Friends With Benefits

Author: Gabe Quintela

Abstract

We propose establishing an FWB Partnerships team dedicated to designing & managing strategic relationships with third-party communities & brands in order to drive value for FWB members as well as FWB’s treasury.

Motivation

We’ve seen a significant opportunity for partnerships at FWB, demonstrated by the volume of community recommendations, inbound interest, and experiences that we’ve already been able to produce with partners.

Formalizing an FWB Partnerships team would allow us to operationalize the interest we’re receiving from third parties while further exploring the unique benefits that we can create for FWB members through creative partnerships.

Strategy

Our highest priority with any partnership will always be to provide value to members while protecting the brand & culture of FWB. Therefore, we view revenue as a trailing indicator. A reward that occurs when we partner with those who do right by our community.

With that perspective in mind, the partnership team will oversee three partnership activation programs:

• Cultural Activations - partner with brands for co-utility. No upfront cash, focused on utility, experience, and brand building.
• Access - FWB members will receive exclusive/early access or discounts to products and services. Most likely activated at the FWB channel level (i.e., skincare, mental health, food, gaming etc.).
• Revenue Driving - partners pay FWB to co-create valuable opportunities for FWB members.

Existing Pipeline

To demonstrate the opportunity behind activating an FWB partnerships team, our (thus far part-time & volunteer) team has already developed a strong pipeline of 9 potential deals for a possible $600,000+ of new revenue. An overview of the deals in the pipeline, including a community-facing proposal for each, is available for FWB members upon request. Please contact Gabe Q.#2254 on Discord for more information.

Budget

This proposal is for the FWB treasury to fund a FWB Partnerships team for two seasons (4 and 5). The monthly burn rate will be $16,900. This burn includes legal fees for structuring contracts on specific partnerships as well as a small travel & entertainment budget for negotiating deals. However, this burn rate doesn’t take into account the offsetting revenue that partnerships can and will bring in. While revenue is not the priority with these deals, we expect to more than offset monthly burn with revenue-generating partnerships.

The Season 4 budget would be back paid to contributors for work done thus far. Full budget breakdown can be found here.

Outcomes and Success Measures

The nuance in determining what success looks like for our team is that we are not treating revenue as the leading priority in our partnerships. While many of the partnerships that we do will bring revenue to FWB, we hope to be a bit different from a traditional partnerships team in that we are equally interested in brand building, and providing unique experiences to our community.

Therefore, we will be measuring success via the following objectives and results:

Objective 1: Achieve (at least) breakeven, offsetting team cost with new partnership revenue by end of Season 5.

• Result: Secure at least $55,000 in partnership revenue in season 5.
• Result: Keep team burn below incoming revenue in season 5.

Objective 2: Generate access to novel experiences for the FWB community

• Result: Secure partnerships that create at least 3 new experiences (IRL events, dinners, pop-ups, digital programming etc) that FWB members can access per season.

Objective 3: Create new opportunities for FWB members to be compensated for their creative work

• Result: Secure at least 2 partnerships per season that generate working opportunities for FWB members to be paid for engaging with said partner.

Objective 4: Establish FWB as a thought leader on what DAO partnerships can look like

• Result: FWB is referenced in at least 2 organic press pieces for unique partnerships that we create.

Benefits

• Provides exclusive opportunities & benefits to FWB members.
• Drives revenue to grow & improve our operations.
• Co-creates opportunities to support the creative class.
• FWB further cements its position as a thought leader by co-creating first of their kind programs and activations.

Drawbacks

• In some cases partnerships will place additional demand on FWB team leads’ time, at an opportunity cost of internal projects.
• Partnering with different brands could subject FWB to potential PR mishaps or other issues that may arise on the partner’s side.