This story is about Latin America and how technology is finally making the field even for Latin-Americans to have a fair fighting chance to change history and thrive!

LATAM… assemble!

Where are we coming from?

Latin America’s problematic can be described with one word: corruption.

A region as rich and vast as Latin America with access to so many natural resources, have always been at the mercy of the powerful nations. The Big brother is always taking decisions for us and not in our best interest.

On top of this, the culture in these countries does not foster any sort of environment for the new generations to become entrepreneurs. The plan is simple: get a loan, buy a house, get married, and have kids (not necessarily in that order). Governments have an interest in keeping things this way as it makes it easier to control the population. There is very minimal support for entrepreneurs, and furthermore… governments actually put obstacles on the way when they see sparkles of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Political corruption, no support for the industry, oppression of the people, and on top of it almost a century of these conditions are a bad recipe for countries looking to thrive. Thankfully technology is here to help us flip things around.

Enter Blockchain technology

Blockchain technologies bring with them attributes that enables builders to create solutions that are transparent, accessible, and fair. It’s the first time in history that under developed countries have the opportunity to play in an even field with everyone all around the world. Justice for all!

One picture worth a thousand words - What’s “justice”?

Now imagine a world where your age, gender, nationality, or education level don’t matter when it comes to having access to opportunities. You can be a 16yr old wiz kid or a retired 80yr old executive from a huge corporation; your attributes don’t determine your opportunities, your skills do. Brilliant!

Welcome to the internet of value!

The Flippening

We know whats wrong and we know we have the tooling to fix things, but what makes us - Latin Americans - be in a privileged position to take this golden opportunity and create a meaningful change for us and the future generations?

We are trained since we are born to make the best out of every condition. Latinos are born in chaos, and this is the ultimate catalyst for creativity, self awareness, and a superb ability to react and adapt quickly to ever changing conditions.

In 2020 Governments in Central America started closing the operation of small electricity producers to have the state as the only provider. What happened? Hydroelectric damns were converted into big self-sustained bitcoin mines.

The Hyper-inflation case in Argentina. Not a lot to explain here - their money worth less and less by the minute.
What happened? They took the Web3 and made it part of their lives! They are turning Argentina in one of the most important countries in the world for innovation in technologies that bring freedom and opportunities to people.

The flippening is happening now right in front of us! propelled by the need to create a better present for us and an incredible future for the coming generations. What a time to be alive!

The Field is even now

Using adversities as a catalyst for change an innovation is a powerful weapon, however other countries and people who have had it “easier” over time will also have their own set of advantages. The incredible news here is that for the first time in history everyone gets to use the best of their skills on an even field! Let the games begin!

I cheer for Latam!, and you?

Whether you have a “no limits” mindset and you enjoy pounding yourself in your pain cave, or you are more structured and you train with a well defined plan… you will eventually end up following the same phases of endurance training. Turns out this is not so different to running projects in the hyper-fast crypto space.

Let go to the good stuff!

The Base Phase

Athletes call it pre-season, the fattening phase, the slow phase, and a few other ways to give yourself permission to go slower; but always building muscular endurance and general base fitness.

This is where you take a moment to retrospectively understand what went wrong, what went well, and identify areas of improvement. Usually this phase starts at the end of race season.

Sounds familiar, huh?

Think of it as that first meeting you have after a busy season, where all your co-workers get together for a post-mortem, but also to plan for whats to come.

We are creatures of habits, and while it’s hard to stop going hard once you started, it’s healthy to do so. Stop, Observe, Adjust, and Plan.

Now don’t forget, this is a phase to get prepared to do better in the next race season. Just like in sports where multidisciplinary training is a proven method, this is the time when you can do some experimentation and exploration to find strengths & weaknesses in your team and fine-tune processes. Learn new abilities, get up to speed with the latest trends in your area, and always remember - after this phase things will start going faster.

“Champions are made in the off-season”

The Build Phase

During this phase you aim to raise your threshold power and increase your capacity. At this stage you start setting the bar higher and higher. Challenging yourself to get to new levels and support bigger loads of stress. Here you start setting your new goals.

When you are running a project in the web3, technology advances so fast that is very hard to keep up the pace. However after a successful Base Phase you had the chance to plan new goals and plan how to make them a reality. You start taking action towards everything that needs to be done: hiring, infrastructure investment, processes improvements, and getting your hands to work.

Runners have a say: “Run less to run faster” - meaning that focusing on form and technique is a way to greatly improve your running.

At this moment is fair to take a minute and realize that sometimes one of the mistakes companies do is putting pedal to the metal to keep up the pace with technology when instead they should just be fine-tuning their processes.

“The body achieves what the mind believes”

Before we get closer to race day, here are some sayings that coaches use all the time. Can you find some analogies related to working in the web3?

• Abs are made in the kitchen

• When you are about to give up - thats when you push harder

• If you cannot get enough sleep, learn to sleep faster

• Burpees are your best friends…

The Tapering and Peaking Phase

Peaking is the art of planning and tapering. An athlete can only peak a few times per season and can probably sustain the peak for just a couple of weeks. Hence the importance of planning very well the taper so the athlete peaks at the right time (Taper can be considered as a progressive reduction in training load).

In the web3 we have a similar very critical problem: burnout.

The web3 never sleeps, is hyper-fast paced, and there are so many things at stake that is hard to stop thinking about it. At the end, we are building the foundations for the future generations.

Teams need to address this situation and do their due diligence to plan the peak and taper accordingly. The question is “What’s Peak season for my team and project?”

• Hackathons? 3 day intense sprints where the team developers are supporting hackers on-site?

• Conferences? Need design, Marketing, Growth to be at their peak?

• Business Development with aggressive goals?

Whatever “Peak” means for your team, the real challenge comes to the planning. A perfect execution will only come from a well oiled machine.

As triathletes say: “the most difficult discipline is the 4th discipline… nutrition”.

Sometimes we as a team focus so much on goals and performance, that we tend to forget working on ourselves - the individuals. We all have families, hobbies, personal situations; and it’s important that we work on them as hard as we do our jobs!

“Don’t forget to taper if you want to peak!”

Food for thought 🤔 - Here are a couple of concepts that athletes use that fit well in the business world.

• Sweet Spot training: to find the optimal balance of intensity and volume that you (your team) can sustain over an extended period of time.

• If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go long go together: this talks about team work! Team work makes the dream work.

The Race Day

It all comes down to this.

Your team have completed the homework to prepare for this day, now is time to enjoy and do everything we’ve been training for. There will be unexpected situations along the way, but at this moment your team already have cadence and momentum enough to overpass any problem and even transform it into an opportunity.

“Medals are won in training, Tournaments is where you pick it up”

The Recovery Phase

One of the most important phases! This is where your team gets together and celebrate every step in this process. This is a time to work on relationships, on getting to know each other, on meeting people that you probably wasn’t even aware were part of your team. And again, working on yourself!

There are so many lessons we can learn from sports for our life, but the most important without a doubt is to enjoy the ride.

Now, take a deep breath… Do not try to use someone else’s recipe. That won’t work. Instead, only try to realize the truth… there is no recipe. Then you will see is not something you are looking to adapt to your community, is your community who will create their own recipe.

You are officially welcome into the DAOtrix! 😎

Where to Start?

Sometimes you in order to get better you have to go slower. This means, a lot of the DAO initial work happens on the sketching board: brainstorming, learning, understanding basic needs, and analyzing how to make it clear to everyone.

Let’s go through some critical considerations that needs to be addressed from the get go to get your DAO in motion.

Purpose & Mission

This is step 0 for every DAO. There needs to be a crystal clear definition of the DAO Purpose and how that purpose will be achieved. This answer the questions: Why do we exist? And why is the work we do important?

As seen in the picture, traditional organizations move as a whole with one person or a small group of persons taking all decisions. DAOs on the other hand they need to have a clear direction of where we are going so no boats will steer away from the goal.

Talk with the team and ensure the DAO purpose really reflects why the organization/project exists, and how through the mission that purpose will be accomplished.

Strategy

So, you have a Purpose and Mission - how are you fulfilling them?

With one purpose and mission there can be several strategies, and one of the key things to define here is “Whats our definition of success?” This is where the team goes back to the drawing board and define success at DAO level, but also per team.

Consider things like:

• Whats your business model?

• What metrics do you want to track?

• Whats the most important asset for your DAO and for each of your teams?

Study strategy design best practices. Make sure to get your team to challenge your ideas, and get validation form your mentors. While trying to move your organization teams to the DAO might sound tempting, the differences in concept and execution are far too great to take this lightly.

Who is your DAO?

Here we talk about making your due diligence and learning who is everyone that belong to your shiny new organization. This has to do everything with membership.

Who are your DAO members? Anyone and everyone with an interest in your project! Starting with your community members on your social channels like Twitter followers, people on your telegram groups, Discord, etc; but going deep to your group leads.

This is unavoidable homework to bring the clarity we’ve been discussing. If you know where you are in your community you will also know where you can go… and more important: How?

Onboarding is everyone’s best friend in a DAO. This is not only about making sure new joiners feel safe, but it also serve as a tool to motivate them to progress and become valuable long lasting contributors.

Now you are ready to DAO!

Ok maybe not yet, but getting closer! 😉

There are a few more things to plan before we move into DAO design and putting all pieces of the puzzle together.

Get ready, this section is meant to be food for thought!

Have you given some thought to which team structure will work for your DAO working groups?

• Self sufficient teams? i.e. Product, Engineering, Moderation?

• Dynamic teaming with a master Talent Pool where resources can decide where they can serve better?

• Dao to DAO collaboration?

What about Reputation?

It is important and it does matter a great deal!

There are many new mechanisms and practices for making sure reputation is taken in consideration for your contributors, however specifying what comes with it is imperative to foster a good DAO collaborative environment.

• How do you earn reputation?

• How is it maintained? What are the rules?

• Does reputation decays over time? How?

• Is your reputation only valid within your DAO, or will the DAO also take in consideration other reputation?

What are the incentives for your community members to join the DAO as contributors?

• Have you thought of implementing a Bounties strategy?

• How do you deal with mercenaries coming to work on your bounties exclusively for the money with little to no interest in the project?

• How are you making sure culture is great in the teams?

How are you organizing to Build in Public?

• Have you explored discussion channels?

• How are you granting access to material?

• What are your membership mechanisms?

At this point you might have a very basic idea of the components you need for an initial version of your DAO. Putting names to each of the tools is another complex task (Good luck with that!).

The DAO rabbit hole is deep and the more you learn the more questions you will have when designing your DAO. Have the courage to get started and become an expert in failing and retrying. DAOs are living organisms that evolve at a high velocity, therefore commit to never stop learning and always listen to your DAO members, they are the ones really designing the DAO!

“…as game theory reminds us, we are each others' environment. In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it's us players who define the game.So, do what you can do, to create the conditions necessary to evolve trust. Build relationships. Find win-wins. Communicate clearly. Maybe then, we can stop firing at each other, get out of our own trenches, cross No Man's Land to come together.”

- From the Evolution of Trust

This bring into question: Is my team ready to DAO?

There are 3 basic questions that need to be clear for every organization looking to DAO.

Why DAO?

With every organization being different, is important to understand the benefits of going into this journey and what are the expectations in the long run.

• Is your project looking to become a community owned & run project?

• Have you identified a genuine interest from your community members to help the project succeed?

If the answer to the 2 questions above is Yes - then your project might be in front of a good opportunity to DAO things up!

Wen DAO?

The “when?” is tricky. It requires team commitment and preparation for this strategy to develop smoothly and be prepared for unforeseen situations to be controlled.

Getting prepared to DAO

The very first steps start in-house. All team must be aware of whats the process, the end goal, and why is beneficial to the project to work together towards this objective.

• Story telling is king! Tell the team about successful projects running in this fashion. Make sure the team can relate to the story and see themselves running this path.

• Make sure everyone understand the challenges in the way.

• Start an awareness & education campaign! There is no need to be a DAO in order to start working internally as a DAO. Teams can start working as independent self-sufficient working groups interfacing with other groups in the organization.

At this point the team recognizes becoming a DAO is a good idea and have a good notion of how the process will be, but there is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path…

Where & How to start?

Starting a DAO nowadays is art and not science. Finding mentors and peers that can validate and challenge the overall strategy becomes critical. Learn from their experiences and incorporate any good practices that fit well into your plans.

Onboarding contributors

Creating a detailed master plan to allow contributors to hit the ground running is vital in the initial stages. New comers must clearly understand the teams setup, where to look for help, and everything about the tooling & infrastructure for the DAO.

Defining roles for every community member and a logical path to advance in the DAO is key towards developing engaged contributors that are motivated to stay for a long time, and will become leaders of the different organizational units.

Now, one of the most complex decisions to take is where to start?

In many cases there will be groups within the organization that are already working in a similar fashion to the desired DAO approach, but if no team is ready then it’s time to make a pause and start developing this culture internally first.

If the organization is ready to move forward and a team can start being “decentralized”, there are a few other action items to guarantee everyone knows the rules of the game:

• Document everything!

• Define metrics and goals for the team as a whole

• Define metrics and goals for each role

• Create exit strategies!

Contributor onboarding is definitely one of the most challenging tasks in this process. Keep your eyes open for new trends and your ears open to what your contributors have to say.

There is no step-by-step guide that tell organizations how to successfully launch a DAO, and at the center of all this fun stuff there are humans. Dare to start, dare to fail, learn to unlearn, and learn to iterate fast… as the saying goes: it’s all about coordination… human coordination.