EthDenver Debrief & Current priorities
More intense than last year, but also more productive and fun
Hey everyone!
EthDenver is wrapped, it was wonderful seeing you all and hanging out together!
I am also proud of all the founders I spoke to who keep working towards their vision. It’s motivating to see kind and knowledgeable people becoming increasingly serious with their projects.
I’ll share with you some of our insights from the conversations and encounters I had along with a few strategic decisions I made for the next weeks. I also created an org chart (details at the bottom of this newsletter), which should give you a clearer idea of what Deep Work looks like.
As always, please feel free to reach out if you have comments, questions, or suggestions.
Deep Work seems well-positioned
Developing relationships in the ecosystem
Despite the uncertainty in market conditions (yet obvious bull cycle), I was surprised by the positive feedback on my presentation (thanks Angelo for hosting the event, Colin, Sarah and Rodolfo for co-authoring and Dan for the recording!).
The number of individuals recognizing Deep Work exceeded my expectations. I also perceive it as a confirmation that developing personal relationships with value-aligned people is a sustainable strategy to be relevant and visible in the ecosystem.
Improving our service offering
Reflecting on these conversations, I shaped the first draft of a new BD process and will keep refining it with a few friends (thanks for getting in touch to those who did!). I’m hesitant calling it “business development“, it feels much more like making friends and collaborating. Our advice around user research, internal alignment, and organizational development generally resonates with founders and seems to increase in demand.
Supporting the grant operator ecosystem
Sarah and I facilitated and documented several sessions for Metagov’s Grant Innovation Lab, to understand grantees’ needs and grant operators’ challenges. We will keep supporting their development since there’s a big overlap with Deep Work’s purpose. You can read (the final draft of) a detailed summary here.
Thanks also to Eugene, Val, and everyone else involved in making the events happen!
Coliving during a conference is a nice concept
Our Airbnb experience was very productive and fun. It was great to get to know each other much better and enjoy various experiences in Denver while staying focused on collective goals. Thanks for everyone who made it happen and contributed to the planning!
The setup, process, and coliving experience can still be improved, but the concept seems to have a solid basis and we took many notes to iterate and repeat it at the next opportunity.
Tweaking the Deep Teams app
In Deep Teams, we recently introduced a feature to “join“ an organization. Thanks for applying, please don’t be discouraged if you’re not “accepted”. The feature is still in development and currently has limited functionality. The best way to apply and get my attention is still through this Typeform.
Focus on becoming “default alive“
Based on the insights above, most of my operational goals for the near future will focus on getting Deep Work default alive and filling up the treasury to prepare for the next bear market.
Current priorities for resource allocation
The following is a list of priorities to guide resource and attention allocation for at least the next two weeks. Please keep in mind that not all of them require financial resources.
Increase the quality and precision of data we gather in Deep Teams so we can provide real-world evidence to support the efficiency of our organizational model in the long term.
Improve the project management UX to reduce my overhead in bugfixing our no-code setup and focus more on mentoring.
Refine the BD process, and client-facing org design.
Refine the branding sprint process, to match the requirements of clients.
Research and write more about organizational design to inform our community better about best practices.
Explore collaborations with agencies with similar models to Deep Work, like RaidGuild.
Explore User Research as a standalone offering to cater to needs in the ecosystem.
Explore opportunities for a marketing offering.
Improve contributor onboarding experience, documentation and create a format for our productized services.
Deep Work org chart and data visualizations
I created an organizational chart that makes it easy to skim our organizational design and provides us with a foundation for strategic decision-making. It shows the current roles, their owners (hopefully all accurately), as well as productized services and recurring projects. My goal is to keep expanding it to be able to see how our organizataion changes as we re-order it, experiment with new projects, and remain on track with our goals.
In addition to the org chart, we are increasing the granularity of the data we collect. This will make clear how we spend money in real time and evaluate its impact on revenue and qualitative outcomes. The data from the following screenshot is not 100% accurate, for now please refer to it only for illustration purposes.
Thanks everyone for your support, contributions, and great vibes.
Enjoy your weekend and see you soon!