Winter 24 Roadmap

[jon]

TL;DR

1. Background

   • Cabin is leading the emerging network city movement
   • Citizenship is the most compelling business model for Cabin
   • Chapters and Supper Clubs drive local community growth

2. Objective

   • 500 active citizens by EOY '24
   • 50 new Citizens during Winter '24

3. Winter '24 Roadmap

• 1. Make Citizenship Better
     a. Develop City Directory
     b. Improve new Citizen experience
     c. Plan 2024 events
• 2. Grow active Citizens
     a. Reduce friction to become a Citizen
     b. Grow Local Chapters
     c. Grow organic search and social
• 3. Improve data and analytics
     a. Migrate DB to SQL
     b. Create dashboards

Background

In our vision document, we outline a roadmap towards 5,040 Citizens over the next 5 years. In 2023, we took the first steps towards this goal by launching our network city and Citizenship offering. Our first bet on Citizenship was too oriented around long term rural coliving. While this was ideal for our initial neighborhoods, it didn’t attract sufficient demand.

In 2024, we need to improve our Citizenship offering and make becoming a Citizen much easier than it currently is. To kick off the Cabin Labs proposal, we started pursuing a set of small exploratory product bets . We’ve had a few key learnings over the past month:

1. Cabin is leading the emerging network city movement
2. Citizenship is the most compelling business model for Cabin
3. Chapters and Supper Clubs drive local community growth

1. Cabin is leading the emerging network city movement

There is a niche, growing market for network cities and Cabin is creating and leading this market. The best startups grow by being the dominant player in a niche growing market.

The Network State Conference, which brought together over 1200 people in Amsterdam on short notice, was a clear market signal for the emerging ecosystem for network cities and states. @grin spoke on behalf of Cabin at the conference (see his excellent writeup here), where we saw clear interest in Cabin’s community, Citizenship, and Supper Clubs. By staying focused and moving fast, we can capitalize on the growth of the network city ecosystem.

2. Citizenship is the most compelling business model for Cabin

As Lily Jordan pointed out in her review of the conference, the State of the Network State, “Cabin’s fundamental primitive is citizenship, not houses or villages”. Despite an incredibly difficult activation flow and an ambiguous value proposition, people want to become Citizens. We should lean into this and make Citizenship a compelling and easy to use product.

We believe there is a market for Cabin Citizenship now, and possibly for a network city/state SaaS product in the future. There is demonstrated demand from the dozens of people per week currently joining our Census and attending Supper Clubs. Many of them are requesting a vouch and becoming Citizens. Consumer subscription membership is a hard business to build. In Network Citizens, we outline some of the key challenges that face us ahead on this path — fulfilling a burning need people have, making it 10x better than alternatives, and realizing enough revenue to cover costs.

In the past, we’ve gotten distracted when we’ve tried to take too many bets at once. After exploring Fall 23 Product Directions and narrowing in on a set of experiments (Cabin Labs - proposed bets), we are planning to focus our energy on making the Citizenship offering more compelling for users.

Citizenship currently costs 0.2 ETH and includes:

• Access the Citizen Directory (350 people to meet & places to stay across the globe)
• Citizens-only special events, pop-up houses, and an annual conference
• 25 ₡ABIN, a physical passport, and a numbered Citizen NFT
• Host Supper Clubs (up to $450 reimbursed)
• Start a neighborhood in Cabin’s city
• Vouch for others to become Citizens
• Free merch, discounts, and other perks

3. Chapters and Supper Clubs drive local community growth

Since starting our Supper Club program last month, we have over a dozen completed and planned Supper Clubs around the world, with over 200 attendees and RSVPs. Our recently hosted and planned Supper Clubs in Bangalore, Costa Rica, Boston, Dubai, London, Sofia, the Eastern Sierra, Amsterdam, Puerto Rico, etc point the path towards Cabin’s community development. Local in-person communities in places where people already live will form the backbone of our movement.

Reference memos

1. Fall 23 Product Directions & Network Citizens
2. Cabin Labs & Cabin Labs - proposed bets
3. Trip Report: Network State Conference
4. On Deck App Work

Objective

500 active paid citizen subscriptions by EOY 2024

• Assume ~40% retention on 1st year free trials = 100 retained
• Need approximately 400 new Citizens in 2024
• New Citizens per season
  • Winter: 50
  • Spring: 100
  • Summer: 150
  • Fall: 200

Winter '24 Roadmap

1. Make Citizenship Better

a. Develop City Directory
b. Improve new Citizen experience
c. Plan 2024 activations

2. Grow active Citizens

a. Reduce friction to become a Citizen
b. Grow Local Chapters
c. Grow organic search and social

3. Improve data and analytics

a. Migrate DB to SQL
b. Create Dashboards

1. Make Citizenship Better

a. Develop City Directory

Context

The City Directory is where Citizens can start local chapters, host supper clubs, visit outposts, vouch for new Citizens, and found neighborhoods. We need to make the product more useful and valuable for Citizens.

Key Results

• Build a map view of people & places
• Get more Citizens to list themselves & outposts
• Facilitate person-to-person connections with notification emails
• Integrate Local Chapters / Supper Clubs

b. Improve new Citizen experience

Context

Becoming a Citizen should be a moment of celebration that makes people proud of their decision to join. We should do more to make new Citizens feel welcomed into our community.

Key Results

• Mail new citizen packages
  • Gather addresses to mail packages and add Citizens to the map
  • Packages include:
    • activated passport card (linked to Census profile)
    • merch items (hat, t-shirt, etc)
    • stickers
• Automate ₡ABIN distribution to new Citizens
• Celebrate new Citizens and invite them to Citizen-only telegram chat

c. Plan 2024 events

Context

Part of the core Citizen offering is Citizens-only special events, pop-up houses, and an annual conference.

Key Results

In 2024, we should aim for 1 Citizen-only activation per season (4 per year):

• Winter: ETHDenver (Denver in February)
• Spring: Solar Eclipse (Texas in April)
• Summer: [TBD]
• Fall: Cabin Camp (Texas in October)

These activations should each be profitable through a combination of ticket sales and sponsorships.

2. Grow active Citizens

a. Reduce friction to become a Citizen

Context

Currently, minting Citizenship is very cumbersome. @grin wrote a good write up of some of the issues with the current Citizenship minting flow here: Trip Report: Network State Conference. If Citizenship is our core focus and business model, we need a much smoother path to becoming a Citizen.

Key Results

To solve this, we need to build the features that will:

• Make vouching easier and incentivized
  • vouch request not required
  • email vouch requests to existing Citizens
  • invite links with embedded vouch
  • more prominent vouches in activity feed
  • ₡ABIN referral gift if you vouch for people who become Citizens
• Build a simple credit card checkout to mint Citizenship
  • replace broken Unlock credit card flow with Stripe
  • make Citizenship price a flat USD rate
• Change new account creation flow to emphasize Citizenship
  • remove role selection and other setup steps
  • /mint page to streamline mint with account creation
  • Improve /citizenship to better highlight benefits

b. Grow Local Chapters

Context

Local Chapters are where we can grow the lifeblood of Cabin’s IRL community. Our recently hosted Supper Clubs in Bangalore, Costa Rica, Boston, Dubai, London, Sofia, the Eastern Sierra, Amsterdam, Puerto Rico, etc point the path towards Cabin’s community development. We are hosting 20 Supper Clubs with >200 attendees in Fall '23.

Key Results

In Winter '24, we want to increase the impact of local Chapters:

• 20+ Local Chapters with active telegram groups
• 200+ Supper Club attendees in Winter '24 (resulting in 20+ new Citizens)
• Starter packs shipped to all Local Chapters

c. Grow organic search and social

Context

We don’t have a strong top-of-funnel engine for bringing new people into Cabin. We need to find sustainable ways to grow our audience.

Key Results

• Improve organic search 2x by migrating blog, growing forum, and creating new content
• Earn >200k organic impressions per month with a >3% engagement rate on Twitter, Instagram, and Farcaster

Improve data and analytics

a. Migrate DB to SQL

Context

Our current database is built on Fauna, which is sunsetting their graphql API on Feb 29th. We need to migrate our database to keep operating. This also gives us the opportunity to move to a more standard SQL database, speeding up app development and query times.

Key Results

Migrate database from Fauna to SQL (estimated time: 4-6 weeks) before API sunsets on Feb 29th.

b. Create dashboards

Context

Once we have our updated DB, we plan to set up a SQL-friendly analytics and dashboarding business intelligence tool, like Blazer. This will allow us to better share and understand data on community growth.

Key Results

Implement Blazer (or similar) and create metrics and dashboards to track progress for this roadmap.

[grin]

Thanks for writing this up Jon! A few stray thoughts:

Feasibility over Need?

We should add more details on how we’re gonna address the middling scores for 1-3 here.

Telegram over Discord?

@jon

• 10+ Local Chapters with active telegram groups

so we’re moving away from Discord? i’m down with it but ideally we could have a single place for all cabin community stuff. does telegram work for everything we want/need?

Celebrating new Citizens

I really like this point:

@jon

Becoming a Citizen should be a moment of celebration

Some more ideas:

• introduce citizens on regular cabin calls (like we used to have)
• have citizens add their citizenship to their apple/google wallet (credit cards do this now and it feels more immediate)
• Campfire episodes with new citizens (if @jxn thinks it would work well)
• personal onboarding calls? followed by intros on the forum?

[jon]

@grin

We should add more details on how we’re gonna address the middling scores for 1-3 here.

Yes, good call out.

I added some explicit language to the roadmap to emphasize the risks and issues we face with pursuing a consumer subscription membership model. Despite these risks, our recent experiments, user research, and intuition make Citizenship seem like the best business model for our community.

Here are some thoughts on these three issues:

Core Problem - What high priority problem do Citizens have?

Citizens want a greater sense of connection to others and the ability to make meaning together. Their high priority problem is a lack of deep social connection.

Lack of social connection is one of the biggest problems in the western world. The U.S. Surgeon General has declared an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. We spend 20 fewer hours per month with friends than we did in 2003. One in four Americans aged 18-29 experienced loneliness yesterday:

So, it’s a wide and deep problem.

Unfortunately, social connectivity is one of those needs at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy that tends to be more of a vitamin than a painkiller. And solving it requires introspection and a willingness to take sizable actions to change your situation.

This is why I gave “core problem” a lower ranking originally. The solution, I think, is to make sure we have a clearer sense of who our target member is that is actively searching for a solution to this problem.

Cabin has grown out of a group of people who have a strong case of this problem and are seeking a solution. We are a diverse community, but on average, people who are a good fit for Cabin tend to be:

• Very online
• 25-40 years old
• Remote worker
• Semi-nomadic
• Has or wants a family
• Spends time in nature
• Seeking belonging & meaning
• Independent thinker
• Gets along well with others

For these people, we can solve a high priority problem by connecting them with other likeminded people and giving them the opportunity to build relationships and make meaning together.

Value Prop

What is our solution?

We are building a network city: somewhere to feel at home anywhere in the world. This means people nearby who you want to spend time with. Friends to have over for a dinner party. Spare bedrooms to stay in across the world. People to connect with online and IRL.

Do people want this?

Yes, they do. The Network State Conference was a good proof point for this. So are the hundreds of people joining our Census and requesting a vouch for Citizenship, even when it’s challenging and ambiguous.

I gave this a lower ranking initially because we are defining a new category and people don’t know how to ask for something they’ve never had. But when the right people learn about Cabin and Citizenship, they want to be a part of it. The Network Citizens memo includes lots of good quotes from Citizens about why they value being a Cabin citizen. We need to continue to talk to members, refine the value, and make the product and marketing more clear.

Why is it 10x better than alternatives?

Network cities are a new category of market that we are defining and leading.

I originally gave this a lower ranking because there are other ways to find community and identity, but there aren’t other good ways to join a network city/state. As the leader of this ecosystem, we are attracting most of the people interested in the broader idea of network cities and states. I do think we have a 10x better solution for joining a real network city project than anyone else in the world right now.

Even though network cities are a new concept, they are adjacent to several other markets that could serve partially overlapping purposes. These are the markets we can measure ourselves against:

• Social associations: Boy Scouts, Rotary International, Elks Club, Freemasons, etc
• Hospitality exchanges: Couchsurfing, BeWelcome, Home Away, etc
• Internet native communities: FWB, Nouns, DeGods, etc

Monetization - How are we going to make money off the solution?

I gave this a low ranking initially because consumer subscription memberships are a challenging way to make money. That said, I think that asking members to pay directly for the services provided by Cabin on a recurring basis is the clearest path to monetization for a community like Cabin. Citizenship is a natural fit for a subscription membership.

In the article linked above, Casey Winters offers some good ways to mitigate this problem that apply to Cabin:

1. Leverage network effects to solve retention and acquisition issues - in our case, this means continuing to grow a high quality community network that gets better as more people join.
2. Go multi-product earlier in your lifecycle to make the product stickier and raise price - for Cabin, this means offering a package of value as part of Citizenship: hospitality exchange, Supper Clubs, events, merch, governance, etc
3. Open up less saturated acquisition channels - community-led growth, particularly organic social content + member referral-based Citizenship growth, are a natural fit for us.
4. Start selling to businesses - longer-term, if network cities and states are successful, there will be a market for a SaaS version of our product that we can sell to other communities.

[Matai]

Excited for the road ahead! Sharing some responses / thoughts below

Telegram over Discord?

@grin

so we’re moving away from Discord? i’m down with it but ideally we could have a single place for all cabin community stuff. does telegram work for everything we want/need?

The location specific Telegram chat’s will be maintained alongside Discord, with the goal of providing people a more accessible way to connect around IRL events. Telegram is as easy and social as texting to many, while Discord has extra steps, noisier notifications and channels. Lots of Supper Club hosts have liked the idea of the local Telegram chats. Ultimately people can choose whether they post in the #IRL-meetups forum on Discord, or Telegram chats, with us cross-posting any key announcements and highlight opportunities for meetups on socials + newsletters.

Celebrating new Citizens

@grin

• introduce citizens on regular cabin calls (like we used to have)

^ @jon and I were talking about resuming quarterly update calls with a State of the Network this winter. Do you think we should try resuming more frequent calls than quarterly at this point? I’m open to try it, but orchestrating would take some bandwidth. It would be awesome to source community updates from around the network to showcase alongside any key updates.

@grin

• personal onboarding calls? followed by intros on the forum?

^ I’m guessing many new citizens today sign up after having a 1:1 Welcome Call do today, but that with growth, less will in the future. I also see some value in group onboarding calls to build comradery amongst cohorts. What if we host a special 30-minute “New Citizen Onboarding” session before the routine community-wide calls? This way new people can get the basics covered before jumping into a broader community update.

I like the idea of a place for intros in the forum that would let them be more accessible vs. being buried in Discord. I wonder if it would be helpful so that when someone completes their Census profile, they are prompted to share that as a Forum post, prefilling some of the about or other context, encouraging thoughtful responses that live in the Census and get socialized on the forum whole streamlining the process.

Some other ideas:

• I like the idea of a new citizen package that we ship new members with stickers, a wearable (t-shirt, beanie?), + what would be our signature swag giveaway be, maybe a branded Cabin polaroid camera? Nomad Nation offers a hoodie as an example. Will be looking into pricing and logistics to flush out some ideas more.
• Along the lines of new Citizen introductions, I think it would be cool to see how we can facilitate more online networking amongst community members. I recently participated in an online “Offers & Needs Market” where people come together to share a list of things they want to offer, and things they (or others they know) need. It was awesome to randomly connect with strangers through the exercise, finding areas of mutual interest with aligned offerings/needs. Would love to help facilitate a similar exercise for a group of interested Cabin community members sometime to see if similar opportunities of connection emerge.

[Matai]

These details from @jon’s reply are helpful!

@jon

I added some explicit language to the roadmap to emphasize the risks and issues we face with pursuing a consumer subscription membership model. Despite these risks, our recent experiments, user research, and intuition make Citizenship seem like the best business model for our community.

Some thoughts:

Core Problem - What high priority problem do Citizens have?

@jon

Lack of social connection is one of the biggest problems in the western world. The U.S. Surgeon General has declared an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.

@jon

For these people, we can solve a high priority problem by connecting them with other likeminded people and giving them the opportunity to build relationships and make meaning together.

^ these points reinforce the need for online engagement to be the easiest to access value prop, starting with online interactions along a potential path of experiences, some at the far opposite end resulting in people living year round together.

Value Prop

@jon

We need to continue to talk to members, refine the value, and make the product and marketing more clear.

^ from my 1st month on the team, everyone new person I’ve met is most excited about Cabin’s vision to connect community members around the world and in their backyard (sometime literally, other times nearby).

i’m excited to see how we can reinforce the online engagement while continuing to create and facilitate IRL opportunities for connection.

How can we do this? By…

1. Inspiring connections online by having routine calls for our community to connect (start with quarterly or monthly and go from there?), while encouraging engagement on our chat and social channels
2. Meeting our citizens where they are, helping pop-up events like Supper Clubs, empowering Local Chapter groups, collaborating with other aligned communities, and facilitating other gatherings around high-traffic activations like conferences, sporting events, festivals and more.
3. Connecting Citizens to amazing IRL experiences that citizens want to travel to, whether for curated experiences like Cabin Weeks and DAO Camp, or other community led events that are put-on by other Citizens (e.g. the Hawaii TechLessCreateMore retreat).

@jon

Local in-person communities in places where people already live will form the backbone of our movement.

Cabin.City is the connecting network

Monetization - How are we going to make money off the solution?

@jon

I think that asking members to pay directly for the services provided by Cabin on a recurring basis is the clearest path to monetization for a community like Cabin. Citizenship is a natural fit for a subscription membership.

^ has member-to-member recruitment compensation come up before? We all hate a pyramid scheme, but I like the idea in theory of members being able to earn a small % of membership fees from members that they helped recruit, providing members an opportunity to earn $ by participating in the Cabin ecosystem.

I would also add a point that I think Cabin can earn revenue from brand sponsorships and content monetization should we put concerted effort into this. FWB is a good example of an internet community that earns funds from partnerships. Bankless DAO is a good example of a decentralized group of people that earn $ together by collaborating on media & content projects.

[jon]

@Matai

I were talking about resuming quarterly update calls with a State of the Network this winter. Do you think we should try resuming more frequent calls than quarterly at this point? I’m open to try it, but orchestrating would take some bandwidth.

I think we should start with quarterly and see how they go. Definitely open to doing them more frequently if there’s appetite and bandwidth for it.

@Matai

1. Connecting Citizens to amazing IRL experiences that citizens want to travel to, whether for curated experiences like Cabin Weeks and DAO Camp, or other community led events that are put-on by other Citizens (e.g. the Hawaii TechLessCreateMore retreat).

Yes, good call, I am going to add an explicit section for this to the roadmap.

@Matai

^ has member-to-member recruitment compensation come up before?

Yes, good call out, adding to the roadmap. We should implement a ₡ABIN referral gift if you vouch for people who become Citizens. We could do it automatically onchain.

@Matai

I would also add a point that I think Cabin can earn revenue from brand sponsorships and content monetization should we put concerted effort into this.

Yes, very interested in this. Let’s explore it for ETHDenver.

[jon]

I made substantial edits to the Winter '24 Roadmap to account for the feedback that’s been provided so far. Big thanks to @grin @Matai and @JuliaLipton for sharing detailed thoughts on this.

[grin]

@Matai

What if we host a special 30-minute “New Citizen Onboarding” session before the routine community-wide calls?

thats a good way to do it

@Matai

I wonder if it would be helpful so that when someone completes their Census profile, they are prompted to share that as a Forum post

I like this. One of the questions we need to answer is where will the public low-effort socializing happen. Will it be on twitter, telegram, discord, the forum, farcaster, in our app?? It could even be multiple places. The ideal place is wherever people already are and spend time, so we can come to them instead of asking them to come to us

@Matai

what would be our signature swag giveaway be

Would love to brainstorm this with you.

[jxn]

Cool write-up. I’d be curious to learn if there’s more we can do to fuel growth from the Supper Clubs. How well are those converting. We are spending up to $450/meal. I don’t think those should continue in perpetuity unless they’re driving sign ups. Do we have rituals/traditions that are consistent across geographies?

Also regarding new Citizenship as a moment of celebration, I also think this is a great content piece to highlight cc @Matai . Cabin is made up of beautiful people and beautiful places. We need to highlight both, and the people are really interesting. So I’d like to see social posts on cool community members, especially as they become Citizens.

40% renewal is a high estimate without auto renewal turned on. As part of the KRs to reduce friction to become Citizens, I’d like to see auto-renewal subscription memberships.

[eileen]

+1 to local telegram chats. I know there are plenty of Cabineers in the PNW and it would be great to have somewhere to connect. Much easier to control noise on Telegram than Discord too. So you get a different demographic of people.

And would be awesome to join/leave groups as one travels to get updates on opportunities.

Perhaps you could link these groups to the map once it exists

[savkruger]

Big fan of the Post Growth Institute and I’ve hosted a number of “gift circles” as we’ve called it in the other communities I’m a part of too. Love this idea and happy to help if need be.