On The Other Side ep 28 - DAO Mini-Series: Finding product-market fit
Primer: How should DAOs approach product-market fit? Who are the users of a given DAO’s products? Often, users overlap with investors and community members. In this episode of On The Other Side, host Chase Chapman invites Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans from the Brave New York podcast to discuss product-market fit and the roles of individuals in DAOs.
Context
Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans have a company called The Ready. They provide consulting to small and large companies
There’s a difference between larger companies that have found product-market fit and are moving towards self-management vs smaller companies who are still trying to find product-market fit
Companies have to be designed to serve users
In the context of DAOs, the main question is who are the users
Aaron’s Thoughts On Product-Market Fit
They have experience in both camps right now:
The Ready already has customers that pay them and is profitable
Murmur, another of their company, is still on the hunt for product-market fit
When building something from scratch, founders look for:
The fit between the problem that they are trying to solve and the focus area they care about
The customer target and the product or service that they are going to build to fulfill it
DAOs sometimes mistake their membership for the target customer
Sometimes, DAO membership overlaps with that of the customer
Roles Of Individuals In DAOs
One of the biggest challenges in DAOs is to figure out the roles of individuals:
Sometimes, users could be members (e.g. Friends With Benefits)
For product-focused DAOs, users use the products and are also part of the community. This introduces confusion
Contributors feel like employees of a DAO
Many Web2 startups have a product/solution, but what they want is a community that supports their endeavours
There are multiple benefits of communities:
Used for marketing
Used for data gathering
Used as a recruiting engine
Often sees early DAO contributors not having a clear enough vision as to what they are going to do
The community needs to understand its purpose
“Like the Wikipedia community understands what it's doing there. Like it's there to contribute to Wikipedia, so that we have Wikipedia, that's dope.”
- Rodney Evans
In a less structured and less mature community, the barrier of entry is incredibly low. It ends up attracting lots of potentially curious folks
Delineation Of Roles In The Community
Token holders/investors should have certain expectations, decision rights, and opportunities
Other roles that are more specific to contribution are compensated differently
The community has to figure out what they need from each party and how to reward them. The roles can then be formalized in governance
There should be criteria for the roles and understanding of the skills that people bring to the table
Some DAOs are doing a good job by having seasons of onboarding and opportunities to get to know what people are capable of
Designing Roles VS Allowing It To Emerge Organically
One option involves roles having to be designed. Token holders have to determine who can fill those roles, the duration for those roles, and how much they will be compensated for their work
There’s a middle ground between both ends of the spectrum — minimum viable constraint
“What should every single member of that community be expected to do? It might be something as simple as contribute to a Discord conversation once a week. That to me is like if people don't want to show up and even be in the conversation, should they really be there? I don't know.”
- Rodney Evans
Create constraints that help keep us on the rails so that we have more time for roles, structures, agreements as and when we need them
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