Scottrepreneur Interview

--- title: "Scottrepreneur Interview" excerpt: "It’s an interesting challenge figuring out the onboarding and offboarding process, discovering jobs from month to month and delicately scheduling them so that it’s not too overwhelming and you’re also not left without enough to do." name: 'Scottrepreneur' username: '@Scottrepreneur' interviewer: '@traviswyche' --- #### Travis Wyche Let’s start with you explaining how you transitioned into working in Web3 and what you were doing before this. #### Scottrepreneur I love startups and I was performing different product and operations roles. I was really excited about crypto and was largely trading up until 2017 or 2018. >**I looked around at the ecosystem and thought about what else I could do to contribute to the sustainability of the movement, to treat it as more than a flash-in-the-pan ICO craze.** I started looking at how I could contribute to projects. A lot of projects weren't really hiring product people at the time and it was just the start of the bear market. I wanted to learn more code. I have parents that are both computer programmers so I knew I was going to code eventually, but didn't actually study code in school and so I really started getting my chops with a little productivity system project that I built. Then I went to ETH Denver and hacked on Pool Together and did a couple of other hackathon efforts that led to Rabbit Hole. I found MetaCartel when I was at one of the conferences and immersed myself into the MetaCartel ecosystem by becoming a member and then figuring out all the cool things that were revealed in DAOhaus. I got really excited about joining Raid Guild and figuring out how I could join they're movement. #### Travis Wyche What does your average workday look like? #### Scottrepreneur I spend a lot of time on calls catching up with folks and understanding the status of projects. There’s a decent amount of coding and scoping of projects, different implementations, giving feedback and working through issues. I'm largely focused on Rabbit Hole these days. I spend a lot of time overseeing the strategy of the technology over there and trying to figure out how we can change credentialing. I contribute on the side to DAOhaus and RaidGuild these days, helping out with some process things and contributor onboarding. #### Travis Wyche Are you actively going on raids? Are you typically looking for new raids to join? #### Scottrepreneur I help facilitate or cleric for the most part. I'm not doing any development raids. I'll throw in a few bug fixes here and there if we have any issues and definitely help oversee a lot of the seasonal projects, mentoring apprentices and helping onboard new contributors. #### Travis Wyche Do you remember your first raid or the first raid that you spearheaded? #### Scottrepreneur I almost immediately started contributing to DAOhaus because I knew I could make a lot of impact there. I was really excited about RaidGuild using DAOhaus. I've done a few different subgraph and front-end raids. I've been bringing in different subgraph projects, because Rabbit Hole is using a lot of subgraphs behind the scenes. Whenever we need some graph built, I'll usually come over to Raid Guild and ask if we can get a project spun up. #### Travis Wyche From a freelancer's point of view, what would you say has been the biggest challenge in working in this manner and pivoting to Web3? #### Scottrepreneur >**It's an interesting challenge figuring out the onboarding and offboarding process, discovering jobs from month to month and delicately scheduling them so that it’s not too overwhelming and you’re also not left without enough to do.** I was freelancing before and had to figure out how to do a lot of different things myself. In RaidGuild I've been able to kind of partner up with people that want to do other pieces of the process so I could focus on development, which allows for a cool partnership with the different parties that come together and allows us to really facilitate the best of the strengths of each raid party member, making sure that we can give the client a really awesome experience. #### Travis Wyche What would you say was your biggest a-ha moment through this process, as a member of multiple DAOs and as a member of Raid Guild? #### Scottrepreneur There have been plenty of initiatives that I haven't been able to provide full-weight support on just because I haven't had time to focus and they turned out to be some of the coolest things that have happened. It’s cool to be able to see that kind of organic growth. >**A lot of those initiatives used to come from the top down, so if the ideas weren't supported from the top they just didn't happen. Now there's a flow of cool things being suggested, promoted, and built, because of the diversity of ideas in the Guild.** #### Travis Wyche If you had to do it all over again is there anything you would do differently? #### Scottrepreneur It's definitely a process to figure out how to deal with taxes and healthcare as a Web3 freelancer. I recommend looking into Opolis or at least understanding the implications of getting paid in crypto and consider how you will facilitate those factors. >**Figure out the lead time of projects and if you're going to off board into dollars to pay your rent that process will require getting used to.** #### Travis Wyche That seems like a really powerful tip for all freelancers, but it’s especially important with crypto! Any final tips or tricks that you might offer the new cohort of apprentices and people just being introduced to Web3 to ensure their success? #### Scottrepreneur I think you're setting a great example here by getting your initiative set to push cool things forward and trying to prove out why that's going to be valuable. >**If you see value there, definitely go and grab it. We as a guild really like to fund those types of ideas, even if it's retroactively.** If you are getting a little bit of reassurance and find yourself swimming in cool ideas, even if they’re not necessarily one of the suggested ideas, definitely pick that up and run with it because that initiative will be rewarded. #### Travis Wyche What roles have you chosen for yourself in RaidGuild? You mentioned cleric work, anything else? #### Scottrepreneur I find myself in an ops mindset often; I don't like to let things fall through the cracks. However, there's not really a good way to get rewarded for those types of roles in our current DAO structure. Those roles are kind of ambiguous in their concrete deliverables, so it's hard for us to rationalize how much they generate in value in comparison to design and development. Clericing is the main role that I've been in, making sure that the projects move forward and are tabulated in our internal rate system. #### Travis Wyche I was having a conversation earlier today with another member who was mentioning that there's not yet a system of incentivization for Tavern keepers either. This is a really important role, to the extent that it's public facing and speaks on behalf of the Guild, providing that necessary culture adhesive and serving as a bridge builder between projects and other DAOs. I can imagine similar difficulties in recognizing the contributions of a cleric, monk, or healer, and that seems like an important conversation. #### Scottrepreneur The healer role is definitely a tricky one to figure out the right way to incentivize. We've proposed salaried positions in the past and that has been met with a little bit of resistance, because there’s a continuous outflow without any clear checks and balances in place. We're starting to figure out how to reward scribes and bards as we focus on the value those roles generate. We need to continue to extend that recognition and continue to have this conversation, like you said, to figure out how those roles can be sustainably incentivized. #### Travis Wyche Do you find yourself serving a similar role in other DAOs? #### Scottrepreneur It's nice to switch and be able to focus on slightly different things in different contexts. There are places where I can shine and so I definitely try to focus on those areas as much as I can, where I can deliver the most impact for the organization. #### Travis Wyche How did you personally fall down the crypto rabbit hole? What was your very first introduction? #### Scottrepreneur I helped a friend get some Bitcoin for a hackathon that he was working on. He needed 20 bucks in Bitcoin and didn't really think anything of it at the time and didn't really touch my account again for another year or so. I found out about Ethereum and got really excited about smart contracts. I’m from Des Moines, which is a big insurance hub, and I’ve never been a big fan of for profit insurance and became excited about the democratization of insurance. I also think prediction markets are really cool, especially when we can start predicting the outcomes of a lot of events. I was in market research for a little while and if we would help marketers and product builders see trends, predict the markets, that would be pretty gnarly. #### Travis Wyche Wow, interesting ideas. Very cool. So let me ask you a question a little bit out of left field. What constitutes a healthy DAO? #### Scottrepreneur That's an interesting question for sure. >**Being able to successfully come to decisions without too much controversy. Some others have proposed having tight votes on-chain as a signal of health, but I'm not sure that's necessarily the best one.** I like the Moloch style where you don't need a ton of votes and the early execution that's been added recently is pretty powerful. A lot of consensus is being built off-chain, then we’re largely passing through proposals that have already been agreed on based on the social signals. Being able to guild kick people is also pretty powerful. #### Travis Wyche Between the on-chain governance and off-chain sentiment gathering into soft consensus, there's certainly some kind of more ineffable or ethereal meat layer of trust and loyalty. There's a lot of conversation in this community about how this trust is built or generated, whether it is in fact a design problem or a story as old as time itself: how people successfully navigate through the trust and loyalty that they extend to each other. How would you describe your experience with building or generating trust and loyalty in your DAOs? #### Scottrepreneur It definitely starts with your mentality. I think MetaCartel has a really cool philosophy of doing good first and then your contributions will be rewarded, to prove that you're not trying to take advantage of the situation. There are different opportunities to show your goodwill and to continue to build that trust. This is one of the big things that is under-represented in the DAO space. >**Trust building is not necessarily removing trust altogether, but helping to provide the community with stronger tools to rely on the trust that's being built across the whole globe.** #### Travis Wyche What do you think the future of all this looks like, of all the tools and all the DAOs? What does the future of coordination look like? #### Scottrepreneur Over the last couple years, there's been a lot of struggle to find business models for blockchain applications. I'm really intrigued by how we might do it at the civic level in trying to replace a lot of the bureaucracy that's currently being used. A lot of government is a black box for a lot of people; you put in a vote and hopefully it’s not garbage that comes out the other side. I think we need to help people connect their vote to the outcomes that are happening and help make that process a lot more transparent. I don't necessarily know if blockchain is the right solution for that, or DAOs are the right solution, but I think we're at least working in that direction. Hopefully the regulators don't blow us up before we get there. #### Travis Wyche We're in store for some very fascinating and tense conversations in the coming days. All of these ideas about increased decentralization and autonomy - this whole grand social experiment - is going to need to interface with the legacy systems, specifically governance and the judiciary body of the state apparatus. There’s a wonderful tension or friction inherent within that idea, touching upon issues of sovereignty and autonomy in the authoritative wielding of centralized power. I'm personally very optimistic and curious about how this will all unfold. #### Scottrepreneur Totally. I don't think we're ever going to accept the US dollar or any other sovereign currency as a global reserve currency, so whether or not that's Bitcoin or DAI or RAI, I think it gives us a lot better footing to try and establish a more global community. >**I think that being able to be an active voice in a community by actively contributing is a super powerful thing for both community and product. I'm really excited to see how different DAOs step into different roles and what decisions they’re able to make and how we will be able to sort through the priorities of what should be built based on the needs of the community members serving as the stewards of new networks dedicated to adding the new features that are most valuable to the community.** It's a powerful incentive. I’m really excited. #### Travis Wyche Anything else you want to add? #### Scottrepreneur I think this is awesome. I personally wanted to work inside of an agency but didn't really want to deal with some of the managerial baggage that comes with traditional agencies. Helping freelancers see the light on the other side of Raid Guild is a really powerful position to be in. I’m excited about this Origin Stories and Freelancer initiative!