I've had a very simple operating system here on the Steem blockchain, which has been integrated into the mission statement of the Minnow Support Project: Spread the values of Peace, Abundance, and Liberty, grow the Steem ecosystem, and train and retain new members on the platform. I'm now convinced that growth of the ecosystem and retention will be best addressed by adding new (d)apps to the platform. Not everyone can blog. We need more forms of entertainment and new services to keep get people using our blockchain and keep them here.
We need capital coming in, people getting hired, and products/services being sold to raise the value of the Steem token.
To that end I'm sharing a vision for a conveyor belt that relies on the Steem Foundation to bring new businesses to Steem:
Ideally a project like The Merger is selected to provide structure, leadership, and aligns financial incentives to to build a pipeline of (d)apps that the community vets, provides some funding in exchange for equity or tokens, and then helps launch them. I'm partial to the Merger since I helped design it and think it's the one that's the most closely aligned with a business migration process, but even if another proposal is chosen their structure can be amended to support bringing businesses to Steem.
What would the steps be?
- A marketing committee would build a program to reach out to (a)pps on various chains and those that are just starting and find good potential candidates to migrate to the Steem Blockchain.
- A business incubation group would work with them to see if it's a good fit. They'll check out the product, the userbase, the tech, and the team and provide some public rubrics and scoring. If it seems like a good plan they can cut a deal using Foundation Funds, delegation, or votes to exchange for equity and tokens offered by the (d)app.
- A Product and Development group works out a timeline and helps provide leadership, guidance and technical support to the project to help them transition their tech to work on or integrate with the Steem blockchain.
- When the product is ready they work with a community team to help roll out the product.
- After the product has achieved some initial success they're routed to the investor team, which helps setup meetings with angel investors to initiate a funding round.
In general this process, if successful, can be self funding. Projects that are financially successful can return funding to the Foundation to then reinvest into new projects.
What would be some good community guidelines for proposals that receive investment from the foundation?
They have a contract. The contract releases funding over time when milestones are achieved. They have to stay on the Steem blockchain for at least 1 year after final funding has been completed. They have to make their security and utility tokens available through the steem blockchain.
What would be a good minimum for the incubation process.
I don't see this thing funding ideas. I see them funding projects. The team would have to include at least 2 people: someone to deal with humans and someone to deal with computers. They also have to have a product that functions even if it's an extreme version of an alpha product (by having even the smallest working product it allows token creation to be utility tokens and not just Security tokens, which can cut costs down substantially to raise money).
Voting is live for foundation proposals
Can you do me a favor? Please vote for Steem Foundation proposals here: https://dpoll.xyz/detail/@steemalliance/steem-alliance-structure-proposal-election/
and after you vote (since I'm paranoid) I suggest you immediately revoke steem connect comment permission: https://v2.steemconnect.com/revoke/@dpoll.xyz