June 2, 2022 1:37 pm

Business Development report: Jan – April 2022

The Dash Core Group Business Development team has undergone significant change in the first 4 months of 2022; including changes in leadership, a decreased number of team members, and the takeover of strategic marketing responsibilities given the departure of the marketing and growth positions within DCG.  Despite changes, we have focused on maintaining productivity, and making sure to be a key part to the continued growth of Dash by making sure our contributions are meaningful on the BD area, supporting team building and morale, as well as several others aspects within and outside of DCG.

This informative document will be the first of a series of reports ideally shared three times per year, and it intends to:

  1. Share our strategy up until the beginning of 2022,
  2. Share our approach to looking for opportunities within these strategic pillars,
  3. Share our achievements during the first four months of the year, and use them as a baseline for measurement with clear actionable items,
  4. Propose the way forward by providing an overview of our strategy from today onwards, in response to and while keeping in mind the changes in DCG and our team.

BD strategy from 2018 until February 2022

During the past three years, we have focused our efforts on growing Dash where we can find the greatest fit for those with the greatest need. Given Dash’s clear technological advantage over almost every other payments cryptocurrency, we have targeted our integrations and partnerships around areas where we have developed ecosystems and synergies that could create a positive loop for growth; these activities were focused on:

  • Cryptocurrency Trading: Dash is currently available at more than 185 exchanges, in four continents – this creates a good opportunity for arbitrage and moving money for trading, which is powered by Dash’s InstantSend and ChainLocks technologies. Our hypothesis has been on growing the FastPass network, as a way to enable trading and fast movement of value in the network.
  • Venezuelan usage: Given the broken financial system, massive awareness for cryptocurrencies and being first to market, we have continued to work on developing for places that could benefit from using Dash as an everyday solution.
  • Remittances: This has been a desired goal for the crypto industry, and we have kept our attention on trying to enter the market, especially around the Venezuelan corridor. However, high regulatory barriers and high costs have blocked our efforts
  • E-Sports and Gaming: There is a clear match between cryptocurrencies and E-sports and gaming, and we have discovered that just like the remittance market, this is a high cost industry, where incumbents like Microsoft spend millions of dollars to remain active. It is a market we have not been able to afford.

Since 2021, we also identified, and started to target the following verticals of opportunities:

  • NeoBanks: Being the evolution of traditional institutions, it is obvious that they will start offering cryptocurrencies to their customers, and just as Robinhood did in the US, will onboard the younger generations of savers, investors and speculators. We identified around 200 of such institutions globally, with a big number of those in Brazil and the rest of LatAm. We started engaging with NeoBanks in order to make sure Dash is included when they begin offering Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for purchase.
  • US payments landscape: Unlike the 2018 bull cycle, the 2021 period brought a big change in appetite for using cryptocurrencies as a payments method. We started engaging with different US actors in order to make sure Dash is included when they begin accepting Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a method of payment.

 

Our approach to work:

We developed our pipeline according to our business engagement as follows:

Each project moves through our pipeline as follows:

  • Amazing to have: Ideas for activities and/or projects that we consider highly interesting due to their potential, and we would like to consider. Just the idea stage!
  • General Ideas: Ideas that we consider to be of interest but have not yet been evaluated to determine viability, contacts we might have, and sustainability. Eg: El Salvador
  • Inbound: A project that falls into our inbox. 90% of the time they come through the DCG Service Desk (Thanks Pablo and team!)
  • Open Leads: Contacts from companies that we consider to be of interest – ones our team  could tap into. EG: I met the founder of an El Salvadorian exchange in a conference.
  • Approved WIP: Projects we approved to dedicate time to, initial phase of discussions.
  • Advanced WIP: Approved projects, in the middle stage of development. Usually a project with which we already agreed to partner, and are looking into details like launch date, resources, etc.
  • Ready to Launch: Approved projects, in the final phase of integration, almost ready to launch. Usually marketing/PR is the missing part.
  • Launched no follow up: A completed project, that serves Dash as a one off.  Usually launching of a new exchange in a non-strategic area.  
  • Launched Key Account: A completed project that serves Dash continuously. We can do many things with them because they want, and serves us. EG: Our ongoing relation with Binance grew from listing, to Chainlocks, to futures, to P2P, etc.
  • Lost not Integrated: Projects that are evaluated, and were not integrated either due to a change in conditions, the partner requested conditions we could not meet, or we found that it is not doable internally.

Our project distribution per stage on the pipeline, follows these amounts for WIP and ready to launch (Which are the projects that really use our time and mindspace, with a total of 39 potential integrations on the “work in progress” stages:

 

The intent of this first report is to share the state of our pipeline by the end of April, so that future reports can be used to measure performance, and the community can see what integrations moved from WIP into completed. We do not share projects that are not completed, in order to make sure we don’t break confidentiality agreements, or are faced with a decision of a canceled initiative that was publicly promised.

 

Results during January-April 2022

January

Description: On Jan 20 Dash made an announcement on Twitter consisted on the date Jan 20 that talked about Dash’s membership in the main online to offline business association that brings together the main fintech players, neobanks and e-commerce institutions in Brazil

Description: On Jan 26 Dash announced the implementation of integrating the Coinflip network of ATMs into the Dash wallet, to more easily search for one of the 3500 ATMS in the USA

Description: On Jan 27 we announced the implementation of Dash in Coinpay. A Costa Rican exchange allowing users to buy, sell and store Dash in the country. A new Fiat On & Off ramp!

 

February

Description: Training and sharing of Dash tools for Bingo Las Vegas team of 55 workers.

Dash was implemented on Bitplaza allowing users to buy, sell, & spend in Dash. The announcement included rewards from the 2nd to 15th of Feb for Dash users on the platform.

Description: Dash announced being integrated into the custody and B2B Copper platform, opening up doors to work with more institutional and financial clients, such as NeoBanks.

On Feb 17 Dash announced being added into the largest P2P platform in volume in the world, with a bolivar pair via Binance P2P.

 

March

Description: On March 17 Dash announced a promotion on ChangeNow where rates would be reduced from the 17th to the 24th of the month, to increase usage. 

  • Ciudad Dash, Date: March 17th 2022
    Partner: Caracas Emprende.

Description: Fair activity in Caracas, in preparation for a future, larger version of Ciudad Dash.  Announcement https://youtu.be/p8P_8hOV_BA.

Description: Interactive Webinar with LatAm focused exchange CoinEx.

  • Title:1er Webinar El Mundo crypto de cara a los emprendedores, Date: March 22, 2022

Partner: Caracas Emprende Announcement link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CbcvgoHOlB6/ 

Description: Webinar for entrepreneurs and potential payroll users and professionals in Venezuela and LatAm

 

April

Partner Website: http://stonoex.com/ 

Description: Dash was integrated into Stonoex Brazil with the listing for Dash/BRL and Dash/Coffe Coin pairs.

Description: On April the Flexa network announced the integration of Dash into their SDK suite

  • Bitcoin 2022 conference, Miami April 6-9

The main goal from a Business development and product perspective was aimed at meeting three key potential partners:

  1. One of the top points of sale companies in the world
  2. One of the largest global exchanges that currently does not carry Dash.
  3. Meeting a firm that enables thousands of physical locations in more than 32 states in the US in a follow up to get Dash onto their system.

In addition to these personal meetings the DCG team had the chance to attend a few of the keynote conferences and see and hear where the industry is headed, as well as catch up and reconnect with over two dozen current partners and close allies.

 

Changes on our Strategy for May-End of 2022

Due to the recent changes in the BD team, with the departure of Omar in January, Ryan in March, and most recently Bruno in May, our capacity has been significantly decreased, and therefore we will be making the following changes, effective immediately:

 

  1. We will pursue the highest impact integrations we have in the pipeline: Getting into the top global exchanges, as well as points of sale integrations above 100k locations in Venezuela or the USA for the time being.
  2. We will stop, temporarily, the NeoBanks and newer vertical search, as those take longer and are more complex in time resources.
  3. We will reinstate the LatAm or USA BD position as soon as the Dash price allows.
  4. We will slowly turn more attention into the post Dash platform release BD activities, with the whistle being MVP on testnet.

 

There will be a document being shared with the new vision for growth in the later part of the month of June. On my upcoming document, I will share how the BD actions are being adapted to the new reality.I will also share how I am leading change and improving marketing for Dash by making sure we execute flawlessly on the marketing basics in a powerful and cost-efficient way (and the great results we have achieved so far – Twitter data will be shared) and I will also share more details on the opportunities and path ahead for the remaining months of 2022, including the changes that will be made right before and after Dash Platform is released!! 

 

It will be very exciting to share all details with the Dash community and then complement this with an AMA session! Stay tuned!! 

About the author

Ernesto Contreras

Marketing and Business Development

Venezuelan engineer, full time crypto since 2016. Dash Core Group global head of Marketing and Business

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Ernesto Contreras

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