Our Q2 OKR Results, product updates, and the future of open source

Gitcoin’s mission is to grow open source. We build our technology open source. We have a wonderful open source community. We also openly share our successes and failures. Let’s review the most recent past and then look ahead to the future we see on the horizon for ourselves and the open source space in general.

Q2 OKR’s: Where We Stand

At the beginning of April, we shared how we performed with our pilot projects and released our Q2 OKR’s. Below, we’ll review where we succeeded, where we failed, and the surprises we saw along the way.

https://medium.com/gitcoin/gitcoin-q1-2018-update-1edaf09da3a

Scale current platform

• Scale to $100k worth of lifetime work on the platform [On 7/1: $139k]
• Scale to $15k worth of open work on the platform [On 7/1: $25k]
• Have 15 repeat (3+ times) repo customers [7/1 Actual: 16; see below]

Our actual numbers all beat our stretch OKR’s. We reached $139k in lifetime work on the platform. Currently $35k in work is open, from features to hackathons to bug bounties. We have worked with 16 fantastic web3 projects on a repeat basis.

Understand our customer

• Run a cohort analysis for the following information. How many people graduate / find full time work in the space and move on from Gitcoin?
• How many give up because Gitcoin is broken / too hard? How many people are just dabbling in blockchain? If they give up, when?
• Aim to maintain a 9 NPS with both developers and repo maintainers

In efforts to keep on top of these statistics, we built the Gitcoin Results page. We still have more work to do here, but this contains learning from our early pricing model, statistics on full time hires via Gitcoin (10!), and our general platform stats.

https://medium.com/gitcoin/gitcoin-q1-2018-update-1edaf09da3a

Rapid hypothesis testing

• Launch MVP for three new OSS funding tools (outside of Issue Explorer)
• Launch MVP’s for two Blockchain UX projects (SolidCoin, ETH Avatar)

Growing open source is our mantra. We are very proud of CodeFund, which officially launched in April 2018. CodeFund connects open source developers to open source products, and supports important projects which otherwise would not have ample funding in the process.

https://medium.com/gitcoin/gitcoin-q1-2018-update-1edaf09da3a

We didn’t succeed in releasing Gitcoin Grants, another feature we’ve been experimenting with this quarter. This is a high priority item for us in Q3.

Outside of grants, we didn’t get to a third OSS funding tool. While we’re all ears for other ideas which make, we’re excited about the progress of the Issue Explorer. We shaped up some UX holes, added bounty types, and saw our biggest bounties yet.

Outside of funding tools, we believe open blockchain protocols will make open source funding easier.Thus, we focus energy on improving blockchain UX in the ecosystem broadly.

We surpassed our OKR for blockchain UX Projects.

• SolidCoin: Launched at Ethereal in May, using digital scarcity at live events to incentivize actions.
• Gitcoin ENS Subdomains: Allows you to easily register <you>.gitcoin.eth for free.
• Blockchain Based Subscriptions (EIP 948): Spearheading efforts to standardize subscriptions on Ethereum’s blockchain. Join the convo!

Highlights From The Quarter

While the OKR’s above represent the goals we reached, the below represents the artifacts that brought us such a fruitful quarter.

Open Source Partnerships (Stable Fund, MakerDAO, ECF)

Our theses is that open source money will build the open source ecosystem.

https://medium.com/gitcoin/gitcoin-q1-2018-update-1edaf09da3a

This quarter, we began three partnerships where we saw the seeds of this thesis coming true.

• Stable Fund Partnership: An initial $10k in Dai to post Gitcoin bounties on open source projects
• Ethereum Foundation Grant: Gitcoin received a $25k grant to post bounties across Ethereum’s infrastructure layer. We’ve had early success on Solidity, Casper FFG, Sharding, Raiden and other key projects.
• ECF Infrastructure Fund Partnership: An initial $5K to Ethereum infrastructure projects without funding like Solium, WalletConnect, web3j, and Gnarly.

Many partnerships and grants fail to deliver on the value they promise. We’re proud that the partnerships we’ve announced thus far are directly related to a) our OKR’s and b) the success of the broader web3 ecosystem. Aligned incentives are a great thing.

Product Launches

• Project Types allows greater diversity of bounties. Use contests for hackathons, cooperative bounties where multiple people need to work together, or approval-only bounties when stakes are high.
• The iOS App Launch allows Gitcoiners to browse open source work anywhere, anytime. See when top open source projects are looking for help.

Team Growth + Team Retreat

Gitcoin Core doubled in Q2, but is still a lean team of less than ten folks. Saptak Sengupta (Product Engineer), Aditya Chelliah (Product Engineer), Scott Moore (Technical Growth Lead), Ben Sparango (Content), and Justin Bean (CodeFund Co-Founder, Product Lead) all joined the team in Q2 2018.

Each brings a unique skill set to the table alongside a passion for the Gitcoin mission. We were excited to get everyone together for the first time just last week in San Francisco!

Community Involvement

Gitcoin operates at the nexus of a few open source communities, and will continue to be active in community events.

• We attended Ethereal (NY), PyCon (Cleveland), EDCON(Toronto), Gitcoin + Friends Meetup (SF), Build ETH (SF), and more events
• The Gitcoin Livestream enjoyed hosting great guests like Augur, Balance, Dharma, QuickBlocks, Gnarly, and Prysmatic Labs. Join us!

Other Highlights

• Excited about our largest bounty (Balance + Dharma integration), which was completed in less than two weeks!
• Shipped Gitcoin Tutorials, including pricing and leveraging Gitcoin’s firehose of talent to do more

Q3 OKR’s: Looking Forward

We’ve released our Q3 OKR’s for the public. We’re looking forward to the continued growth of the community and keeping the community aware of our goals is a clear benefit as we row in the same direction with other open source enthusiasts.

Scale Our Platform & Community

Our community is our strength. We’re thankful for everyone who has said hello on #community-intros on Slack, read the newsletter, or completed work on the platform. These numbers are growing, and we’d like the party to keep rolling this quarter. Here’s how:

• Grow the platform $500k in Active Work / $150k in Work Done
• Triple the number of active bounty hunters [167 → 500]
• Double the number of organizations posting bounties [41 → 82]
• Launch two new products (Dev Grants + a secret project) which impact our ability to grow open source in the web3 community
• Create 10+ self sustaining bounty programs for open source projects in the ecosystem, leveraging our EF grant + current partnerships to do so

Increase Platform Quality

• Successfully launch new features and improve current functionality of the core product by Q3
• Be able to scale up individual coding languages quickly (Go, Rust, Python, Javascript, and other communities)
• Increase average bounty size, while reducing the time it takes from a bounty posting → bounty completion

Our OKR’s remain in context of the broader Ethereum ecosystem. We are in a critical time, and hope to get more and more developers on board as more projects take off!

Grow Open Source

Everything we do has the goal of growing open source in mind. If you have any thoughts on how we can do better, these OKR’s are open for a reason. Let us know.

We’d also love to welcome you to the community in the way which works for you. Let’s grow open source, together.