Worldwide blockchain entrepreneurs need seed funding sources to develop ideas into minimum viable products that have marketable potential.

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OUR EVENT PROCESS IS PROVEN—IT WORKED IN CATALYST FUND 2

It drove great projects the community is currently funding!

Why?
Entrepreneurs NEED non-dilutive capital to jump start their ideas

How?
Engagement: We hold worldwide events (e.g.; startup weekends, hackathons, pitch competitions)
We successfully entered a dozen such new projects into Catalyst Fund 2 with this very method! Liqwid, Wavachain, Fundtrack and others all entered proposals in Fund 2 this way—from a virtual event they all participated in Sept 2020, which required them to enter their project directly into Catalyst as a requirement to be recognized as winners of WyoHackathon.

* We need to actually engage entrepreneurs in the process, we can't simple advertise to them, we need them in the process.

* Network effects work. They trust their Communities who will inform them of Catalyst Funds for us when we partner with them.

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SCOPE

* Directly engage entrepreneurs, developers and blockchain enthusiasts in weekend long events and pitch competitions that have a proven track records with hundreds of thousands of participants over the past decade.
- Hackathons work where a team is quickly formed to build an MVP to certain challenges or themes, mainly developer focused
- Startup Weekends are engage all disciplines in business creation form idea to MVP over a weekend
- Pitch competitions are mainly teams looking for funding, a great target to hold some around blockchain themes

* Create partnerships with the top entrepreneurial communities around the world (see list below)
- As trusted partners to entrepreneurs, these organizations provide education, information, networking, and funding leads, these are essential to getting the word out about non-dilutive capital available to blockchain startups.
- We will directly work with these organizations to get the word out to their constituents.

BENEFITS

* Catalyst quickly adds many new proposers from outside the existing Cardano community.

* Entrepreneurs and developers participating in events are required to submit directly into Catalyst to win.

* Entrepreneurs get informed of non-dilutive funds available through Catalyst.

* Network effects occur when participants are required to social share their projects.

SCHEDULE
Six weeks from funding, we can have events up and running, and requiring submission into Catalyst.
Immediately after funding we can start outreach to partners to inform their communities about Catalyst Innovation Fund.

PLAN AND BUDGET

PLANNING
We will be working on plans to host these events which will include virtual, possibly live (rona willing) and worldwide. Upon funding, we should be able to host our series of events within 6-weeks post funding and align them with a Catalyst Proposal submission date.

BUDGET

$43,827
4 x $10,000 each (Typical Local Sponsorship raise for a Weekend event) Covers T-shirts, prizes and swag for a 36-hour event starting Friday evening, ending Sunday afternoon. All events will be sponsored by Catalyst and submissions entered into Catalyst IdeasScale or other program if we move from IdeaScale.
$3,827 Website, graphics and outreach to partners.

DEFINED SUCCESS REPORTING

3-month: Post funding 6-week we will have our first event to match the timing of a Catalyst Submission and we can measure the success at that time.
6-month: Repeat proposers seeking new funding and new proposers coming from the partnership outreach.
12-month: Review of referral data in the Catalyst system.

MEASURING SUCCESS

We'll require a program specific referrer email be entered into Catalyst with a standard first sentence of: How did the referral refer you to submit a proposal? It will mention this program. Then they will be required to add feedback about the program they were referred by. This will give us an idea how many proposers came from this outreach.
We will collect the announcements that each partner makes about Catalyst funding.
This will be a prototype experiment that can be measured and expanded based on the metrics.

BACKGROUND

DIRECT MARKETING WORKS FROM A TRUSTED SOURCE
We will get the most trusted source an entrepreneur has to tell them about Catalyst's FREE MONEY to build their startup.
They trust their organizations, not spray-and-pray advertisements.

BEWARE OF MASS MEDIA ADVERTISING

Many consumers are worried about the risks to their privacy that come with personalized ads, according to a 2017 study published in the International Journal of Advertising.
"The perception of risk is much stronger than the perception of benefit," said Chang-Dae Ham, the study's author and a professor at the University of Illinois, in a statement. "That drives them to perceive more privacy concern, and finally to avoid the advertising."
This is especially relevant in the blockchain and crypto space where own-your-data and privacy-by-design are the ethos.

Advertising: Intrusiveness vs Relevance

The trust consumers have in advertising is at risk of deteriorating further, as the use of consumer data becomes more frequent and potentially insensitive. Overall, more than half (54%) of respondents agreed that targeted ads based on past online activity are intrusive.

WE'LL USE SOURCES THEY TRUST TO REACH THE ENTREPRENEURS
So, where are consumers going for trusted information about brands and services? Overwhelmingly, respondents trust friends and family (93%). Research has previously shown that recommendations of friends or family members have far more influence over purchase decisions than influencers or celebrities. Indeed, the study results indicate that word-of-mouth still matters in the digital age, with many brands striving to become 'talkworthy'.

Direct marketing consists of any marketing that relies on direct communication or distribution to individual consumers, rather than through a third party such as mass media.
The trusted source for the entrepreneurs we seek are the organizations and institutions where they are community members. Below, we detail 6 of those organizations that can get our Catalyst message directly to the consumer at the point of need. In other words, when an entrepreneur need funding they look to their community resources. We will be present in those community communications and be offering tangible programs and help on-boarding active projects into Catalyst.

IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS
Produce (4) four worldwide blockchain Startup Events and enter the ideas into Catalyst.
Highly engaged Entrepreneurial communities exist worldwide. Some of the biggest are eager to collaborate to help entrepreneurs, especially help them find non-dilutive seed funding for their ideas. I have been in the startup community for 30+ years and have deep connections to some of the largest entrepreneurship communities with WW footprints. We will place article in guest blogs in the partner communications to their constituents.

This is an effective means to drive new proposers (who aren't currently aware of Catalyst) from the entrepreneurial community to the Cardano Catalyst Innovation Fund to support their blockchain ideas and innovations.

WE"LL DRIVE PARTNERSHIPS WITH:

Techstars—Startup Weekend, 150+ Countries; 428K+ Total participants; 7K+ Programs held; 19K+ Community Leaders. I'm a community leader and was the Marketing Lead for the April 2020 Covid Worldwide online Startup Weekend with over 10K+ participants.
https://www.techstars.com/

Kauffman Foundation—Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) empowers roughly 25 million people through more than 25,000 activities, and is supported by dozens of world leaders and a network of 10,000 partner organizations. https://www.kauffman.org/

Kauffman also runs the 1MM Cups program where every Wednesday over 160 entrepreneurship communities meet to give each other support, encouragement and feedback over a cup of coffee.
https://www.1millioncups.com/

Draper Startup House—Supporting entrepreneurs in 12 worldwide locations with programs and support located in Austin, Texas USA; Bali, Indonesia; Bangalore Flagship, Koramangala; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Chiang Mai, Thailand; Da Nang, Vietnam; Lisbon, Portugal; Manila, Philippines; Penang, Malaysia; San Mateo, California, USA; Singapore, Singapore; Tallinn, Estonia; Yangon, Myanmar.

https://draperstartuphouse.com/

Global Accelerator Network (GAN)—Creating opportunities for startups around the world to access the human and financial capital they need. https://www.gan.co/

The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN)—operates an array of programs in 180 countries aimed at making it easier for anyone, anywhere to start and scale a business.
http://genglobal.org/

I****ncubateIND—India`s largest and fastest-growing community of technology innovators including startups and student innovators. 100K+ Active Developers; 200+ Hackathons; 1000+ Submitted Projects; 436 Ideas Incubated. I host IncubateIND.us during the international events. https://www.incubateind.com/

PROMOTING FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

What entrepreneurs need are funding sources. We'll design programs to reach out to these worldwide organizations and add Cardano Catalyst to their list of funding sources and increase awareness for blockchain entrepreneurs and startups. A solid model exist for building entrepreneurship communities and all of them are looking for non-dilutive funding opportunities. Their are clear roadmaps we will follow to reach net new potential Catalyst proposers that come from many different walks of life, with lots of ideas and technological solutions, from the entrepreneurship communities.
https://www.slideshare.net/RichKopcho/university-of-wyoming-entrepreneurship-summit-2019-142181638

CREATING STARTUP EVENTS

We'll create and host 4 virtual Blockchain Startup Events around the world. We'll be partnering with Techstars, Draper House, Kauffman Foundation, IncubateIND and others while we leverage 1MM Cups and the GEN November WW event.

SUCCESS IS ALWAYS WELL PLANNED

Who will Implement This
Rich Kopcho, a life-long entrepreneur building 18 start-ups in his career. He has owned and managed a development shop and open-sourced the successful 'Restore' backup solution. He taught manufacturers around the world Holonic manufacturing (1997-2007); a heterarchical systems and technology approach that is the foundation DAOs are based on. He currently operates a venture studio in Laramie WY building technology solutions with partners. Rich is the executive producer of the Wyoming Blockchain Stampede - an annual conference by UWYO that IOHK/Cardano/Emurgo and others sponsor to educate the blockchain community.

Team, we have a network of individuals who make these events special and spectacular. We will engage the network.
Our track record of delivering these kinds of events and the resulting impact is well documented and established. Given the proper funding, we can deliver large numbers of net new proposers into the Catalyst ecosystem with very promising startup ideas to build on Cardano. There is the chance a worldwide pandemic, world financial meltdown or similar events will severally impact our ability to execute. However, barring any of these catastrophic occurrences, this will move the needle.
I have been producing the Wyoming Blockchain Stampede, WyoHackathon for 4-years now and host the Wyoming Chapter of BitAngels, produce with my partner the Sandcastle Challenge, produce the Inevitable Events Summit and have hosted many Techstar's Startup weekends over the past dozen years.

Why It Will Work

This plan will increase awareness of the Catalyst program and draw a different user base than we currently have in the Cardano community. Liqwid DeFi and Fundtrack (both Fund 2 awardees) won #1 and #3 place at WyoHackathon and got added into the Catalyst Program from the WyoHackathon. We can drive net new proposers to Catalyst.

We can highly target blockchain enthusiasts and entrepreneurs who are currently looking for FUNDING to submit innovations into Catalyst.