Nick, I love seeing the energy and effort that went into this proposal. This is the biggest proposal that Cabin’s had in a long time, both in scope and in financial outlay. I’m impressed that you’re so inspired by Cabin’s vision that you want to invest the next 7 months of your life to this contribution.
What I Like
To me, the most eye-catching part of this proposal is your goal of bringing in $1 million in the next six months. I agree with you that local municipalities are the most promising way for Cabin to become sustainable (they’re at the top of our list here). I love that you have domain knowledge in this area and you’re planning to run a structured process to identify their needs and get financial commitment up front, ensuring that we don’t waste time building something with no market. Even if you accomplish nothing else but this, that alone would already be worth the expense.
I also appreciate the overall fresh-eyed look at the state of Cabin and what it needs. It’s easy to get lost in the sauce of day-to-day contributor work and forget what it’s like to look at Cabin from the outside. I don’t agree with all your conclusions, but your criticism of our comms (esp around vision and accountability) hits home for me. It’s something I’m already working on improving.
General Concerns
My biggest worry with this proposal is that you’re asking for too much trust without enough of a foundation for it. From your perspective, I can see how you feel capable of taking on this work and delivering what you promise. But for me, I don’t know much about you. We’ve chatted a bit in Discord and had one call, but I’ve never seen your work and know almost nothing about your judgement or ability to execute what you propose. I don’t think anyone else at Cabin does either. Yet you’re asking to spend $400k and hire/pay 20 people in six months. That’s is a huge risk for us to take.
Second, this proposal is long on ideas and light on details. It proposes to do a lot of stuff all at once, without much justification for why all this is necessary. Personally I like a few of these ideas and also think most of them are not needed. Therefore it’s hard for me to vote to support the whole package.
Specific Points
Here are a few responses to specific points you make.
Cabin Council
The Council feels like an important safeguard that your proposal relies on to give Cabin confidence in it’s investment, but there are no details on how the council works. Why 7 people, and not 3 or 5 or 10? How is the council elected, and why is Eileen chairing it (nothing against her, but if the council is to be elected then how is she already on it)? How does the council make decisions?What actual powers does the council have? Can it cancel this proposal and revoke funding if the team falls behind or doesn’t deliver?
Delivering on Pre-sold Promises
If you succeed in getting municipalities to prepay for a product that does not exist, you’ll have committed Cabin to creating that product. But your proposal says nothing about how that will happen. You’re implicitly asking us to trust that you’ll see to that, but you also told me on our call that this is a six-month proposal so you can return to your primary focus (hurricane disaster response) in July. Who will fulfill the promises that you’re selling?
Spending as a Goal
Waiting? Making bets is exactly what Cabin has been doing. We’ve spent half of our treasury over the last 3 years, making dozens of bets and scaling the most promising ones. Our pace of spending has decreased over time because we’ve learned there are a lot of ideas in our space that sound promising but don’t pan out. So we had to be leaner and validate ideas in smaller, more focused ways. No other social DAO from the 2020-2021 era learned this lesson in time, and now every single one except Cabin is dead or winding down. Setting a target of “spend half our remaining funds this year” is a great way to join them.
$50k in Grants to New Ideas
We already have three ways of supporting promising new ideas: Cabin’s general proposal process, Cabin Labs, and the Ideation Pods that just passed. Why add a fourth? I don’t think we lack access to funding. Cabin is approving and funding most ideas that are proposed. What we lack is good ideas and people to take them on.
Additional Deliverables
Do you have a plan for these? This list sounds quite incredible to do in six months, on top of everything else you’re promising. It feels more like a wishlist than a concrete plan, and inspires doubt rather than trust.
My Suggestion
As it is written today, I would not vote for this all-encompassing set of changes. Instead I would love to see a smaller proposal that focuses on just one thing:
Achieving this goal would accomplish many important things at once:
- it would clarify Cabin’s path to sustainability,
- demonstrate your work style and ability,
- give us time to get to know you as a leader,
- and further cement Cabin’s plan of supporting local neighborhoods as a viable path to building a network city.
After that I would have much more confidence in you.