This is a proposal about treating my travel expense to ETHDenver as a business expense.
I have been going to conferences for the past 3 years with the goal being promotion of MetaGame, yet I never requested any funds for it.
Why is this time different? A few reasons:
This is really the first time I don’t even feel like going but feel it would be irresponsible not to go.
ETHDenver will be coinciding with our fundraise
By going to ETHDenver, I can probably at least 2x the funds raised.
Pretty much everyone I planned on reaching out to will be there
19950 other people will be there as well; they’re making it the biggest Ethereum conference (yes, bigger than Devcon) & it includes a hackathon - meaning there will be tons of potential patrons around
Its a bear winter. Yes I’ve spent probably tens of thousands of dollars attending these conferences for MetaGame before, but I can’t keep on doing that indefinitely lol
Time for MetaGame to grow up?
I think this is a good model going forward as well.
MetaGame funds someone’s trip to a conference
That someone makes it a mission to promote MetaGame & find some new patrons
Depending on how far & how expensive the place, it can cost anywhere from $1k to $5k - this isn’t a small amount of money but the person only needs to raise $1.1 to $5.1k for it to be worth it.
Even if its a net positive of only $100, its still overall worth it because $100>0, because the person has also promoted MetaGame & raised awareness, and the person got to go to a conference. Win, win, win.
The key bit: I think the proposal should come before the conference but the actual payout might be better deferred for after the conference to make sure the person really gives their best to raise the money necessary vs being like “oh well, the trip is already paid for…”
Agree with giving it later, and maybe to set up 3 tiers of funding, in panvala they do this with a bronze, silver and gold tier
Gold means we fund all the expenses because it was a satisfactory experience measured by results on the travel
Silver will fund around , 60/80% depending on same information
Bronze will fund 30/50% if it was a non effective experience for metagame
Also i think there can be cases where flexibility is needed and can be discussed, example: a player doesnt have the funds to pre pay for the experience by himself before.
Revising slightly Jose’s suggestion, I think that the attendee should receive 50% of conference expenses upfront with the remaining to be paid if agreed-upon results are achieved. Otherwise, the high upfront cost may preclude the attendee from being able to attend the conference.
Agree with paying for travel, also like Jose’s idea of having different tiers (or even just a proposal/request that can not ask to be fully reimbursed, doesn’t necessarily need rigid tiers), and also agree with splitting payments to a portion before to alleviate the cost of the actual travel, but hold some for after to incentivize following through.
At the main conference itself, it was tough. Instead of investors, I kept meeting people who were also fundraising
So I think at ETHDenver itself I met maybe like 1 investor but I went to every VC side event & happy hour that I knew about - which is where I met most other investors.
All in all, I talked to about 20ish investors (as in actual VCs, not just crypto people who also invest in projects, since everyone is an investor these days).
It seems pretty much all of them understand that onboarding is a problem & gamification is the way.
The response was very positive but I try to keep my hopes low until checks start rolling in.
I also made IRL contact with a few investors that passed on us last time (eg. Jesse Walden) & hopefully they won’t pass on us again.
Spent most of the time chasing VCs but also had time to re-establish some old connections, refresh old friendships & hang out with other guilds from the MetaAlliance, like DAOhaus & Raid Guild.
Overall, good!
As proof, here’s the notion page that contains most of the people I’ve met:
