Following on from Sleety’s Media, Docs & Compass proposal, I’d like to put forward a fourth DAO-level project along the same vane.
Arrow Business Development (BD) : a structured effort to find, qualify, and progress business partners across every area Arrow touches, from:
component suppliers and manufacturing, tokenomics partners (exchanges, market makers, launch infrastructure), content and media sales, distribution and operator customers, ecosystem (e.g DePIN partners), and AIP-009 participant outreach and onboarding, etc.
Sleety’s proposal makes the case for the inbound flywheel: Media brings people in, Docs receives them, Compass points them. What’s missing is the outbound arm that goes out to open doors that won’t open themselves. Suppliers don’t discover us through a viral post, Exchanges, certification bodies, and fleet operators need someone showing up with a deck, a spec sheet, and a follow-up cadence. That’s this project.
I’m also adopting Sleety’s compensation model wholesale: “gated, paid on delivery, criteria clear enough that an agent could check them”, with a public accountability table. BD is exactly the kind of work that historically gets paid on vibes (“I’m having conversations”), so it’s the kind of work that could most do with this discipline.
Purpose
To build and work a real partner pipeline for Arrow : suppliers, manufacturers, tokenomics partners, media/content buyers, distributors and protocol operators, so that when the DAO’s engineering, media, and governance work is ready to convert into revenue and capability, relationships already exist.
Scope
Five partner categories, worked in parallel:
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Supply chain & manufacturing: motors, ESCs, frames, batteries, avionics, and contract manufacturing options for Quiver, Caribou, Spearhead and onwards. Potential custom build to spec component relationships and volume etc price advantages Goal: qualified supplier shortlists with real quotes, MOQs, and lead times, not link dumps and, longer-term, candidate participants and component routing for the AIP-009 manufacturing ecosystem.
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Tokenomics & launch partners: exchanges, market makers, launchpads, and infrastructure partners relevant to AIP-010 (Tokenomics V1) and onwards. Goal: a mapped set of options with terms, so the token workstream chooses from a researched menu.
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Software & licensing: counterparties for arrow system commercialisation. (Possible AIP-011 concept)
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Content & media sales: co-marketing organisations, media outlets, sponsorship and syndication opportunities for the content stream Media & Comms produces. Direct handoff: Media, Docs & compass makes the content, BD sells the reach.
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Distribution, operators & institutional: fleet operators, integrators, agencies, and pilot-program candidates for the aircraft themselves.
Not in scope: closing legal or product agreements unilaterally (anything binding goes to the DAO per existing governance), and duplicate outreach into channels Media & Comms already owns (see uniqueness note below).
(Uniqueness note for the AIP-006 gate: Media & Comms mentions connecting with investors, suppliers and collaborators, but as an inbound by-product of publishing. This project is the outbound, tracked, deal-oriented counterpart. Clean boundary: Media owns the official accounts and broadcast; BD owns the pipeline document, direct outreach, and negotiations. To be sharpened in discussions.
Project Lead
Me (Alex). I’ve been working on supplier qualification, manufacturing partnerships, and institutional pitches for both engineering and finance projects. I’ve created outreach pipelines containing dozens of organisations, setting up meeting and facilities tours, produced capability and technical briefs signed off by national government agencies(NDA),… found my way into a billionaires Christmas party for a handshake sit-down meeting… and I’m currently in the process of exploring advisory relationships in the DePIN space directly relevant to Arrow’s ecosystem positioning e.g the Arrow × Peaq synergy mapping concept.
Concrete near-term proof of work: I’ll be in Shenzhen, China from mid July through mid-August for hardware business meetings and general ecosystem vibin, including planned facility visits to; a major Avionics & propulsion manufacturer, HobbyWing, Board House & Electronics Manufacturer and Assembly shop, Elecrow, etc, as well as a host of Humanoid Robotics developers. If this project passes, Arrow’s supplier-qualification agenda retroactively comes with me on that trip at no travel cost to the DAO, and the findings land in the pipeline document as the project’s first entries.
Payment gate
Gated on pipeline facilitation, not signatures: the same logic as Compass. Signed deals depend on counterparties and can take quarters; what the DAO pays for is the controllable, checkable work of building and moving the pipeline. Closed deals get reported (and celebrated) but don’t gate compensation, because gating on outcomes would create pressure to sign bad deals.
Monthly floors:
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≥ 10 new qualified pipeline entries: each with organisation, category, contact, relevance rationale, and status. Logged in a public pipeline document in the project repo. “Qualified” means researched and relevant, not scraped.
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≥ 4 substantive contacts progressed: a discovery call held, a meaningful email exchange, a quote received, a meeting notes doc posted. Each with evidence linked.
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1 monthly BD report posted to the forum: pipeline movement, category health, wins and dead ends named honestly, next month’s targets.
Quarterly:
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≥ 2 partnership briefs: a complete internal document on a specific opportunity (terms discussed, what the DAO would need to decide, recommendation), ready for community discussion or a Snapshot vote if warranted.
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Category map refresh : the state of all five categories, published.
Fall short on a line and it pro-rates, same as the other projects.
What that looks like in practice: accountability table in the project repo, updated monthly:
| Criterion | Committed | Delivered | Met? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New qualified pipeline entries | ≥ 10 | 12 |  |
pipeline links |
| Contacts progressed | ≥ 4 | 3 | 75% | call notes, quotes |
| Monthly BD report | 1 | 1 | |
forum link |
In this example two lines clear and one lands at 3 of 4, so that line pro-rates and docks its share of the cap. Identical maths to the other three projects.
Cost
~7.5 hrs/wk = 30 hrs/mo at Level 4 ($64), monthly cap $1,920, gated monthly, no rollover, AIP-006 terms (funding expiry, active review rather than auto-renew). The hours cover research, outreach, calls, and documentation, and I absorb anything beyond the cap. Travel is on my own account.
Term: 26 weeks, matching Sleety’s projects, with the same renew-or-wind-down review. If the Media/Docs/Compass timeline holds, I’d propose this discussion runs ~1–2 weeks, then Snapshot, with a start in early august
How it plugs into the other three and feeds AIP-009
Compass sets quarterly priorities → BD’s pipeline categories weight toward them. Media broadcasts progress → BD converts the credibility into meetings. Docs make onboarding frictionless → BD’s partner conversations have somewhere professional to send people. The fortnightly Compass meeting is the natural place for BD to report in, so we’re not adding another standing call.
There’s also a direct line to AIP-009 (Decentralised Manufacturing Protocol). AIP-009’s core bet is that instead of Arrow owning a company, companies exist within Arrow’s ecosystem. Anyone can join and manufacture our designs in a trust-minimised way, with bonding mechanics aligning manufacturers to the DAO.
The protocol is only as good as the participants it attracts. Workshops, contract manufacturers, and component suppliers won’t discover the bonding mechanism on their own, at least not initially, until the network expands enough to speak for itself; someone has to find them, explain the model, qualify their capability, and walk them toward joining. That’s BD work on participant onboarding. The supply-chain and manufacturing category of this pipeline doubles as the recruitment funnel for the manufacturing ecosystem: every qualified supplier or workshop entry is a candidate ecosystem participant, logged and warm before the protocol even needs them. When develop the protocol development lands, it could inherit a pipeline, not start from zero.
It could also turn interest into contribution. BD works that funnel from the outbound end could create partner conversations that produce participants as well as deals. A supplier’s engineer who wants to contribute to Quiver, an operator who joins the Discord, a co-marketing contact who becomes a token holder, etc.
What I want feedback on
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The gate levels: 10 entries + 4 progressions per month are arbitrary at this time, so only really interacting with the ecosystem can temperature check what’s viable here.
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The categories: what else should fall under or be pulled from this scope.
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Facilitation-gating vs. outcome-gating. I think it’s the only fair way to gate BD, but say so if you disagree.