2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Able to describe basic characteristics of the DAO
Can outline a few differentiators between the DAO and traditional business
Understands the theoretical DAO vs. practical DAO
Can articulate potential challenges for the DAO
4. Raised!
Shawn Grubb
2004 2008
1995
B.S. Business
Administration
Operations Mgmt.
Mgmt Info Systems.
ERP Systems Mgmt.
Graduate: SAP
University Alliance
Startup: Top Notch Entertainment
(6 employees, $100K annual revenue SOLD!
Guest Speaker:
“Managing Global teams”
Project Manager:
Vita Acquisition
Barcelona Spain
Project Manager:
Pharma manufacturing
outsourcing in France
Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals
Product Supply/Manufacturing
Married
Hasnaa!
IT Portfolio & PMO Director
for $250 Million US portfolio
KARZ
K9FM
KPPL KALF
KLRS
First Career: Radio
Music & Media:
Values: Character – Integrity & Courage, Family & Faith
Passions: Running – Hiking – Teaching – Real Estate
Strengths Finder: Strategic – Futuristic – Command – Competition – Self-Assurance
1990
Promotion
Masters in Business (MBA):
International Management
Xavier University
$12B BeautyCare business unit divestiture:
Global Master Data Program Manager
Northern California Procter & Gamble IT: Cincinnati:
2000
SAP Global Core Financials:
NA Accounts Payable
Implementation
Systems Analyst at P&G
Global Business Services
P&G IT: Project Manager (Frankfurt)
2001
SAP Implementation
Dreieich Germany
SAP Core Logistics
Blois France
SAP Implementation
Bournemouth UK
SAP Implementation
Italy Plants & DCs
P&G IT: Portfolio Director
Pain Specialists of Cincinnati: CEO
Career 3: Career pivot back to
HealthCare, but in private practice
P&G Pet Care: CIO P&G: Sr. Program Manager
Twitter: @shawnlgrubb
SAP Implementation
Casablanca Morocco
P&G Healthcare: Program Director (Paris)
Acquired Physical Therapy and
Chiropractic business unit
Integrated opioid
compliance unit
Sabbatical:
Socially distant sabbatical:
Designed, planned, & built
(my own 2 hands) a multi-
story off-grid tiny home
2012 2015
Startup a new Pain
clinic in Cincinnati!
2017 2020
Direct a $14 million shared services
budget for the $2 billion business
Direct the divestiture of
shared services to MARS.
Hasnaa and
Shawn welcome
Baby Adam!
Promotion
Built high-complexity
CLIA Laboratory
Guest Speaker: High Complexity
Labs – do they still make sense?
Adjunct professor: business
analytics, marketing,
statistics & information
systems
PMP Certification
P&G IT leader for 2012
London Olympic Games
Promotion
Relocate to Germany Relocate to France Return to the USA
5. November 2020: Bull market technical trader - October 2021:
“you are not doing it to get
rich and have a nice car. That’s
lame that’s boring, that been
done. We are doing this to
build a better financial future
for every single person in the
world."
Nov. 2021: Governance & People Ops. Aug 2022: Governance design Aug. 2023: Grants & Governance design
6.
7. WHAT IS A DAO?
DECENTRALIZED AUTONOMOUS ORGANIZATION
A LEGAL STRUCTURE THAT HAS NO CENTRAL
GOVERNING BODY AND WHOSE MEMBERS SHARE A
COMMON GOAL TO ACT IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE
ENTITY.
Decentralized
Autonomous
Organization
• Collection of individuals with a goal in common
• Actively share decision making across stakeholders
• Principally shun or reject the centralization of decision making
• Actively move decisions to the lowest level of expertise
• Celebrate the autonomy of the individual and the sub-units
• Contributors don’t particularly like being told what to do
• Matches resources to needs & organizes labor
8. LEADERSHIP
• Objective: build shareholder
wealth
• Objective: build stakeholder
health
• Decisions are top-down
• Community makes decisions
• Intellectual property is protected
• Intellectual property is shared
COMPARING TRADITIONAL
BUSINESS WITH THE DAO
1.
9. THE WORK
(HUMAN CAPITAL)
Employees are
retained
Contributors
are voluntary
Challenge to
engage
employees
Challenge to
direct passion
Responsibilities
and jobs are
assigned
Choose what
you want to
work on
COMPARING TRADITIONAL
BUSINESS WITH THE DAO
1I.
10. III.
MANAGING
• Regionally managed workforce
• Globally sourced contributors
• Reporting lines managed centrally
• Contributors choose whom to work with
• Let’s make quick decisions
• Good decisions take time
• Initiative is rewarded
• Initiative is the cost of entry
COMPARING TRADITIONAL
BUSINESS WITH THE DAO
11. IV.
STRATEGIC
PLANNING
&
BUDGETING
Often managed by a central orgs
Often overlooked by contributors
History of solid practices for development
Few examples of it being done well
Led by experts in the field
Stumbled through by founders
COMPARING TRADITIONAL
BUSINESS WITH THE DAO
12. INCENTIVES I:
“THERE IS ONE AND ONLY ONE
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF
BUSINESS—TO USE ITS
RESOURCES AND ENGAGE IN
ACTIVITIES DESIGNED TO
INCREASE ITS PROFITS.”
M. FRIEDMAN
14. INCENTIVES III
DOES IT HELP
TO THINK
DIFFERENTLY?
politea vs. politics
I represent the best interest of
the thing
I represent the best interest of
my constituents
41. CHALLENGES FOR THE DAO:
DECENTRALIZATION
Centralized Autonomous
Old World
Companies
Technology
Sector
Ideal DAO
DAO Reality
Military
42. CHALLENGES FOR
THE DAO:
DIRECTION AND FOCUS:
VISION MISSION
& STRATEGY
• What is Vision-Mission-
Strategy?
• How do we use them?
• Who develops them?
• How do we get to alignment?
• What if we don’t agree?
• Who ensures we are on task?
43. CHALLENGES FOR
THE DAO:
REGUL ATORY UNCERTAINTY
• (How) do I pay my taxes?
• Unknown Legal liability
• What regulations apply?
• Is my token a security?
46. AI AND THE BLOCKCHAIN
• Algorithmic Trading:
• Smart Contracts:
• Security and Fraud Detection:
• Data Analysis:
• Automation of Governance:
47. SSDD
SAME S^&T DIFFERENT DAY
1. DAOs have refugees
2. DAOs have new grads
3. Refugees have escaped a TradBusiness
4. Noobs are excited to be here
5. Building new stuff is hard
6. Reapplying old stuff is easy
7. Refugees will do what is easy
8. Noobs won’t know the difference
RISK:
Refugees will centralize & create hierarchies
Because its what we know
DAOs contributors build
Traditional Businesses with
the patina of a DAO
51. CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING:
COMPARING TRADITIONAL
BUSINESS WITH THE DAO
• Traditional Business
• Objective: build shareholder wealth
• Intellectual property is protected
• Decisions are top-down
• Employees are retained
• Challenge to engage employees
• Regionally managed workforce
• Clear reporting lines
• Responsibilities and jobs are assigned
• Initiative is rewarded
• DAOs
• Objective: build community results
• Intellectual property is shared
• Community makes decisions
• Contributors are voluntary
• Challenge to direct passion
• Globally sourced contributors
• Choose whom you work with
• Choose what you want to work on
• Initiative is the cost of entry
52. RESOURCES AND REFERENCES FOR
FURTHER READING
• https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/corporate-purpose/from-there-to-here-50-years-of-thinking-on-the-social-responsibility-of-
business
• https://crypto101podcast.com/podcasts/ep-396-designing-the-best-products-in-the-world-with-simon-judd-of-index-coop/
• https://x.com/SpartanRegen/status/1643451178855038976
• https://x.com/shawnlgrubb/status/1596509502136025088
• https://x.com/PirateOrg/status/1650164623608250370
• https://mintzberg.org/blog/three-sectors
• https://twitter.com/gigarahul/status/1673182886390902784
• https://medium.com/@shawnlgrubb/why-the-dao-must-resist-mba-thinking-bcaf1330f8ef
• https://twitter.com/howdaobook
• https://twitter.com/gigarahul/status/1673182886390902784
• https://internetcomputer.org/docs/current/developer-docs/integrations/sns/tokenomics/sns-checklist
• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jxbb3YkrjAT1TUe6W2yCFUAsXUhdVt5JYoJwmMfykoQ/edit#heading=h.xm43iia8mx4f
• https://twitter.com/PirateOrg/status/1650164623608250370
• https://x.com/SpartanRegen/status/1643451178855038976
Is it a new kind of organization? Yes, and no. Closest comparison at scale might be a Co-operative:
- 100 years ago your family might have been wheat farmers
- good price for grain, but a better price for flour- but building a grain mill is expensive
- you and 10 of your neighbor's pitch in money and effort and build a grain mill
- you all agree to send your wheat to the mill, it makes and sells flour and the owners sell flour vs. grain, at a better price.
- the point of the mill is not to make a profit – it is to help the farmers, mill the grain, and provide flour for the community, the bakers,
Who can name a co op today? REI –
What is an example of REI not putting profit above all else? #OptOutside (Black Friday)
Directing passion: its like a herd of cats – get a group of passionate, ambitious, proactive thinkers, with a healthy distrust of authority – and they are off! Choose who you want to work with – At index I had a personality conflict with a guy – I met, and we tried to see eye to eye and we fundamentally had different objectives I chose not to work with him. Story: in the DAO I get to work with people I want to work with,
I can spin up a 2 month trial contract with zero cost. In the INC, I have to pass it by a b c
PepperoniJoe PaytonRoseFeemChats
Globally sourced contributors – my project team is in Canada, Israel, Montenegro, and the US
- I don’t care where someone is located – I just need good people
Initiative: not easy to get into. Often there is no application to fill out, no co-op or internship
My first dao I asked “what is the mission” Six different (but mostly related) answers
May DAOS are formed by visionaries, not organizational experts
Many times driven by technical developers – they want to build and code!
When the development of core north star documents like Mission, vision, values statements – are brought up
“organizational navel gazing”
Q: What is shareholder wealth? Q: Who are stakeholders? (owners, employees, customers, consumers, the community, the environment)
Example:
Split room into thirds
Customers
Employees
Owners (decision makers)
Recent publications will say something different – but institutions move slow
2012 MBA From Xavier – a Jesuit university –
The objective of business is to deliver better than average returns to the shareholders
Quote from BigSky“you are not doing it to get rich and have a nice car. That’s lame that’s boring, that been done. We are doing this to build a better financial future for every single person in the world."
Recent publications will say something different – but institutions move slow
2012 MBA From Xavier – a Jesuit university –
The objective of business is to deliver better than average returns to the shareholders
Politeia, (Statesman)
In Greek means the community of citizens in a city / state.
Governance for the thing
My people over your people
politics:
the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.
Governance for my constituents
Not always appropriate. If there is a fire
Optimism – a huge layer two condition of employment: move out of the United States
Collegue was told NOT to work on his DAO while in Morocco (where crypto has been banned)