important activities and events of Cardano's ecosystem and the web3 and entrepreneurship digital communities of Spain and Andorra.

The objective of the stage 2:

KR1: Achieve the successful financing of at least 3 proposals in Fund 13 through our incubation program of ideas and proposals.

KR2: Have attended at least 15 events in other communities and entrepreneurial spaces digitally and physically.

KR3: Have had at least 6 participants within the incubation program of ideas and proposals.

KR4: Have directly contacted at least 30 Spanish and Andorran companies in the lead generation program in consulting and development.

KR5: To have obtained at least 10 feedbacks from web2 companies on why they are interested or not in adopting web3 technologies.

KPIs: This are some kpis that we will establish to measure and quantify metrics of the products and the development of the proposals, these are subject to further modifications to provide more quality information in the final report.

Reach:

1. Number of brands, companies and communities contacted.
2. Number and kind of community event that we have participated. (Digital and Physically)
3. Number of followers on social networks.
4. Reach and engagement metrics of the launched by-products (Newsletter + new subproducts)

Activation:

1. Number of people joining the community after attending a physical event.
2. Number of people joining the community after attending a digital event.
3. Number of new proponents in Fund 13 thanks our consultancy.

Engagement:

1. Number of posts, comments, and reactions in the Discord community.
2. Average time members in digital events.
3. Number of members participating in community polls or votes.
4. Number of digital and physical events that we will attend as representatives of Innovatio and Cardano, to generate business opportunities.

Growth:

1. Total number of members in the community and the growth in this proposal.
2. Number of new members joining the community each month.
3. Member retention rate (percentage of members who remain in the community after a certain period of time).
4. Number of strategic alliances formed with other communities or institutions.

Consulting:

1. Number of proposals mentored in the idea incubator program for Fund 13
2. Number of proposals helped funded in the next Fund 13 thanks our consultancy.
3. Number of products that adopted some functionality or solution based on Cardano.
4. Number of consultancies we have performed on the technology and its adoption.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

Ayax Labombarda: has extensive experience participating in Catalyst, since Fund 3, obtaining funding for 6 proposals, most of which are now complete. He has experience in product, team, and project management, as well as in the definition of marketing and sales strategies at the vision and business objectives level.

This focus on business activity, metrics, data analytics, and leadership is certified by his studies in Project Management, Product Delivery & Product Manager at the University of Maryland, and a Product HUB Bootcamp.

Also, it is worth clarifying that Ayax is a Discord user since 2016, he has managed several communities over the past 3 years, something that is highly important for the success of this proposal.

Daniel Rodriguez: He is an apassionate in Blockchain, IT professional with over 25 years of experience in software analysis, development and recruiting, he lead Community management and business management, with emphasis in Blockchain developement. As well, he uses all Microsoft stack and tools/software. From DevOps to T-SQL development, DBA tasks, DB Tuning, design for performance, and web development with C# .NET/.NETCORE/VB6/ASP Classic. Daniel has been successful in transformingcustomer business requirements into comprehensive solutions using the appropriate technologies. He has also led a development team and has succeeded in complex projects dealing directly with clients, and he applied some projects in fund10, having a lot of followers of his projects.

Trackrecord: The innovatio community was born in Fund 6 in March 2019 almost 4 years ago, in which it has managed to fund 4 proposals and successfully completed its closing, throughout these years, we have been witnesses and people involved directly and indirectly with hundreds of community members, projects and products.

First Funded Proposal (F6): https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/59086

Second Funded Proposal (F8) and its closing report: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/62152

Third Funded Proposal (F9) and its closing report: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/62144

Fourth Funded Proposal (F9) and its closing report: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/64187

Some of the tangible achievements we have made in all these years include:

Networking sessions and project presentations: 11 Networking sessions and more than 20 projects.

Networking spaces in After-Townhalls: More than 18 BreakOut Rooms.

Cardano Newsletters + Trendic Topics Web3: More than 45 editions revealing the weekly web3 trends and periodic news of the Cardano ecosystem and more than 30 historical events.

Podcast: 11 episodes, 6 in Spanish and 5 in English.

Mentoring: More than 15 mentorships and more than 8 winning projects in Catalyst.

Based on this empirical evidence, we believe we have the experience and background to successfully complete the project.

[PROJECT MILESTONES] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

We will receive the first funds to hire the required personnel and as described below, we will on-board them about the brand, Cardano's ecosystem, its values, philosophy, etc. We will define the internal work methodologies, and communication channels and explain the objective of our proposal.

Estimated duration: 1 month and half (July & August) - Funding amount of 20%.

Tasks:

1. We hire personnel and perform the onboarding described above.
2. Explained the objective and development of the proposal to community leaders and content creators and the plan to execute it.
3. Update the descriptions of our social networks and Discord channels.
4. Pay work tools such as ClickUp, Figma, Miro, etc.
5. We will develop the proposal backlog, assign tasks, organize internally, etc.

We started with activities in the Discord community and publications in our social networks (Instagram, LinkedIn & Twitter (X). We assigned community leaders to the most promising digital spaces of the entrepreneurial and professional communities in LATAM.

Estimated duration: 1 month (September) - Funding amount of 20%.

Tasks:

1. Have periodic publications in the different social networks on a regular basis. (At least 3 per week)
2. Have a weekly events and engagements that encourages networking and interaction between community members on Discord (Photos & recorded event).
3. Start updating the database and knowledge of the current Cardano ecosystem. (Projects ; Communities & Use Cases)
4. Start updating the database and knowledge of the most promising Spanish and Andorran communities and entrepreneurial spaces. (Communities, Products/Brands and Institutions)

By now, we expect to finish updating our internal database with the most important projects, communities and suppliers of the Cardano ecosystem, and we will have identified the digital and physicall spaces of entrepreneurship and web3 in Spain and Andorra, in order to have a presence in them and encourage the adoption of the Cardano ecosystem through our community activities.

Estimated duration: 1 months (October) - Funding amount of 20%.

Tasks:

1. We will have completed our database with the most relevant communities to which we will follow up bi-weekly on the most relevant events and activities.
2. We will have completed our database with the most interesting projects, communities and products of the current Cardano ecosystem and we will follow up bi-weekly on the most relevant events and activities.
3. We will have hosted at least 6 live digital or physical community events with a duration of at least 45 minutes that encourage engagement and value development across the community.
4. We will define the launch of new by-products to drive community growth and engagement and foster visibility of the benefits of Web3 technology.
5. We have reached the milestone of having launched at least 25 educational and informative audiovisual pieces.

We hope to start this Milestone already having a good presence of community members in our weekly events and that the development of our educational and informative by-products are well received by users. Here we begin our second stage of the project, giving it a more entrepreneurial and B2B focus with the support of the community we have built and re-activated.

Estimated duration: 1 month (November) - Funding amount of 20%.

1. Have an open incubator program of consulting and ideas to encourage the presentation of new products and solutions to the next Catalyst Fund 13.
2. We will have established at least 5 collaborations with different communities or institutions in Spain and Andorra.
3. We will have published at least 37 audiovisual pieces and host at least 9 community events in our Discord space.
4. We will have developed at least 2 "sub-products" that foster the growth, visibility and interaction of our community.

To conclude this proposal presented to reactivate the Innovatio community and intends to present it in subsequent Funds, we will seek to test the possibility of self-financing through B2B consulting and development services for the Cardano ecosystem, taking advantage of all our knowledge of the ecosystem, its tools, its operation, its community and its suppliers. We will seek to contact companies to sell these services in pursuit of further development and products for the entire community.

Estimated duration: 1 month (December) - Funding amount of 20%.

Tasks:

1. Developed final report on the metrics, objectives and impacts of the project.
2. Develop our video closing and final report.
3. We will have published at least 55 audiovisual pieces and host at least 12 community events in our Discord space.
4. We will have attended 5 physical events in Spain & Andorra to generate awareness of the Cardano ecosystem and the Innovatio community.
5. We will have attended 6 virtual or physical  events hosted in other entrepreneurship and web3 communities.
6. Obtain feedback from the participants of our product and idea incubation program for Fund 13.
7. We will have launched a small lead generation campaign to test the self-sustainability of Innovatio's consulting and development services for Web2 companies in B2B format.

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Ayax Labombarda - Product Manager. LINKEDIN

He has 3 years of experience in project and product management, plus 2 years of experience participating in Catalyst, where he has funded 6 proposals since Fund 3, also is certified in Product Manager & Project Manager with full agile methodologies. In addition, he has knowledge of metrics and analitycs to measure product impact and strategize.

Daniel Rodriguez - CTO & Scrum Master. GITHUB: LINKEDIN

He attended numerous virtual and in-person web3 seminars, building self-learning skills through videos, tutorials, and courses on web portals with guided development and certifications in NFT. He actively participated in hackathons, such as the Polkadot, CHAINLINK web3 hackathon, where I served as the PM/Leader of the development team for Chainlink POP. 

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

PAYROLLS

1 - Product Manager & Business Consultor = $2.000 x 5 months = TOTAL $10.000

1 - Operations Manager & Technical Consultor = $1.000 x 4 months = TOTAL $4.000

1 - Community Manager = $1.000 x 4 months = TOTAL $4.000

1 - CopyWriter Content = $1.000 x 4 months = TOTAL $4.000

1 - Graphic Designer = $1.000 x 4 months = TOTAL $4.000

2 - Community Leaders & Ambassadors = $1.600c/u x 2 = $3.200 x 4 months = TOTAL $12.800

TOTAL PROPOSAL PAYROLL ESTIMATED BUDGET= $38.800

MARKETING, PARTNERSHIPS, ADS & AUDIOVISUAL CONTENT = $1.200

This budget includes the working materials needed by the Community Leaders for their work, as well as travel and tickets to business events, contact cards, digital marketing budget for meta-ads (Instagram), Twitter (X) & LinkedIn, the development of audiovisual material to announce events, opportunities and more.

TOTAL BUDGET = 100.000 ADAs that we calculate it to around $40.000. Any difference in favor will be added to the Marketing, Partnerships, Ads & Audiovisual content budget, and any difference against, it will be discounted from this budget or the sallary of the proposal owner.

[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

The costs have been decided based on the average market rate of freelancers in Europe, where we will hire the staff and where we will allocate the budget in the creation of content and payment of digital advertising. Ayax Labombarda is living in Europe, so his rate's more higher than the rest one.

The contracts and the responsibility of each one is based on full-time, that is to say, around 40 hours per week, in addition, we have established a budget for marketing, content creation and a physical event, which we can manage and modify according to the price of ADA and the outcomes of the project.