Please describe your proposed solution.
Why mentorship & coaching is important
There are incredible tech people working with Cardano technology. However, to grow a solution into a successful company, tech is not enough, even if you have the most innovative solution. To build success and scale, teams also need to foster an entrepreneurial mindset and capabilities. We know blockchain developers hugely benefit from, learning about: clarifying their purpose as individuals and a business, market analysis, customer acquisition, funding, and strategic planning. This empowers developers to not only create innovative blockchain solutions but also build sustainable businesses around them.
Background
We have been working on those issues for many years as mentors, coaches, and consultants, for fast-growth technology startups and mid-tier enterprises.
In the last two years, in particular, we have been proud to be working as part of the Catalyst ecosystem. During this, we have been funded by Catalyst to undertake several projects, to transpose our proven set of tools and frameworks into a bespoke Toolkit designed to support blockchain developers and the wider community, as they undertake the journey from technical solutions to successfully scaleable enterprises.
Our projects include:
F7: Dev Accelerator - closed out
F7 SPO Incubator - closed out
F8: SPO Incubator productisation - closed out
F8: Dev Accelerator - 2:2 bespoke mentoring, Pro bono - closed out.
F8 Train the Trainer Africa - ongoing
F9: Full Value, Organisation Valuation Dashboard - ongoing
Our closed-out projects have been deemed a great success and value-add by the 20-plus community members that have reviewed the closed-out projects so far - as well as the project catalyst team and audience: where we delivered some of our modules as part of the catalyst coordinators programme.
We Are Ready to SCALE
The IP build phase of our projects is now complete.
We have an integrated suite of Fit For Purpose, proven programmes to support teams and companies reach scalable growth.
However, although these programmes add fantastic value to our participants, the process is manual: they are at present provided primarily synchronously with live mentors and coaches, with limited time slots, and restricted participant numbers available - with programmes maybe 80% live, 20% automated.
We would like to change that, now we would like to dramatically increase the number of developers who can access our programmes, enabling them to get access whenever they want and work on them at their own pace and level of interaction.
The opportunity -
Automating mentorship
We have developed a huge amount of content through the programs and our work over the last 20 years, and specifically the last 2 years on Cardano. Our programmes are based upon Exponential Organisation growth (ExO) principles - focussing on how companies can scale through solving ‘wicked challenges’ to harness ‘exponential opportunities’.
With blockchain technology and AI, there is a great opportunity to take our programme delivery to the next level: by automating the process, while providing personalised high service as appropriate to teams and companies.
Our vision is to build an online Dev Accelerator Academy that will overtime automate 80% of the mentorship process and keep 20% for specific areas where companies need help. For that, we are partnering with blockchain and AI companies to develop ‘mentorship 3.0’.
With Web-3. there is also the opportunity to build out our solution to create a mentorship community supported by a dynamic learning environment.
Our Solution for this proposal - A Mentoring programme for Developers, based on a Project Based Learning platform
The main objective of this proposal is to build and deliver a high-value mentorship programme aimed at supporting blockchain developers on their journey from technology solutions to successful scalable businesses. Where the programme itself, being delivered from the Andamio project-based-learning (PBL), enabled platform, can be delivered asynchronously, but with a rich learning experience and is both easily accessible, interactive, affordable and scalable.
The programme will be based upon our highly successful coaching and mentoring suite - that forms the basis of our Exponential Organisation Growth platform.
The Edify Colabs Online Mentoring Programme for Scalable Growth
We have 8 unique PBL Modules to create for this proposal covering the following subject sessions:
- Programme overview
- Business Audit
- Purpose and Intent
- Business Model
- External Business Environment
- Product Proposition
- Customer Proposition
- Positioning and Market
- Channel Proposition
- Building Passive Assets: Systems and Things
- Building Active Assets: Leadership Teams and People
- Commercial Vision
- Business Plan Development and Scenario Planning
- Avenues for Funding support
Link to miro board for full programme overview of modules and sessions: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVM5pTvn8=/?share_link_id=879693464337
About Edify Colabs
Edify Collabs is the on-chain expression of The Edify Ecosystem (Edify) - an impact, innovation, investment-focused consultancy, coaching practice and partner Ecosystem. Edify Colabs was formed to work within the Catalyst community - and have been a proactive member for over 18 months.
https://linktr.ee/edify_collabs .
The Andamio platform (by Gimbalabs)
Edify Collabs is partnering with Andamio to provide the core technology required.
The Andamio Platform:
- Provides a Learning Management System (LMS) for onboarding new contributors to your project/organization
- Is built on Cardano with Plutus smart contracts and UI components for treasury management, skill accreditation, project contribution, and emergent reputation
The Andamio MVP was built and tested around the Plutus PBL - for more info check https://plutuspbl.io/
You can find an introductory overview of the Andamio platform here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12VLfrZVaqLqzRCv_4ME78t4JERxeCLN8/view?usp=sharing
As a result of the work Gimbalabs has done over the past years through the Plutus Project-Based Learning (PBL) program, Gimbalabs Playground, and Gimbalabs Live Coding, the Gimbalabs team created Andamio which provides an LMS platform for any organization to onboard and reward contributors. Contributors can earn skills that enable them to contribute to projects. Our Plutus PBL (https://plutuspbl.io/) is a good example.
Link to example Plutus PBL course, which is the Andamio MVP: <https://plutuspbl.io/>
Fig 1. The PBL Framework. A high overview description of a PBL module.
Project based learning courses (PBL):
Edify Collabs will use the Andamio platform to develop the following courses:
- ExO programme for mentoring developers and businesses to begin and succeed on their journey to sustainable exponential growth
Andamio features to be used by Edify Collabs:
- The Project Based Learning Platform
- Proof of Completion
- Register skills and knowledge acquired by completing PBL course module
- Register contribution generated by each partnership generator (partnership generated)
- Smart contract for skills and credentials
- Web interface
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
Essential Toolkit development
It is well known that around 50% of new enterprises fail within 2 years of inception and 80% fail within 5 years. Many of the reasons for this failure rate are not because of a lack of technical expertise, but a lack of time, knowledge or experience about how to build a successful enterprise around the initial team. Our solution addresses this need by providing an integrated Catalyst-developed and proven system for supporting tech-based teams as they start the journey of transitioning into successful scalable Exponential Organisations.
Attracting developers
This platform and programme development is centred around being able to deliver our content in a PBL format at scale. Therefore after the initial launch, it will be proactively marketed both internally to catalyst developers and externally to other blockchain and AI-focused developers and teams.
Supporting Developer wants
Over many years working in the tech space we understand that all developer teams need entrepreneurial smarts alongside a system to support them to successfully scale their business.
Our programme for scaling mentorship on Cardano will provide entrepreneurial developers in the Cardano dev ecosystem with access to a structured, proven system for achieving scalable growth for their enterprise over time. It will be there to support those that need it within the Catalyst community, when they need it as they need it, at a cost that they feel reflects the value they have received.
Augmenting and developing dev motivation
Blockchain devs are notoriously focused and hard-working. Our programme provides them with the Business Toolkit: covering areas such as purpose and business model, product and go-to-market strategy and funding support- that will enable them to more effectively undertake the business growth journey, focus on what they love and so set and reach their desired outcomes.
Delivering easier, more effective, faster, enterprise project development
From our experience successful dev teams have developed the balance between technical capabilities, entrepreneurship focus and financial acumen. Which allows them to deliver better projects, in less time, and more easily. Our programme will help support them to develop their entrepreneurial and business capabilities allowing them to scale their business: easier, faster, and with better results
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
We plan to measure the following KPIs
- Number of developers/companies engaging with the Edify Collabs team / Andamio platform for programme
- Number of developers/companies entering the programme
- Number of participants completing the programme.
Additional programme metrics will be developed with Andamio, but will typically include:
- Successful business audits completed
- Successful vision and business plans completed
- Number of business/product ideas per member
Finally, as we have done with all our F7 and F8 projects, participants will be asked to complete a review survey of the programme - which is also used to iterate the programme structure, content, and delivery.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
As with our previous F7 and F8 projects all KPIs and reviews are included in our project close-out reports and the community will have access to it.
Also as this is an MVP, and we have used online Learning Management Systems before we understand how complex and time-consuming this process can be. Therefore we plan to compile a brief set of - train-the-trainer videos explaining the main elements of the programme development initially as a guide - for use by Edify team members and partners. We plan to make this open access as well, to support subsequent members of the Catalyst community that may wish to use the Andamio platform.
We also plan to run multiple taster sessions during the programme development and delivery period to both build on the MVP and also build awareness of the programme within the community.
Edify and Andamio are working with the mindset of Open source. In some cases for business, legal or privacy reasons some information will not be openly available.