Thanks very much for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Also, really appreciate you giving me a call over the weekend to discuss. Look forward to fielding questions during this week’s town hall as you suggested, rather than rushing this on chain (have had a few delegation offers to get me the additional Noun required for submission after Noun 400).
You mention that Small Grants was formed to facilitate smaller grants, though the group has since evolved to have a fully open discretionary mandate (we’re going to change the name soon to reflect this). Will Noun Haus have a specific mandate for things that you’d fund, or do you intend for this to be totally up to your discretion like Small Grants? It sounds like you will focus on Nouns Builder projects (very exciting) but do you envision expanding beyond that?
The evolution of Small Grants and the work you’ve done have been a huge inspiration for making this proposal. Not to mention the fact that I got my start as a Nouns DAO contributor after having received a small grant that I passed through to Nouns Athletes.
NOUN HAUS intends to function in a consultative and collaborative manner with Small Grants, where we add value by filling gaps that emerge and forwarding on opportunities where relevant. We’d like to be discretionary as to not restrict the experimental nature, but have no desire to compete with Small Grants on opportunities. Extensions are where we can add the most value and our niche experience is where our passion lies – a public alliance would be paramount and I think it’s very likely our referrals would lead to more inbound opportunities for Small Grants as well.
Is this a for-profit pod or a grants program? It sounds like you’ll be doing both. You mention you will request more grants funding in the future, but when it comes to operations/compensation funding, that will be funded by the returns you are making from investments in the future? What are some of the ways that you plan to generate revenue?
NOUN HAUS would operate a grants program AND showcase projects we’ve built, or have contributed to (by issuing grants and providing guidance). We’d be doing both in practice, but with a clear line of demarcation, whereby we’d lead by example (as done so far) to establish potential revenue streams atop Nouns as a platform. Hyperstructures as defined by Jacob are in large part how we’ve been thinking about relevant business models. Open source and CC0 both present unique challenges for monetisation, but there’s opportunity aplenty.
There’s every chance that our experiments lead to the formation of a subDAO akin to Gnars DAO, whereby domain specificity is the enabler, but tbh that’s what we intend to find out. The chance to explore methods of self-sustenance is in part why we are so excited about this proposal. In this context, my work on Gnars DAO etc has been referenced by a number of nounish builders as inspirational and pioneering – we’ve every intention of paving a path to proliferation and guiding others toward it.