Proposal -- Exec search for Marketing Lead

Position proposal for DXdao

The Position team is excited to propose a working arrangement with the DXDao community to find your Marketing Lead. This individual will be critical in defining product marketing strategy along with crafting the narrative to attract and foster a vibrant community of supporters.

Below I will outline our pricing, process, and client list.

Fintech / Crypto clients:

We are happy to put you in touch with the Founders or People leaders from any of these companies as a point of reference

Services
Process: Formal Search Timeline (10-12 weeks)

  • Organization/Team: A full examination of the department’s structure.
  • Market analysis: Compile a target list of relevant companies with employee data to gauge the potential for success of search tactics.
  • Job Specification: Create a robust position spec and company pitch.
  • Comp analysis: Perform an analysis of expected comp (cash, bonus, and equity) to set expectations for the potential hire.
  • Build a custom database focusing on specific companies (local landscape, industry, and national targets) as well as the specific roles within those companies.
  • Source candidates nationally from (1) our own database, (2) human-aided AI, (3) LinkedIn, (4) industry websites, and (5) professional networks. This typically will generate 1000+ profiles.
  • Prioritize profiles into the top 75-100+ candidates.
  • Outreach: We then reach out to the entire market simultaneously and, based on responses, the candidates are filtered by (1) level of interest, (2) availability, (3) affordability, (4) location/relocation, (5) qualifications, and (6) cultural fit (based upon interviews conducted).
  • Submit qualified candidates: Typically each search garners 6-8 candidates submitted to the client via a (1) detailed candidate summary, (2) resume, and (3) personalized notations on their file indicating high-level feedback based on my expertise, past experience, and conversations held with the candidates throughout the process.
  • Offer: We guide the offer and hiring process by leading salary negotiations and reference checks.
  • Onboarding: Finally, we support with onboarding of hire and conduct regular check-ins to ensure client/candidate satisfaction

Pricing:

  • $40,000 total search fee
    Fee break down:
    • $10k retainer fee due upon search commencement paid in ETH
    • $20k success fee due upon the successful placement of the candidate paid in ETH or DAI
    • $10k success fee paid in DXD with 1-year lockup

Guarantee (1-year): We will refill the position at no cost should the placed executive willfully leave or not perform to expectations within 12 months of the commencement of their employment.

Next Steps:
We are ready to get started if/when this proposal is accepted by the community. In the meantime, feel free to reach out or comment with questions about our process and proposal.

4 Likes

Trey and Chase came to the Biz Dev call last week. They’re one of the few recruiters with a foot in the crypto world and the traditional tech world.

DXdao is looking for unique contributors and it’s a pre-requisite that they get and understand our ethos and work style. It will be a challenge to find someone with that mentality that also understands marketing and Web3. DAOs are a new breed, but Trey and Chase seem to have a good understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish and hopefully can find a person to drive DXdao’s marketing efforts and expand the products’ brand.

Trey found a great candidate for a search 3 years ago for a crypto media company and I’m hoping his knowledge can help us find someone to that understands DeFi, DAOs and the importance of decentralization. We need to coordinate across each of the products and also do more regional expansion and maybe even into the offline world of conferences and meetups.

I’m hoping the structure of the relationship, where payment is contingent on successful placement and the 12 month guarantee re-fill should help insure against the problem of finding someone that fits. This will require some effort on DXdao’s side to coordinate the candidate selection.

Looking forward to seeing this proposal passed.

1 Like

While I agree with the need for a ā€œmarketing leadā€, I’m against spending $40k finders fee for a few reasons. First off, it’s a lot of money and I’d like to give @Melanie a chance to find this marketing lead before we use the ā€œbazookaā€.

Secondly, this will make our ā€œmarketing leadā€ the most expensive person within DXdao since the 1 year cost will be level 5 + $40k. From a marketing perspective this is terrible. Are we tech pioneers or are we a shitcoin show? Conclusion: I’d rather push the general $5k referral fee through to find both marketers & devs and possibly raise wages across the board to make DXdao a more competitive place to work for.

6 Likes

We did not get to this on Wednesday’s Governance discussion. I’ll make sure there’s time next week to talk about it.

To touch on @pulpmachina’s comments.

  • For recruiting, we need an ā€˜all hands on deck’ approach. I’m very happy with work Melanie is doing and looking forward to the internal referral program, but most of Melanie’s focus now is on process improvement and onboarding, not combing through hundreds of resumes.
  • We need more resources and shots on goals. Using internal resources will only rearrange our existing capabilities, so if someone is spending time recruiting that means they’re not spending time building/communicating. The problem is a lack of resources, not a reshuffling of incentives. And we need to be pro-active, not wait for a good candidate.
  • Time is our most precious luxury. Lots of discussion recently about our lack of marketing and brand awareness and we need to fix this now. Waiting…has downside risk
  • Trey and Chase have lots of experience recruiting in crypto and past candidates to choose from. We don’t have these capabilities or resources internally and I think justify the cost.
  • I don’t think we’re a shitcoin show? All the existing contributors have earned REP and thus have much more DXD compensation according to the Gov 2.0 agreement than the Marketing Lead (or any new contributor will have). And our security personnel are higher paid on a pure cost basis (of course they are contractors, not contributors), and this recruitment would be a one-time expense by the DAO, not paid to the individual. And, to be honest, marketing is our biggest need right now, so it makes sense to invest in it.
1 Like

Hey All! While the majority of the Contributor Experience Squad’s effort has been put into process development and improving the onboarding and worker proposal processes lately I am not opposed to shifting our energy into recruiting.

If we need the focus to be on finding a Marketing Lead we can do that! I’m all for doing what’s best for DXdao right now!

4 Likes

@SlimDelgado Let me push back on your ā€œbinder full of brosā€ comment. We take great pride in hiring diverse candidates. About 1/3rd of all our searches even have a mandate of hiring for diversity. CoinDesk hired us for their CPO and COO searches with the mandate to hire only females for the roles since their exec team was all ā€œbrosā€. Older bros, perhaps, but we took that mandate and delivered them two incredible female exec hires.

Do we spam people on LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Sure. This is sales and we don’t post jobs. We are going after the most qualified people for the job and most of those people are actively employed. You can wait around to see who refers in their buddy, who happens to be unemployed and might be ā€œgood enoughā€ for the job. Or you can go after every possible, qualified candidate at once giving you a full picture of the market so you know you’re bringing on the best possible person for the job.

One route saves you $20k, but you’re banking on ā€œhopeā€ that you stumble upon the right person.
Our route puts a process in place. A process we have conducted hundreds of times and that consistently delivers results.

1 Like

I support trying this path. So many projects are in need of a top-notch marketing lead, and few can find one.
If we can get a top notch Marketing Lead out of this, it’s totally worth it.

Plus DXdao needs to learn how to hire external parties to get things done.

This specific clause is what makes the entire try worth it to me. It reduces the risk of this experiment dramatically.

Because of that, I support it.

I also really like @Trey 's reply regarding diversity.

1 Like

Apologies accepted @SlimDelgado. Don’t beat yourself up here. The whole point of message boards is to create dialogue.

3 Likes

UPDATED: Position proposal for DXdao

The Position team is excited to propose a working arrangement with the DXDao community to find your Marketing Lead. This individual will be critical in defining product marketing strategy along with crafting the narrative to attract and foster a vibrant community of supporters.

Below I will outline our pricing, process, and client list.

Fintech / Crypto clients:

We are happy to put you in touch with the Founders or People leaders from any of these companies as a point of reference

Services
Process: Formal Search Timeline (6-12 weeks)

  • Organization/Team: A full examination of the department’s structure.
  • Market analysis: Compile a target list of relevant companies with employee data to gauge the potential for success of search tactics.
  • Job Specification: Create a robust position spec and company pitch.
  • Comp analysis: Perform an analysis of expected comp (cash, bonus, and equity) to set expectations for the potential hire.
  • Build a custom database focusing on specific companies (local landscape, industry, and national targets) as well as the specific roles within those companies.
  • Source candidates nationally from (1) our own database, (2) human-aided AI, (3) LinkedIn, (4) industry websites, and (5) professional networks. This typically will generate 1000+ profiles.
  • Prioritize profiles into the top 75-100+ candidates.
  • Outreach: We then reach out to the entire market simultaneously and, based on responses, the candidates are filtered by (1) level of interest, (2) availability, (3) affordability, (4) location/relocation, (5) qualifications, and (6) cultural fit (based upon interviews conducted).
  • Submit qualified candidates: Typically each search garners 6-8 candidates submitted to the client via a (1) detailed candidate summary, (2) resume, and (3) personalized notations on their file indicating high-level feedback based on my expertise, past experience, and conversations held with the candidates throughout the process.
  • Offer: We guide the offer and hiring process by leading salary negotiations and reference checks.
  • Onboarding: Finally, we support with onboarding of hire and conduct regular check-ins to ensure client/candidate satisfaction

Pricing:

  • $40,000 total search fee
    Fee break down:
    • $10k retainer fee due upon search commencement paid in ETH
    • $20k success fee due upon the successful placement of the candidate paid in 50% ETH or 50% DXD
    • $10k success fee paid in DXD with 1-year lockup

Guarantee (1-year): We will refill the position at no cost should the placed executive willfully leave or not perform to expectations within 12 months of the commencement of their employment.

Next Steps:
We are ready to get started if/when this proposal is accepted by the community. In the meantime, feel free to reach out or comment with questions about our process and proposal.

2 Likes

We do need all the help we can get. :}

I 100% agree with @pulpmachina’s response that it is a lot of money to commit to a marketing lead, although; I have to admit that I’m not aware of a going rate for this line of work.

One critique other than cost:

I don’t support giving out DXD - even as a part of the success fee. We are still trying to formalise a buyback because it is laughably undervalued. It makes little sense to me to pay out DXD to external workers of the DAO (locked or unlocked). We should spend our ETH/stablecoins on these expenses.

4 Likes

This proposal has been submitted, boosted and can be voted on:

1 Like

This task has been completed.

Nissa’s contributor proposal has passed as of Aug 29th.

Per our approved Proposal for this exec search, we are now submitting our proposal for our final payment.

1 Like