Smarthubs=more impact/adoption

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Design a DAO model to connect localised hubs for collaboration starting with 3 businesses promoting Cardano (Suiss, New Zealand & Canada) to distribute & decentralise the work to onboard organisations

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Team leads comprise 90 years experience in business development with additional complimentary skills and expertise. F7: Geneva Business Hub proposal. Very active in Cardano & Catalyst, operating local business hubs in their countries with a focus on Catalyst for the last 6 months

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Introduction

Business development hubs expand the Cardano ecosystem to enable even greater innovation and positive social, environmental and economic impact. 

We’ve proven this through funded and successful community hub proposals across two funds already:

• F6: Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/368369)
• F7: Geneva Business Development Hub (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384221)

We know hubs are an effective way to engage, onboard and support for-purpose communities and organisations to become active participants in Project Catalyst and use the Cardano blockchain to make the world better for all.

The work which started and is ongoing in Geneva is also being done in New Zealand and Canada with the promotion of Catalyst & Cardano to local communities and businesses. The results are already to be seen in Fund 9 with proposals from more organisations the hubs have onboarded. 

Our intention in developing the Cardano business development hubs concept is to deliver a DAO of “smarthubs” that can deliver on a specific Cardano ecosystem-building role – driving awareness and adoption by existing organisations anchored in locations across the world. Smarthubs bring changemakers, innovators, and visionaries to Project Catalyst to create the greatest possible ripple effect of common-good outcomes.

The DAO infrastructure will ultimately comprise a combination of websites, tools and content. It will enable the emergence of an ecosystem of professional business development hubs. Our aim is a commons model of organising ‘bizdev’ based on small units (smarthubs), shared services and dynamic contracting.

This organisational model is ideal for confronting the increasing complexity amongst markets and societies, and the opportunities that that brings; and, takes advantage of the plummeting transaction costs, connectivity and scale that building open-source/creative commons products offers.

As Cardano continues to develop, demand increases and becomes more varied, the ability to serve demand is becoming the “key control point” which means embracing this organisational model and starting to create the foundations of this DAO of Cardano business development service providers. (Think a decentralised, uncapturable “Redhat” for Cardano).

The smarthubs product fully developed will be organised as a DAO consisting of:

– Micro-Enterprises; (Singular) smarthubs in locations around the globe that bear their own defining indicator(s) for sustainability.

– Shared Services Platform; Content, Data, Metrics, Governance, Tools, e.g.; lead generation tool (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397339)

– An ecosystem of Micro-Community Contracts; Which is how the smarthubs support, collaborate, and share resources and rewards with each other.

Why it's important

As Cardano continues to establish itself a common, professional, onboarding experience and support will increase the speed of adoption. Bizdev professionals need well-documented processes, libraries of examples, data, and other resources from around the world to use in the business development process. 

Smarthubs will:

– Raise brand awareness, develop trust and keep in contact until potential organisations are ready to make a proposal in Project Catalyst or join the Cardano ecosystem independently.

– Support collaboration between an organisation's business people, engineers, developers and designers and the Project Catalyst communities.

– Provide the means to create greater transparency, traceability of outcomes and the real world impact organisations joining the Cardano ecosystem make on social and environmental challenges.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Addressing the challenge

This proposal for creating a DAO of smarthubs supports the challenge by utilising the combined skills, expertise and experience of a team of active Project Catalyst community members. We will define, design and begin development of a Cardano “native” DAO from the ground up. Document the whole process. Work with the wider community to do it. Then, present the model back to Project Catalyst in 3 months time with scopes for tools needed to enable this DAO and many others to offer far superior features to those offered on other chains.

Second, the intention of developing this DAO is to bring on board many more organisations to populate, in time, a thriving ecosystem of interconnecting DAO’s on Cardano. 

We’ve already demonstrated we do what we say we’ll do, and have achieved significant success to date with SANADA and the Geneva business development hubs as out first pilots. This proposal details the cost and work needed to carry out the next steps. 

We will take the learnings gained and initial work done and develop the DAO concept over the next 3 months to enable business development professionals in multiple, English speaking (to start with) locations to use their skills, experience and networks to expand the Cardano ecosystem. 

For this proposal we have prioritised the first of 12 smarthub development areas (outlined below) from the ‘next steps list’ you can find in our Fund 7 close-out report, (a full list can be found at the Geneva busines hub closing report, page 10):

Defining the product, business model (and opportunity for scale)

Cardano smarthubs connected and developed as a DAO aim to give people across the world the opportunity to develop a sustainable business development practice centred on Cardano. Each hub will bring on many other communities and organisations from their locality in a professional and efficient way. 

We imagine each of the smarthubs in the DAO will consist of:

– a business model and documented method to generate revenue for time and effort 

– replicable online presence including content (ENG) which can be localised/personalised 

– run-sheets/budgets/content for online/in-person small/large group events

– time/online engagement tracking software

– partnerships and research/development projects to develop an impactful Cardano ecosystem

– datacommons and measurement tools to track impact

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Risk 1 -  compliance risk: how to combine local businesses as limited liability companies / registered charities etc, with a DAO model. Two different systems coming together in 3 locations with their own specific (but in some ways similar) regulatory and legislative barriers. We believe this is a very important area to solve.

Our team construction mitigates the risk to greatest extent possible as we are coming together as 3 established business units that are led by very committed community members in Cardano, with wide professional networks in our own locations to assist us with creating this new model. 

Risk 2 - operational risk: The team are working across timezones and although we have worked together successfully to date (for over 6 months), schedules change, communications become unclear

We have created a specific channel, a culture and ritual for check-ins which keep us each up to date with each other, and ensure transparent, open dialogue based around shared values and purpose which extends beyond this project. We are committed to the ‘infinite game’ of making the world a better place.

Risk 3 - strategic risk: The business and economic environment is changing constantly, and while we believe, like the founder Charles Hoskinson, that the arc of history bends towards justice and equality of opportunity “things may break”.

All three proposers are deeply engaged in the ecosystem in and around Cardano. We also have a broad range of Project Catalyst and community members in our local ecosystems who are able to advise and assist the team for the duration of this project.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

The core value of this proposal for the Cardano community is to have a DAO of smarthubs operating together in an open platform, as a reusable utility, to support all Cardano.

Project roadmap:

Phase 1 – Defining the Smarthub functions (8 weeks)

The team will analyse research and available resources from close colleagues we work alongside who are also Project Catalyst funded proposers, e.g.; the New Zealand based team working on the F8: Lobbying for favourable legislation: Impact Finance Regulatory Sandbox Project

(https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403011) which includes the author of the recently published Phd Decentralised Autonomous Organisations: Governance, Dispute Resolution and Regulation (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3971228)

This will revolve around a series of development sessions between the proposal team which will also be open to Project Catalyst community members to join and participate in codesign of:

• Relationships between local business hubs and the centralised hub
• Planning around resources which will be shared and what will be local/localised
• The revenue model of the overarching DAO and each smart hub
• How the DAO supports the three inital local hubs and new hubs
• What business tools and DApps we need to build to support the work; e.g.;
• Lead generation dapp
• Onboarding new companies process
• Impact measurement and network valuation tools
• How the DAO of smarthubs creates collaborations with other Project Catalyst community platforms and tools
• How the DAO creates collaborations with external platforms, partners and tools
• The legal structures
• Answers to the other questions that will come up through the work

Phase 2 – Designing the DAO model (8 weeks) 

This part of the project will also be conducted in a series of sessions between the proposal team but also open for community members. In these sessions we will:

• Define the vision, mission and values for the DAO
• Describe the roles and governance of the different stakeholders 
• Describe the measurement and metrics
• Describe the dapps that can be built to support the smart hub (DID, lead generation dapp…)
• Describe the token model that can be used for interactions between local hub and smart hub
• Build a 12 month plan for the DAO 

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Budget

Phase 1 – Defining the Smarthub functions

• Research & analysis & preparation of meetings estimated 10 hours per week for the team x $100 x 8 weeks = $8000USD
• 8 x 2 hour weekly sessions x 3 team members x $100 = $4800USD

Phase 2 – Designing the DAO model

• Design of the models, preparation of documentation on the various topics (as  above) 10 hours per week for the team x $100 x 8 weeks = $8000
• 8 x 2 hours weekly sessions x 3 team members x $100 = $4800  

Admin, presentations, videos/recordings, closing reports = $3000  

Total budget: $28600 / @$9533 per team member $2383 per month

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Team

Our team includes longstanding Project Catalyst community members, who will call on their networks. We all have companies operating as local hubs for business and entrepreneurial development, onboarding local companies from the countries in which we reside.  

We have been collaborating and coordinating our activities around how to develop our separate companies into a smarthub DAO so we can share resources, tools and more efficiently and effectively. Our ambition is to create a structure which enables us to collaborate with more hubs under a unique DAO structure. 

Nori Nishigaya https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishigaya

Founder of the Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance (SANADA), co-founder of Bridge Builders and SAMON pool. Member of the  CC Admin Team, Cardano4Climate, and Littlefish Foundation. Cardano Ambassador, CA, and Funded proposer. Passionate about radical inclusivity and community, and devoted to making Cardano the best community on the planet. Nori brings over 30 years of experience in software development, agile methodologies, leadership and managing teams, and founding and running technology startups.

Yoram Ben-Zvi https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoram-ben-zvi-446836

A social entrepreneur. In the last five years, Yoram is focusing on combining impact and business. A mentor with the international board, operations, and startup experience. Yoram is an active catalyst member, CA, and part of the Cardano4Climate community. He is active in promoting the Catalyst and Cardano community to impact companies and networks to connect them to the ecosystem, e.g.; seedstars.com. A successful proposer and part of the AIM team, he has been involved with the Catalyst SDG tool cardanocataly.st/proposer-tool-sdg/#/ (which is included in the proposal process) and the Catalyst alignment to SDG research. 

Jo Allum https://www.linkedin.com/in/joallum/ 

Co-founder of community-led coworking space, Entrepreneur Support Organisation (including incubation, acceleration programs) and a country-wide network of ESO's for Impact entrepreneurs. Contracted to support Angel Association New Zealand's Investor network and member of the committee of New Zealand's Open Source Society. Jo’s intention is to advance the establishment of the global ‘innovation commons’ for common-good with Cardano. CA, F7, F6 Funded Proposer, Challenge Team member at Improve and Grow Auditability. Early contributor to Eastern and Pacific Townhalls, Audit Circle, Community Governance Oversight, the emerging Cardano Impact Collective, Done Collectively and Catalyst GPS.

The team has already worked together on various projects in the last six months. We have complimentary experience and are located in different timezones & cultures which adds valuable international experience to this project. We are all aligned on values, purpose, and are dedicated full time to Cardano and Catalyst advancement. We all have previous funded proposals as well as multiple proposals in fund 9. 

This specific proposal is focusing on bringing together the learnings from activities and work we have already done in the last 6 months and will compensate for our time to be dedicated to applying our knowledge and experience to the community, lead the co-creation of the DAO model and prepare the suggested documentation. 

As mentioned above, this proposal is connected and part of a business development smarthub model we are working on for and with Project Catalyst & Cardano. The model also includes;

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/421607 F9: Legal & Financial Implementations: Onboarded companies playbook

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397339 F8: Business Solutions (B2B & B2C): Community Lead Generation

For a full picture of the work in progress, the following docs provide workload management information for each team member;

https://clik.vc/workloadyoram

https://clik.vc/worloadnori

https://clik.vc/workloadjo

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

This proposal follows on from the Geneva Business Development Hub proposal. Our goal with that, as with this proposal, is to develop and test the necessary elements of a business model for a global smarthub DAO. Each defined and discrete piece of work in our proposals, when combined, will achieve the goal, while each piece adds value to the community in and of itself. 

Through our work on this proposal we will inevitably scope the design for potential DApps and tokenisation models which we may propose in future Catalyst funding rounds. Those solutions will also be developed with and available to the community to support the business growth of Cardano.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Progress and development measures

Key deliverables will be;

1) Engagement with Cardano community and quantitative and qualitative participation – evidenced through recordings and artefacts generated in the sessions described above.

2) Identification of use cases with global applicability and how they connect the smarthub(s) and the DAO – evidenced through documentation which will accompany the project closing report.

3) Regular documentation of progress, tracked using Kanban with process and practice, challenges and opportunities being updated regularly based on the topics described in the plan (above).

• Define the vision, mission and values for the DAO
• Describe the roles and governance of the different stakeholders 
• Describe the measurement and metrics 
• Describe the dapps that can be built to support the smart hub (DID, lead generation DApp, etc.)
• Describe the token model that can be used for interactions between local hub and smart hub
• Build a 12 month plan for the DAO 

4) Meeting deliverables deadlines (see roadmap/timeline above).

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

What does success for this project look like?

Success will be developing a DAO model that we can launch to begin a new experiment to demonstrate how local businesses worldwide could work in a collaborative way using a DAO structure. This model could be then also adapted and iterated upon by other global-local (‘glocal’) organisations. Ultimately we will be in a position to prove there are no better ways to manage your DAO than to use Cardano DAOs. From Small Business to Global Communities. Cardano DAOs deliver.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This proposal follows on from the Geneva Business Development Hub proposal.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG goals:

Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

SDG subgoals:

Strengthen domestic resource mobilization, including through international support to developing countries, to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection

Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge-sharing on mutually agreed terms, including through improved coordination among existing mechanisms, in particular at the United Nations level, and through a global technology facilitation mechanism

Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the Sustainable Development Goals, including through North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation

Increase the access of small-scale industrial and other enterprises, in particular in developing countries, to financial services, including affordable credit, and their integration into value chains and markets

Facilitate sustainable and resilient infrastructure development in developing countries through enhanced financial, technological and technical support to African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States

#proposertoolsdg