Partner Support Squad

by 0xd11a019a70986bd607cbc1c1f9ae221c78581f49 (Yemel)

Should the following Tier 5: up to $120,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Community category be approved?

Abstract

Create a task force to develop and maintain a public registry of individuals and organizations offering their services to build content on Decetraland’s platform. The goal is to connect brands coming into the space with talented builders who can help with events production, wearables making, 3D modeling and SDK programming.

Grant size

118,200 USD

Beneficiary address

0x444327160dC3e72F3146b7F95e7D77Ca9aBF6172

Email address

yemel@decentraland.org

Description

As the Metaverse concept goes mainstream there are more and more brands coming into the space willing to build a presence in Decentraland. However, creating 3D content can be a daunting task and most organizations will prefer to hire experienced professionals.

Decentraland creators are one of the most valuable audiences Decentraland has at this point. It is crucial to have a dedicated team to support them and promote their services, effectively helping them to grow into a sustainable business.

Creating a public and official registry of Verified Partners will promote transparency between brands and creators. With this initiative, we aim to democratize access to qualified suppliers and generate new sources of business opportunities for them.

The first goal of this team is to survey all creators in the Decentraland community and list them in a public registry of creators, the Verified Partners Registry. The team will also provide support and foster networking opportunities between the partners community.

A second goal of the team is to do an outreach to brands willing to invest in their online presence. The team will create a strategy to market the services provided by the verified partners, onboarding brands, and position Decentraland as a great place to build.

Specification

This grant will set up a budget to run this team for the next 6 months. This grant could be extended upon a further decision of the DAO if the grant succeeds in its objectives.

The proposed Partner Support Squad will be implemented under the same non-profit foundation created for the DAO Governance Squad. This foundation provides a flexible vehicle to manage a budget with autonomy while still giving authority to the DAO to steer its direction.

The grant will be provided as a vesting contract of stablecoins assigned to a 2-out-of-3 signatures wallet. The key holders are Bianca Monti, Yemel Jardi and maraoz in their respective capacities as Squad Lead, DAO Committee Member and Trusted Community Member.

The public registry will first launch as a dedicated page on Decentraland’s documentation site, a testing version of it is already available here. Once a substantial number of providers are included and the services they provide are surveyed, the team will plan the migration of the directory to its own domain for a richer experience (searching, filtering, applying, and more).

Personnel

The team is made up of two departments and a project manager to coordinate their efforts:

• Business Development: Two experienced producers will dedicate 60hrs per week to verify partners and create business opportunities for them.

• Marketing: Two experienced marketers who will be working 20 hrs per week on designing and implementing communication strategies to onboard new partners and brands. They will manage a monthly budget to produce content and advertise it.

Team members:

• Project Manager - Bianca Monti ( Linkedin )
• Producer - Agustin Pagano - ( Linkedin )
• Producer - Alejandro Escoda ( Resume )
• Marketer - Matias Basile ( Linkedin )
• Marketer - Ramiro Valverde ( Linkedin )

Total Hours: ~440 monthly hours or ~110 weekly hours. Budget: $19,700 USD per month or a total of $118,200 USD

This includes:

• Team compensation: $97,200 USD
• Marketing Budget: $18,000 USD
• Operational expenses: $3,000

Roadmap and milestones

During the 6 months of this project the team will focus on:

• Bootstrap the Verified Partners Registry.

  1. Contact all Decentraland creators and survey the services they provide.
  2. Develop a process/criteria to verify the partners and previous experience.
  3. Review applications from potential partners to join the registry.
  4. Evaluate results and propose a definition for the next version of the registry.

• Market the Verified Partners Registry to several audiences.

  1. Reach out to all studios and freelancers already providing services for other metaverses in the industry.
  2. Educate brands about the possibility of building a presence in the metaverse.
  3. Create business opportunities by connecting brands with relevant verified partners.

• Support the partners' community & foster networking opportunities

  1. Discover the needs and opportunities to empower/boost the partners' community.
  2. Host regular online meetings between the partners' community to share knowledge and present relevant initiatives.
  3. Collaborate with the DCL Foundation Marketing team to amplify partners' announcements and achievements.
  4. Collaborate with DCL Foundation Engineering teams to provide technical support to verified partners and summarize feedback about DCL tools usage.

Finally, the team will plan the next iteration of the registry, which might include the migration to its own site and the inclusion of the DAO in the process of adding/removing members of the registry.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO