Blockchain Learning Center

Provide a community learning center attached to a crypto positive coffee shop that offer demos and classes covering a wide range of topics.

I'm a front end engineer and I have been a barista in the past. I have been inspired by the passion of the cardano community!

Beanchain Coffee shop and Blockchain Learning Center

Our coffee shop will be called Beanchain Coffee. It will be a coffee shop, bakery, and roaster with ample room for people to work and study. Our goal is for this to be a community hub for any local groups that want to congregate here. 

The blockchain learning center will be separated from the main space by a glass wall and a door.  The goal with that is to get people curious and have them come on in to see what its all about! Inside the learning center we will have demos set up along the wall, like in a science center, that will teach the basics of blockchain in a way that anyone could easily understand. Things like wallets, staking/mining, and all the things the blockchain is being used for like logistics tracking, voting, identity storage, file storage, and more. This will help passively dissolve some disinformation and get people more interested. 

We'll be offering classes for those who want to dive in a little deeper. These classes start with beginner/intro level; how to use your wallet, blockchain history, how to stake with Cardano and how does it work. And they will go all the way to advanced courses; developing with Plutus, Smart contracts, token economies, DAOS,  making NFT campaigns, and more. Classes will take place in person and streaming for subscribers, so that they can be viewed by as many people as possible. By doing the classes live we can address peoples questions and help provide a more complete learning experience. We plan to play recordings of introductory courses for people to enjoy for free. The membership costs for attending the live classes will be around $20/ month. 

We're working with groups like Catalyst School to start developing courses. We've also developed relationships with the Arizona State University Blockchain Club and Gimbalabs. 

We plan to host a monthly incubator workshop, for local entrepreneurs and business owners to get onboard with the business side of blockchain technology as applied to their businesses.  We anticipate this will bring more great ideas into Catalyst and help people get prepared to be successful in every aspect of their journey.  This can be a stepping stone toward a more complete incubator program that we seek to develop further over time.

Our business plan is completed, we have a robust discord community, a website, social media, are beginning to construct coffee carts to start getting the word out, and we have unbounded passion for what we're trying to accomplish here. 

Beanchain will be a worker directed company that give our workers 50% voting power in the organization as well as profit sharing. Our goal is to prioritize expanding to new locations and deliver blockchain learning to more people through the growing network of Beanchains. We'll be trying to put our learning centers next to Universities and colleges since this is our primary audience.

Milestones

Completed

• Develop relationship with a community that can help develop curriculum (Catalyst School)
• Get an account, real estate agent, and legal representation
• Make Website (bchain.coffee)
• Build Discord Community (https://discord.gg/bDmWS38Hz8)
• Start social media (twitter and instagram)
• Meet with the ASU Blockchain Club
• Meet with the people at ASU involved with business partnerships

In progress

• Start NFT Campaign to get more funding
• Start Kickstarter campaign
• Find real estate to open shop in
• Build coffee cart
• Plan Demos that will be set up in the learning center
• Create courses and develop curriculum

Planned

• Release first set of courses in the learning center
• Survey users to get feedback on demos and classes
• Train instructors
• Create / Find platform to host courses on (working with Catalyst School)
• Work with ASU to offer credits to students that teach classes
• Start renovation of our space to set up for shop and learning center
• Use Coffee Cart 5 days a week

Timeline

By 3 months we expect to:

• Curriculum partially developed
• Plans for demos nearly completed
• One coffee cart is built and in operation; start marketing and bringing in revenue
• Have real estate contract negotiated and contractors starting work
• Select and get commitments from 6 future trainers; selected from local colleges

By 6 months we expect to:

• Shop is opened or opening very soon
• ~5 courses complete and trainers trained to deliver them
• Renovations completed
• Coffee cart in operations 5 days a week
• Demos set up in learning

By 12 months we expect to:

• Incubator program operating
• Have ~10 additional classes finished
• Have the second coffee cart running 5 days a week
• Improve Learning Center; refine the way we teach, improve demos, add new content

Our hope is that this will be an entry point to the blockchain and Cardano environment for many that otherwise would not be reached and can do a lot to give blockchain a better image in peoples eyes. 

Team

David Baxter

Founder, Communications, Organizer, Front End Software Engineer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/baxweb/

Randall Harmon

Fundamentals of accounting, project management, engineering for web applications and all their supporting infrastructure

https://www.linkedin.com/in/randall-harmon-aa52765/

William Burns

Coffee shop manager, Network and Systems administration

Simon Fleck

Director of the Learning Center, Cohort F6, CA, IT consultant focused on the people-ware infrastructure for sustainable communities.

https://github.com/Seomon4u/

We have some organizational partners as well! 

The Catalyst School was funded by Catalyst and is doing great work getting some educational materials created and helping people to put together fantastic catalyst proposals! We're working with them to develop the educational materials we will need and to make sure we can reach people in many languages. They are partnering with us to be our primary course creator and to help us figure out how set up the most effective demonstrations of blockchain technology. 

Living Waters Costa Rica is another proposal that we're working with as our goals are very similar. We'll be trying to develop educational material with them and will be including a display in our learning center that will show their efforts in sustainability and how they will be using the blockchain to do it.
https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Living-Waters-Costa-Rica/384240-48088

Developing strong relationships with local trade schools and universities has been a goal as well. As we build our incubator and curriculum being well connected to educational institutions will be an enormous asset. We would like to train students to teach the courses and make sure they can get credits for doing so as well.

Budget Breakdown

6 Teachers $46,400

• At 4 x 1 hour classes a day 5 days a week that is 1040 hours of teaching time. 
• Assuming 40 hours training per teacher: 240 hours
• $40 per class and $20/hour training

Implementing system for hosting and distributing courses $10,000~

This is what we'll be spending the $56,400 that we will be asking for on. We wanted to make sure to ask for a reasonable amount that would help us with the setup and operation of the learning center without asking that Catalyst pay for the coffee shop element of the business.

Other Learning Center Costs

Renovate leased space $70,000~ 

• 2,000 sqft at $20 per sqft $40,000
  electric and plumbing, flooring, ventilation, etc
• Glass separation wall between learning center and coffee shop $5,000~
• Build Demos $10,000~
  equipment, planning consultation by education experts
• Equipment and Furniture $15,000
  tables, chairs, projector or TV, misc

Utilities for our first year $5,800

• $2.90 per square foot (estimate) 

We're pursuing private investment, bank loans, an NFT campaign, and crowdfunding to make up the rest of the about $400k we need in total to start and safely run the business for the first 5 years.

Funding sources secured for the rest of the business

• Founder funding(myself) 200k
• Private investment 250k loan

Funding we are seeking

• Crowdfunding (kickstarter) 100k
• SBA Loan 350k
• NFT Campaign

Risks and Risk Management

Risk
Having a good supply of people that are willing to teach classes to make sure that we can constantly provide a high quality learning environment. 

Solution
Develop relationships with local colleges and clubs that are enthusiastic about blockchain and would like to participate in getting people involved. 

Risk
Sustainability and repeatability of our model. We need the learning center to be able to pay for itself and be able to scale by opening new locations and spreading across the United States and Europe. 

Solution
We are working on getting funding from many sources and building revenue streams into the learning center such as the paid subscription for more advanced classes and selling blockchain merchandise like miners, hardware wallets, apparel, NFTs, etc.

Risk
Not reaching enough people to fill out our classes. 

Solution
Build a large and inclusive community. We have been working hard to build our Discord server, social media, and our web presence. We're also directly contacting universities, clubs, and colleges to invite them to participate in our community. In addition to that we have offered discounts to schools in the area and agreed to support each other on social media. By developing strong ties to other groups in the area we will become trusted and welcoming to all the people that live here. 

Auditability / Metrics

A few metrics we think could help us figure out how successful we've been in our mission and how we can improve over time. 

Wallets Created
As part of our demo for wallets we plan on helping the user created a wallet on their phone and then airdropping a small reward to them to make it a positive experience. By tracking the number of wallets created and how much those wallets are used in the future we may be able to get a good idea about how engaged the people we bring into the network are.

Goal: 5 wallets per week in first 3 months, up to 5 wallets per day after 6 months

Sustainability
Our goal is to be financially sustainable so that we can take this model and reproduce it across the US and Europe. By paying close attention to how well the blockchain learning space pays for itself we can adjust and add new revenue streams to it if need be. We'll map out the cost of the space and its operation and weigh that against the revenue generated by it to see how well we're doing here.

Goal: Revenue to Cost ratio of 1.0 or higher

Conversion Rate
One of our goals is to get people that visit the Learning Center to see the demos to also sign up for classes and join as a member for the more advanced classes. The amount of people we get to sign up for our free and our advanced classes would be a tremendous indicator of how well we are teaching and grabbing peoples attention with the demos. 

Goal: Convert 2% of the people that visit and see the demos into members. 

Incubator Program Instantiation and Participation
We plan on starting an incubator program that can help people get help for their ideas and get them funded. Starting this incubator program and compiling all the tools, services, and people needed for it is a year one goal. Getting this program up and running and getting some ideas successfully developed and funded will be a metric we're tracking.

Goal: Have helped at least 2 projects get developed and funded by 12 months

Proposals Submitted from our Community
Since we'll be getting so many new people into the Cardano and greater blockchain ecosystem we will be suggesting that people with good ideas submit them to the Catalyst program. We'll also be helping them get they're proposals set up and give them the best shot at getting voted on. We should be driving a lot of new participation in the Catalyst program. Tracking how many proposals and successful projects come out of our community would be a great metric.

Goal: To have at least 1 proposal get funded each Catalyst fund and at least 10 proposals summited by our members in each fund.