June/July 2024 Status Report
The calm before the storm
Hello All,
This update covers progress from mid-June through mid-July.
The sections of this update are as follows:
TL;DR
Primary Updates
Accomplishments and Wins
Failures and Learnings
Upcoming Priorities and Planning
Asks
Misc
Gratitude
TL;DR
#NYTechweek outcomes were generally positive, but ROI was less than expected.
The web app is improving, we’re addressing some tech debt, and are close to releasing some important new features.
We’ve hired 2 interns for the remainder of the summer to help with miscellaneous research, outreach, and social media marketing projects.
I’m now spending 80% of my time working on user acquisition. Reaching specific user related milestones is Spartacus's current #1 priority.
We (virtually) attended Netroots Nation 2024, a huge hub of left-wing organizing, civic initiatives, and political activism. We have 500+ leads to follow up with.
We’ll be Dogfooding Spartacus to create cohorts of early adopters - starting at 10 and expanding from there.
I had some ideas about a matching algorithm for participant-specific success conditions and exploring Advance Market Commitment frameworks as a revenue model.
Primary Updates
Product Roadmap
We’ve continued to iterate on our current features to make them more robust. Based on feedback, we’re improving our transactional messages and some UI design elements. We’re close to releasing the “Chain of Trust” setting, i.e. one-time-use-only invite codes, for campaigns requiring a higher degree of participant vetting, privacy, accountability, and deterrence against bad actors.
Complete:
Usernames are now automatically generated on sign-up.
Usernames are no longer tied to PII in the deanonymized participant table.
Campaign creators can now preview content before publishing.
Added captions and tooltips to provide additional context to various user actions.
Added more granular control to notification settings.
Changed UI elements to make messages more legible.
Added a button to archive inactive campaigns to declutter “My Campaigns” tab.
Flagging/Reporting for content that violates TOS.
Under Construction:
“Chain of Trust” referral system.
Unique invite code generator
Options settings for enabling/disabling “Chain of Trust”
Tree diagram and database to track code creation, utilization, and referral connections.
Private Campaign type.
Campaign Categorization Tags.
Internal KPI/Analytics tracking.
Monetization.
Platform fee.
Subscription.
Marketing and Outreach Strategy
We’re creating a funnel of users we can segment into cohorts defined by:
Use case
Campaign size/duration
Readiness
Viral potential/marketing value.
Tactics:
Refine our user personas and ideal customer profiles for targeted marketing campaigns.
Develop distinct value propositions targeted to specific audiences.
Determine the types of case studies that would maximally demonstrate credibility and Social Proof. Proactively scout for those users.
Recruit users from inside marquee organizations so we can say, “Used by [Impressive recognizable organization].”
Posting consistently to Substack, Reddit, X, and Threads.
Active social media management to increase followers and spur engagement with high-profile accounts.
SEO
Paid Advertising on Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit.
Influencer/KOL targeted engagement.
Seminars, Webinars, Presentations, and Events.
Early Adopter Cohorts
You can’t take a startup seriously that doesn’t dogfood its own product to solve a problem it claims it should be trusted to solve for others. We’re no exception. We need to be very hands-on in the beginning to get thorough feedback and establish trust.
It would be a mistake to do this randomly and piecemeal. It’s more efficient to work with small groups of users simultaneously so we can learn, test, and digest bursts of activity in a set period of time.
So, I’ll be creating Spartacus campaigns to create discreet cohorts of early adopters. The first one will have a goal of 10. I’ll also be setting up either a Slack or Discord channel to facilitate discussion. Anyone who’s reached out over the last months with interest in contributing will receive an invitation from me soon.
Events
I virtually attended Netroots Nation from July 11—13.
Many of the panel discussions were interesting (and some not so much), but most valuable was the event’s purpose itself, bringing together thousands of individuals and organizations involved in progressive politics and causes. As an ideologically agnostic (with limits) platform, it’s imperative for Spartacus to appeal to a broad range of users who are looking for better ways to organize and mobilize. I made more than 500 connections, which I expect to yield dozens of meetings and new users.
We’ll be planning some smaller-scale events later in August and will participate in both LA and SF tech week this upcoming October.
Hiring and Internships
As you read this, we’ll be hiring 2 interns to help with research, marketing, event planning, and other miscellaneous projects.
We’re always open to hearing from people who want to contribute, especially in unique ways. If we don’t have a specific need for your skills now, we may in the near future! Feel free to inquire at jordan@spartacus.app
Accomplishments and Wins
In the last update, I covered how well the public debut of Spartacus was received. The period immediately following the event was one of steady improvement, but no huge leaps forward or milestones hit. There’s been a bit of a lull in the action, but I expect things to pick up in a major way very soon, especially once we have 2 more people on the team to help with outreach and marketing. We’re laying the groundwork for getting orders of magnitude more eyeballs on the project.
The several meetings held in June/July have been promising, including a few that open up possibilities of collaborations with very high-profile organizations. Discussions are ongoing.
Failures and Learnings
While the NYC meetings were generally productive, the conversion rate from meeting prospects to meetings held was too low, and follow-on interest dropped off more quickly than anticipated. This was due to a combination of our audience being a little too general and me not being aggressive enough with immediate follow-ups.
A singular focus on prep for Tech Week created a major backlog of other work, and catching up has been a challenge due to the same bandwidth issues mentioned in previous posts. This has compelled me to start building out a new prioritization workflow based partially on the Eisenhower Matrix, with additional variables regarding anticipated ROI (linear vs. exponential).
We received word that our applications to Techstars NY and LA were rejected. Expected, but still a bummer.
I caught the prevalent strain of Covid in late May. Although my case was mild/moderate, I’ve been suffering from prolonged symptoms throughout all of June, including a nagging cough, congestion, fatigue, and acute back pain. This has been frustrating, to say the least, but I’m gradually getting better. It definitely lowered the ceiling on my productivity for a while.
The video of our June event has terrible audio, to the extent that I’ve delayed posting it until it can be fixed. I’ve attempted to clean it up using a few different methods, to no avail. I’m working with an expert audio engineer to see if we can salvage it. If all else fails, we’ll post it and encourage people to turn captions on.
Upcoming Priorities and Planning
Team
Oboarding and delegating work to summer interns.
The search for a full-time committed co-founder is ongoing.
Growth
See “Marketing and Outreach Strategy” above.
Our rough milestones are as follows:
More than 1,000 social media followers by Sept 1.
Shepherd the first cohort of 10 campaign creators to completion by Aug 15th.
A waiting list of 100 or more campaign creators by Sept 1.
Posting revenue from early users.
Product
Private Campaigns, Chain of Trust, and Monitization will be done by Aug 15th.
Misc
Accelerator research and applications.
Grant research and applications.
Asks
Social Media/PR/Signal Boosting:
Spartacus doesn’t have a strong social media presence. We need help with growing an audience and becoming a known quantity in relevant online communities and groups. If you’re active in any space you think would be receptive to Spartacus’ mission, please let me know.
Referrals and Intros:
We would greatly appreciate a warm introduction if you know anyone who would be interested in learning more about Spartacus or using it.
Brainstorming and Red-Teaming:
We want to hear from anyone who has thoughts on coordination problems they care about. These can range from trivial group decision-making paradoxes to moonshot global-scale problems. We also want to engage with skeptics sensitive to user concerns or problem areas to which we may not be giving sufficient attention.
Miscellaneous
Advance Market Commitments
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-to-start-an-advance-market-commitment/
Advance market commitments, or AMCs, are promises to buy or subsidize something in the future if someone can invent and produce it, kind of like a reverse Kickstarter. Their purpose is to guarantee enough future demand to encourage suppliers to try to build something that should exist but doesn’t. AMCs are an interesting concept that can help break the inertia of a situation where there’s too much up-front risk to build or make something without a guarantee that other people will be willing to buy it.
Reading this piece spurred me to think about how Spartacus could be used to organize AMCs. After all, it’s a form of assurance contract. If Spartacus was used to successfully fund an AMC, the platform could take a commission. However, there are many other well-established crowdfunding platforms that can easily be adapted to this use case. It’s just fundraising, after all, which is not our primary focus.
More interesting was how the concept could be used to induce Spartacus campaigns that didn’t yet exist but could be brought into being using an AMC as an incentive.
In this scenario, an AMC would function as a kind of bounty, where a person(s) with money could advertise some goal they want accomplished - something that could only be achieved through collective action - and create a structure for how the funds would be disbursed based on an entity successfully being formed and reaching certain milestones of achievable goals. Spartacus could take a percentage of the disbursement as a management fee.
Additionally, we could identify great campaign candidates for Spartacus using a worksheet:
Is it a collective action problem? How do you know?
What’s the desired equilibrium shift? (current status of affairs vs. desired status of affairs)
What are the minimum prerequisites of time, resources, and personal commitments to achieve the equilibrium shift?
Can you create an action plan to identify and engage the correct levers of change, assuming you have the prerequisites?
One could then advertise the project and let Spartacus work.
Campaign Type: Preferred Participants
Another fun idea was a different type of campaign that added another specific success condition. Instead of our default model - success being tied to numerical size but agnostic to identities involved - in this case, you needed both a minimum size threshold and mutual, reciprocal confirmation of specific people willing to participate. Instead of “I’ll do this if 10 other people also agree”, it would be “I (John) will do this as long as (Julia, Alex, Michael, etc) also agree).
This would require a matching algorithm that cross-referenced everyone’s participation criteria and only marked the campaign as successful if a certain percentage of reciprocal selections was attained. John will say yes if Michael says yes, but Michael has his own criteria, and so on. There would need to be a critical mass of overlapping selections of the same people (and a limited set of people to select from) for this to work.
Eat Bob
The ACX Blog posted a thought-provoking piece about complex social dynamics and game theory.
In one of the scenarios, 10 people in a lifeboat have to decide how they will all choose who among them they should kill and cannibalize in order to save the rest. It’s a fun combo of behavioral economics, psychology, and dark humor. My own contribution is here:
https://spartacus.app/campaign/2b43930b-0f47-47b3-9bd9-8acb9593b13a
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lifeboat-games-and-backscratchers/comment/61694960
It got lost in the stream of comments, but this is the kind of viral marketing I want to do more of!
Gratitude
Thank you, Tetra Jones, for your indispensable work.
That’s it for now! Expect the next update by August 15th.
"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
- T.S. Eliot