June - Progress Update + Q2 Review
Increasing clarity on the market and a more sustainable strategy
Hello friends!
Over the course of the last weeks I tried to put more effort into reading and solidifying our business.
In this newsletter, I will first briefly touch on some observations and strategic decisions, break down our current treasury balance and aim to reflect on data from the last six months. And if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll see some interesting research I came across.
Please ping be if you are coming to EthCC in Brussels next week and would like to hang out. Have a nice week and see some of you soon!
Andrej
Exploring what we can learn from current market
Similar to Deep Work’s current strategy, the market environment we are in still seems very conservative. We are receiving requests mostly for smaller website/slide deck projects with a low budget.
Sergey, Ana, Savannah and I are working with a few clients who are mainly interested in low-budget deliverables like landing pages, slide decks, and other investor material.
I anticipate this to continue, more details in the previous newsletter. We are also seeing many teams trying to raise investment, using pitch decks that reflect a lack of focus and clarity. This could be an opportunity to collaborate more with lead investors.
Staying financially conservative
Our goal is still to save as much money as possible at the moment, so we can enjoy our savings when crypto experiences a bear market.
We paused our software development to reduce costs. I will also hold off from allocating funds for the design and implementation our new website for now, especially before testing the messaging at EthCC.
Colin and I also wrote up the first version of our Treasury Policy, which will help us stay focused at scale in the future. Along with this monthly financial report (see below), I will also share some insights over the last six months and set up a new financial dashboard to better keep track of our treasury balance.
Org design process summary
Along with streamlining our BD processes, I refined my approach to organizational design. Here is a summary of 11 workshops with founders and/or their teams (among them DecentDAO, CollabLand, RaidGuid, DappNode, MetaGov, and Gitcoin MMM). The framework seems to receive a lot of recognition, and can equally be presented at conferences. Feel free to explore and send me feedback.
Contributor onboarding updated
Our Discord onboarding also now follows a much simpler approach, outlined in the #education channel. There is no need to fill out a portfolio page anymore, anyone should be able to find their way to connect with us now. I removed the bi-weekly calls from our calendar as they were empty for the last few months.
Checklist of tasks in Deep Teams
Some workflows had easy-to-miss steps, so last month Denis updated the Deep Teams interface with “Tasks“. These can be created as part of a role, to make it easier to remember which tasks are part of the workflow.
Current Treasury Balance: $9,886
1,859 USDC
0.124 BTC (~$7,725)
0.06 ETH (~$302)
Revenue: $64,894 (Polywrap, Kaon)
Profits: $7,931 (Polywrap)
Internal payments: $0
Operational costs: $776
Insights from the last six months
Treasury balance history:
Jan 1st, 2024: $26,020
Apr 1st, 2024: $20,133
July 1st, 2024: $9,886
Over the last six months, we have seen an overall decline in our treasury. This has multiple reasons:
We had fewer large client projects and started improving our strategy a few months ago. We keep observing the market as the effects unfold.
We went to Denver earlier this year and spent money on accommodation, transportation, and food. However, this acts as a great reference point for future event planning.
We lost profits and paid our team for their work on the YieldNest project, who refused to pay us. This led to a big update in our client relationship process.
We’re still improving our processes to track and evaluate this data.
Recommended reading
Money as a Store of Value by Guy Numa
Jean-Baptiste Say was a French economist and businessman who was famous for his observation that production is the stimulus for consumption, as opposed to quantity of money in the economy (a more widespread belief among policymakers). This article explores his understanding of saving vs. hoarding behaviors in the population, especially in times of crisis.
People Powered Money by Leander Bindewald
A guide and framework to understanding community currencies. The author also shares how existing communities benefited from their own currencies and when they didn’t work.