9 questions to ask yourself before starting a DAO — a marketer’s view
Published in
3 min readJan 30, 2023
Thinking about creating your first DAO, or Decentralised Autonomous Organisation? As a growth marketer and non-technical when it comes to Web3, I have been thinking about what I would need in order to start a DAO, and have put down the questions I think every founder should be asking themselves, along with a few useful resources to get you started:
/ Marketing
/ Technicals
/ Techstack
- What is your purpose of your DAO? Before you begin, ask yourself what is the purpose of what you are trying to build, and how do you intend to structure it. There are many types of DAO, from Impact DAOs to Media DAOs, and Collector DAOs to Investment DAOs. Rather than going broad, find a niche and build to answer a specific problem.
- Can you define your mission statement in five words or less? The best DAO projects have a clear purpose, and strong mission statement. Get this right off the bat, and bake it into your product, marketing, and comms form the start.
- How are you going to build your community? This is probably the most crucial part, and what I think all founders should be prepared to focus resource in from the start. Before launching anything — identify and build a relationship with your target tribe. Start by creating a Telegram or Discord, reach out to likeminded individuals where you expect them to already being hanging out, which could include traditional digital — Twitter, LinkedIn, or Reddit, and invite them to your network. Essentially, go to where your audience is and build meaningful connections.
- Got a good meme? If you ever hope of achieving *virality*, get your memes-hat on and consider using NFTs as a promotional tool for your DAO. Just look at what Nouns is doing on Twitter.
- How are you going to create and deploy your smart contract? Once the purpose and structure of your DAO have been determined, think about how you intent to create a smart contract on the blockchain that will govern the DAO’s operations. This contract should include all the necessary functions for managing the DAO, such as adding and removing members, creating and voting on proposals, and handling funds. N.B: Check out the tools below.
- How are you going to interact with the DAO and it’s smart contract? The obvious answer to this will be to create a website where you can build your UX and define your project. At the very least the website should provide an easy way for members to participate in the DAO, including getting regular updates on the project, and creating and voting on proposals.
- How do you intend to run your governance? For a DAO to be successful your governance will need to be active and regular. Hold regular meetings, write updates, vote on proposals, and make decisions as a community. Clubhouse, Zoom, or Telegram, will be invaluable tools for this. How you structure your DAO’s governance procedure is up to you, but typically involves: 1. high level community discussions; 2. Proposals and voting; 3. Execution.
- How are you going to distribute ownership to the community? Ownership is how you will give your community access and vote on various governance decisions. provide member access & vote on governance decisions. Essentially there are two ways to do this: Non-fungible and Fungible tokens. Check out this article by Lucas Campbell explaining the positives and negatives of both here.
- Are you serious about auditing, security, and compliance? Obviously, if you want your DAO to be a success, you must consider the security and robustness of the smart contract and infrastructure. This will help to prevent hacking and other security breaches. If you want to avoid your DAO from being shut down you will need to follow relevant securities laws, money transmission laws, and other regulations that may apply to your specific DAO. You will need expert advice. Reach out to your user base, and consider hiring expert advice from the DAO membership or beyond.
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