As part of the Events Bounty Curators, I’m posting this comment on behalf of all seven of us.

The Events Bounty Curators would like to share our perspective on this proposal, as we were directly mentioned. It’s stated that the EB rejected this proposal because it had previously been rejected by OpenGov. However, this is not entirely accurate. While the OpenGov rejections were a factor, there were several additional reasons for our decision. We feel it is important to provide clarity on this matter for the community and outline the sequence of events and our reasoning in detail.

The original proposal to OpenGov requested $1 million to fund 20 investment conferences and was rejected three times due to several concerns including the lack of quarterly milestones to mitigate risk, insufficient justification for a large upfront budget, limited evidence of the team's venture investment expertise and uncertainty around the projected ROI. Following these rejections, the proposers approached the EB with a reduced scope of five events. Upon reviewing this proposal, we provided feedback requesting clear KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the events, such as lead generation and conversions. We highlighted the need to start with a single proof-of-concept event before scaling to a series, especially since the proposal had already faced strong community pushback. We also requested a detailed report on the Vienna Wealth Summit, which was mentioned as a proof of concept, and asked for clarity on speaker funding, ROI for Polkadot, and how the proposal would balance HIC’s profit focus with measurable benefits for the Polkadot ecosystem.

In response, the proposers provided answers and revised their submission, highlighting reduced costs and indirect benefits for Polkadot through institutional investor engagement. Despite this, EB rejected the proposal for five events, as it lacked a formal report on the Vienna Summit outcomes, failed to provide specific budgets, and continued to raise concerns about HIC’s profit-driven goals outweighing direct benefits for the Polkadot community. We reiterated that we were unwilling to approve a broad discretionary budget, as event curation, including speaker selection and branding, typically falls under the Events Bounty’s oversight. Furthermore, given the prior OpenGov rejections, we felt there was insufficient community support to proceed with a broader series.

The proposers then returned with a revised submission for two events. After another thorough review, the EB curators rejected this version as well. While the scope was reduced, the proposal still focused heavily on promoting HIC, which we believe should be financed by the VC itself rather than community funds. We were also unsure about the choice of Riyadh as one of the two locations, as we feel attendance there might be limited. In addition, the proposal did not provide enough specifics about the planned activities, speakers, or how Polkadot would be represented. We also noticed that the budget continued to reference five events instead of two, which created some confusion about the proposal’s consistency.

Throughout the process, our primary concerns have remained consistent. We require demonstrated ROI and measurable outcomes from a single proof-of-concept event before funding a broader series. The lack of event-specific details, incomplete budgets, and a clear focus on benefiting Polkadot’s ecosystem rather than promoting HIC made it difficult for us to support the proposal in any of its forms.

We hope this explanation provides the community with a comprehensive understanding of our decision. All the best to the team that submitted this proposal.

Dear Event Bounty Curators and @anamarie_com - I find your post here incredibly misleading and politically biased, hence I have to respond. You did state in your initial response (as well as in verbal feedback) that you rejected this because something similar was previously rejected in OpenGov. I believe this is circular logic, which would defeat the purpose of the bounty. The EB should be able to make its assessments independently of OpenGov and of political biases, but apparently this is not the case.

It is true that in your initial response you have also mentioned other reasons for rejecting it, but these have since been dispelled. Nonetheless you keep repeating them here. Let me address them one by one:

Vienna CEE Wealth Summit: The post-event report for this “proof-of-concept” conference has been submitted to the EB (although admittedly with a delay — apologies for that). The inclusion of Christoph, Tommi and Nathalie as speakers at this event should illustrate that we are striving for inclusive representation of the ecosystem, not just HIC.

This is an HIC event: This criticism would have been justified against Ref 731, but we have since made major adjustments. We have very clearly stated that we will involve other ecosystem agents (ambassadors, projects, and other ecosystem funds) in these events, but you keep ignoring that point. HIC here acts as the event's organiser, not the beneficiary. It is like saying WebZero benefitted more than Polkadot from organising Sub0 — clearly a ridiculous statement.

HIC is a profit driven entity, hence you should fund it yourself Yes, we are a profit driven entity, and we won’t apologise for that. So is literally any other company in the world. But we are also a Polkadot ecosystem fund, and every dollar raised at these investor conferences, will get reinvested into the Polkadot ecosystem. What exactly is bad about that?

You should scale it down: We just did! We scaled it down from 1m to 185k, and from 20+ events to 5 events. We just did the CEE Wealth Summit as a proof of concept, and it was a resounding success. To push us to reduce it even further to one event would be self-defeating, I don’t think 5 events (by a single organiser) are too much of a risk. We need some predictability to plan and execute these events.

This is a broad discretionary budget: The budget breakdown has been clearly stated in the table, as such it is not discretionary (again, this would have been a fair criticism of 731, but not of this proposal). It is true that the speaker selection has not been finalised yet, but it’s also a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, we can’t finalise the list of speakers before we know whether the budget gets approved. I also strongly disagree with your statement that “speaker selection should fall under the EB’s oversight”. I don’t think that the bounty curators should have a monopoly on deciding who gets to speak on behalf of Polkadot.

We are unsure about Riyadh as one of the locations: This is a particularly strange argument in my opinion. Riyadh is a major financial hub for capital allocators, and the Saudis have been actively investing in Web3. Animoca Brands just raise 50m there, as one of many examples. It is not the easiest market to penetrate, but with this particular conference we have a good opportunity. We also already have two Saudi investors in Fund I, and we want to scale that. To ignore Saudi Arabia when raising capital for Polkadot, would be a rather obvious mistake.

In summary, I am disappointed by the EB’s rejection of the proposal – the reasons provided are weak, outdated or outright false. This is why we’re now back to OpenGov.