Oct 8, 2021

Create a DAO with no code - Free Preview

Christian⚡️

Welcome to No-Code Startup Ideas. This week’s idea: a DAO.

NFTs are going nuts right now (lol), and some say DAOs are next. You can create a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to coordinate groups to invest in startups, buy NFTs, share revenue from new products and businesses, and much more. And you can do it with zero coding.

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What is this newsletter about?

In each issue, I send out a deeply researched business plan for a validated, profitable startup that you can start with no coding and very little money. See past issues here.

The methodology

For each idea, we go through:

The opportunity
JTBD (Jobs to be done)
Why now
Pricing and revenue projections
How to build the no-code MVP
Startup costs and time to profitability
Tactics to get the first 10 customers
Bonus: 3 more no-code startup ideas

Let’s go!

The Opportunity: DAOs and the Future of Work

The bottom line is this: If you want to galvanize a community for a shared purpose, then a DAO could be a great tool. It’s like crowdfunding, collective treasury management, and a community referral program all rolled into one.

Stepping back from all the crypto mumbo-jumbo, DAOs seem like a fairly good way to raise money and coordinate a community to do things.

What kind of things can I do with a DAO, you ask?

Building a product. Dance Floor DeFi is building a way to unlock cash from NFTs you own. DANCE token holders control the product.
Building a city. CityDAO is divvying up ownership in a real parcel of land in Wyoming.
Investing. Flamingo invests collectively in new NFT projects, and Seed Club invests in new products.
Other crazy stuff. Krause is a DAO that wants to buy an NBA team.

DAOs are growing like crazy

According to DeepDAO, as of February 21, 2021 there were 2,300 total members across all DAOs.

That number today? 1 million.

That’s an annualized growth rate of over 40,000%.

Jeff Bezos started Amazon after going nuts over the fact that the internet was growing at 2,300%. DAOs are growing at almost 20x that rate.

Ready to jump in yet??

A Research DAO

For our DAO, we’re going to choose a topic that’s well-suited to someone who doesn’t want to code solidity. We’re going to create a research service for investors who want to jump into web3.

The core value prop will be: Helping investors find the best new projects in Web3 through a research subscription. Kind of like Forrester or Gartner, but on a smaller scale and much more focused.

JTBD (Jobs To Be Done)

For investors, what’s the job to be done here?

Find promising new projects
Understand whether they’re going to succeed
Figure out how to invest in them

Check, check, and check.

How will this DAO create a revenue stream? Well, in this DAO we’re going to sell a research subscription to earn revenue, which then we can program to distribute to all members according to how many tokens they have.

How is this different from a company? Token holders vote on all changes to the DAO. If you don’t like the direction things are going, you can always “rage quit” and exit, taking with you your share of the treasury.

Why now

NFTs are going nuts right now, but all the people that were talking about NFTs back in Jan-Feb 2021? They’ve been talking more and more about DAOs.

In 2016, a grand DAO experiment took place. A bunch of people got together and put ETH into a DAO called, well… “the DAO”. They wanted to invest in new projects together.

Just 2 months later, hackers stole 3.6 million ETH, which would be worth about $12 billion in today’s prices – making it one of the biggest hacks of all time.

Except in the aftermath, the Ethereum team decided to create a hard fork – and the Ethereum blockchain we know today is the version where that massive DAO hack never even happened.

Needless to say, the idea of DAOs took a huge PR hit. Today, though, most have forgotten this ancient history. And security has improved since then. So too, DAO treasuries have soared. With overall sentiment improving and more and more people looking for what’s next after NFTs, now might be the perfect time to jump in.

Things are far from certain, however, as shown by a recent $160m bug in one of the biggest DAOs, Compound. So be sure to use caution and do your research before picking a platform.

But if those 40,000% growth rates don’t convince you to at least take a look, I’m not sure what will.

Pricing and revenue

Setting up the DAO

In addition to the typical pricing and revenue section, I’m going to talk about how to set up the rules of your DAO so that you can actually make money. How much revenue you generate will depend on what product you build with your DAO teammates.

In this case, we’ll want to set up our DAO to have a core team of people you trust who are the only ones who can buy tokens and vote with them.

Then every month, you can set up transactions to each member in the amount they earned. Everyone votes and the transactions go through.

Let’s take an example. Let’s say you decide to create a DAO to produce original research on the best new web3 projects. Here are the roles you need:

Writers who submit research reports in return for rewards
A committee of “judges” who decide which reports to reward, and which to reject
A core team who can get customers, create the website, etc.

Pricing & revenue

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Building the no-code MVP

There are actually a bunch of tools you can use to build a DAO without coding, and probably many more in the works as I write this. But the ones I know about are:

Aragon, live on Ethereum (super high gas fees)
xDAO, live on Polygon & Binance Smart Chain (much lower gas fees)
Colony, in development - will be on xDai
Squads, in development - will be on Solana

xDAO is the best choice for now because of low gas fees. So here’s what you’ll do:

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Startup costs and time to profitability

How would costs break down here? Let’s posit the following:

You reward writers $350 per report, and create ~1 report per week at first
You reward $50 to each of 3 judges for every report they review. You can do this yourself at first :)

Otherwise, you’ll need a way for customers to pay you for subscriptions.

So here are the other costs you’ll need to account for:

Domain: $15/yr
Website where customers can pay, let’s say Webflow ($15/mo) + Memberful (free + 10%/transaction)
Notion (to coordinate with the contributors): Free
Airtable (to take submissions): Free

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Tactics to get the first 10 customers

Let’s talk customers for a sec. In the current climate, everyone and their mom is trying to figure out how to get exposure to crypto, but they often have no idea where to start. This is where you come in.

Check out PrimeDAO, which is starting a ratings service for DeFi projects. You could start a similar service, but for NFTs. Or you could jump into DeFi as well - there’s not a shortage of new protocols to research!

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Now go get building! 🚀

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your reactions and ideas.

And please come say hello on Twitter. I’d love to hear from you!

Looking for a cofounder to build with? @ me and we’ll find someone for you.

Bonus: 3 more no-code startup ideas

And because I came across a ton of great ideas in my research, here are a few more ideas to stimulate your creativity:

Community for aspiring food bloggers
Marketplace for finding bands to play in
Online course & community on how to create a successful NFT series

Might pick one of these for the next issue. Hmu if you have a preference!

Don’t miss out on the other issues by Christian⚡️

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Christian⚡️ @christpetron

Each issue is a deeply researched business plan for a profitable startup you can start with no coding and very little money. Scroll down to see past issues.

I bootstrapped my last company to $20K+ per month using no-code tools, and I want to help you do the same.

Each email includes:
- Pitch and value proposition
- Target audience and their problem
- How to create version 1 step-by-step
- Specific tactics on how to get your first 10 customers
- Pricing, startup costs, revenue projections, and payback period
- 3 bonus ideas

Avoid analysis paralysis. Find your idea and build your profitable business faster!

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