Name: Christian Dike
Forum Username: @christiandike
Discord Handle: @christiandike
Twitter: christiandike_
Background
- What is your involvement with Push Protocol?
I have been an active community member of Push DAO, contributing meaningfully to governance discussions on the forum by providing well-researched views, solutions and ideas, consistently attending Push ceremonies, and being invested in the progress of the DAO. Despite joining only recently (December 2023), I’ve managed to maintain a relatively strong/regular presence in the DAO, and intend to continue doing so over the long haul. This is because I believe in Push’s mission as the communication layer for web3 and I am committed to fostering the continued growth of Push through my contributions.
- What experience do you have that is relevant to the Grants Council?
I possess a background in law and finance and specialise in facilitating investment operations for firms by providing legal advisory, due diligence, and other key investment management services.
I was previously in the Legal and Investments division of Asset & Resource Management Company (ARM), a traditional investment firm managing over $2 billion in assets, where I drove the firm’s venture capital operations. Specifically, I partnered with Techstars, a US-based venture capital firm, to run an accelerator program where we allocated $600k in funding to five startups in Africa, selected from a pool of hundreds of applicants.
This undertaking required me to leverage skills such as reviewing funding applications, conducting due diligence on applicants, designing evaluation criteria, capital allocation, financial reporting, post-investment support, etc., and I am looking to leverage the same skillset in assisting the Council with the Push Grants Program.
- What do you think a good community-owned Grants program looks like?
A good community-owned grants program is a grants program that is entirely community-driven in terms of operation, decision-making and strategic direction, with the freedom of each individual community member to determine the extent of their involvement or participation in the grants process (which may be direct or indirect).
Hence, a good community-owned grants program should look pluralistic by design. The reason for this is that a pluralistic grants program entails running different grant/funding mechanisms in parallel through which the community can determine the extent of their involvement in the grants process. For example, some community members can opt for very direct involvement (using Quadratic Funding) or indirect involvement (relying on elected representatives such as the Grants Council).
- What are your goals for this program?
I’ve been able to identify some issues and areas where Push Grants currently need improvement. One of my goals for this program is to take concrete steps to address these issues in order to achieve a more optimised and efficient grants program
