This 90-day plan is a living document and will be publicly updated as new information becomes available. Travel will be around major conferences and events like KBW, Token2049, Cosmosverse, with other cities in between.
Day 1-30: Rapid Execution and Initial Actions
Week 1
Team Briefing:
Hold introductory meetings with marketing and regional team members.
Outline the immediate action plan and expectations.
Research and Analysis:
Review and prioritize all workstreams, commitments, invoicing, payments, and contracts.
Review financial reports, strategic plans, and recent performance metrics.
Study the Pocket Network Foundation’s current status, marketing strategies, and challenges.
Understand key international markets: Asia, Africa, and South America.
Identify potential partner companies and local influencers for hosting meetups.
Begin scheduling travel and ensure overlap with major web3 conferences such as Korea Blockchain Week, Token2049.
Create budget and build PnL based on re-prioritization of workstreams and future hires.
Hiring:
Analyze which roles need to be hired for to continue key operations.
Security:
Evaluate security procedures and begin transfer or rotation of critical private keys as needed.
Website And Repositioning:
Review the current status of the website update.
POKT Holder Outreach:
Compile list for major POKT holder outreach.
Economic Parameters:
Begin planning for economic parameter changes.
Week 2
Partner Identification:
Reach out to potential local partners and influencers.
Finalize initial agreements for collaboration.
Community Leader Search:
Start identifying and engaging potential community leaders.
Use social media and existing networks to find passionate individuals.
Translator Recruitment:
Begin recruiting local translators to help with communication and localization of content.
Continue Website Update:
Re-establish relationship with contractor for website pending budget and priorities.
Ensure the website content is updated to reflect the new strategic focus.
Translate website content into key languages for targeted regions.
Optimize the website for search engines to increase visibility in target regions.
Enhance the user interface and navigation to improve visitor engagement.
Streamline grant applications.
Team:
Begin working with recruiters or talent aggregators to fill key gaps.
Communicate with roles to community members for available roles.
Gateways:
Touch base with all existing and potential gateways that have been communicated to and re-establish relationships.
Exchanges:
Touch base with all existing exchange relationships and future listing conversations.
Grants and Commitments:
Ensure all outstanding grants and commitments are resolved.
Other Workstreams:
Consider all other workstreams that I do not have current visibility into.
Economic Parameters:
Announce dates for economic parameter changes.
POKT Holder Outreach:
Begin outreach for speaking with existing POKT holders.
Week 3
Campaign Launch:
Highlight the benefits of POKT and upcoming meetup details.
Partner with relevant local companies to boost campaign reach and credibility.
Meetup Scheduling:
Finalize the schedule of meetups starting in Week 4.
Plan two-day events in each city: the first day for a broad introduction to POKT and the second day for a gateway and node-running workshop.
Coordinate with local partners for logistics and promotion.
Website:
Establish cadence for development and design of updated website.
Interviews:
Begin pipeline of interviews for potential candidates.
Incentive Programs:
Begin planning incentive programs for new and existing POKT holders.
Economic Parameters:
Execute on needed economic parameters.
Communicate rationale and expectations.
Week 4
First Meetups:
Start hosting two-day meetups in key cities across the targeted regions.
Day 1: Broad introduction to POKT, its benefits, and opportunities.
Day 2: Node-running and Gateway workshop to show attendees how to run a node or gateway and engage those most interested.
Feedback Collection:
Gather immediate feedback from attendees to refine the approach.
Ongoing Outreach:
Continue outreach to potential community leaders and partners.
Translation and Localization:
Work with local translators to ensure all materials and announcements are available in the local languages.
Community Chats Setup:
Establish localized community chats on Kakao, WhatsApp, Telegram, and other relevant platforms.
Website Repositioning:
Continue regular communication for website repositioning.
Day 31-60: Expanding Reach and Building Momentum
Week 5-6: Continuation and Expansion
Meetup Continuation:
Continue hosting two-day meetups every 2-3 days in different cities.
Use feedback from initial meetups to improve subsequent events.
Community Programs:
Share playbooks for follow-on meetups.
Actively manage and engage localized community chats.
Start highlighting success stories and local opportunities.
Incentive Programs:
Launch campaigns that incentivize current POKT holders to continue staking.
Offer rewards for participation in meetups, community chats, Gateway and node-running initiatives.
Translator Integration:
Ensure translators are integrated into the community chats to facilitate communication and announcements.
New Chains Marketing:
Begin architecting and planning pipelines for new chains that support economic parameter changes.
Work with existing gateways to create partnership and incentive opportunities to drive RPC traffic on the network.
Week 7-8: Deepening Engagement
Workshops:
Conduct in-depth workshops to educate local entrepreneurs on running POKT nodes and Gateways.
Community Leader Development:
Provide support and resources to identified community leaders.
Schedule regular check-ins between community leaders and the Foundation’s head of community.
Plan for follow-up meetups with identified community leaders.
Partnership Programs:
Strengthen partnerships with local businesses and tech hubs to expand reach.
Translation Efforts:
Continue to work with translators to keep all communications and announcements localized.
Website:
Continue website work.
Day 61-90: Consolidation and Long-term Strategy
Week 9-10: Review and Optimization
Progress Review:
Review the progress of all workstreams and efforts.
Collect comprehensive feedback from meetup attendees, community members, and local partners.
Adjust Plan:
Make necessary adjustments to the strategy based on feedback and performance data.
Launch website.
Week 11-12: Long-term Planning
Sustainability Planning:
Develop a long-term growth plan based on the outcomes of the first 90 days.
Establish a roadmap for continuous community engagement and expansion.
Ongoing Improvement:
Implement a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
Strengthen Relationships:
Build stronger relationships with partners, investors, and the community.
This plan focuses on keeping existing important work streams, rapid execution and immediate engagement to build a strong foundation for POKT in new regions, attract new token holders, and create sustainable economic opportunities for local entrepreneurs while ensuring effective localization and communication through translators and community leaders.
So, the 90-day plan is essentially a continuation of what the previous directors initiated, with a few more trips added on your part.
Honestly, it’s a bit underwhelming. Was all the drama worth it? Is this THE plan you felt the previous directors couldn’t get on board with so much so you planned a takeover behind their backs. I was expecting some revolutionary plan for the first three months of your tenure.
It almost feels like zero thought went into this plan. The previous directors gave us the Ecosystem Thesis complete with projects, while your plan mostly revolves around you flying around the world.
thanks for writing the plan, it’s comprehensive and thoughtful
it’s hard to predict and thus plan for 30 days later, considering this is almost like a new onboarding for you. My read of the first 2-3 weeks plan is to diagnose problems/bottlenecks, prioritize, form a quick turnaround, then execute in remaining weeks. Thus, would recommend to explicitly set expectation of the audience that, the exact plan after 3 weeks likely will be subject to major changes as a result
I agree with lots of it, also have added a few my thoughts below. they are meant to be constructive and help us rigorously prioritize, they are NOT meant to undermine the thoughtfulness and proactiveness of this proposal.
time management and priority
time is limited and stringent so use them wisely. several items seem to be of low priority or unclear priority IMHO. We can discuss their necessity in depth, may be just my lack of understanding of the context
driven by measurements and concrete goals
it’s not clear what’s the concrete goal and concrete outcome for several items. eg.
1/ “Identify potential partner companies and local influencers for hosting meetups” on week 1
2/ “Understand key international markets: Asia, Africa, and South America.”
3/ “Begin recruiting local translators to help with communication and localization of content”
what’s each of their goals? can it be materialized to “increase unique pokt wallet #, or amount of staked pokt”? How to measure it achieves the goal or not?
have international funds/whales stated lack of local content is a blocker for them to invest in pokt? if so, how many of them?
my career experience tells me, if it’s not measurable, it’s not actionable
minimize ineffective spending
re: “Partner Identification, Reach out to potential local partners and influencers. Finalize initial agreements for collaboration.”
more details like “what concrete outcome will we get from influencers? how to measure them?” would need to be thought thru before doubling down
there’re so many items, so must delegate, and delegate to the proper person. Who are they for each item?
rigid hiring planning
hiring is critical. But before hiring, recommend go thru rigid scoping:
is the work really important?
what’s team’s skill set? can a team member handle it?
what’s the workload to a person? can a team member use 20% their time and handle 80% of it?
recommend not hire until the scope and priority are absolutely figured out, and we are sure it occupies a person 100%. we don’t wanna hire a person in PNF then find they are only 50% occupied or be slack at work.
would be great to see PNF under new leadership can significantly increase efficiency and settle that into the bone of culture, before expanding the team too much
Again, this is NOT countering or undermining the plan listed out, but to add on top more details and thoughts into how to better execute the 90days plan, and to debate priority by going thru a fierce prioritization process. They may have been thought of already, just not elaborated in the plan due to limited space, or maybe due to my lack of understanding of certain situation. I just think they are important to call out explicitly
As the one in charge of Chinese community hub, I would say “Yes” per my experience, and not only the simple translated contents, also the well understanding of the whole ecosystem.
In the beginning of 2024, I attended in a private meetup with a VC investing in POKT in Ji Nan. They are experienced in Crypto but still got confused in a few questions / ecosystem updates until I explained in details with some examples.
As I can see, VCs have dedicated researchers, but it’s impossible to invest every workday to stick with a single project to catch up all the changes. When they need to do the research tasks, reading the localized contents will make them much happier than reading the long English contents. I am not gonna say the localized contents will certainly bring the VCs, but it is an influential factor. Besides, when they can find someone speaking local language to answer their questions, they would be even more happier.
All these are real cases occurred in the past. For the local retail investors with less resource, they desire the localized contents & someone to ask even more than VCs.
However, I do have a suggestion about the translator candidates. We would need someone with fair experience in Crypto and understand POKT Network.
E.g. the “abstracting complexity” wording on x.com It can be simply translated in local language word by word, but the translated sentence would make no sense for the local folks if the translator doesn’t fully understand it, and makes the meaningful change during translating.
The similar jargon like “chain agnostic”, “trustless” and more, I have seen multiple bad cases the translated words either make no sense, or express the wrong even opposite message.
Strong agree here. I’ve heard this from Bruce and from @NPC-Leo and others in the Chinese ecosystem, and I’m confident we’ll hear the same from other language centers.
This was a priority for the regional hub and ambassador program that I worked with @Ming on previously, which was why it was such a disappointment when it was shuttered by PNF. I’m eager to see it re-prioritized.
Thanks Mike for sharing the 90 days plan for PNF. Sharing some feedbacks here for you and the community to reflect upon.
The current plans lacks teeth as many pointed out. Most of these goals are not action oriented and not measurable => leads to rather fancy wishes rather than strategic vision, mission, actionable goals and a plan to execute
Too many items => once again, too many fancy wishes. I assure you 75% of this won’t be achievable in 90 days time. Need to prioritise on what matters most in the timeline (if 90 days is what you decide, then realistically within the time period)
Solution:
I think the high level strategy could be divided in to three sub points (three because, it is just simple)
Fundamentals: What can be done to make Pocket the most fundamentally driven DePIN project?
How to drive more relays to the network?
What specific steps to attract more gateways that can bring more relays & competition on the protocol?
How to make the technology better - shannon upgrade, (others?) => Milestones & how foundation will align incentives to achieve this => carrots & sticks?
How to market the technology as the best RPC provider, AI inference & other ideas discussed? How to position in the market & attract customers?
Price: What can be done to revitalize the POKT price?
Changes in token economics to make the price attractive in the short term, without compromising long term viability
Narratives & yield strategies to aligning with the vision creating interest to invest and hold POKT
Making investing and generating yield with POKT easier => exchange listings, liquidity, wallet experience, staking experiences, yield generating opportunities, information available in website
Community
What can be done to strengthen existing community and grow new ones?
What are some quick growth hacks that can be done => quest platforms, reengagement with token holders, attracting & engaging developer & node communities, what else?
How to create communities in under exposed geographies and what will be the specific strategies => in person local engagements, localisation of business & communication, what else?
Could include specific travel topics => but just traveling wont be enough => can pocket organize side events at each of these events => I believe DAO has the money for it => how to put yourself as a brand bringing together most respected thought leaders and communities, there needs to be specific action steps in your travel plans
But not limited to any of these ideas. I think Mike needs to prioritise the main goals which are simple and not too many, provide some clarity on the sub goals/action points. Then improve on the feedback of the community and his team to really crystallise specific goals, action items, timeline, and system to measure the progress.