Hey, thanks for sharing your concerns @cynicalgnostic !
Important context to have here before I respond is that Gnosis Ltd is going to discontinue the app within its own annual budget, and are more open to doing spinouts now so each entity/team can remain more focused. Read this post from @mkoeppelmann here.
So this proposal should be read more as : Do we continue to keep Circles as a project alive in a new structure with a motivated founder as a seed stage bet, or do we shut it down.
Back to some of your Qs/concerns:
Regarding getting external funding to get a market price, I’m not against this at all but going full fundraising mode right now would very likely mean we stop all existing momentum, put product on a standstill and lose most of the team. Important to note here that we have a close to ~1000 backers on the product today (i.e $100,000 committed by users, almost like a non-refundable fee/‘revenue’ for the app). Many of these ~1000 have done this purely to support the product & it’s large vision — this is something quite valuable at this early stage in my opinion, and something to build on top of rather than forego it.
On the HQ comparison: I’d push back on the parallel. From what I understand, there, cash went out to pay external founders for their equity and the DAO took on ongoing payroll.
This is the opposite: no one is bought out or paid to exit, the $3M is akin to a seed stage funding to give the project a chance to succeed. The team’s equity vests over standard 4 year schedule. The incentives are aligned for both parties to bring long-term success. No one is trying to extract the DAO’s treasury.