Proposal: Asia Pacific Working Group (APWG)
Title: Proposal to establish the APAC Working Group (APWG)
Status: Request For Community Feedback
Decision Process: As per Proposed Decision Making Process
Authors: @pujimak_in @lanks @tudou @lee0007
Reviewer: @Pepperoni_Joe @DarkForestCapital
Created: 17 September 2021
Summary
We propose the creation and Q4 funding of an Asia Pacific Working Group (APWG) for the three months from 1 October 2021 ending 31 December 2021. As an independent and autonomous working group, we will work (in consultation with existing WG) to position APWG as a self-sustainable, growth engine by delivering value quantified in terms of increased awareness, net inflow, and minimised costs as measured in relation to our North Stars & Core KPIâs [ADD: Link to Growth Performance Baselines & Measures]
Strategic Objective: Deliver quantifiable value ⼠5 x APWG Operational Budget $ [ADD: budget when finalised]
Key Considerations: Geographic expansion requires translation of existing resources - our focus is Mandarin. APWG will work with respective working groups to identify, prioritize and progress translation for documents that relate to our Q4 objectives. [EDIT: markdown removed to shutdown internal document links]
Background
What has been done?
Recognizing that community and working group calls serve a vital function within Index Coop (IC) in June 2021, we sought the opportunity to âdevelop an APAC community and ultimately move towards establishing an APAC working groupâ.
At the time, most IC community members were (and remain) located in the US and EMEA regions. Subsequently, calls designed to keep the community up-to-date, informed, and aligned were scheduled across US/EMEA time zones, making it challenging to engage the growing number of APAC community members.
In the weeks since inception (6 July 2021), APAC community calls have shown a steady increase in the number of participants and contributors. We had 11 participants at the most recent meeting on 14 September, up from an initial five and now consistently upwards of nine.
What Worked?
Our relatively small and agile team have collaborated to:
- Identify and prioritise market entry points and align community members with these markets
- Identify trading habits, key media agencies and news outlets within the APAC market
- Support relationships with Institutional, High Networth, Venture Capital and Retail investors
- Coordinate APAC review and feedback for Index 2.0 workshops
- Promote IC products in key communication channels in the market.
- Language Ops contributors set up official WeChat and Weibo channels as part of the regional content marketing strategy to boost the visibility and reputation of ICâs index products and serve as a funnel for talent, retail and institutional investors from Chinese-speaking regions.
- tudou WeChat (blog): Index Coop ä¸ć
- tudou Weibo (microblog): IndexCoop垎ĺ
- Other language activities to further expand global reach of Index Coop products
- Establish a strategic direction and workflow (Notion) for delivering Q4 objectives
- Establish performance measures and Key Performance Indicators (KPIâs) for the APWG in line with IC North Stars, Core KPIs and channel metrics
- Identified responsible contributors to ensure open, transparent and cross-functional communication.
What Needs Improving?
- Accountability: we need to establish accountability for achieving product, community and contributor growth.
- Communication: we need to formalise clear and open lines of cross-functional communication and share this responsibility.
- Community: we need to strengthen a sense of belonging, coordinate and leverage the wealth of talent within the APAC community.
- Planning: we need to plan for future development to capture the potential growth of deFi within the APAC region.
- Compensation: we need to fairly compensate APAC contributors so that they can be held accountable for progress against our proposed KPIâs.
Situation
What are you proposing?
We propose the creation and Q4 funding of an Asia Pacific Working Group (APWG) for the three months from 1 October 2021 ending December 31 2021. The APWG will be composed of four vertices and function in consultation with the following four working groups.
- Business Development
- Institutional Business
- Growth
- People Organisation & Community
Key contributors will be responsible for alignment with current working groups to;
- Ensure clear communication
- Maintain alignment of purpose and goals
- Minimise duplication of effort/cost
What is the core problem(s) you want to solve?
Index Coop is experiencing hyper-growth both in terms of AUM and the size and spread of our community. This is a positive result of the high-performance and results-orientated culture we strive for - however, growth, for any organisation, is a double-edged sword.
If growth is constrained, we will fail to achieve our mission to become the Blackrock of Crypto. On the other side, hyper-growth could become unsustainable without the leadership, systems and culture required to support forward momentum.
The formation of the APAC working group is an effort to plan and prepare for the inevitable growth opportunities we see within the APAC region. To capture market opportunity, we look to provide solutions for:
- Geographic Expansion: we hope APWG might provide proof of concept (PoC) for creating multiple, geographic-specific working groups, each functioning as independent and autonomous teams. We believe this form of organisation will facilitate efficient, effective geographic expansion.
- Organisation Support Structures: as APAC activity expands, responsibility and accountability will fall to APWG instead of existing IC WG leads.
- Timely Decision Making: We can seize opportunities and mitigate delayed decision-making due to time-zone differences with funded autonomy.
- Market Growth & Development: in line with the North Stars and Core KPIs, we work to increase awareness, influence consideration and facilitate investment for IC products.
- Community & Cultural Autonomy: we seek to identify, nurture and retain talented advocates and IC contributors, to increase autonomy for APAC contributors and reward results.
- Efficient Communication: we intend to formalise, streamlined cross-function communication to ensure the APAC community is up-to-date, informed and aligned with ICâs vision, purpose and mission.
Why is this worth addressing today?
A 2021 report by Messari on Asiaâs Crypto Landscape shows the vast market opportunity APAC presents.
Leading crypto countries, such as China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, have deep pools of liquidity, while other countries have a great potential to scale. The nature of traditional finance has played a key role in the adoption of crypto: capital controls pushed investors towards cryptocurrencies in China and South Korea, while low-yields pushed adoption in Japan. YE June 2020 Asia accounted for 43% of global cryptocurrency activity, or US $296 billion in transactions. Asia has an outsized role in the crypto markets due to a variety of reasons. Each country has its nuances, but factors include high penetration of public market investing, high-technology pedigree, the prevalence of WiFi, deep penetration of e-payments, propensity for gambling, and a high percentage of computer science graduates.
This region has substantial untapped potential in terms of both market development and the talent required to drive growth. Establishing the APWG is important to address today because;
- First-Mover Advantage: as a leading DeFi Protocol in a market that accounts for upwards of 40% of global cryptocurrency activity, the first-mover advantage could be lost within months.
- Geographic Expansion: bridging the gap between east and west ecosystems should be a priority for Index Coop, as we strive to make crypto easy and accessible. Our team seek to identify and foster new institutional and business development relationships in the APAC region.
- Accountability for Growth: we need to formalise accountability, support growth and set clear objectives to grow the APAC market.
- Decentralized Autonomy: we seek your trust signalled by granting us the autonomy to set direction in this region based on cultural alignment. We require funding to plan, coordinate and implement work and to research, identify and secure opportunities as they arise.
How will you address it?
Our first approach was to prioritise geographical regions and respective metropolitan hubs to connect and engage with communities and deFi sectors.
- East Asia || Primary Hub - Hong Kong, China
- South-East Asia (ASEAN) || Primary Hub - Singapore, Singapore
- Oceania || Primary Hub - Sydney, Australia
- Central Asia || Primary Hub - Bombay, India
Business development opportunities in other regions (Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan) are ongoing yet not a strategic priority (yet)due to limited resources. [EDIT: to reflect the above list is not intended to exclude any APAC country]. Work is ongoing to identify trading habits, key media agencies, and news outlets within the APAC market to prioritise key media relationships to support product marketing. [EDIT: Simplify] We proposed to undertake the following broad functions through data-driven decision-making and a relentless, results-orientated growth focus.
- Business Development Research, Strategic Planning & Coordination
- Institutional Business Research, Strategic Planning & Coordination
- Localized Product Marketing Content & Events (AMA +Airdrops)
- Community Growth & Capacity Building
We believe these four working group areas provide the minimum viable level of support needed (as of this proposal) to underpin IC expansion into the APAC region. We recognize it remains necessary to collaborate with all other working groups and expect to undertake the following activities:
General Activity: Project Leads
[EDIT: markdown removed to shutdown internal document links]
- Plan, prepare and report to APAC community, and DAO calls
- Attend associated leadership & strategy calls and workshops
- Share IC vision & mission, goals & achievements
- Recognise, celebrate & share wins
- Develop forum posts and proposals for community consideration and feedback
- Analyse, measure and refine growth performance
- Report performance, refine, adapt or pivot as required
WG Specific Activity: Contributors
[EDIT: markdown removed to shutdown internal document links]
APAC Business Development, Research & Strategy
- Integrations/partnerships with DeFi protocols
- Establishing relationships with digital asset custodians and market makers
- Recruit Internal Methodologists to launch community-led indices
With several potential collaborations in the pipeline, APWG will continue to research, identify and secure growth opportunities. The team maintains a solid relationship with Ontology Protocol and recently secured IC token listing with ONTO X wallet. This partnership includes a growth marketing AMA session (tentative date: 24th September).
APAC Institutional Business Strategy
Infrastructure Building
- Custodian Token Listing
- Centralised Exchange Listing
Institutional Education & Awareness
- Index Coop Sponsored Events
- Conferences
- Investor Relations Resources
- Online Events
IB Team currently supports two regional investors - LD Capital & DeFinance with the recent Treasury Diversification. We also support ongoing efforts to increase institutional and retail participation with the APAC based KuCoin (CEX) through further research and stakeholder engagement. A research-led approach will help us develop a more systematic approach to opportunity assessment.
APAC Product Content Marketing
- Customisation of IC resources to promote, educate and raise awareness of our growing suite of institutional-grade products.
- Region-specific events to promote, educate and raise awareness of our product suite.
- Media research and outreach
NOTES: Due to APACâs diversity of cultures, there remain many disconnects between current content marketing strategy and APACâs institutional, HNW and retail investors. Currently, Chinese content production is constrained by the lack of budget to expand their content production team. We seek funded autonomy to set the direction for region-specific content development and event marketing.
APAC Community, Culture & Capacity Building
- Contribute region-specific recommendations for onboarding & orientation
- Offline Engagement, Networking & Promotion
- Community management (& gamification)
With some customization of the onboarding process, APWG would initially focus on university and young professional communities to engage with finance, research, engineering, and entrepreneurial talent. By growing our community, we expect to develop a network effect to cost-efficiently increase awareness, grow an engaged community and ultimately increase the number of unique holders.
What Impact Will this Project Have?
Q4 Objectives
[EDIT: markdown removed to shutdown internal document links]
Increase # Unique Holders by growing our community while developing contributor autonomy and effective coordination and alignment of peopleâs skills and interests.
POC (People) focused on the development and retention of contributors owls through the use of APAC customized language and research-based onboarding activities (jobs board) [EDIT: to specify research-based and reference jobs board]
- [KPI] # onboarding and attaining Owl Levels
- [KPI] % growth from baseline
POC (Organisation) focused on supporting new contributors to develop context, depth of market and product knowledge and empowering high-impact contributors through increased autonomy
- [KPI] # of Levels 1 Level 2 contributors supported to identify and deliver value
- [KPI] # of Level 3 Level 4 contributors working autonomously to deliver value
POC Community outreach focused on knowledgeable audiences such as University Finance & Technology students
- [KPI] # new members (initially low due to needing to develop onboarding funnel)
- [KPI] Target 15% representation of women/non-binary contributors (3% above industry standard)
Increase $Protocol Revenue & Increase # Unit Supply: Stage 1 focused on developing a research-led sales funnel (onboarding) to increase contributor knowledge and autonomy to identify, build and secure IB BD opportunities in the APAC Region.
- [KPI] # New IB BD opportunities identified
- [KPI] # Strategic Relationship established/progressed by IB BD team
- [KPI] $ Growth of TVL on APAC Exchanges &/or Net Inflow
Increase $ Aggregate Trade Volume: in consultation with LOWG and GWG, APWG develops in-market expertise to inform localized outreach, content production and audience engagement. Focus on raising awareness by developing regional content and events
- [KPI] Increase APAC % of Trade Volume
- [KPI] # Event participants
- [KPI] # Impression for content & media
[KPI] # Emails collected
Request For Funding
NB: This section is a work in progress and will be updated to reflect community feedback around the work we plan to undertake
Estimate [EDIT: markdown removed to shutdown internal document links]
| Category | October | November | December | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salaries and rewards | $INDEX | $INDEX | $INDEX | $INDEX |
| WG Lead (Index Stipend) | TBC | TBC | TBC | TBC |
| $ | $ | $ | $ | |
| Full-time contributors | $11,000 | $11,000 | $11,000 | $33,000 |
| Contributors rewards | $5,500 | $6,000 | $6,500 | $18,000 |
| Total Salaries and rewards | $16,500 | $17,000 | $17,500 | $51,000 |
| Expected headcount each month | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
| Contributor Reward (Average) | $2,750 | $2,429 | $2,188 | |
| Additional Costs | ||||
| Conferences & Events | $1,250 | $1,250 | $1,250 | $3,750 |
| Partnerships | $500 | $500 | $500 | $1,500 |
| Marketing & Promotions | $1,500 | $1,500 | $1,500 | $4,500 |
| Total Additional APWG costs | $3,250 | $3,250 | $3,250 | $9,750 |
| TOTAL REQUESTED BUDGET | $60,750 |
Organization - How Will it Work?
Collective Growth & Trust
As an independent and autonomous working group, APWG aims to organize and collaborate based on:-
1. Relentless focus: We will continue to ask ourselves what does/doesnât work, what should we do thatâs new, of impact to the North Star, Core KPI, and very specific to our region.
2. Trust & Action-Orientated: trusting in one anotherâs ability to deliver, we work to Get Stuff Done (GSD) and interact with others on the understanding that everyone is busy driving our collective success
3. Radical Candor: As a diverse melting pot of cultures, we will apply the concept of radical candor to guide our approach when providing and receiving feedback.
4. Assume the Best of Each Other: Intent can be easily misinterpreted, especially online. Therefore we must always assume communication comes from a positive place of desire to help and connect.
5. Self-Identified Autonomy: we are taking an experimental approach to empower and build contributor autonomy by applying a framework for members to self-identify their level of autonomy in relation to six key interactions
Key Interactions & Autonomy
APAC Contributors
Working Group Lead
- Irsyad Nazri (@pujimak_in )
Project Leads & Contributors
- Jack Lanks (@lanks)
- Tudou Hou (@tudou)
- Renee Lee (@lee0007)
- Vanita Kadam (@vanita)
- Louisa Rajamanickam (@Louisaraj)
- Brad Morris (@bradwmorris)
- Ronald Wiplinger (@Elmit)
@Pujimak_in will lead the APWG. Projects and subregions will be led by a core contributor with a track record of impact. The working group members will be accountable to execute APWG objectives as per a self-identified level of autonomy.
- L1 L2: leads are responsible for supporting and seeing that contributors deliver value according to APWG objectives.
- L3 L4: high autonomy contributors are responsible and accountable for delivering value according to APWG or organizational strategy.
The APGW Lead will decide on the performance and payment of core contributors, while APWG Lead + Core Contributors will co-decide on the performance reward of subregions/project contributors.
What will you be doing?
Refer General Activity Specific Activity & Budget [EDIT: 3 x markdown removed to shutdown internal document links]
How will you interface with the community?
- Weekly Standup Updates
- Bi-weekly APAC community call
- A representative at a majority of western weekly standup calls
- AdHoc Community calls as required
- Publication of all expenses and contributor rewards
- #APAC Channel on Discord
- APAC KPI update in Monthly and Quarterly report
Our Commitments
We are committed to
- Index Coop Guiding Principles and will use them as a reference point during challenging conversations to promote constructive conflict resolution and guide purposeful decision making.
- Service to the entire Index Coop with our work.
- Open, rapid communication style knowing that clear, constant, public communication lifts the entire Index Coop community.
- Sharing progress and learning with the entire community and will ensure that anything we create is accessible beyond our tenure for future generations of owls to access & build upon
- Intellectual honesty, growth and improvement.
- Being open to feedback and will use feedback to improve our work for the benefit of the entire Coop community.
- Community and making Index Coop a welcoming, fun, and engaging community to work in!
(EDITS: 17/09/21 multiple to remove internal markdown & formating: ends 18:00 GMT+12)
(EDITS: 18/09/21 Edit core contributors to project leads and contributors, contributors based on contribution to the APWG proposal, edit identified language and expand IB BD KPIâs)
(EDIT: 19/09/21 to clarify that listing strategic geographic priorities does not limit opportunities in other regions)
(EDIT: 20/09/21 - by Irsyad; Clarify and formating the Subregions + Primary Hub)
(EDIT: 23/09/21 - to add link to North Stars, edit POC objectives to specify âresearch-basedâ onboarding activities, and reference jobs board, added awareness to the strategic measures of value based on an update to growth KPIâs for aggregate trade volume, removed email KPI)
