Cabin Labs - First Year of Experiments, Oct 23 - Oct 24

[jon]

A year ago, I wrote out a list of proposed initial bets I was interested in running experiments on via Cabin Labs: Cabin Labs - proposed bets.

Here’s how each of these major experiments went:

First wave (Fall 2023 → Winter 2024)

Software for Network States

Experiment: Evaluate if there is a market for Network State software by trying to land a $50k contract for our software stack. @grin attended the Network State Conference , where he pitched our software stack: Census, City Directory, Citizenship, Activity Feed, etc. One of our main goals at the conference was to assess the market for network state software.

Result: You can read @grin’s trip report here: Trip Report: Network State Conference. We determined that there was no urgent market for other network societies to buy these types of products. We need to build for ourselves first. This view has been further reinforced over the past year.

Deep Work Club

Experiment: Try to create a profitable model for Cabin outposts as places for deep work near cities. @charlie tried to build and sell a subscription membership for Neighborhood Zero as a club.

Result: You can see his writeup on the results here: Deep Work Club Experiment Learnings. While he sold some memberships @ $350/month, demand was more limited than expected and did not hit the $10k MRR goal.

Solarpunk Sandbox

Experiment: Close a $20,000 grant partnership with Artizen to create art, architecture, and content at Cabin outposts

Result: With the help of Rene from Artizen, we raised and launched the $20k grant program with no cost to Cabin. You can see the projects currently getting funded here:

Cabin Fund for Regenerative Art

While this experiment was successful, it took a long time to get off the ground (it’s still live). We will probably not run a grant program like this again unless we can find a way to get more submissions directly targeted at the end goal of building physical infrastructure in neighborhoods.

Supper Clubs

Experiment: Develop local meetups for Cabin Citizens and the adjacent curious

Result: We exceeded our goal of 200 participants in Supper Clubs within the first few months of launching the experiment. @grin’s Network State Conference talk captured a lot of demand for Supper Clubs and @Matai ran the Supper Club program during the Winter 24 season (see Supper Club Guide).

It was a successful proof of concept for gathering Cabin-aligned people in their local communities.The original purpose of Supper Clubs was to serve as a larger test for our neighborhood thesis:

@jon

One of our biggest learnings form the past six months has been that it’s very hard to get people to relocate, but that they are interested in participating in Cabin events where they already live. To test this, we want to crowdsource local dinner party meetups to bring our existing community together and introduce new people to Cabin IRL in their local area.

Supper Clubs helped us build the clarity and confidence to launch the Neighborhood Accelerator, making them one of the most important experiments of the year.

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Second wave (Winter → Spring 2024)

There were several other experiments we listed as “On Deck”, ie an initial backlog of other experiments we wanted to consider but needed to flesh out more. As we completed the first wave, we worked on these:

500 Citizens

Experiment: Try to put together a package of benefits that would allow us to grow to 500 paid citizen subscriptions.

Result: This was the core focus of our Winter 2024 Roadmap. While we sold a handful of memberships, it became painfully clear that we did not have product market fit for a $400/yr membership with any of the benefits we tried to offer.

We tried the ideas here (Network Citizens) and here (Winter 24 Roadmap).

Ultimately, getting consumers to pay as much or more than they do for things like Netflix and Spotify—which provide many hours per week of value to their life and only cost $14.99—is a hard selling proposition. Doubly so for something as amorphous as community. Good generalized product thinking on this problem from my friend Casey Winters here: Why Consumer Subscription Is So Hard, and What to Do About It | Casey Accidental

That said, I wouldn’t consider the idea of a consumer subscription citizenship completely untenable—there are other ideas from the community like those @camlindsay shared here (Cabin Citizenship 2.0) and @Matai shared here (A perspective on Cabin's current state, questions and recommendations (Feb 2024)).

Given lack of clear PMF, Cabin Labs stopped prioritizing Citizenship experiments starting with the Cabin Labs - Spring 2024 Roadmap.

Family Neighborhood Map

Experiment: Put out bat signals for family-friendly neighborhoods with Cabin community members and try to get a directory of 30 neighborhoods for families on a map.

Result: To start exploring the idea of Neighborhoods for Families, I went on an initial research trip to map out Neighborhoods for Families in Colorado, which is documented here: Exploring Villages for Families in Colorado. Since then, Cabin has oriented more of its branding and programming around families, in response to positive feedback from the community. As a result, this became a core focus of our Spring Roadmap: Cabin Labs - Spring 2024

Eclipse @ N0

Experiment: Evaluate effectiveness of Citizen events, starting with the April 2024 Eclipse.

Result: We partnered with our friends at vibecamp, who were already putting on Vibeclipse near Neighborhood Zero. We worked with them to get special discounts and colocated housing for Cabin citizens. No one used these benefits.

Merch Store

Experiment: Expand Cabin’s merch offering with a goal of $2k in monthly sales

Result: We created a whole new set of items that ship on-demand from a Spotify store located at https://store.cabin.city/. We’ve seen very few purchases from the store, though these merch items have been popular at events. We didn’t hit the $2k monthly revenue goal, but have kept the store up because it’s almost fully automated.

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Third wave (Summer → Fall 2024)

Finally, there were other experiments that emerged over the course of the year in response to learnings from other experiments and new opportunities that arose. We pursued these experiments over the last 6 months:

Neighborhood Accelerator

Experiment: Run an initial cohort of an accelerator program to onboard new neighborhoods to Cabin’s network.

Result: The Neighborhood Accelerator has been Cabin’s most successful experiment this year. @savkruger took the lead on this experiment, running a test Cohort 0, followed by a first full cohort this summer. See Cabin Neighborhood Accelerator - Summer 2024 and Month 1 Update - Neighborhood Accelerator Summer 2024 for more details. From there, @savkruger has grown the program, which is currently in Cohort 2: Reflections on NAP1 & NAP2. She is now spinning out her own proposal to continue working on this: Neighborhood Accelerator DAO Proposal

Network Society Camp

Experiment: As the popup village movement has exploded this year, we wanted to experiment with a larger format gathering, which took the form of Network Society Camp: https://tns.camp/

Result: We put on an excellent camp for ~100 people, including ~10 families. The exit survey results were very strong: 71% rated the experience Most Excellent and the remaining 29% rated in Excellent. It exceeded expectations for 82% of attendees, 75% would be very likely to come back to another one, and 53% definitely anticipate future collaborations with people they met at camp.

That said, these events require too much in terms of resources to have sufficiently high ROI for Cabin right now. I believe the popup village space is getting pretty crowded and it a better match for others in the ecosystem than for Cabin’s current focus.

L2 neighborhoods

Experiment: Partner with a special economic zone or charter city and try to start building a Cabin neighborhood there, under the theory that L2s could be a compelling model for network cities.

Result: We have directly partnered with two special economic zones to build Cabin neighborhoods. You can see their directory listings here (Duna Residences at Prospera | Cabin.city) and here (Bootstrap City | Cabin.city). We also attended Edge Esmeralda and hosted gatherings of the Cabin community to explore another developing city project.

Of these, our partnership with Prospera has been most fruitful thanks to the excellent community building efforts of @ChristineU. She continues to build a strong neighborhood community at Prospera that I believe will be an important part of their resident growth in the coming years.

Fourth Wave (Winter 2025 and beyond)

We are just starting to plan the next wave of experiments for 2025. Here’s some early thinking: Cabin Labs 2025 Roadmap Planning Kickoff

Now that we are growing the number of neighborhoods in our network city, the next most important priority is to figure out a business model that can allow us to be financially sustainable. While many past experiments have generated some revenue, none have generated enough to cover costs. I believe the most promising potential business models for our network of neighborhoods are:

• Local government partnerships
• Retroactive public goods funding
• Third spaces
• Real estate brokerage

I’d like to work on a slate of experiments to explore these business models in the next year.

Finally, I want to acknowledge @grin’s role in this whole experimental process. Not only has he built the software to enable us to operate these experiments, he has also been a critical thought partner for me in figuring out which experiments to run next.

So, having seen what we’ve done in the last year, what do you think we should be betting on next?

[OregonScott]

Thoughts on the above:

What’s the real estate brokerage? I’m interested in hearing about that.

Why weren’t the experiments put out for public discussion before they were chosen?

Why was build.cities not used? They have a network set up already and you could download video content and be apart of a larger network of “states”

[jon]

@OregonScott

What’s the real estate brokerage? I’m interested in hearing about that.

Check out the “People moving to Cabin neighborhoods” section of this post: Potential business models for Cabin (Summer 2024)

@OregonScott

Why weren’t the experiments put out for public discussion before they were chosen?

They were, here’s the link—it’s the same one linked at the top of this post: Cabin Labs - proposed bets

@OregonScott

Why was build.cities not used? They have a network set up already and you could download video content and be apart of a larger network of “states”

Used for what?

[Ktando]

Thanks Jon- can you share more about Fourth Wave section. Might be helpful to expand on the 4 potential business models- they seem incredibly broad. I imagine if they made it to the list of potential tries, there are more formed ideas of how Cabin might try to play here? What will Cabin Labs ongoing role be with the Neighborhood Accelerator Program? How does that function alongside the spinout that @savkruger is proposing?

[jon]

Yep! This post is backwards-looking and the “fourth wave” is forwards-looking. I will write another post about the future roadmap plans, but didn’t want to overburden this retrospective.

In that post, I will also talk about Cabin Labs team plans, but I intend for the overall structure to remain the same, because I think it has worked well this year. From a team perspective, Cabin Labs is focused on:

1. Recruiting new talent and helping them get up to speed
2. Helping them through the process of spinning out their own proposal to the DAO when ready
3. Continuing to mentor/coach/support DAO contributors once they have their own proposals
4. Providing the connective tissue of roadmaps/goals/meetings/admin/organization across autonomous pods

[Matai]

(moving these questions from my retrospective post as it feels better suited here)

Thanks for taking the time to write this up @jon, few questions:

Goals

1. What were the measurable outcomes of each experiment, and how do these track to objectives outlined in past proposals or roadmap updates?

Reading through the above post, I see some insight, is this a fair summary?

(= goal hit | = goal missed)

First Wave (Fall 2023 → Winter 2024):

• Software for Network States: $50k contract
• Deep Work Club: $10k MRR
• Solarpunk Sandbox: $20k grant
• Supper Clubs: 200 participants

Second Wave (Winter → Spring 2024):

• 500 Citizens: 500 subscriptions
• Family Neighborhood Map: 30 neighborhoods
• Eclipse @ N0: Citizen benefits not used❌
• Merch Store: $2k monthly sales

Third Wave (Summer → Fall 2024):

• Neighborhood Accelerator: Run first cohort
• Network Society Camp: Host gathering
• L2 neighborhoods: Partner with zones✅

Are there any other quantitative metrics or qualitative feedback that you’re tracking?

@jon

The overall goal of Cabin Labs is to help promote high quality metrics-driven experiments for the DAO by helping new proposals get ready to operate independently as quickly as possible.

Community health

3. Can you share any detailed metrics or data to evaluate the impact of these experiments on the health of the community before and after they were run?

For example:

• How has website traffic increased or decreased?
• How about engagement on socials, newsletter, the forum?
• Any community surveys to point to with other data (outside of TNS)?
• Attendance at Cabin events?

You make this claim in the Cabin Labs First Year Retrospective post:

@jon

and a stronger and more engaged community and DAO than we had a year ago

Can you share any data to substantiate this statement?

Budget

4. What was the total DAO budget allocated to these experiments? Both for USDC, and Cabin governance token distribution?
5. How many unique contributors received USDC payments?
6. How many community members received Cabin Governance token distributions?

[jon]

Here’s our trailing 7 day active user count in the app over the past year (Nov 2023 - Nov 2024). We spent most of the past year hovering around 250 active users / week, and since August we have been seeing numbers consistently above that. Much more variance, driven by things like accelerator cohort deadlines, but avg is ~2x higher and range is ~250-1000 active users per week:

The newsletter went from 2925 → 4066 subscribers (+40% growth). The forum didn’t exist until a year ago, so it went from 0 posts / month → an average of ~50 posts / month. The neighborhood telegram group also didn’t exist and now get ~50 posts / week. The quality of content on the forum and telegram group are quite high.

Our main focus over the next year will be growth in active neighborhoods. We are starting to see a more consistent trend of increased new neighborhood listings by month in the City Directory:

For your questions about onchain data like CABIN token distributions—the best part of blockchains is that the data is transparent and composable, so I’d encourage you to seek the answers you’re looking for using the available public data. To help you get started, I’ve created an example Dune Dashboard that shows CABIN token transfers by month. We’ve averaged about 16 transfers per month over the past year:

I’d love to see this number increase, especially to new people that don’t yet have tokens. But, because this is governance power in the DAO, we also want to make sure that we’re being responsible with how we distribute it. We want people who are Doing The Thing and will be effective at helping govern the DAO to be rewarded with tokens. I expect to see this number increase through distributions to members of the accelerator cohorts, Celebrating Wins group, and in-app neighborhood building activities. I’d love to see gifting activity increase as well.

[Matai]

Thanks @jon!

Few questions:

1. More Clarity on historical data

A. Is there a place where DAO members can access historical insight on community health metrics beyond the past year?

It would be helpful to see how these stats stack up to past initiatives to understand how these new efforts and pivots might be faring compared to past initiatives.

I think it makes sense that engagement was very low at the beginning of the year as you and Grin were the only employees until I joined the team.

B. Can you share a graph that illustrates the growth over time from the newsletter portal? I also believe that the newsletter growth was largely due to supper clubs, as I saw those stats while employed at Cabin Labs.

More transparency on past metrics would be awesome and insightful to inform strategies moving forward.

2. What are users doing in the app?

The graph you shared was helpful, but it doesn’t really explain the value being generated.

A. What % of users are creating census profiles?

B. How many messages have been exchanged on the app?

3. More of a focus on impact vs. arbitrary #s

The Cabin Las 2025 roadmap goal is to hit 500 neighborhoods in 5 years, with the hope that this will unlock some business opportunities. Based on the strategy you outlined in the NAP proposal:

@jon

The goal of the accelerator is to grow the network of neighborhoods. It is by far the most successful way we’ve been able to do that so far. Social networks—whether they are traditional web2 platforms like Facebook and Twitter, or network cities like Cabin—require significant scale before they are useful, and typically require scale before they can operate a financially sustainable business model. The accelerator is about helping us achieve that network scale first and foremost.

Cabin’s mission is to build a network city. No one has ever done that before, so no one knows the playbook for growing a global network of neighborhoods or how to build a business model for it. We have been iterating towards answers to these questions. We now have some clarity on a path to grow the network. Now we need to figure out a business model.

A. How many neighborhoods have more than 1 person associated to them? I know there are a handful of couples, but what about neighbors living outside of the same residence?

B. What impact metrics are you focused on that try to illustrate the benefit of the ~$500K budget allocated to these efforts?

@Matai

Cabin Labs Proposal (Oct 2023):

• Total participation: 17,941.01 ₡ABIN (~4.2% of circulating supply)
• Budget: $396,000 USDC + 12,600 ₡ABIN

Technical Needs Proposal (Jan 2024):

• Total participation: 14,447.53 ₡ABIN (~3.4% of circulating supply)
• Budget: $200,000 USDC + 2,400 ₡ABIN

C. With no business models being actively pursued by NAP participants that are worth bringing to the DAO, why are you so confident that more investment in these efforts will all of a sudden unlock the elusive business model that allows Cabin to profit off the community of neighborhoods?

@savkruger

3. Are there any examples of “viable revenue opportunities” that are being actively pursued by NAP participants?
A few nascent projects are being explored, but nothing that I’m confident pitching the DAO about yet. Most revenue stream explorations are being done by Grin and Jon + soon Dahveed with his Ideation Pod.

More related insight and questions that have been unaddressed are also shared here:

• How was Cabin funded as an organization?
• How can Cabin compensate contributors in a fair way?
• Cabin Labs 1st year retrospective
• Cabin governance quorum discussions

Appreciate you taking the time to share more insight and engage in these dialogues @jon