This proposal aims to obtain a marketing budget of US$1 million to sponsor a series of ~20 major established global family office summits and traditional investment conferences, which is where we see the greatest opportunity for bringing untapped capital into Polkadot. If successfully executed, this US$1 million in sponsorship costs will be repaid to the treasury in full.
Background
This proposal is a revised version of Ref 899, which was narrowly rejected during confirmation period on 19 July. We have received a lot of positive feedback and many people have voted in favour (7/10 DVs voted AYE). The primary reason the Ref ultimately failed is because of three whale accounts (16hZ*, 156U* and 12k2*), who in combination control ~40m DOT voted against it. We don’t know who is behind these accounts, or why they voted NAY, but if you read this, please do reach out to us in the comments section or on TG: max462.
Regarding other community feedback, we have often heard suggestions that the event series should bring more direct benefit to the treasury. We have considered all comments and significantly revised our proposal, which we are excited to present below:
1% Revenue-Share: In this new proposal, 1% of the capital raised by Harbour Industrial Capital (“HIC”) at these investment conferences from new LPs will be directly returned to the Polkadot treasury. If we successfully raise the US$100m through these events as planned, the US$1m in event sponsorship costs will have been fully repaid.
Equitable Distribution: This 1% will be taken directly out of the management fee that HIC charges its LPs, thereby cutting directly into our bottom line, while bringing a directly measurable ROI to the treasury.
Risk Sharing: There is no limit to this 1% deal: If we manage to raise US$200m, US$2m will be repaid. If we only manage US$50m, it will be US$500k. Some people may argue that there is a risk that the capital will not be fully repaid. While this is correct, HIC will also only receive a fraction in management fees, if we raise a much smaller fund. (We don’t take any salary out of the US$1m budget). Incentives for us to work hard and raise a fund as large as possible are therefore well aligned.
Fringe Benefit: We argue that this new Rev-share model with the treasury should be considered a fringe benefit to the treasury. Nice to have, but not the main reason to vote AYE. Instead, the key benefit to the Polkadot ecosystem – and therefore to the treasury – is bringing in fresh capital and creating a new large Polkadot ecosystem fund that otherwise would not exist.
Comparison with other Events: As the funds will be used for event sponsorship, this proposal should primarily be evaluated through the same ROI lens as other Polkadot events (Decoded, Sub0, Consensus, Token49 etc). These often have similar price points for a single event as our series of 20 events. We believe that introducing Polkadot to very wealthy investors, raising a $100m ecosystem fund AND offering a direct rev-share to the treasury, creates a much better ROI to the treasury than many of these other events.
Head Ambassadors: Since we launched Ref 899, Max and Mario have been voted in as Head Ambassadors of Polkadot. We are extremely grateful for this trust, and will use our HA title to speak on behalf of Polkadot at the investment conferences. Like the other HAs, we will be drawing a salary from the position. We would therefore like to emphasise that the present proposal does NOT INCLUDE ANY ADDITIONAL SALARY for ourselves, but that we will be organising these events at cost.
No Other Changes: Other than that, there are no changes compared to Ref899. We therefore believe that everyone who voted AYE previously, should vote AYE again. At the same time we hope the additional benefit to the treasury will win over many more people who were previously on the NAY side.
Who we are and what we have done so far
The unfortunate answer is: Because many traditional VCs still ignore projects building on Polkadot. Ask any team that recently tried to raise money from generic crypto VCs, a frequent reply is “You’ve got a good team and good idea, but why are you building on Polkadot?”. Sure, we believe this narrative will change over time as other capital allocators slowly begin to realise the potential of Polkadot. But in the meanwhile, we need a dedicated Polkadot-only VC, that helps all the exciting new projects building on Polkadot get off the ground.
It is a chicken-and-egg problem: If Polkadot based projects are starved of capital vis-a-vie those building in other ecosystems, Polkadot will never get the liquidity and “hype” that ultimately attracts more capital. Having worked in the ecosystem for many years, it’s sad to see quality Polkadot based projects migrate to other L1s/L2s, not because of the tech, but simply because they believe they have better opportunities to get VC funding there. We want to change that, and make Polkadot the place great builders go and access capital.
When looking to bring significant amounts of new capital into Polkadot ecosystems, we believe that Family Offices are the most promising investors. But why promote a Polkadot Ecosystem Development Fund, when people can just invest directly into Polkadot? There are at least three good reasons:
Harbour Industrial Capital (HIC) is a private Polkadot VC fund, established by Max Rebol and Mario Altenburger in 2021. We are registered in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in HK. As of Q1 2024 we have an AUM of over US$10 million. We have raised this money from private investors such as Family Offices, and subsequently deployed it exclusively in the Polkadot ecosystem. Fund 1 held its final closing on 31 December 2023, and we are about three quarters deployed. The plan is to launch Fund 2 towards the end of 2024, with a target size of US$100 million.
While Harbour Industrial Capital will take the lead in organising these events, we will actively bring a diverse set of people from within the Polkadot ecosystem to these events:
Please find our proposed budget in the table at the bottom of the full proposal. Kindly note that this is still a draft, as the cost of many items are yet to be confirmed. Most importantly, the exact sponsorship fee will vary from event to event, and has to be negotiated with each event organiser. The numbers below are averages based on initial discussions we have had with different organisers. We have applied a discount of 50% for sponsoring an entire events series (rather than a one-off event), as all organisers prefer long-term partnerships and encourage them with such discounts. It is also the primary reason why we have decided to do this treasury proposal rather than go through the Events Bounty, which only supports one-off events.
Please also note that the amount between line items in this table may shift, depending on actual costs, so long as the total of US$1m is not exceeded. A key variable in this budget is the number of events we will organise. We propose 20 events throughout the fundraising period of two years. However, it may end up being 15 or 25, depending on the actual costs of the initial events.
This means, we will continue organising the fundraising events, until this budget is used up. We believe that this approach is well aligned with the interests of the treasury: The more events we are able to organise, the more commitments into the fund we are likely to get, and the more capital we will have available to invest back into the Polkadot ecosystem.
1% of all funds raised from LPs will be returned to the treasury. This money will be taken out of the management fee that HIC charges its LPs. It therefore has no impact on the net investment returns the fund generates for its LPs, but only narrows the profit margin of HIC. Funds shall be returned to the treasury on a quarterly basis following completed capital calls that quarter. A transparency report disclosing the amount of funds raised from LPs at each event will also be published quarterly.
The above is just a short summary. To read the proposal in full, including graphics and additional links please click here.
This proposal aims to obtain a marketing budget of US$1 million to sponsor a series of ~20 major established global family office summits and traditional investment conferences, which is where we see the greatest opportunity for bringing untapped capital into Polkadot. If successfully executed, this US$1 million in sponsorship costs will be repaid to the treasury in full.
Background
This proposal is a revised version of Ref 899, which was narrowly rejected during confirmation period on 19 July. We have received a lot of positive feedback and many people have voted in favour (7/10 DVs voted AYE). The primary reason the Ref ultimately failed is because of three whale accounts (16hZ*, 156U* and 12k2*), who in combination control ~40m DOT voted against it. We don’t know who is behind these accounts, or why they voted NAY, but if you read this, please do reach out to us in the comments section or on TG: max462.
Regarding other community feedback, we have often heard suggestions that the event series should bring more direct benefit to the treasury. We have considered all comments and significantly revised our proposal, which we are excited to present below:
1% Revenue-Share: In this new proposal, 1% of the capital raised by Harbour Industrial Capital (“HIC”) at these investment conferences from new LPs will be directly returned to the Polkadot treasury. If we successfully raise the US$100m through these events as planned, the US$1m in event sponsorship costs will have been fully repaid.
Equitable Distribution: This 1% will be taken directly out of the management fee that HIC charges its LPs, thereby cutting directly into our bottom line, while bringing a directly measurable ROI to the treasury.
Risk Sharing: There is no limit to this 1% deal: If we manage to raise US$200m, US$2m will be repaid. If we only manage US$50m, it will be US$500k. Some people may argue that there is a risk that the capital will not be fully repaid. While this is correct, HIC will also only receive a fraction in management fees, if we raise a much smaller fund. (We don’t take any salary out of the US$1m budget). Incentives for us to work hard and raise a fund as large as possible are therefore well aligned.
Fringe Benefit: We argue that this new Rev-share model with the treasury should be considered a fringe benefit to the treasury. Nice to have, but not the main reason to vote AYE. Instead, the key benefit to the Polkadot ecosystem – and therefore to the treasury – is bringing in fresh capital and creating a new large Polkadot ecosystem fund that otherwise would not exist.
Comparison with other Events: As the funds will be used for event sponsorship, this proposal should primarily be evaluated through the same ROI lens as other Polkadot events (Decoded, Sub0, Consensus, Token49 etc). These often have similar price points for a single event as our series of 20 events. We believe that introducing Polkadot to very wealthy investors, raising a $100m ecosystem fund AND offering a direct rev-share to the treasury, creates a much better ROI to the treasury than many of these other events.
Head Ambassadors: Since we launched Ref 899, Max and Mario have been voted in as Head Ambassadors of Polkadot. We are extremely grateful for this trust, and will use our HA title to speak on behalf of Polkadot at the investment conferences. Like the other HAs, we will be drawing a salary from the position. We would therefore like to emphasise that the present proposal does NOT INCLUDE ANY ADDITIONAL SALARY for ourselves, but that we will be organising these events at cost.
No Other Changes: Other than that, there are no changes compared to Ref899. We therefore believe that everyone who voted AYE previously, should vote AYE again. At the same time we hope the additional benefit to the treasury will win over many more people who were previously on the NAY side.
Who we are and what we have done so far
The unfortunate answer is: Because many traditional VCs still ignore projects building on Polkadot. Ask any team that recently tried to raise money from generic crypto VCs, a frequent reply is “You’ve got a good team and good idea, but why are you building on Polkadot?”. Sure, we believe this narrative will change over time as other capital allocators slowly begin to realise the potential of Polkadot. But in the meanwhile, we need a dedicated Polkadot-only VC, that helps all the exciting new projects building on Polkadot get off the ground.
It is a chicken-and-egg problem: If Polkadot based projects are starved of capital vis-a-vie those building in other ecosystems, Polkadot will never get the liquidity and “hype” that ultimately attracts more capital. Having worked in the ecosystem for many years, it’s sad to see quality Polkadot based projects migrate to other L1s/L2s, not because of the tech, but simply because they believe they have better opportunities to get VC funding there. We want to change that, and make Polkadot the place great builders go and access capital.
When looking to bring significant amounts of new capital into Polkadot ecosystems, we believe that Family Offices are the most promising investors. But why promote a Polkadot Ecosystem Development Fund, when people can just invest directly into Polkadot? There are at least three good reasons:
Harbour Industrial Capital (HIC) is a private Polkadot VC fund, established by Max Rebol and Mario Altenburger in 2021. We are registered in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in HK. As of Q1 2024 we have an AUM of over US$10 million. We have raised this money from private investors such as Family Offices, and subsequently deployed it exclusively in the Polkadot ecosystem. Fund 1 held its final closing on 31 December 2023, and we are about three quarters deployed. The plan is to launch Fund 2 towards the end of 2024, with a target size of US$100 million.
While Harbour Industrial Capital will take the lead in organising these events, we will actively bring a diverse set of people from within the Polkadot ecosystem to these events:
Please find our proposed budget in the table at the bottom of the full proposal. Kindly note that this is still a draft, as the cost of many items are yet to be confirmed. Most importantly, the exact sponsorship fee will vary from event to event, and has to be negotiated with each event organiser. The numbers below are averages based on initial discussions we have had with different organisers. We have applied a discount of 50% for sponsoring an entire events series (rather than a one-off event), as all organisers prefer long-term partnerships and encourage them with such discounts. It is also the primary reason why we have decided to do this treasury proposal rather than go through the Events Bounty, which only supports one-off events.
Please also note that the amount between line items in this table may shift, depending on actual costs, so long as the total of US$1m is not exceeded. A key variable in this budget is the number of events we will organise. We propose 20 events throughout the fundraising period of two years. However, it may end up being 15 or 25, depending on the actual costs of the initial events.
This means, we will continue organising the fundraising events, until this budget is used up. We believe that this approach is well aligned with the interests of the treasury: The more events we are able to organise, the more commitments into the fund we are likely to get, and the more capital we will have available to invest back into the Polkadot ecosystem.
1% of all funds raised from LPs will be returned to the treasury. This money will be taken out of the management fee that HIC charges its LPs. It therefore has no impact on the net investment returns the fund generates for its LPs, but only narrows the profit margin of HIC. Funds shall be returned to the treasury on a quarterly basis following completed capital calls that quarter. A transparency report disclosing the amount of funds raised from LPs at each event will also be published quarterly.
The above is just a short summary. To read the proposal in full, including graphics and additional links please click here.
Threshold
Threshold