Polkassembly - Polkadot India Incubator Launch and Evangelist Hiring Proposal

Polkadot India Incubator Launch and Evangelist Hiring Proposal - Lumos Labs

4 years ago

After a successful Inaugural India Hackathon i.e Polkadot Buildathon: India, in collaboration with the Web3 Foundation, we at Lumos Labs are excited to explore the next phase in the development of Web3 Ecosystem in India.
Polkadot Buildathon India was an India Focussed 9-week online Hackathon that provided great opportunities to learn how to build a blockchain, join a talented, global community and show off your talent as a developer!

The program ran from March 2021 to May 2021. During this, We received over 1230 Applications, 695 Submissions, 120 Local Node Submissions.

3 Teams won the Hackathon from a Pool of USD 14,000 as Grants.

Post the success of the Hackathon, Lumos Labs discussed the next set of challenges and opportunities to the Indian Developer Ecosystem and how we can address them on a grassroots level. This proposal Covers our vision for the next phase.

Lumos Labs had a discussion with various teams earlier in July and validated the concept note and the need for an Incubator program was identified along with hiring an India Developer Evangelist.

Full Proposal Can be Found here

Comments (2)

4 years ago

Overall I think this is a good direction, but I have a few issues. First, a few nits:

The requirement for the evangelist to have built something with Substrate that is deployed on Polkadot, and the estimate of taking only one month to find and hire this person. There are only a handful of people who meet this requirement, and if you can hire one in under a month then please teach me :).
The prediction of establishing partnerships in under one month and ensuring that each partner has the staff and resources to fulfill the program.

Regarding the incubator teams and costs, this is a rather large proposal. Normally an incubator would take equity in its incubees, and if the Treasury is funding 100% of the costs, it should have an agreement to also become a stakeholder in the incubees.

Likewise the full 6 month funding upfront is quite large. I think this would be better broken into smaller proposals.

nitinvinayachandran

4 years ago

Appreciate your note & happy to address your concerns

Regarding India Evangelist Hiring: Through our first engagement, Polkadot Buildathon: India hackathon, we have a ready database of people conversant with Substrate. Most of them clear our hiring criteria & would be keen to work with Polkadot, hence we are confident of closing the position well within the specified timeframe.
Regarding Establishing Partnerships: We have a ready set of college partners with whom we have executed several programs and partnership closure here is fairly plug & play. Lumos Labs team will be working closely with the evangelist to drive these partnerships.
Regarding stake in incubated projects: For projects converting into full-time startups through this incubator, we can definitely discuss the equity bit on a case-to-case basis. However, given that these are projects by students who have become Substrate/Polkadot savvy through this program, some of them may not go public and rather be open to getting plugged into other Polkadot ecosystem projects.
Regarding Payment Terms: The whole proposal is bifurcated into operating expenses & grants, and grants release is expected only towards the completion of the respective phases. However, we are happy to consider further breaking the proposal based on milestones.

PleaseLogin to comment