NEM Foundation - Funding Proposal 2019

Hmm I can see that one issue that a lot of people are concerned about is the number of verticals and C-suite level staff. If I may synthesize some of the concerns behind this brought up by @Dan_V and @h_x as well as mine it boils down to this:

  1. Can we further reduce the number of staff/ verticals to cut costs and increase efficiency?
  2. If certain roles are very complementary and have overlap, why not combine them?
  3. I think another concern is that having so many verticals will encourage bloat in the future- leading to an expansion in the long term that could bring us back to square one.

Thank you @Pedro_Gutierrez for your answer clarifying the difference between marketing and business development. The thrust behind your answer I believe is subject expertise- we want specialised talent to really focus on their job and not be juggling 3 different things to maximise efficiency.

Personally I think this is a reasonable answer. However, how will we prevent bloat in the long term? Overlap of functions? Perhaps some of the confusion on my part arises from some degree of vagueness in what exactly the difference is between BD and Marketing/ CFO and Revenue.

Are there also reasons for them to be separate explicitly aside from specialisation? For instance, I previously brought up that it may be a conflict of interest for the CFO to be also doing Revenue if Revenue is to be a more consulting/ paid training kind of role- in which case the CFO might be in a position to offer more resources for those instead of balancing the needs of the other departments.

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These are not the same guys though. I mean, we voted for change last election and now all this dirt is being dug up and @Inside_NEM is being wayyyy more transparent, communicative, and responsive than the previous council ever was. In the space of a month, the amount of times I’ve seen them respond in telegram or the forum is 10 times better than previously, especially @jason.lee

I believe it would be cruel for us to have voted in a new council for change, and then straight up deny them a chance to clean shop and make the change we voted them in for. I also believe that NEM has a chance to make the best of this- Tezos, EOS, all had their governance issues but haven’t really figured out a good way to make this better- maybe this model could lead the way.

I bought XEM when it was above a dollar…so I’m hurting and angry it’s come to this. But denying the new council a chance to bring the change we voted them in for…I’m willing to give it a go- it’s better than nothing.

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Having read through the proposal and the discussion thus far, would like to add some thoughts on the topic of combining roles/teams especially.

However, before going into this, acknowledge that moving from a regional setup where each had their own autonomy toward a global structure, the new team will have a much bigger portfolio under their purview. Couple the significant reduction of total salaries vs. Increase of workload and accountability for each of the new team set against strict and transparent KPIs, this seems fair.

That being said, perhaps there are certain overlaps that could be further streamlined in the new structure. Some thoughts/suggestions:

  1. Business Development and Revenue - Each have their own budgets for partnerships for example. It might be best to consolidate it into BD to ensure all partnerships yield ROI or is aligned to the KPIs since BD is tasked to maintain all partnerships globally. This allows the Revenue team to focus more on corporate/consulting/revenue generating projects and other streams of revenue - the pricing and market strategy could also be folded into the revenue team as it directly relates to their KPIs. While working together with product team to ensure features and support needed of course.

  2. This then hopefully clarifies the different focus of revenue team vs finance team where each is much needed for sustainability and accountability. One brings in the money while the other ensures it is spent effectively without conflicting interests.

  3. On the combination of BD and Marketing, I believe that both teams have articulated different focus areas. Judging by 2018 activities, I would have agreed where to this as “marketing” was more focused on sponsorships which equal events mostly. However the new marketing team looks to be more focused on brand, channel & content management, market reports, supporting tech docs, targeted vertical attack plans, etc. All of which are much needed and have been missing from a global perspective

  4. On the question about why there is marketing budget without catapult, I believe as mentioned by many the structure is fluid and will be set in place as time progresses. I am sure marketing activities will be aligned to catapult release. Same goes for the effort of BD/Revenue teams where their projects and plans will definitely be focused on Catapult when the time comes.

  5. Seems like the tech and product team has very strong synergy with each other. There could be room for some streamlining too.

  6. Lastly, on the creation of many C-level roles. This is could be more of a naming convention I believe. I am assuming that this is to give equal voice to the heads of each team to table their plans and needs. This leads to better synergy that is imperative for a lean global structure to maximum efficiency for lower cost and efforts.

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BTW 210 million at the moment ~ 7.2 millions USD dollars which is already lower than needed for yearly budget.

How they’ve planned to maintain operations if the price goes south and NEM will be only worth 0.01$ or even less? That seems to be very likely event with current markets, so how they are planned to handle different scenarios?

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This is a good idea- BD can then channel the partnerships that have need of consulting/ corporate intelligence services to the Revenue team which can focus on doing the actual paid work instead of looking for clients all the time.

This was exactly my personal gripe with the notion of combining Revenue and Finance. Finance has to be the watchman to make sure the money is spent effectively and fairly.

It seems that most of 2018 budget was spent on these events- which in my opinion present very poor ROI. So what if we paid X thousand amount of dollars to have a booth at a fancy “blockchain” trade show? Last I heard, Origin Protocol had a no paying for events/ speaker slots policy- if a conference really believed they were worth having, they would invite them without charging. Perhaps we need some clarification on what marketing activities consist of- if it will indeed be about documentation and core branding as you pointed out.

Agreed on this.

RocketShoes wouldn’t be where we are now without the support of the NEM community… And much support Jason Lee!

I’m still running nem.education - with a new module on IOT being developed this school term! :slight_smile:

Looking forward to working with the NEM community in 2019! :slight_smile:

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Chill out

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given that one of the goals of this propposal is to advance the development of catapult, how does it actually achieve this? from looking at the numbers I don’t see a clear focus on tech development itself

the propsoal calls for 8M of which 2.5M (31%) falls under the CTO. of that, there appear to be only 4 FTEs (together at 275k) working on nemtech development (excluding docs and websites). what happened to the positions listed on nem.io/jobs?

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I propose that monthly payments rather than a lump sum should be paid based on milestones met, just as it is with funding for projects. Payments will continue as long as targets are met by the foundation.

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Уважаемое сообщество!

Мы хотим чтобы Вы проголосовали с помощью POI в поддержку запроса на финансирование для Фонда NEM.
Мы полностью перестроили операционную структуру и задачи фонда.
Мы нажмем на кнопу “обновить” и начнем всё с нуля. Мы изменим акценты, благодаря новой команде и новому фонду NEM, который создан для того, чтобы служить и поддерживать свое мощное сообщество.

Прежде чем проголосовать, мы настоятельно рекомендуем сообществу ознакомиться с ресурсами, которые мы подготовили, чтобы помочь принять обоснованное и взвешенное решение:

1.Список предложений – http://bit.ly/NEMFoundationFundingProposal2019
2.FAQ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jw1zIJciZ4etd99AbBicDHfbg3vSzgzCLH_0ORovLH8/edit?usp=sharing
3. Видео обращение – http://bit.ly/NFVideoFundingProposal2019

Требования:

  1. Минимум 3% POI голосования (включает в себя 3% от общего количества голосов POI - оба голоса “за” или “против” включены)
  2. 65% голосов “ЗА” из общего числа голосов.

Оба требования должны быть выполнены для того, чтобы заявка на финансирование была успешной.

Правила:

1.Процесс обсуждения (голосование не разрешено) будет продолжаться в течение 10 дней с 5 февраля 6:00 вечера по центральному стандартному времени (CST) до 15 февраля 2019 года 6:00 вечера CST.

-В течение первых 5 дней обсуждения фонд NEM хотел бы иметь возможность вносить изменения после получения отзывов от сообщества.

-В течение следующих пяти дней обсуждения никаких изменений в предложения вноситься не будет, но обсуждение может продолжаться.

2.Голосование POI начнется в течение 5 дней, начиная с 15 февраля 6:00 вечера CST и закончится 20 февраля 2019 года 6:00 вечера CST, всем членам сообщества предлагается голосовать.
Никакие другие изменения не должны вноситься для того, чтобы дать сообществу возможность для независимого принятия решения на голосовании.

3.Средства, скорее всего, будут взяты из фондов маркетинга, нетрадиционного маркетинга, операционных фондов. Эта схема будет доработана и предложена за 5 дней до голосования POI 15 февраля в 18:00 CST.
Все члены сообщества могут голосовать через кошелек NEM Nano Wallet.

4.Руководство по голосованию можно найти здесь https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wp3O4j06pGAm5gycbpyb75KCtAEIjruCtXiTXUfEQeM/edit?usp=sharing

Заключение:

Если запрос на финансирование будет одобрен, фонд NEM будет реструктурирован для создания новых групп, ориентированных на продукт.
Руководители этих команд - технический директор, директор управления продуктом, финансовый директор, директор по развитию бизнеса, директор по операционной деятельности, директор по маркетингу и главный ревизор.

Каждый из этих руководителей группы будет отвечать за предоставление показателей и обеспечение возврата инвестиций (ROI) непосредственно сообществу и Совету для поддержания прозрачности и подотчетности. Все отчеты о израсходованных средствах будут поступать через финансового директора и соответствовать необходимым стандартам учета.

Фонд NEM должен продолжать существовать как организация ориентированная на продукт, доход и сообщество, потому что:

Фонд NEM уделяет большое внимание маркетингу и развитию бизнеса, что является ключевой потребностью в запуске и монетизации Catapult - есть планы по продвижению Catapult через комплексную стратегию цифрового маркетинга, а также через развитие ключевых стратегических партнерств, которые были установлены ранее.

Новому составу фонда всего месяц, и мы привержен делу обеспечения прозрачности и подотчетности.
Алекс Тинсман, избранный президент, имел самые высокие голоса как на POI, так и на обычном голосовании.
Мы добавляем сверхважные задачи для технических функций продукта, инструментов для разработчиков и программистов, которые помогут сделать платформу NEM лучшей в отрасли.
Мы также планируем быть устойчивыми за счет увеличения поступлений от назначения Главного ревизора.

Мы предлагаем бюджет с сокращением расходов примерно на 60% по сравнению с предыдущим. Это позволит Фонду добиваться амбициозных результатов при ответственном использовании резервов.
Этот бюджет еще не утвержден, и нам предстоит сделать еще несколько шагов, прежде чем мы получим необходимое финансирование для реализации этих планов.

Много размышлений и догадок было высказано при рассмотрении неудач и успехов фонда 2018 года, а также понимание общей ситуации, как структурированы другие подобные успешные организации - одобрение этого запроса на финансирование означало бы, что мы можем использовать полученный опыт, чтобы обеспечить надлежащее распределение ресурсов для продвижения вперед.

Мы хотим, чтобы было ясно, что фонд NEM действует как отдельная организация и является одним из многих участников экосистемы проекта с открытым исходным кодом NEM.
ПОЭТОМУ ФОНД NEM - ЭТО не NEM. Проект с открытым исходным кодом NEM остается сильным и процветающим.

Мы хотели, чтобы сообщество использовало этот пост на форуме для участия в обсуждении, и Совет ждет от Вас обратной связи для создания новой структуры.
Период голосования начнется с 15 февраля 6:00 вечера CST до 20 февраля 2019 года 6:00 вечера CST.

Три вещи, которые мы ожидаем увидеть в 2019 году, если финансирование будет одобрено:

1.) Рассчитывайте увидеть больше организаций, использующих Catapult для монетизации своего бизнеса.

2.) Ожидайте увидеть больше публичных и частных блокчейнов с использованием Catapult.

3.) Ожидайте решительного руководства, твердого управления и служения обществу, партнерам и всему миру. Мы надеемся на светлое будущее!

Ссылки на прошлые объявления от Фонда NEM:

  1. https://forum.nem.io/t/nem-foundation-message-to-the-community/
  2. https://forum.nem.io/t/nem-foundation-update-a-response-to-questions-and-anticipated
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Yep, that is worrying. They’ve repeated to focus mainly finishing Catapult and tech and yet majority of funds proposed will be directed to other activities. It doesn’t sound very convincing.

What’s the point for having still such a huge number of employees, who don’t work directly for fulfulling the main goal.

I would like to see how much each chief will get paid and more discussions of is it really necessary to pay monthly salaries to people who at the same time are running their own projects?

I think they may have underestimated how hung up people are on this and only this.

It would be very helpful if all the parties involved put together a post outlining exactly where catapult stands right now, what’s left to do and who they need to do it.

In retrospect it was a mistake to mention it as anything other than a cool future prospect in passing as it’s now taken on mythical proportions.

If the foundation is totally hollowed out then it can’t contribute much, but people only want to hear about this one thing at present.

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i prefer shut down FOUNDATION
and not shut down NEM price
simple as that
vote NO

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Yep, community needs to hear to more before deciding whether give or not give 8 million USD dollars to the Foundation.

They should have some clues about the development process and how far it’s from being launched in 2019. For me it sounds like the Catapult can’t be launched in 2019 or maybe not even in 2020, but foundations employees need to get their paychecks before the shitstorm. Now it’s time for real transperancy and facts.

  • How many devs are needed to complete it and how much of the proposed funding will go directly to hiring tech people?

  • How near is the Catapult launch?

  • Have you any plan B if the voting result = NO

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Don’t be a silly sausage.

She is tackling a dumpster fire created by other people in a way they certainly wouldn’t have done.

The timing is awful. If only this had become a problem in 6 months rather than immediately.

Sorry, for this beginner question, but where can I vote on this proposal?

100% agree with Pontifier many XEM were wasted last year just for stupid promo materials on youtube, parties and so on.

I presume it’s going to appear in the polls section of the wallets plus maybe a yes or no address.

The vote isn’t open yet.

Got question regarding to “Each of these team’s leads will be responsible for reporting metrics and delivering a Return of Investment (ROI) directly to the community and council to maintain transparency and accountability. All funds spent will flow through the Chief Financial Officer and adhere to consistent accounting standards.”
Can you sound at least one way/plan in with you can increase ROI ? I mean real plan. Thanks

I can see previous management was wasting a lot of funding for many useless cost, and lots of human resources overpaid also not effective non essential…
This cost cutting is GOOD MOVE, however announcing it IS NOT a good move…

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