Oddbean

Some suggestions of expanding the funding ecosystem of Nostr. (This is not for OpenSats or Odell, but for all). 1. Explore equity crowdfunding that enable users to own equity of the company. This will speed up early stages and users can help devs grow the business 2. OpenSats to expand individual funding into modular system. Like how designers are funded to assist many devs, also fund PR and comms, marketing etc to assist multiple devs. This are diff modules of a startup to make the outcome more complete. 3. Setup incubation / accelerator : Devs here are not entrepreneurs (yet) and don’t fully understand market penetration, financial plans and growth, user engagements etc (yet). This is common for any tech person who starts a startup. They need different help 4. Fund receivers to provide ROI from time to time based on funding - this will help everyone understand how the funds were maximised. This opens up transparency for both funders like OpenSats and HRF and for fund receivers. And will be an attractive factor for users, angels who want to invest large amount onto devs. 5. There are many types of funding models - anyone can create create this and implement this. To keep yelling at OpenSats is not going to make much diff only because the devs here are plenty and the market is wanting a wider funding ecosystem. Whatever is happening here is natural growth and a good thing. On a side note : 1. It’s good to expand funding ecosystem. There are no disbenefits. 2. Bootstrap means using profit to reinvest into r&d and at early stages there are little / no profit so it’s a slow slow process. Having funds expedites the build. 3. Break even won’t happen tmr or this year or next year (in case anyone is wondering). 4. Market penetration is important. Nostr has only teased the market and not gone head in. 5. A lot complain why users don’t want to pay for what they build. This is likely because users don’t know what you built or don’t see a value to it. I once read somewhere that entrepreneurs jump off a cliff and builds a plane on their way down. This is true. Good luck all !

I also received a lot of feedback from Nostriches who said they were uncertain who to donate to and how, or even who had built the stuff they're using. I see things like what @Karnage and @PABLOF7z have produced as a way to fill that information/convenience gap. @ODELL it would be great if OpenSats could somehow refer to these tools or something similar from their webpage. That would be a big help for those who didn't receive grants, to receive free marketing from you all.

Agree that using some of the grant money to create a "help devs to help themselves" infrastructure would go a long way. They're doing that with #SovEng and some of the design documentation, etc. That stuff scales really well, without skewing the market as much. It's clear that there are a lot of good devs missing what I'd call "project infrastructure" and "business knowledge" and they don't have the professional experience or the time to learn it and provide it to themselves. That's giving an advantage to my own team, but I can't provide it to everyone. It's frustrating because I see interesting projects sort of wilting away and devs getting discouraged.

Everyone needs this. 🫂 To be honest, everyone needs it in real life, too. I just spent three months trying to quit my job and it still isn't finalized. And then I got a new job offer on Sunday. 🤷‍♀️ Real life has the same lack of human resources. The people were never born, who are now needed as workers.

I wonder how “social onboarding” could be funded? I’m developing a web client and incentive program to support sharing Nostr with friends. While onboarding projects are typical “low hanging fruit” when it comes to receiving grants, “social onboarding” ALSO has the “value add” of strengthening webs of trust for new accounts. ADDITIONALLY … the “social onboarding” user experience is an excellent opportunity for clients and relays (and their funding partners) to gain new users, and for influencers (and their supporters) to gain new follows. Nostr Advocates act as the conduit, sharing their recommended apps and follows with their “new account” friends. Could a “multi stakeholder owner membership” (equity crowdfunding, where everybody has a stake in the business) funding model be a something that works in this case?

Perhaps, let’s establish some common grounds first. ** On funding : 1. Grants are technically for development purposes to encourage the building part of the business. It is with hope that after you build, you find other funding means or you can take off the business independently. 2. Loans - there are two types - Business loans are what you take when your businesses are generating stable revenue. Personal loans are the riskiest as early stage business has high failure rates, you don’t have income and you gamble everything. 3. Equity - you are selling company stock for money, with the assumption that you can generate returns. You can sell your stock to anyone who believes this business has potential. Traditionally, there’s angels as pre-seed / seed stage, VCs at seed/series A,B and PEs from Series B until IPO. Equity crowdfunding sometimes falls under pre-seed or seed stage depending on who is investing in you. There are diff interest of investors - those who want to expand the business quick and fast and those who prefer slow and steady, with profit sharing revenue, ** On selection at early stages : Typically stuff like EBITDA / DCF / CCF / PTA can be thrown out of the window for early stages. The Early-stage evaluations are normally based on : 1. Founders - industry expertise, creativity, ability to think out of the box, integrity. 2. Business potentials - market size and opportunity, business model, competitive landscape. 3. Traction - based on how you are able to acquire customers. ** On startup stages 1. Pre-seed - brings an idea to life. You might do rapid or native prototyping to test the receptiveness of the market on your innovation. Often, you might do several iterations to find a fit. Most devs are at this stage now, and build something with the assumption that it is awesome, do not test the market, and get frustrated when it doesn't pick up. 2. Seed stage - this is when you create something more solid like an MVP after a little test on the market. Good time to apply for grants as you will need some time creating a better product and testing market more in depth. This is when you officially launch it. 3. Series A onwards is exploring market deeply and penetrating other markets ** Now that we have established that, you need to ask yourself a few questions : 1. Does your product work ? Not functionally but in the market i.e - How many people have you used it on to bring into Nostr ? 1000? 10,0000? How long did it take you to engage them ? Who are there and where are they from ? 2. If your product can be monetised in order to generate revenue, then you can attract equity investors. 3. Alternatively you can create a revenue sharing model where you don’t need investors but you can attract people to generate and earn income - the more people participate, it becomes an attraction factor to get more people in. And serves your end goal of bringing people into Nostr. 4. Are you building something out of goodwill /non profit /no touch of capitalism that purely benefits the people? then you need to get funds out of goodwill from opensats or people like Jack who don’t expect you to repay. 5. Can your product be easily leveraged as a simple app / interface by clients? This will determine your product value. It doesn’t matter if it's open source or not, the purpose of your product and traction is what makes a difference. 6. How can you grow your product ? This question is really important. Can you partner up with clients that attracts specific communities for example like Coracle who works closely with Christian community + local business community or other clients that serves diff purposes / market? Can you expand it into local meet-ups based on interest ? a dating platform ? nostr nest hangout sessions ? You won't find the answers to these questions overnight or in a week. You will have to test the market, find ways for your product to reach people wherever they are, and go through many iterations. On a diff note, I wrote more on equity crowdfunding here and have brief example of cap table, income statement if you want to read more. note1xsyxqsv2xxfr3wyssaagp73nmujryyylw5fe4n90t6tksq2x8qws29hu84 Hope this helps. All the best. Keep going!

Wow. Thanks for the detailed reply. I had already read your reply to will earlier, and wanted bounce this by you then… I’ve already received a small grant from @Blockhenge for an MVP release. Was supposed to be done by end of March … so I’m kinda rushing to get this out the door asap … but once I do I’ll be looking to take the next steps. I’ll prolly need another grant (and enough for an assistant) but I do see great promise for nostr in “social onboarding”. I have 20+ years in creative web dev. I’d like to see where this could go, cause frankly, Nostr is worth it. https://github.com/nostrmeetme/nostrmeetme nostr:note1kvvn8ygjntsrts0lq4ndz943eu7regwcqske4r0uejs6j58030tstgglmv