@Cipher_Blue_22 @Adri Appreciate the feedback.
In my opinion, I go back to the notion that blockchain in general feels like its Microsoft in search of Windows 95. Its just so early. There’s too many barriers to drive mass adoption, the technology is clunky, you need to remember a pass code, store it on a Ledger device (which is sort of proof that its a security if you’re not building or using the Applications). Folks read about horror stories every day losing their tokens in a hack or phishing attack. For developers, its a completely new technology. All these are barriers to adoption. So, what’s been adopted today are things that are easily grasped (example, NFT technology is basically used to buy Ape . . . or alligators . . . or long neck thing jpegs). There will be eventual real life use cases of NFT technology, just not happening until the industry problem solves for the barriers to mass adoption.
I think the Foundation should focus every last penny in their war chest on their core competency using technology to drive simplicity and mass adoption. This feels out of the scope of their core competency to invest in applications. I think they should look to early Microsoft or Apple as the best case studies and learn from it.
The opportunity cost seems too high. Could these resources be better spent supercharging future version of AlgoKit with a more robust development team? Better yet, I think the Foundation could use a more robust Sales platform. As a community, we tend to conflate marketing with advertising or sales, all of which are different skillsets. We often use “marketing” as an umbrella term for wanting people to know what is algorand. Marketing is only one piece of the puzzle.
It feels like the Algorand community (either Inc or the Foundation) lacks a killer sales unit. When you look how TikTok or Google corporate is organized, they have robust enterprise sales teams segmented by industry: a team dedicated to Biotech, Auto, Real Estate etc… Each team member is given a list of strategic accounts with a big entertainment budget to have lunch, dinner, ski trips whatever. Their whole goal is to embed themselves into the middle and upper management of those enterprises to understand future RFPs / deal opportunities. Build trust and relationships. They have dedicated Originations team cold calling thousands of potential customers a week building relationships. They know anything and everything about their key industry accounts and emerging deals in the industry. There’s a second round value they get out of this through gathering proprietary data on the industry. People want to work with them because they know what their competitors and others are doing. In my opinion, this is Algorand’s biggest weakness and at this stage in Algorand’s growth where money should be spent first. I lose faith when I see Algo leadership retroactively Tweeting at Helium after they select Solana as their new Tier 1 (albeit a dumb decision on their part, but my point is that it seemed like they found out about the move after the fact). Same with cold Tweeting at Elon Musk etc.
This should be done by an dedicated Sales platform (its not marketing) within the organization, poaching Applications off other Tier 1s or sourcing new adoption from traditional corporates. This takes a lot of resources both in terms of head count, and a hefty entertainment budget.
I guess my argument is that I’m trying to point out weaknesses within the Algorand platform right now, and I’d rather see scarce resources dedicated toward building out long-lasting value rather than preserving the size of the pie that we have in place today. Before we bail anyone out we should ask if there’s anyone doing what they do right now on a different chain. If we truly have the best technology in the industry (and I believe we do) then the Foundation and Inc should be on offense hunting rather than playing defense which feels like the relief fund.
Execution just breaks down with Algo. We made a big deal about EVM compatibility over a year ago. The Foundation made huge investments in that tech. I imagine the leadership team saw this as the primary basis for our low adoption to date guessing by the size of the rewards we gave to solve it. But I question how robust (or how talented?) the team is out there trying to actually sell this stuff to the EVM users right now.
Just my long winded two cents.