Following today’s Q&A session, we wanted to restate our support for this proposal, and encourage others to reconsider their opposition to it.
The amended deal (which we assume will be posted shortly for a further temp check) has done a good job of addressing the concerns raised above. We were particularly pleased to see the willingness of HQ’s founders to significantly reduce their own payout and extend the terms of their vesting to ensure alignment over at least the next 4 years.
More broadly, the explanations from both sides of their strategic rationales are worth reflecting on. We recognise the analysis of other delegates who pointed out that the quantitative financial prospects of the deal are not apparent; ultimately, without underlying financial data, we agree it is hard to give this deal much financial weight. But the discussion today weighed heavily on the qualitative prospects of the deal, in extending Gnosis’ stack, geographic reach and regulatory approvals.
For us, it’s easy to see that a business-oriented UI is needed to extend the capabilities of Safe and Gnosis Pay, to meet institutional demand for accounting tools and payment rails… this is a natural extension of the Gnosis stack and a market that would benefit from tighter vertical integration via Gnosis (given the raft of competitors currently vying for market position). Stefan pointed out that it would cost far more than the value of the revised deal to build an equivalent business from the ground up; more importantly, it would take years that we don’t have. We are therefore satisfied that qualitatively it makes sense to acquire and integrate, if Gnosis is to have the foothold in business payments and accounting that we think it should.
Other delegates have referred back to historic Gnosis deals as examples of how paying too much for existing businesses hasn’t created value. With respect, we believe that the success of Gnosis will be measured over decades as we reach mass adoption, and can’t be fully appreciated from a zoomed in view of the last few years. Likewise, deals like this are relatively small in the scheme of the wider DAO treasury; our mental model must be making a number of smaller bets looking for the one or two that will become gamechangers, not insisting on a high bar of each bolt-on pulling its own weight. Ultimately, deals like this which lack immediate financial justification may come to be seen as prophetic as the market evolves… but spotting them ahead of time takes real vision.
We support the vision of Gnosis Ltd. We support the acquisition of HQ.xyz.