Have a question?

• Onboarding contact: [email protected]
• Stewards: Laurence Ion#4088, ****timrpeterson#8928

Want to work full-time in dealflow?

• Check out our job board!

What’s the purpose of the longevity / dealflow WG?

The WG has 2 purposes:

• Source quality projects for VitaDAO to fund
• Evaluate projects and provide funding recommendations to the community

What kind of projects are good fits?

• Early stage research or startup, seeking funding in the range of $50k - 1 mil
• Translational projects with pathway to generating IP or commercial value
• Willing to share some form of upside of the IP (our strong preference is via IP-NFT)

How do I get started?

1. Introduce yourself in the #introductions channel and mention how you’d like to help
2. Attend an onboarding call, or add value, like referring a project for funding.
3. Join a dealflow call

What can I do?

There are many ways you can contribute! Longevity scientific background helpful but not required.

Shepherd

• Responsible for “shepherding” a project from the start (application) to finish (funding decision)
• Follow up with projects after funding to get updates
• The contact point for applicants
• Compensated by projects shepherded
• Helpful skills: communication, writing, project management, ops

Senior Reviewer

• Experienced longevity scientists who will conduct a scientific review of projects
• Compensated by reviews written
• Helpful skills: longevity science, writing

Deal Squad

• Team members working with shepherd to guide a project
• Help find reviewers, take notes, give scientific inputs
• Communicate project progress to the WG
• Negotiate and close deals
• Helpful skills: longevity, communication, writing

TODO: some commercialization role?

TODO: feels like we need some roles here where job is to follow up with projects frequently after funding, and assist them towards commercialization

How does dealflow work?

1. Projects sourced

All projects are kept track in an Airtable form. Projects enter the dealflow funnel via our application form or sourced by a contributor.

2. Shepherd assigned and deal squad formed

This is where you join! Shepherds and deal squad members are formed usually by individuals checking the Airtable spreadsheet and proactively express interests in a project. The Longevity / Dealflow meeting is a good meeting attend to see where help is needed.

3. Review

3a. Prequalification

Make sure the project checks the boxes here.

3b. Gathering information + refining projects

• Shepherd and deal squad communicate with the applicant (usually via email and an Q&A google doc)
• Shepherd and deal squad present information to the WG in Discord or during WG meetings
• Once the project is ready, reach out to senior reviewers to get the project reviewed

3c. Senior review

• Receive projects to be reviewed, and fill out a review form

3d. Summary review

• After receiving the reviews, shepherd and deal squad writes a summary to the community

4. Voting

• Project details, reviews and summaries are posted on Discourse for discussion, and then to Snapshot where community members can vote on funding decisions

5. Term Negotiation

• If the community votes to fund the project, we move to negotiating the exact terms with relevant stakeholders in the project. This is usually done through Molecule, a service provider

Key Concepts

Application Rounds

VitaDAO is moving to a “batch applications” model, with predefined timing and standardized terms. Projects can still apply outside of batches, but we only consider them in exceptional circumstances.

Sponsored Research Agreement

TODO

Decentralized Tech Transfer

TODO

IP-NFT

Our standard funding agreement have our service provider, Molecule, owning the IP from funded projects (so universities don’t have to interact with foreign web3 and DAO concepts). Molecule will sublicense the IP to VitaDAO, where we represent the IP as an IP-NFT on-chain. The IP-NFT is owned by VitaDAO, but this doesn’t mean that we own 100% of the IP! The NFT can represent any composition of ownership.

Want to read more?

[VDP-26.1] Dealflow structure & incentives

VDP-45: Decentralized Tech Transfer (DTT)