Thank you so much, @Mattsanto for your comments and perspective. We also really appreicate the removal of the Rootstock brand name and logo from the conference website partner page, thank you. We would also request the removal of the use of the brand name and/or logo from any conference promotions (email/social, etc.) either sent from your communications or the conference managers communications team, until the vote has passed successfully.
We appreciate your thoughts regarding the reasoning why the logo (and Rootstock name) were added to the conference website in the first place, and understand that you have experience running events as a Rootstock Ambassador. We feel confident that in the past, you have represented our brand correctly - both in tone and context.
However, the use of the brand name by listing it on the conference website does benefit the conference team for individual registration sales (validation endorsement) as well, as if this proposal does not pass, the brand could become damaged (either short term or long) for not sponsoring, eventhough we were listed on the website earlier (from an individual and other partner’s perspective). It feels like the “horse before the cart” and that can affect our brand’s positive (or in this case) negative perspective to the outside world.
While we understand that this is an unique conference and opportunity (sponsorship level incentive + target audience), for us, we have voted against this proposal that has just gone forward to Tally.
Here’s why we have voted against this proposal:
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Even though this would be considered an unique opportunity, we don’t feel that the KPIs and TVL are strong enough to justify the spend of $12.5K. When considering event sponsorships, we are confident that the customer acquisition cost (CAC) have not been fully addressed/flushed out by the proposal authors. There are a lot of details of activities at the event (which we appreciate) however, to @Axia point earlier, the 60 day plan is lacking on details of execution, GTM plan, and follow-through. The mention of the idea of considering the University Workshops is a good start, but there is more of a focus on the actual activities at the event, rather than the 60 days afterwards, as the author noted was “…60 day follow-up pipeline is where staking conversations is more likely to happen organically”, reinforces our concerns.
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Secondly, we keep on coming back to the impression that this feels like a very strong Beexo event, but Rootstock is doing the heavy (financial) lifting as the sponsorship funding source (which is the majority of the budget expenses). This is expressed with Beexo sending engineers, providing some additional builder rewards; which the amount is undisclosed (in addition to this proposal request of $2.5K for builder rewards) and being the “de-facto” wallet recommended to use for integration, as noted in here. Overall, we perceive this proposal as an imbalanced partnership request, and “skin in the game” is not equal.