What is a DAO? Let me try to explain using an example: Imagine that you want to work for a hot tech startup…
1/ Instead of applying for a job, you can just join this startup’s Slack with one click. There’s no real onboarding – you see dozens of channels right away. It’s overwhelming but you start exploring…
2/ You introduce yourself and another person reaches out. They point you to two different ways to work for this startup: 1. Bounties 2. Teams
3/ “Bounties” is a massive JIRA board with tickets on everything from taking meeting notes to shipping a feature. You take notes for a meeting and share them in Slack. Someone marks the ticket as done and you get a few shares of the company in return.
4/ You want to contribute more and check out the #Growth team Slack. Someone leads this team but nobody reports to them. You volunteer to ship a marketing page for the website for 100 company shares.
5/ You’re finding it hard to coordinate with other people on this team as everyone seems to be part time. Somehow you still manage to ship the page with another contributor and you both get more shares. You like that you only get rewarded if you put in the work vs. face time.
6/ You figured out why people are part time – they’re all working for 5 other startups at the same time! People are just choosing to work on whatever they’re most interested in. And almost all decisions at these startups are public for everyone on the internet to see.
7/ There does seem to be 20 people who are less part time at this startup. These core contributors all own significant company shares and can vote on decisions.
8/ A month into working for this startup you want to get some performance feedback. However, you don’t have a manager. Instead, you meet 1:1 with core contributors to get feedback. There’s also no career ladder, but…
9/ Someone submits a proposal to give you an $150K salary for your hard work. There’s no CEO to approve this. Instead, all contributors vote and the proposal passes. You feel validated that you’re getting a salary. Maybe you’ll only work for 2 other startups instead of 5.
10/ So that’s how this startup (DAO) works: 1. Most people are part time and work at multiple startups 2. All decisions are transparent 3. You earn the right to own more of the company by putting in the work
