I’ve now been at Juicebox for ~6 months and in that time we’ve made incredible progress on the product and brand, however, the product efforts have fallen flat as users continue to decline amid a bear market, the product becomes more complex, the projects barely increase in overall quality and users funding expectations aren’t met. Fundamentally, this is likely because:

• Project owners, let alone contributors, have an incredibly tough time understanding how Juicebox works,
• We are trying to address every use case, rather than nailing one first,
• Given the history of Juicebox, we attract a low-quality, degenerate part of the market that is focused on making quick and easy money (aka illegitimate or non-serious projects),
• We haven’t made any efforts to market toward investors, and rather focused on everyday web3 users,
• Even if we did market correctly, the functionality of the protocol does not provide investor confidence nor does the quality of projects,
• The protocol and the product are developed in isolation without collaboration, and
• There is less liquid capital available for investment into risky projects amid a tough economic climate.

Among other smaller nuanced issues, the main issues seem to be complexity, protocol, and distribution efforts. The most prevalent and underlying question has always been “what is Juicebox?” in which everyone has had slightly different answers, with one common agreement – Juicebox is a fundraiser for web3 projects. This sentiment is also shared with the project creators, however, their problems are:

1. It’s difficult and complex to understand how Juicebox works, and
2. Their projects aren’t getting funded.

With Juicebox being a DAO, there are a few fundamental challenges that do not help the above problems. These challenges include:

• There is no mission, vision, or leadership so everyone’s individual understanding of these things differs slightly, and
• Roles aren’t defined based on needs or strategies, but rather ‘pitched’ to a team that all have differences.

Whilst the above problems sound like a lot, Juicebox has done a couple of things right, namely building a strong brand within the web3 fundraising space and attracting talented and motivated contributors. Not to mention the absolute shipping powerhouse we have created in Peel (win!!). Some alignment, leadership, and strategy would go a long way across the DAO.