Please describe your proposed solution.
PMM proposes to add a system and methods to facilitate funded proposal, planning, team building, strategy design and execution, by enabling funded proposers to find help among skilled members of the Cardano's community that are willing to mentor projects and proposers. Working towards the achievement of outstanding results, value and increase the chances creating amazing, impactful and lovable products and outcomes.
Complementing and furthering the successfully funded Fund 6 and Fund 7 Proposals Mentors Marketplace and F7 New Members Engagement that joined our platform, this second phase proposal seeks to continuing adding new functionality to the platform and to enhance its capabilities after launching our first release in July (all three previous proposals are now completed)
Catalyst Proposal LifeCycle
After our Discovery phase, we have identified three main stages of the Proposal Journey:
- When a proposer enters the Cardano's Ecosystem and the Catalyst Project and wants to understand how she/he can be part of it, wether she/he has an idea for a proposal or not.
- When a proposer wants to create a proposal and realize her/his idea, applying to a Catalyst Fund round.
- When a proposer got her/his proposal funded and needs to deliver on the promises.
Our 1st phase, F6 funded proposal - Proposals Mentor Marketplace - aims to solve Stage 2 of the Proposal LifeCycle, and it is on track to deliver on that goal, after successful completion of the MVP1, which launched in May 2022 as a closed beta, to further test the system.
Our funded F7 continuation proposal, enhanced our backend, data model and build the proper CI/CD infrastructure to be able to produce continuous learning and improvements, following our LEAN approach to generate value.
Also our funded F7 New members onboarding proposal, extended our model to cover Stages 1 and 3 of the Proposal LifeCyle, adding the TASKs entity and the Collaborators role to the marketplace.
This proposal intends to provide continuation and new enhancements to PMM, with three main objectives:
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Incorporate new possibilities to the formalization of agreements between the participants, allowing to register more details and even attach a wallet for the payments. As this is a key element to make the platform more appealing and of value to all parties. (Exploring and paving the way for a potential embedded smartcontract).
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Produce a reports section, with key performance metrics and statistics aimed for all parties to understand their efforts, their results and general KPIs to further improve their goal. We will also incorporate a Guidance section, with some metrics about past funds to be used as guidance on how to produce better proposals and testimonies on how to overcome main issues and roadblocks in Catalyst projects.
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We will produce a second UX phase, to understand if the user personas, needs and pains detected are properly solved by the platform and also which ones are not yet covered, so we can plan to add them to the marketplace.
Our Platform (PMM - Proposals Mentors Marketplace)
This platform was planned as a unique directory of ranked mentors and new members collaborators, that offer their help to proposal building, promotion and execution. Mentor, Proposer and Collaborator profile and success metrics are visible in the platform, with certain key attributes that help the proposer to select/be matched to the relevant mentors and collaborators who can help bring their ideas to become reality.
Mentors and Collaborators will be able to monetize their advice and help, should they desire and agree this with proposers. By agreeing with the proposers during the application process, a sort of 'coming together' to agreement. We see that this could be in the form of pre-funding payment, post funding payment, equity interest or some mix or other in kind payment. The platform will help facilitate the agreement process.
In this initial stage we are experimenting with this open option to learn what are the different monetization needs from the community. Now the platform could leverage smart contracts or detailed agreements to help with the transparency, good will and monetization of the efforts and the marketplace itself, and maybe helping also Cardano's to send and track funding for proposals.
Our current State
At the time of these proposal writing, we are recruiting mentors from existing and well known Catalyst community members, such as Victor, Dzhuliana, Ninh, Ayax and also the proposers. We are starting our public usage of the platform aim in Africa for Funded proposers of previous funds, and new proposers in F10.
We also need to get a domain and connect it to our deployment, so it is easier to promote and attract members.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
Project Catalyst's funding process is funding significantly more proposals each fund. In order to continue to grow, a principal aim of the ecosystem is to reach outside the existing pool of proposers and encourage and engage entrepreneurs, developers and idea generators. We aim to help guide these enthusiasts to reach towards Cardano's long term goal of impacting 1 Billion people.
During Fund6 around 151 proposals were funded, 269 in F7 and 367 in Fund8. With the success of Catalyst and the available Funds in each funding round ($12.8M) the number of funded proposals will likely continue to increase.
Even though each proposal is being given feedback, assessed and finally voted, that is not the end rather the start of the journey to deliver real value. Delivering on intention, even for experienced proposers is not always easy. Hurdles and unexpected complex situations are often encountered.
Having a pool of dedicated, skilled and knowledgeable mentors that can continue to offer benefits to the proposers, community and ecosystem. By having access to highly skilled and seasoned mentors, proposers can have access to the wealth of experience to deliver on intention.
So giving that brief, our proposal helps the Challenge main objective of Novel and viable applications and products get built on top of Cardano attracting users. Integrations manage to pull in more adoption. And it is considered as it is a Marketplace.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
RISK1: Not able to Recruit Mentors
MITIGATION:
This tool's first goal is to serve the Catalyst Community, our Discovery showed that there are many members of the community willing to perform as Mentors (both Pro bono and Paid) so our current hypothesis is that recruiting mentors to the platform is doable, aiming at the purpose we all believe in, fostering a larger community and a thriving ecosystem. At this stage, with some effort, thru the Catalyst Discord and Telegram channels, and our own personal relationships, some of them already joined, and we are confident that more will follow. After the public presentation of PMM at the TH we will reach enough people that will jump in.
RISK2: Not able to Recruit Proposers
MITIGATION:
Recruiting proposers imposes a tougher challenge, as per the immense information that a new comer faces when entering the ecosystem, is not that easy to stand out. We will try several approaches to achieve that, including:
- Presentations at the TownHalls (Catalyst, Africa, Eastern and the upcoming Latam), Swarm sessions, AfterTown Breakouts, Ideafest.
- We plan also to make agreements with the Accelerators and Mentors program within the Challenge to make coordinated efforts to leverage the platform for their mentoring efforts or as a staged process from-to Catalyst (e.g. Seedstars, Entreprenerdy and others whom we been interacting)
- Then we have our early adopters' mentors which are active community members, that are usually go to persons for new proposers seeking for help, they could be incentivized to bring those proposers to the platform and use it as a way to facilitate and formalize their agreements.
- And finally after building some initial momentum, we will be able to show the community how much better possibilities you have on getting your proposal funded, if you use the platform and its mentors, creating a viral type of adoption.
RISK3: Not much engagement at the Platform
MITIGATION:
Regarding the FIT between the proposer's proposal and the mentor, we found many insights during our Discovery phase on Why and How this shall happen. Agreements will play a key part on making this experience great for everyone, that's why they are key for this phase.
The platform also considers a Ranking system, created by the community's opinion after each mentoring and collaboration opportunity ends, Proposers, Mentors and Collaborators will be building their reputation, based on this ranking, helping future proposers to see the history of a certain mentor and help her/him decide on wether that mentor is a good match for the proposal, maximizing the interest and usage of the patform.