Anna Kaic - The Fundraising Map: Tools, Platforms

I was acquainted with European funding and European funds for technology development and uh it was very frustrating because I would see people with great ideas that were looking for funding and it was just so complicated to prepare all the documentation. It was a back and forth that could go for up to six months a year to write this program. You needed to pay an adviser and in the at the end of the day after all of this you wouldn't get anything. Um and then I discovered fundraising in web tree which by no means it's easy but it's definitely has a way less bureaucratic work um if compared to traditional funding. Um so one thing that for me um is very good u with onchain grants is that they not only provide uh with uh capital so they will not only give you money do your thing and you're good to go.

uh many of them will give you also technical mentorship, community exposure and tooling. Uh because without a good business model, without uh good vision for what you want to do and uh at the end of the day, how are you going to make your project profitable uh then yes you will get funding but then at the end of the day maybe your project will die. So um technical mentorship I think and also marketing mentorship and launchpads are all all type of um similar projects are really really valuable and uh quite widespread. um around the ecosystem. So, so let's say that you decide, okay, oh, this looks a bit off, but you decide, okay, I need funding for my project.

Uh, where do I start? Because the first thing you will do, you're going to probably type in grant funding, web three grant funding, and you're going to see these astronomical numbers of different protocols, different blockchains that say, uh, we offer, I don't know, $50 million in funding for new projects in web three. Um, I would say don't get overwhelmed by the amount of funding there is and also don't fall for the big numbers. just be very realistic for um with what you want to do and make sure that the money that you are asking for is coming from an aligned source, a source that is aligned with your project and with your goals. Um so when you look for funding uh I would first go as a grants manager I would look for the funding scope and size.

Normally um when um funding is publicized uh they will showcase the total pool but then at the end of the day you need to be very careful. There's some um limitations to it and most grants have a cap. So there is no way that uh one project will bring home $15 million. Um well I haven't found any yet but uh just make sure that uh the cap that you are going to be applying for uh the grant you're going to be applying for will give you enough funding to actually fulfill the milestones you are going to promise because at the end of the day is also part of your reputation. So first of all, yeah, um we check the total funding, the per project caps.

After we've done that, uh we always check the rolling bases grants and time limited rounds. Now I have a strong preference for time limited uh rounds just because the rolling days grants can be a bit wishy-washy like they say, oh we have funding, you might hear back from us in three weeks, maybe three months, maybe never. But when there is a deadline, um you have a clear expectation. Okay, I will hear from this program on the 21st of June. Uh, and by I don't know the 1st of July, I will have the funds in my wallet so I can actually start building.

And it's not this endless uh cycle of writing a grant not knowing when they will come back and then your project gets delayed and then the team doesn't have funding. It's for me um I would absolutely go for uh the time limited rounds and then as I said before if you can also get ecosystem support for um for your project like mentorship I think that's way more valuable funds are very valuable but um the shared knowledge of the community and also exposure for your project will bring you way more than just than just funding uh in the long run of course. Okay. So there are some interesting um platforms and tools that have been used um in the past months um for uh fundraising and um some of them are new some of them are OGs but uh I will I put here as a mix of them so maybe you heard about give it um so whenever I hear about a new project I have a friend of mine here that has a project that just started if it's a public goods project if Um it's something that will really benefit the community or um it can be also um you know real world projects um right now. Um yeah there are all types of things happening in the world and if you go to give it you will find a lot of um initiatives you can support.

It's a platform that enables donations um in that that basically you get 100% of the donation. So, and you can see where your donation is going. Um, and you can also see that you know, oh, this project with my funding, they did this and this and this. Um, there is a whole give economy that I will not explain right now. Um, but um, I think give it is a great platform if you have an idea, you don't have a lot yet, but you think that um, community will support your idea and you can start your project there.

You can start fundraising. It's like a GoFundMe, but for web three. Um and a cool thing about uh GITH is that periodically they also organize quadratic funding rounds and these rounds are normally sponsored by bigger blockchains. Normally we are talking about uh $50,000 rounds where projects join apply to join and then basically for every donation uh they get a portion of the matching pool calculated through quadratic funding of through the quadratic formula. So, at the end of the day, one a $1 donation can bring you, I don't know, up to $10 or $20, which is very nice.

Um, and the community really comes together during these um quadratic funding rounds. Everybody's trying to, you know, get more donations, ship more, um, create more. So, if you didn't know about Give It, I think you can, uh, start looking into it if you have a fresh new project. Gitcoin grants, um, I will not say too much about it. It's been here forever.

This has been the first um fundraising platform that I've been using since Gong Grants 13. I don't even know. I think we are Gong Grants 21 or 22 right now. Um the number is the number of the rounds of quadratic funding rounds they've been doing. Um they happen I think every 3 months, three to four months.

Um then you apply with your project. They have a huge uh match funding pool uh QF rounds and it's just um I think um it's different from GTH because GTH enables you to have a project there all the time. Uh Gitcon grants goes more in waves but uh if you are looking for another option to fund raise to kickstart the fundraising for your project um Gitcon grants is the OG here. Then something very fresh that actually started three months ago I would say um is Gitcoin Gardens and it looks very cute because you can uh if you have a community, if you have a project and uh you would like to basically start a fundraising campaign uh for um aligned projects with your project, you can set up your own matching pool. You can set up your own criteria.

you can set up uh your your own way of accepting uh projects, your own way of dispersing uh the funds and um it's very nice because you can set up basically everything. So in this uh here you can participate um you can participate as a grantee but also you can participate as also a grant allocator. So in case and we we don't have to talk about millions like if you want to just award contributions from your community I think it going is something worth looking into. And then a very cool one that also started uh uh not not so long ago. Um it was uh started by the team behind the Valora wallet that is the main wallet on Cello.

And uh what they're doing is basically you have builders that when they reach certain milestones like here I put transactions and fees or whatever milestone the um the the reward allocator wants to set when these milestones are reached there is a smart contract that will allocate rewards for builders. So you don't have the whole pain of having to write a grant, having to you know promise milestones when you achieve a milestone. If you if you have DV integrated, then you will just get rewards based on that. Um it's a very fresh project. I think they they just started out.

So if you don't want to miss on this opportunity um it's a good good starting point as well. specifically if you already have a working product that has already been launched that has already uh you know uh some transactions some volume some users that's worth looking into um and then before I was talking about Gitcoin grants and as a new grantee or if you're looking um towards participating in Gitcoin grants for example this is a tool you cannot miss and what I see normally also With some of our clients at General Magic, people come to the point where oh we want to apply for git congrats. We don't have a karma gap. So they will stay up late for days building their karma gap. But uh karma gap is not meant to be built in a day.

It's basically like a portfolio of everything you have done of all the impact you have created. And this is spec specifically good for I would say regenerative finance projects that sometimes lack some measuring of the success measuring of the result um and uh measuring of all the work they do. So if you are thinking you know one day I want to fund raise having a karma gap account I think um it's very very useful. They also integrate a lot of other tools like DV which we mentioned before. Um they have the proof of ship and uh they're they're also trusted by many others.

So they've been a key part for being admitted to Gitcoin grants for example. So if you don't have a karma gap there's a very like you will not be admitted to many funding rounds. So think about karma gap. And then one that is a bit dear to my heart because it also comes from the family of giveth and general magic is the vouch. So if you are acquainted with uh the optimism retrofunding um and but in general also with all types of um you know grants allocation.

This is a great platform where people that trust your projects uh your project and then have seen what your project is capable of um basically they can vouch for you. They can say oh these guys are legit like they're not like a scam and they're really doing the thing. And the way the vouching works is basically your voucher um if your profile is stronger like if you're an optimism delegate or if you have a Gitcoin passport that has a high score. So basically you're just saying I trust this project and I know that they will do good. And this is very useful for um grants allocators because then you can discern between projects that are being flagged because you can also flag projects that are red flags not doing anything not doing much um and it helps specifically when um the decision is being made about where do we want to allocate the funds.

So you can create, you can put your project on dev vouch. You can go ask your community, hey, you've seen what we've done. Can you please vouch for me and then one day you can use that also in your fundraising campaign. I think it's it's a it's a good um good platform, very easy to use. So I would say yes.

Okay. So um this part is a little bit more focused on uh AI grant programs just because lately uh the majority of grants we've been working on um at General Magic have been AI focused and I think that if you have a project you will you probably have an AI component in it either if you want it or not you probably should. And I think I'm going to give you just um skim through uh a lot of different grants programs. Uh and if you want you you can take a picture or if any of these aligns with um your own project, it can be useful because they have good funding. You need to have an AI component but at the same time you might also get um yeah uh good funds to kickstart your project.

Um so the first one is arbitum. Arbitrum Foundation. They have a trailblazer AI program. This trailblazer word reminds me of JVT. Um but yeah uh well they have a 1 million total pool.

This is what we uh what we um saw before and then you can get up to 10K for your project. uh but it has already um to uh be launched on arbitum and it has to have an AI agent integrated and uh they normally announce they go on a rolling basis like they announce different rounds so you can stay up to date about them on their arbitrum foundation website. Then uh if you're a fan of Avalanche, they also do have an infrail AI uh program and uh basically they have pitch events which is great because you can also sense the interest of the avalanche community in what you want to build or what you already built. Um so basically you can yeah go on their website find out about these speech events. I think they happen every two weeks.

I'm not very sure. I know they had one in at the beginning of June. Um and these are more for like AI powered developer tools, autonomous onchain agents and um they have a 15 million totem pool. So if you are yeah a fan of avalanche this is a good one. Polygon community grants the AI track they have multiple tracks.

So this is if you want to also look into other opportunities if you're not really a fan of AI. um they have just an array of a lot of different opportunities and a lot of different grant pools. The I think the most impressive thing is that they want to allocate 1 billion pole over 10 years which is 100 million per year which is uh quite impressive. So I think they will have funding. You can also look into the long run.

And something I didn't mention before um it's very good if you start small. So don't overpromise or don't I wouldn't personally ask for funding for my whole project. I would do something small. I would ask for a 5k 10k 15 20 30k grant 35 tops. Do something with it.

Uh become familiar with the grant allocator and then the grant allocator will be more favorable to giving more funding to you which is very logical but sometimes people ask for 100k and then they're like we don't know you guys. So no. Um, light chain has also um a grant um opportunity. It's a bit smaller like they will allocate up to 5k per team but the good part is that they have the technical mentorship and the co-arketing and trust me when you're a new project and you have one follower on X and nobody knows about you having some community support is very nice. Kadena has also some millions for you.

Um if you are more into um regenerative finance, real world assets, tokenization and um yeah, if you're more into the regenerative part of web3, I think kada can be interesting then for the funds of internet computer uh they have the DAI grant program. They have also other grant programs. But um this uh for example here an interesting thing uh is that we can see that the grant review lasts for four to six months. And I will give you a tip when you see something like this. I would personally look for a contact directly with the grants uh team the the team who is evaluating the grants.

Just so you know after a week or two, hey where are we standing? Can we provide more information? Do you maybe want to call? Do you maybe want to ask some more? Yeah.

Some more things regarding our application. I would definitely do that and specifically with rolling basis grants. Solana also they have um a grants and partnerships. Um this they have an estimated timeline that it's m much quicker. I'm not sure about how much they are allocating but if you are looking into grants that might not be as explored as the others that we mentioned like arbitrum and polygon Solana can also be a good ally specifically if you're already building on Solana and then some best practices after all these grant opportunities now that you have decided that you're going to ask for a million dollars for your project um one very important The thing before you start filling in the um application, make sure to read the criteria.

Sometimes they have a specific way of you writing about the milestones. Sometimes they want to know exactly some specific information. Just make sure to read the criteria. This is um yeah, mistake number one. Um make sure to have clear milestones.

Make sure you can deliver on the milestones. Make sure you have a dev who will deliver what you're promising because even if you get 5K and you don't deliver, it's going to hurt your reputation. You don't want that and you will drag that in all the other projects you um work in. Uh then leverage the community, come to it, go to itcon, go to different events, talk about your project, meet the grant allocators, hack there, do whatever it takes to actually build a community for yourself. And I would say that many programs require a quote to be publicly available.

It has happened to me one time that we wrote the whole grant and then the GitHub was private and the code was not public which is a waste of time. So again read your um criteria. So you can bookmark everything uh that I said before. You can also I don't know if the slides are going to be available somewhere. Maybe yes maybe no.

And if you have any questions then I'm happy to answer. Um but that was it. I think we are on time. Yes. Good.

Thank you. Nice. Maybe I have a question for you. Did you apply for any grants recently and you were successful? You did?

Yeah.

What for? for conference.

You applied to the ecosystem support program.

Yes, we applied to ESP.

Okay. How did it go?

Went pretty smooth. They're actually processing it well and have a good process.

Okay.

Yeah. So, it's probably different as opposed to the dress that you talked about which are for projects.

Exactly. Yes. Very good. Well, it's nice because I see they're supporting many new projects. So, this is great to see from their side.

Yeah. Well, um I think I can turn it off. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. It's underneath. Yes.

You can turn. This was fast. No, no, it's okay. I have the questions ready. Well, thank you very much.

Nice to see. I know your face. annoy you.