GCP #8: Launching GCRx - A Software Venture and Spin-Off from GCR

Summary/Proposal

Currently, GCR DAO operates as a comprehensive community, managing a wide range of tasks from sourcing and investing in Web3 deals to conducting research, marketing, and building internal tools. This proposal aims to establish GCRx, a separate company spin-off from GCR DAO, with a focus on building a technology platform to enable communities to invest together. The goal of the company is to enable other communities to invest together by leveraging GCR's successful investing practices and brand.

Motivation

Since the DAO’s establishment, GCR has become one of the most recognizable brands in the Investment DAO space. In the last three years, the DAO has deployed over $41M in capital as a DAO and invested in over 65 projects including Lens Protocol, Sweatcoin, Aurora, Mysten Labs (Sui), LayerZero, and Magic Eden.

GCR DAO is mostly full-time crypto professionals ranging from Union Square Ventures investing team members, to Arca, Polygon, NEAR, and other ecosystem executives, and the members have span across the globe to form a formidable community worldwide.

Now, the motivation behind the creation of the software company, GCRx and this proposal, will allow us to take the GCR brand further. Nevertheless, there needs to be a separate entity established because of the following:

• The GCR brand will be symbiotic across GCRx and future brands the DAO incubates. By separating from the DAO, different organizations can run independently with different structures.
• Establishing a separate software company enables these entities to raise capital independently in a more fitting legal structure, providing the company with more resources for growth and development.
• The separation would reduce the financial burn of the DAO by about one-third, extending the DAO’s operational runway.
• This separation would allow the DAO to focus more on decentralization and meeting the needs and interests of the community.
• The spin-off would have more operational freedom. While the GCR community would benefit from further decentralization and proposal-driven decision-making, the software team requires agile and opinionated work from full-time builders for efficient software development.

Details on GCRx

The goal of GCRx (temp name) is to build a technology platform to enable communities to invest together. Many of kickstarting the company has begun and below are the details for launching the company into a completely independent but synergistic entity:

• Establish a C-Corp for GCRx and have it be a standalone company.
• Join the OrangeDAO accelerator in July-September of 2023, which would fund GCRx with some initial capital.
• Spin out the team and divide members into either GCRx-only or to receive payroll from both GCR DAO and GCRx should the member continue to work on both. Continue to ramp up hiring for GCRx based on the company’s needs and runway.
• Explore further fundraising and monetization opportunities leveraging GCR’s brand and community in the next 3-5 months.

Benefits for GCR DAO and $GCR Token

The establishment of the C-Corp, GCRx, would bring several benefits directly to the DAO.

• The proposed restructuring would extend the DAO's operational runway from approximately 10 months to over 14 months.
• GCR will retain 25% of ownership and shareholders in the new company.
• GCRx would focus on creating software products that expand the use case of the $GCR token, support the treasury, and initiate other projects to continue the success of GCR.
• One of the board seats of GCRx would be occupied by the GCR DAO Core Team, ensuring representation and alignment of interests.
• Once capitalized over a certain threshold, GCRx would purchase a series of $GCR tokens at a pre-determined price. These tokens would be held on GCRx's balance sheet to further align the new entity with the GCR DAO.

Vote:

The ‘Single choice voting’ Snapshot voting system will be used for this proposal, meaning each voter must hold at least 1 GCR token to be able to vote and may select only one choice:

Yes - Approve the proposal No - Decline the proposal