GM Builders,

These days, at Push, we're moving at breakneck speed toward something greater.

In that vein, I'm keeping these installments of practical tips from the forefront of DAOs, even shorter and sweeter.

Today, I'm thinking about balancing chasing OKRs with encouraging experimentation, under the umbrella of a DAO.

Let's dive in.

The Case for More Skunkworks

We're often too focused on "founder-mode."

Aligning ourselves with the right OKRs, KPIs, or whatever you want to call them under the microscope of an overarching master strategy is all well and good. In fact, it's necessary. Still, to DAO is to imagine things differently and push toward that point.

We need to cultivate on-chain organizations that have metrics they aim to achieve each month, each quarter, and each year, but also allow for moonshots. If we don't, we'll end up with corporations on open databases.

In recent years, a lot of what I've done is work with teams to help them understand how to hit that balance, how to be results-focused and at the same time, open up a fertile ground for innovation that looks far beyond models that have already worked.

When I think about how to spell this out in the simplest possible terms, I think about something my best friend once told me. "To truly push the world forward, someone has to take the first step." I'm paraphrasing here because we've said and done so much in our work together, but the point is still exactly as she intended it to be, in my opinion.

Someone has to be the pioneer, the one to step outside of the walls and look to settle somewhere else.

With the advent of Bitcoin and Ethereum, we began to show the world that the old ways of thinking and creating the structures that govern us are dead. When Protocol DAOs, Constitution DAO, Ukraine DAO, and all the DAOs we still have today came to life, we took that a step further and gave people an even more powerful preview into how things could be.

There are a lot of pieces that are stalling in the DAO machine. Voter turnout is still very low in the grand scheme of things. Skin-in-the-game hasn't been figured out yet and a lot of DAOs have less than 10 contributors that regularly run the show.

In many cases, those with the most tokens straight-up decide everything.

And yet, there's hope.

Quadratic funding, quadratic voting, tiered governance models with multiple levels of voters, DAOs which live off of a network's fees alone, and DAOs in which you can't buy your way in and you actually have to earn your voting power point the way toward where we're going.

Look to those championing these models even in these early days and you're already getting a glimpse of the next stage for all communities.

I fully believe this is true or I wouldn't still be here.

Still, to ensure that happens, we need to allow for even more experimentation across all of these areas and more within our DAOs and our on-chain communities at-large.

How do we do that?

Start with allocating a greater percentage of your yearly budget not just to grants but to internal R&D. Simultaneously, consider opening up the same category in your grants program. We often don't have all the answers in our existing circles. We need to go out and find that elusive group of builders who can make the right pieces fit.

On top of this, don't fall into complacency with your governance model. Grow it over time. See it as a living organism that changes as the majority of community sentiment changes.

We'll be walking the walk in this respect with Push DAO in 2025.

Stay tuned :)

What's next?

This content is very much an experiment in and of itself. I'm cutting these posts to be even shorter and even more to the point as we go. I was inspired by today's particularly turbulent geopolitical landscape to pen this reminder that we are working our way toward a better future and that DAOs are at the center of that future.

For any of you who do read this, I hope it gives you a bit of hope.

The world can and will be DAOified, on a gradient scale.

Not every organization or community will need to be fully controlled by the swarm and that's ok. Still, everyone will eventually be tipped forward into adopting pieces of the model.

Next time, we'll dig even further into how to craft proposals for DAOs that balance being results(KPI/OKR-driven) and pushing the boundaries of innovation.

Until then, thanks for reading!

Be on the lookout for the launch of our podcast this month! Follow us on Twitter for that announcement and if you believe in a future driven by DAOified apps and want to help us achieve that, say hi in our forum!

Last but not least, there are so many genuinely good people who inspire me every day in this space. Each week, I'll shout out a few.

If you're looking for some inspo of your own, follow: Schlomo, Carla, Pranshu, and Gozman.

See you next week!