TL;DR
The Decentralized Futures Program envisioned by the Web3 Foundation has 2 objectives we look to address. Expanding the Polkadot Network and onboarding projects that generate profit. This can be distilled into 2 categories: creating assets people want and generating fees with all the DeFi protocols needed to create on-chain profits.
We propose 4 solutions to tackle Polkadot’s objectives. Over the first 180 days, we aim to bring 3 top-tier Champion dApps to the Polkadot ecosystem. The goal of the Champion dApps is to drive the numbers that matter in web3: wallets, trading volume, market cap, TVL, transactions, and fees. But most importantly, Champion dApps create assets that people want to trade. Second, we look to help drive and cover all the DeFi utility dApps that ecosystems need to thrive including, but not limited to: veDexes, order books, lending protocols, yield aggregators, liquid staking, derivatives, perpetuals, and options.
Third, we propose to equip all open Polkadot BD teams with our proprietary, web3-native BD software to streamline prospecting, engagement, and deal-making. Finally, we align our analytics and attribution software to the Polkadot Ecosystem, we will track the impact of every dollar spent to track the efficacy of capital deployed throughout the Polkadot Ecosystem.
To achieve this goal and to provide accountability, we have opened our doors to a Polkadot Advisory Board (see below) and look to fill seats with key figures across the Polkadot Parachains and the broader ecosystem. We are open to collaborating with efforts from other Decentralized Futures grantees to align and bring in the most value to the entire Polkadot ecosystem.
About AlphaGrowth
Established in 2018, AlphaGrowth brings extensive expertise to the fields of DeFi, Crypto Business Development, and Growth. Over the years, we have successfully played a pivotal role in advancing the growth and development of prominent projects in the blockchain space, including NEAR, Aurora, KAVA, Core, and protocols such as Compound Finance, Sommelier Finance, Collab.land, and many others. We believe we are uniquely positioned for success within the Decentralized Futures (DF) program.
AlphaGrowth is aligned with the Web3 Foundation’s vision for the Decentralized Futures Program. Our unique position as collaborators with both top ecosystems and bluechip protocols has provided us with valuable insights into the various challenges that arise in expansion and integration. This wealth of experience enables us to assist ecosystems in overcoming blockers and onboarding hundreds of dApps. Our learnings will be pivotal to identifying the risks and benefits associated with various growth strategies for the Polkadot Ecosystem.
Challenges Addressed
Lack of Consistent Growth Engines
Despite Polkadot’s technological advantages, it has struggled to seize the moment and turn that into a crypto narrative. After all, success begets more success. Polkadot’s lack of a cohesive sales process, clear growth strategy, and misaligned incentives between stakeholders has held the ecosystem back. We’re here to change that. To see growth, AlphaGrowth believes Polkadot requires a balanced sales and marketing approach with boots-on-the-ground selling solutions, mixed with the right process, people, incentives, and technology.
Too Much Emphasis on Long-Term Bets
We believe in the balance between web3-native use cases that drive near-term growth and future use cases that will drive growth in the next 2-5 years. A fine balance between what’s worked in the past and what is going to drive future growth is key to winning the day.
Lack of Cohesion Between BD Teams
A fractured BD split between Parity and Parachain teams led to mixed growth results. Parachain teams never had the experience or firepower to land big deals and didn’t receive enough support from Parity. On the other hand, Parity’s big bets generally took years to pay off. This left the current ecosystem to flounder.
We find that it’s important to balance the needs of the ecosystem when doing any sort of growth services. Any service provider to Polkadot needs to balance the growth of existing Parachains while also growing the value-added services within the ecosystem in the form of novel Parachains. It’s critical to focus on the prospects’ needs when considering the best way to onboard them to Polkadot. AlphaGrowth intends to lean into existing Parachains while promoting growth through new Parachains where appropriate for the prospect. Critically, being in constant communication with each team with various opportunities both synchronously and asynchronously will provide the best outcome.
Lack of Consistent Message
Unless you were big enough to call in a favor, marketing efforts never quite aligned with Parachain teams. This left the Polkadot community fractured and each individually calling out into the void with many small messages instead of one large headline. We intend to work closely with Parity and DF marketing partners (Distractive) to all preach complimentary messages, building that all-important crypto narrative that the Polkadot community is begging for.
Our Roles
Selling & Onboarding “Champion” dApps
At AlphaGrowth we believe that the most important strategies an ecosystem can fund are dApps people want to use and dApps that make revenue. AlphaGrowth currently has an optimized roster of 15 top dApps that will help move the needle in any ecosystem. These projects are looking for a home base they can live in and change the world from - Polkadot would be a natural landing spot for these use cases.
With these top-tier dApps, AlphaGrowth can demonstrate immediate value by onboarding early projects with blue-chip potential already in our pipeline. These “Champion dApps” will be deployed onto existing Parachains (or new Parachains) with the most feasible compatibility to optimize value-add to the Polkadot Ecosystem. Throughout the campaign, AlphaGrowth will carry an open dialogue with its Polkadot Oversight Advisory Board to seek advice, align, and determine the best fit for each Champion dApp.
AlphaGrowth specializes in ecosystem growth through a tried and tested business development process. We begin with an ecosystem audit to identify common infrastructural needs and blockers. The ecosystem audit will paint a tremendous and cohesive picture of the state of the Polkadot ecosystem and its strengths and weaknesses. Once we identify infrastructure blockers and holes in the ecosystem, we will match Champion dApps with the most compatible Parachain to leverage, or even have them deploy their own dedicated chain to bring forth the best value to the Polkadot Ecosystem.
Supercharging Business Development
In addition to growth services, AlphaGrowth brings a one-of-a-kind, crypto-native sales & BD platform to Polkadot - to be used not only by the AlphaGrowth Team but all BD personnel in the Polkadot Ecosystem. Our team built (and always improving on) a crypto-native CRM and dashboard enabling us to efficiently evaluate, score opportunities, and report progress on all BD efforts.
Creating a single point of communication and transparency for Polkadot BD service providers, stakeholders, and projects will bridge the gaps that previously existed in the Polkadot Ecosystem. Gone are the days of siloed data tracking, one-off introductions, and haphazard sales efforts. Our platform creates a “growth homepage” for the ecosystem
Currently, there are over 5,000 registered users on alphagrowth.io representing projects, ecosystems, and investors. These parties use AlphaGrowth’s tools to prospect, invest, and sell more effectively. The AlphaGrowth team itself, through the platform, has interacted and collaborated with over one hundred ecosystems, hundreds of investors, and thousands of blockchain projects creating tens of thousands of unique interactions.
alphagrowth.io could be positioned as the center of mass for all of Polkadot’s BD efforts. While not necessarily involved in every sale in every niche or region, AlphaGrowth may deploy a dedicated sales and BD coordinator for all service providers in the Polkadot Ecosystem - think of this as VIP services, for all Polkadot BD professionals.
Watching the Watch(wo)man
All web3 natives are witness to projects wasting millions of dollars of capital used in pursuit of growth. For the past 2 years, AlphaGrowth has served ecosystems. After being asked to assist with both grants and growth, we realized there were very few mechanisms that existed to help teams understand the ROI of capital deployment.
Our analytics tool creates an effective mechanism for monitoring service providers in the Decentralized Futures program, including AlphaGrowth. This tool could be leveraged to create transparency and maximize ROI for the Decentralized Futures program, where stakeholders could make informed decisions about continued funding or increased grant allocations. To that end, AlphaGrowth suggests a resource to coordinate amongst teams and leverage the software to create insights for the community and Foundation.
Upon securing funding for this part of the proposal, AlphaGrowth will be able to allocate engineering resources to expedite the development and completion of this feature. Polkadot gets the full benefit of our pre-existing infrastructure - we have been working on this tool for the past two years.
Understanding effective capital deployment is a multi-billion dollar attribution opportunity. AlphaGrowth was made to take on the opportunity.
Differentiation
AlphaGrowth offers a unique balance between software and services, creating a best-of-breed option for ecosystem growth services. While we offer each offering individually, we recommend a combination of all of the software and services to create a more impactful offering. All of this is wrapped in a cost-conscious package enabling more impact for less money spent. Our incremental approach offers an alternative to costly proposals that bet large amounts of money from the Decentralized Futures on a single approach.
Oversight Advisory Board
While we are confident in our ability to deliver on our goals, we believe it’s important to be transparent and accountable to the Web3 Foundation and the community. Therefore, we have created an oversight council made up of Polkadot leaders and community members. This counsel would provide a mechanism to receive feedback, provide oversight, and strengthen existing relationships within the Polkadot community.
Initial commitments to our Advisory Board include:
- Adam Liposky - Former Head of Ecosystem @ Moonbeam, Former COO of Pocket Network. During his tenure with Moonbeam Foundation, he and his team built out the capabilities of the Foundation, hiring a team of web3 experts and designing a balanced go-to-market approach that would limit bear-market downside while producing a funnel of attractive opportunities, including Uniswap & Upbit.
- Aarya Ravahi - Ex-ecosystem growth at Parity. Led the efforts to grow Polkadot’s gaming ecosystem and was instrumental in coordinating efforts between ecosystem partners.
- Nick Odio - Chief Growth Officer @ Ferrum Network
- Nick has been largely responsible for the team’s decision to move toward Polkadot and is the main advisor regarding all things Polkadot at the company. He is one of the main spokespersons for Ferrum Network and excels in PR.
- Matt C. - Builder and Ambassador @ Astar Network
- Matt is actively involved in both the development and promotion of this innovative network. Not only that, but Matt is also a Core Member of various Astar projects, including AstridDAO, Bluez, and SiO2 Finance
- Toga Mamora - Former Community Management @ Astar Network
- Toga played a key role in the growth and community management of Astar Network, contributing to its development as a DAO. He is proficient in UI testing and has organized community events for Astar, including AMAs and local meetups.
- Robin Ejsmond-Frey - Former Senior Business Development Manager at Parity. Robin started his career in management consulting and tradfi, and also ran his own hospitality venture for five years, before seeing the light and moving into crypto. His first role was as Head of Business Development at a Defi protocol on Cosmos, before being recruited to Parity as a Senior Business Development Manager, focused on developing both crypto-native and enterprise opportunities.
- Ryan Whitehead - Instrumental in driving growth as the Global Head of Marketing for Moonbeam Foundation. Ex-Coinbase Director of Product Marketing, ex-Facebook Head of Partnerships Global Brand & Solutions Marketing.
Sustainability
By design, AlphaGrowth is a sustainable organization offering growth services and software to venture-scale projects and ecosystems in Web3. Future business opportunities are driven by our ability to provide a successful growth service to Polkadot. This initial foot in the door will create future opportunities to grow and support teams and projects within the ecosystem with growth services. Further, AlphaGrowth hopes to drive significant usage through its sales and transparency platform by demonstrating its value to a large Polkadot audience, building a major source of usage and revenue for the company.
We envision a future where Polkadot service providers work together to close and integrate the latest and greatest applications on Polkadot. AlphaGrowth aims to be a “founding partner” in that ecosystem of service providers and integrators.
Team
Founded in 2018, AlphaGrowth has helped strategize, fund, and market hundreds of blockchain projects. AlphaGrowth consists of a team of seasoned crypto professionals with an extensive network in the industry. Our mission is to help the next top 1,000 crypto projects get funding and go to market.
Our team is led by a team of data, mathematics, economists, and computer scientists with deep blockchain experience. Previously, the founding team built a computer matching algorithm to match 80,000 fintech companies with 7,000 investors and private equity firms. AlphaGrowth is now applying these same principles to match crypto projects to corresponding ecosystem criteria and desires.
- Bryan Colligan: Founder, Program and Technical Lead | Twitter, Linkedin
- Joe Bjornsen: Co-Founder, Outreach and BD Lead | Linkedin
- Michael Borisov: Co-Founder, Engineering Lead | Linkedin
- Shardul Pilley: Core Team, Grants & Governance Lead | LinkedIn
- Kyril Vlasenko: Core Team, Operations and UI/UX | Linkedin
- Vitalii Serdiuk: Core Team, Partnerships & Client Success Manager | Linkedin
- Jose Alfonso Manrique: Core Team, Partnerships, and BD Manager | Linkedin
Closing Thoughts
AlphaGrowth envisions being one of many sustainable, growth-oriented service providers in the Polkadot ecosystem. We are uniquely positioned to provide value across the growth spectrum with our unique combination of experience, software-enabled services, and web3 software tools. The AlphaGrowth team is here for the long haul, and we are honored to have the opportunity to be Polkadot’s boots on the ground. A sincere thank you from our team for taking the time to read through our proposal.