Library of Proposer Case Studies

Language evolves, ideas blend, skills get honed, in entrepreneurship & tech we stand on others shoulders by understanding what's gone before

Co-founded nationwide place-based network of local hubs supporting emerging entrepreneurs; Blockchain, Finance, Design, Startups, Education

The movie Hidden Figures was the story of individuals who believed in their talent and hard work, pushed back on a system to advance themselves and their community, and did so without role models. The film was respectful of them as pioneers.

Similarly, Cardano's successful Project Catalyst Proposers are pioneers of decentralised, blockchain ventures pushing to create the new system, whose stories are yet to be told.

To see opportunity and act upon it requires an entrepreneurial mindset, tenacity and confidence all of which are advanced by seeing, hearing and understanding others who have gone before. Finding role models whose stories teach others by example to "sweat the problem", "keep it simple", "deliver value" and execute on many more tropes, challenging themselves to do so and never give up gives confidence to others to do the same.

Current problems and limitations

To find the final versions of previous successful proposals is one thing, however finding the background – the telegram and discord messages, youtube videos of workshops, meetups etc – of what happened to create it is time-consuming and almost impossible task. Just how did the successful proposers develop their skills to execute & communicate their great ideas so voters/stakeholders valued the project?

While some may be aware of how collaboration helped, how input received is incorporated, how long a successful proposer spends "seating the problem" many don't.

The lack of available fleshed-out examples of the human cost and benefit of being a Project Catalyst pioneer makes people suspicious and fearful that their effort will not be worth it or they won't measure up to the task. We want to change that.

The Team

The team has been responsible for entrepreneurial programme development across New Zealand. A richly diverse multicultural society of the pacific.

Jo Allum (@yojo): Entrepreneur, Communication Designer and Creative Director. Co-Founder of Venture Centre, New Zealand Open Source Society and Society for Cooperative Housing New Zealand Council Member, Co-Organises Legal Hackers NZ.

Robert O'Brien (@wolstaeb): Entrepreneur and Financial systems Software Engineer (Financial systems). Extensive Blockchain experience and co-Founded three fintech start-ups. Co-Organises LegalHackers NZ.

Pascale Hyboud-Peron: Entrepreneur, 20+ year high-school teacher, and trustee of the Global Entrepreneurship Network NZ. Co-Founder of Venture Centre. Facilitates Young Enterprise NZ, NZ Startup Weekends.

We are educators with backgrounds in finance, blockchain, legal technology, publication media, and teaching. We are co-founders and entrepreneurs and part of a team many thousand strong.

Our Solution: Create a Library of Proposer Case-studies

A library of up-close, in-depth and detailed investigations of proposers and their related contextual position. Showing how their product or service proposal was created and has been implemented successfully allows new proposers to see what their proposal preparation process can look like.

We've had a lot of success with case studies here at Venture Centre. We have run live, in-person events to explore an entrepreneur's story with pre-arranged and in-the-room Q&A's, video's compiled over the course of a programme or event and edited into an entertaining timeline of the ups and downs, and created blog posts written by or for entrepreneurs at various stages of their journey.

The Cardano Library of Proposer Case Studies will;

#1: Tell stories

Bringing the process to life by illustrating who these people are and how they first designed a project or venture and then the process they went through to articulate it well. Stories paint a picture to activate people's brains and to understand what happened and how.

#2: Demonstrate successes

Not only will case studies focus on proposers, they will also demonstrate how Ideascales features, the Project Catalyst community channels have been used successfully. Prospective proposers care more about seeing how others have actually used the ecosystem to succeed than they care about hearing about what you can potentially do.

In this way, case studies demonstrate success. They prove that you're able to accomplish what you say you can do, based on real results and real stories, not just theories. Case studies give Project Catalyst and its community more credibility. They show that people are using the platform and channels and having success doing so.

#3: Leverage our community of proposers' brands

Let us leverage the brand power of our successful proposers and give them a boost too. By showing the entrepreneurs pioneering Cardano, we get to show that they are willing to recommend the community, the process and the platform and talk about what they are doing together with all of us. People care a lot about what other people have to say.

#4: And, we all get to learn lots

These case studies will teach us a lot about Cardano projects. The patterns that emerge around delivering valuable products and services to customers on Cardano can become part of the tools and frameworks created for local community hubs. We'll learn things about Cardano products that we may never have known before by getting a good idea about how our successful proposers are doing what they doing and how their customers are reacting.

The initial library will include a range of:

Blog posts : These are the easiest to publish and can be posted on multiple channels by multiple community members. We will write up the case study as a post, and then hit publish.

PDFs : A formulaic easy-to-read format that includes callouts and special informational sections like 'fact packs' (like recipes the case-study subjects used for completing a task). Links to PDFs could also be e-mailed to prospective proposers when they begin working on the first stage, submitting proposals on Project Catalyst.

Infographics : These will take more time to plan and design to present information in a visually appealing way that's likely to be shared via social networks.

Videos : These can take a number of forms. Straightforward interviews with proposers will deliver a rich experience of the person and their journey. Mini-doco's including artefacts or animations can describe timeline and iteration steps. Panel discussion videos provide an insight into the differences which make a difference so we can notice and respect the limits of our expectations of ourselves and others.

Having created a library of Proposer Case Studies we will hope to work with the Catalyst School and Catalyst Swam to host, position and promote the library.

What comes next: From there we hope to iterate and refine the case-study formats, translate these first case studies into more languages and provide guides and templates for others to follow and create case studies to add to the library.

A note about challenge choice:

We have chosen the DLT Toolkit Challenge for this proposal as this content can serve multiple purposes. However, these case studies will be material to the design of the Cardano Canvas, Card deck and calculator we have proposed in the Scale-UP Cardano's Community Hubs challenge. With seven years of hands-on experience building community hubs at Venture Centre, we have a deep understanding of what it takes to support emerging entrepreneurs, build their confidence and enable them to articulate the value they aim to create clearly. We want to ensure this content is available to the networks of hubs we already work with, the thousands of others around the world and the ones which are still to emerge from small groups of people who watch or read one of these case studies, take action and make a stake in and for the future with Cardano.

Budget

Asking for $36,250

This funds @520 hours of work @$70p/hr for both research and development, and content creation over the next 6 months (21hrs a week)

Major Tasks

• Proposer research
• Initial and Case-study interviews
• Content planning
• Videography, production and editing
• Graphic design
• Content writing, editing
• Animation

Deliverables timeline

Month 1 - Research and connect to conduct initial interviews. Plan content – format, storyboard, animations and fact packs. Coordinate videography.

Month 3 - Establish commonalities. Conduct full interviews. Curate or create animation and digital onscreen graphic design elements. Produce and edit

Month 6 - Finalise content products, connect with Catalyst school and Swarm to coordinate publishing and dissemination. Plan and execute social media campaign.

What does the future look like?

Month 12 - Curate and tag all case-studies so they relate directly to and can be found easily when prospective proposers are using the Canvas, Card-deck and calculator tools.

Month 18 - Publish a book with follow-up stories of the successes for general public consumption.

Why is it important?

People who participate and make proposals are interested in creating projects and ventures on Cardano are challenged with communicating a complex mix of information in order to provide the blended social, environmental and economic returns they envision. They need to know first, its possible by people like them, how to do that alongside and in collaboration with the Project Catalyst community and many of them are new to entrepreneurship itself and the process of executing and articulating their idea.

How does success look like?

The average person will be able to become a proposer anywhere across the world and be relieved to find easily accessible content to help them start and progress. They will recognise themselves in the stories of others, identify skills and strengths they have by seeing the strengths and skills of others; learn how they to can make the human connections in the Project Catalyst community, and build a team o create ventures on Cardano. Their suspicions and fears that they may not be up to the task will be dispersed and more proposers from more people will appear.

Ultimately the result will be a steady increase in Cardano-curious at the top of the funnel and converting them to Cardano-community members and Project Catalyst proposers lower down, resulting in an increase in the adoption and awareness of Cardano, a key, continuous overarching metric of success.

Key Metrics to measure

Number of users, using the tools and difference in score of applicants using the toolbox and those not using the tools.

– To be achieved by setting up tracking on content and working with Catalyst school and Swarm to capture data from their use of the library.

Gaps that are filled in the entrepreneurial skills base of project teams from the start of ideation through project delivery.

– To be achieved by creating new case-studies of those who have had access to the library and documenting how the content has helped with elements of the proposal process.

Sustainability of venture plans beyond the scope of Catalyst development project.

– To be achieved through collaboration with Catalyst school and Swarm