đŸ—ƒïž
Contributor Access Bundle DBs
/
🍄
Gitcoin Brand Evolution
/
đŸȘ€
Gitcoin Brand Stakeholder Questionnaire (Scott)
đŸȘ€

Gitcoin Brand Stakeholder Questionnaire (Scott)

Purpose: Brand Evolution
Objectives for the interviews
  • Understand personal perspectives of individual stakeholders and thought leaders
  • Uncover key strategic opportunities
  • Understand the internal culture at Gitcoin
  • Understand the past-present-future vision narrative
  • Flag key challenges or possible stumbling blocks
  • Include the team as an essential voice in the brand strategy (/rebrand) process
  • Help us help you!
Preamble
  • Please be candid / nothing will be attributed
  • Any shared discovery notes will be anonymized
  • Any questions before we start?
Questions
  1. Intro & Role
  • Can you tell us a bit about your role at Gitcoin?
    • I’m a co-founder of Gitcoin and originally got involved since I was building a similar company in the space focused on helping open source developers build their own digitally local community currencies
    • Originally I was leading growth for the bounties product which was our first shot at trying to help Ethereum devs, and eventually led the charge on a hackathons business to help us bring in more consistent revenue by “bundling” bounties together
    • As we realized maintainers / core folks were more important to support (often, OSS devs didn’t want to deal with the complexity of paying individual contributors) I started to play with the idea of a grants concept, and Kevin started thinking about building out a subscription services model from there
    • In 2018 Vitalik launched his paper on QF and I surfaced it with Vivek suggesting it was something we should push forward, and so we quickly moved away from subscriptions to focus on just the quadratic funding model itself
  • How and why did you come to join Gitcoin/the Gitcoin founding team
    • As I was working on the competing project above I decided I needed to figure out a way to work more closely together with users and iterate with them, and bounties were a much easier way to do that than the “boil the ocean” deploy your own currency model I had been thinking about
    • Mark Beylin introduced Kevin and I at a hackathon and I joined shortly after
  • What are your main areas of focus in the short term (3-6 months?)
    • Right now I’m focused on getting PGF in shape to ensure we have a plan for a) scaling up the grants program itself b) moving it successfully to the protocol c) implementing a services model such that we can achieve sustainability
      • For the services model right now my view is that we should work with UNI, MATIC, AAVE, and other ecosystems and take a portion of their ecosystem value
  • What else should we know about you and your team/workstream to set us up for success? (And how would you define success for this project?)
    • I think success here would be really ensuring we’re able to build a consistent brand that stakeholders in the protocol (partners, developers), the program (matching funders, public goodsTM grantees), and the broader community (DAO, Ethereum OGs, KERNEL Fellows) resonate with
  1. Mission, Vision & Values
  • How would you define Gitcoin’s vision today vs. the past? Does this differ from the vision for the future?
    • I think we started very small, focusing on building out a bounties product, quickly added lots of scope and expanded from “helping contributors for web3 projects” (bounties) to “building reputation for devs in web3” (kudos) to “helping maintainers in web3” (grants) to “experimenting with new ways to fund open source software” (quadratic funding) to “funding digital public goods” (quadratic funding) to “ helping ecosystems fund their shared needs community-first / bottoms-up / local way”
    • Other things we say a lot:
      • “helping communities collectively curate their shared needs”
      • “funding global public goods through local community preferences”
      • will add
  • How would you define Gitcoin’s mission today vs. the past? Does this mission vary by “product”
    • I think the mission now is very much around shared needs; specifically we’re local first, community first, all about empowering groups to define their own local preferences to eventually solve global problems (needs shortening)
    • In the past we went through eras of just trying to help contributors in repos, help maintainers of open source software, I think the goal is more broad now as the scope of web3 itself has scaled and evolved
    • I think focusing in on our ability to help with things like coordination is probably the simplest way to combine these themes
  • How would you define Gitcoin’s values vs. the past? Does this differ from the values for the future?
    • I think we value localism, community, positive-sum games, building to make a better world, ensuring those that are building for a better world have sustainable funding, finding ways for any local community to do this for their communities even if we disagree with them, credible neutrality (not as interesting to me), building a more equal (democratic) human-centric + techno-optimist future; radiclexchange style pluralism
    • Would you say Gitcoin the brand’s values are synonymous with Gitcoin community values?
    • generally the ones above I would say yes, although I do worry that sometimes we don’t embody these values sufficiently in the DAO
  • What does Gitcoin stand against?
    • Gitcoin stands against centralization of access / control (though we have not always lived by this) and against institutional hegemony / the idea that one group can solve all the world’s problems
    • Gitcoin stands against the idea that there should be an individualist / collectivist divide (believes in bottoms-up but collective decision-making, mutualism although this is loaded)
    • Gitcoin is against binary thinking (we are pro-concavity / pluralism)
    • Gitcoin is against MolochTM (this is actually serious and IMO is a good litmus test of if someone might be in the “in-group” for who we want to target, not everyone should have to understand this lore but we probably want these memes as a stake in the ground)
      • Reason: we need to center back on our core audience and community and rally around the flag in order to build momentum for a larger expansion with other user groups; we should not aim to please everyone and although we should explain these concepts to people we should not aim to simplify them
  1. Gitcoin Community
  • Who is your target audience/ideal user? Who would you say are your ideal community members/users/contributors? Broader audience opportunity?
    • Existing Web3 developers and builders
    • Web3 influencers and thotTM leaders
    • Web3 community members / interested users
  • What does the community love most about Gitcoin?
    • Public goods are good
    • Creating a more regenerative future
    • Our ability to help support core Ethereum devs (ultra sound money / wen eth2 etc)
    • We’re lindy candidly
  • How does Gitcoin meet the community’s needs, both practically and emotionally? And the individual contributor’s needs?
    • We are meeting internal stakeholder needs but not the broader communities needs, for meeting emotional needs tbh lani is dope to talk to
  • What is their most significant barrier to entry (e.g. the hardest part of winning a new user)?
    • Understanding how to leverage the tools Gitcoin provides (e.g. wow I love supporting ETH devs how do I actually do it; I want to build my own ecosystem round who do I even talk to or what are the docs for this stuff)
  • What do you want your user to take away from Gitcoin (e.g., what do you want to be known for)?
    • Helping Ethereum developers “make it”
    • Helping communities fund their local needs
    • Improving our ability to coordinate on hard problems together (ironically)
  • What is Gitcoin’s biggest challenge in retaining community members or communities?
    • Lack of attention to external community (too much inside out thinking)
    • Needing an OKR for every interaction with new community members
    • Failure to build documentation around core products / offerings
    • No easy on-ramp into the organization
  • What are the cultural / societal forces or trends impacting your “category” and your users/contributors?
  • What are the common threads connecting the GItcoin community across your products (e.g., where is the overlap, the lowest common denominator)?
  • Tell us about your most celebrated supporters or evangelists.
  1. Gitcoin Product
  • What has informed Product Development or Innovation thus far?
    • I think this has mostly been led by the product team in somewhat of a silo post-DAO
  • How has the community been involved in Product Development or Innovation?
    • I think the community has largely been left out of this process beyond more formal interviews, I’d love to find ways to better showcase the work we’re doing to them
  • What are the common threads connecting the Gitcoin “suite” of programs and products?
    • I think the protocol + program together actually tie together the themes we’ve talked about well (both the themes in this survey and the themes we talked about in DMs
  • What are the key differentiators between your products?
    • program == public goods
    • protocol == shared needs
  • How do you see those products being differentiated visually?
    • See napkin sketches
  • How do you see the product offering of Gitcoin evolving?
    • Allowing developers to build with us directly via the protocol, for their own ecosystems
  1. Existing Org, Product & Brand
  • What do you think is the most unique thing about Gitcoin?
  • Who do you see as your key competitors and why?
  • What are your biggest strengths? Weaknesses?
  • What about the current brand do you think works well today? What could be better?
  • Are there any specific elements of the visual identity or product experience you feel strongly about either way?
  1. Future Org, Product & Brand
  • Thinking about the next 3-5 years, what are the biggest challenges facing Gitcoin continued growth, especially in such a novel space?
  • How do you want to be thought of in 5 years? In 10 years?
  • If the world ended, what would you want Gitcoin’s legacy to be? (Sorry for the morbidity here, but this is usually quite helpful to know)
  • What changes do you think are necessary for it to get there?
  • Are there products in the pipeline that deliver on your value proposition we should know about?
  • Can you describe how the web experience should feel for users?
  • What are your overall hopes and fears for the rebrand?
  • Any other brands (in or out of sector) you feel are a good reference point for us?
  • Do you envision people being represented visually?
  • Do you envision the planet being represented visually?
  1. And finally

  • How would you describe Gitcoin in three words?
    • local coordination tools
    • funding public goods
    • funding shared needs
    • tools for change (wow)
Addendum
  1. Additional Questions:
  • What is included in your definition of public goods? What isn’t?
đŸ—ƒïž
Contributor Access Bundle DBs
/
🍄
Gitcoin Brand Evolution
/
đŸȘ€
Gitcoin Brand Stakeholder Questionnaire (Scott)
đŸȘ€

Gitcoin Brand Stakeholder Questionnaire (Scott)

Purpose: Brand Evolution
Objectives for the interviews
  • Understand personal perspectives of individual stakeholders and thought leaders
  • Uncover key strategic opportunities
  • Understand the internal culture at Gitcoin
  • Understand the past-present-future vision narrative
  • Flag key challenges or possible stumbling blocks
  • Include the team as an essential voice in the brand strategy (/rebrand) process
  • Help us help you!
Preamble
  • Please be candid / nothing will be attributed
  • Any shared discovery notes will be anonymized
  • Any questions before we start?
Questions
  1. Intro & Role
  • Can you tell us a bit about your role at Gitcoin?
    • I’m a co-founder of Gitcoin and originally got involved since I was building a similar company in the space focused on helping open source developers build their own digitally local community currencies
    • Originally I was leading growth for the bounties product which was our first shot at trying to help Ethereum devs, and eventually led the charge on a hackathons business to help us bring in more consistent revenue by “bundling” bounties together
    • As we realized maintainers / core folks were more important to support (often, OSS devs didn’t want to deal with the complexity of paying individual contributors) I started to play with the idea of a grants concept, and Kevin started thinking about building out a subscription services model from there
    • In 2018 Vitalik launched his paper on QF and I surfaced it with Vivek suggesting it was something we should push forward, and so we quickly moved away from subscriptions to focus on just the quadratic funding model itself
  • How and why did you come to join Gitcoin/the Gitcoin founding team
    • As I was working on the competing project above I decided I needed to figure out a way to work more closely together with users and iterate with them, and bounties were a much easier way to do that than the “boil the ocean” deploy your own currency model I had been thinking about
    • Mark Beylin introduced Kevin and I at a hackathon and I joined shortly after
  • What are your main areas of focus in the short term (3-6 months?)
    • Right now I’m focused on getting PGF in shape to ensure we have a plan for a) scaling up the grants program itself b) moving it successfully to the protocol c) implementing a services model such that we can achieve sustainability
      • For the services model right now my view is that we should work with UNI, MATIC, AAVE, and other ecosystems and take a portion of their ecosystem value
  • What else should we know about you and your team/workstream to set us up for success? (And how would you define success for this project?)
    • I think success here would be really ensuring we’re able to build a consistent brand that stakeholders in the protocol (partners, developers), the program (matching funders, public goodsTM grantees), and the broader community (DAO, Ethereum OGs, KERNEL Fellows) resonate with
  1. Mission, Vision & Values
  • How would you define Gitcoin’s vision today vs. the past? Does this differ from the vision for the future?
    • I think we started very small, focusing on building out a bounties product, quickly added lots of scope and expanded from “helping contributors for web3 projects” (bounties) to “building reputation for devs in web3” (kudos) to “helping maintainers in web3” (grants) to “experimenting with new ways to fund open source software” (quadratic funding) to “funding digital public goods” (quadratic funding) to “ helping ecosystems fund their shared needs community-first / bottoms-up / local way”
    • Other things we say a lot:
      • “helping communities collectively curate their shared needs”
      • “funding global public goods through local community preferences”
      • will add
  • How would you define Gitcoin’s mission today vs. the past? Does this mission vary by “product”
    • I think the mission now is very much around shared needs; specifically we’re local first, community first, all about empowering groups to define their own local preferences to eventually solve global problems (needs shortening)
    • In the past we went through eras of just trying to help contributors in repos, help maintainers of open source software, I think the goal is more broad now as the scope of web3 itself has scaled and evolved
    • I think focusing in on our ability to help with things like coordination is probably the simplest way to combine these themes
  • How would you define Gitcoin’s values vs. the past? Does this differ from the values for the future?
    • I think we value localism, community, positive-sum games, building to make a better world, ensuring those that are building for a better world have sustainable funding, finding ways for any local community to do this for their communities even if we disagree with them, credible neutrality (not as interesting to me), building a more equal (democratic) human-centric + techno-optimist future; radiclexchange style pluralism
    • Would you say Gitcoin the brand’s values are synonymous with Gitcoin community values?
    • generally the ones above I would say yes, although I do worry that sometimes we don’t embody these values sufficiently in the DAO
  • What does Gitcoin stand against?
    • Gitcoin stands against centralization of access / control (though we have not always lived by this) and against institutional hegemony / the idea that one group can solve all the world’s problems
    • Gitcoin stands against the idea that there should be an individualist / collectivist divide (believes in bottoms-up but collective decision-making, mutualism although this is loaded)
    • Gitcoin is against binary thinking (we are pro-concavity / pluralism)
    • Gitcoin is against MolochTM (this is actually serious and IMO is a good litmus test of if someone might be in the “in-group” for who we want to target, not everyone should have to understand this lore but we probably want these memes as a stake in the ground)
      • Reason: we need to center back on our core audience and community and rally around the flag in order to build momentum for a larger expansion with other user groups; we should not aim to please everyone and although we should explain these concepts to people we should not aim to simplify them
  1. Gitcoin Community
  • Who is your target audience/ideal user? Who would you say are your ideal community members/users/contributors? Broader audience opportunity?
    • Existing Web3 developers and builders
    • Web3 influencers and thotTM leaders
    • Web3 community members / interested users
  • What does the community love most about Gitcoin?
    • Public goods are good
    • Creating a more regenerative future
    • Our ability to help support core Ethereum devs (ultra sound money / wen eth2 etc)
    • We’re lindy candidly
  • How does Gitcoin meet the community’s needs, both practically and emotionally? And the individual contributor’s needs?
    • We are meeting internal stakeholder needs but not the broader communities needs, for meeting emotional needs tbh lani is dope to talk to
  • What is their most significant barrier to entry (e.g. the hardest part of winning a new user)?
    • Understanding how to leverage the tools Gitcoin provides (e.g. wow I love supporting ETH devs how do I actually do it; I want to build my own ecosystem round who do I even talk to or what are the docs for this stuff)
  • What do you want your user to take away from Gitcoin (e.g., what do you want to be known for)?
    • Helping Ethereum developers “make it”
    • Helping communities fund their local needs
    • Improving our ability to coordinate on hard problems together (ironically)
  • What is Gitcoin’s biggest challenge in retaining community members or communities?
    • Lack of attention to external community (too much inside out thinking)
    • Needing an OKR for every interaction with new community members
    • Failure to build documentation around core products / offerings
    • No easy on-ramp into the organization
  • What are the cultural / societal forces or trends impacting your “category” and your users/contributors?
  • What are the common threads connecting the GItcoin community across your products (e.g., where is the overlap, the lowest common denominator)?
  • Tell us about your most celebrated supporters or evangelists.
  1. Gitcoin Product
  • What has informed Product Development or Innovation thus far?
    • I think this has mostly been led by the product team in somewhat of a silo post-DAO
  • How has the community been involved in Product Development or Innovation?
    • I think the community has largely been left out of this process beyond more formal interviews, I’d love to find ways to better showcase the work we’re doing to them
  • What are the common threads connecting the Gitcoin “suite” of programs and products?
    • I think the protocol + program together actually tie together the themes we’ve talked about well (both the themes in this survey and the themes we talked about in DMs
  • What are the key differentiators between your products?
    • program == public goods
    • protocol == shared needs
  • How do you see those products being differentiated visually?
    • See napkin sketches
  • How do you see the product offering of Gitcoin evolving?
    • Allowing developers to build with us directly via the protocol, for their own ecosystems
  1. Existing Org, Product & Brand
  • What do you think is the most unique thing about Gitcoin?
  • Who do you see as your key competitors and why?
  • What are your biggest strengths? Weaknesses?
  • What about the current brand do you think works well today? What could be better?
  • Are there any specific elements of the visual identity or product experience you feel strongly about either way?
  1. Future Org, Product & Brand
  • Thinking about the next 3-5 years, what are the biggest challenges facing Gitcoin continued growth, especially in such a novel space?
  • How do you want to be thought of in 5 years? In 10 years?
  • If the world ended, what would you want Gitcoin’s legacy to be? (Sorry for the morbidity here, but this is usually quite helpful to know)
  • What changes do you think are necessary for it to get there?
  • Are there products in the pipeline that deliver on your value proposition we should know about?
  • Can you describe how the web experience should feel for users?
  • What are your overall hopes and fears for the rebrand?
  • Any other brands (in or out of sector) you feel are a good reference point for us?
  • Do you envision people being represented visually?
  • Do you envision the planet being represented visually?
  1. And finally

  • How would you describe Gitcoin in three words?
    • local coordination tools
    • funding public goods
    • funding shared needs
    • tools for change (wow)
Addendum
  1. Additional Questions:
  • What is included in your definition of public goods? What isn’t?