Working at RnDAO: what to expect
At RnDAO, we’re exploring new ways to work together. A key part of this is the relationship between the organisation and its contributors.
Traditionally, companies hire employees. Most employees are devoid of significant decision making power (which leads to adversarial relationships and unionisation) and they have mostly a fixed salary with limited upside if the organisation does well. Although we appreciate the sense of security the traditional model offers, employee’s are by design less engaged than founders. Most employee-employer models embed parent-child-like dynamics at the core of the organisation. Employee-employer models are also rather rigid and cookie-cutter (reducing human potential), and are not particularly conducive to psychological wellbeing.
We aim to turn this model on its head:
- Enable those wanting to work on the same ideas to find it possible and more rewarding to collaborate with us rather than compete
- Give contributors a sense of ownership (stewardship) and empowerment.
- Reward entrepreneurialism.
- Facilitate consensual agreements between peers.
- Allow people to manage their workload and energy to support wellbeing.
- And allow people to explore their passions and talents outside commoditised job descriptions (which can include working across multiple projects and roles).
These ambitions are a tall order, and a constant work in progress that we hope you’ll help us refine and evolve.
The current version looks like this:
RnDAO is divided in Units: Projects Units which are autonomous (the ventures we incubate) and DAO Work Units which are semi-autnonomous (and provide services for the DAO to function). Contributors can join an existing Unit (or several) or start a new Unit.
Each Unit has its own P&L and decides how to attract and compensate contributors. Solving this has 3 main components:
- Working as a team to generate funds from servicing other Units, providing services to RnDAO directly, or serving external clients, or raising funds from investors.
- Accounting for how much each person has contributed to the Unit.
- Distributing the funds available (and distributing ownership/control).
1 Generating Funds: Most Units are startup-like - they apply for grants and sell an offering to generate their own budgets. In this sense, Units eat what they hunt. As an example, Community Health (one of our Units researching this topic and building a product) is on track to raise 100k+ of grants over the first 6 months for a team of 8 (each person has been contributing part time) and will then raise investment and aim to generate revenue from the product. SubDAO Research (a research project for a client), was funded for 20k for a small team of three that worked for 6 weeks also part time. Each Unit varies so check with the Unit leads about budgets. At the current stage of maturity of most Units, the work resembles more freelance engagements or co-founding a startup and not really a corporate job. As Units mature, they’re likely to become more stable and so can the roles and compensation that contributors receive.
2 Accounting for Contributions: Units regularly use Coordinape - a tool that enables team members to assess how much value each person contributed and quantify that as points. We use this method as a way to account for value added instead of the number of hours someone worked. The downside is not having certainty upfront about what one’s compensation will be, but the upside is a culture that values creating value together and offers flexibility to contributors. When we get it right, this transforms the politics of salary negotiations on peer to peer feedback and personal growth.
3 Distributing Funds & Ownership: Unit member decide amongst themselves when to distribute funds (using the Coordinape points or another system of their choosing) by making a proposal that the team accepts. Units that are operating as a startup (developing a product or service) will usually use the Coordinape points to also define the token or equity distribution when an investment happens. As such, we don’t have a small group of founders who own and control the organisation but instead everyone operates like a cofounder and intrapreneur.
Meaningfully contributing to each Unit requires a minimum of 6-8 hours of work a week. We don’t count hours, this is just a rough guideline of the time it takes to be able to join meetings, keep up with messages and do some work on your own. When you factor in the needed flexibility for scheduling across timezones, most people struggle to honour more than 2-3 commitments at a time. As such, it’s important to pick wisely which Units you contribute to and which commitments you make.
Financial Expectations
At this stage, working at RnDAO is unlikely to offer a good income short term. However, the work can be incredibly rewarding in terms of learning and impact, and if the Units you lead or contribute to become successful products, the financial upside could be significant. A good proxy is to think about it as cofounding a startup or social enterprise, limited rewards in the short-term but potentially significant in the mid-term.
For clarity, significant contributions to a Unit that has some funding could get you $1.5k-7k USD a month short term. But the majority of the work is bootstrapping new units that don't yet have funding.
Where to Start
Join our Discord and after verifying, introduce yourself in the #introductions channel
