Thank APE Season 6: Built By ApeCoin(BBAC)

At the start of season 6, all I could hear was buzz about this new accelerator program that will provide grants from a sum of 600,000 $APE to ecosystem businesses. And being new to the DAO I was curious to find out what it meant to be an ecosystem business and how a business could contribute to the community. Through research and paying attention as the season unfolds, this is what I found out about the program and why it’s so important for the ecosystem.

The Built By ApeCoin accelerator program, is an empowering initiative aimed at providing small grants to thirty selected businesses(Each receiving 20,000APE) that impact the ecosystem in any capacity. It’s open to all small businesses provided it is owned by a member of the DAO. The most important criteria for the business to be eligible to apply, is the fact that it should be one that is currently contributing to the ecosystem or has clear plans to contribute to the ecosystem’s growth with time.

After the application period ends, all the applications are reviewed by seven selected individuals committed to fishing out the best candidates for the program with an unbiased assessment. To seamlessly achieve this goal, they designed a rubric to be used by all reviewers in assessing all the applications submitted. Some of the things the team were particularly interested in was how unique the business was, how it can be easily integrated into the ecosystem to help it grow, the track record of the business since they launched and the clarity of their mission and goals. In contrast, through research, I found out some reasons why some applicants may not make the selection due to certain criteria. First of all, the review process focuses more on businesses that have more impact on the ecosystem rather than those that might be the best on paper. Other reasons a business might not be selected is if it is too exclusive or niche, thereby hindering more people from accessing it, if the business has received a large grant to support it’s operation, if the business has not launched and being in operation enough to have a good enough track record and finally if the reviewers feel the business is better fit for a future program that will further improve growth of the ecosystem.

In addition to Providing grants to the selected businesses, THANK APE has created contributions that give these selected businesses the spotlight, where DAO members create high quality content in many forms for these businesses after taking time to learn about them.

The BBAC program has exposed me to brands doing amazing work and impacting the ecosystem’s growth through innovation and creativity. And I’m looking forward to participating in future programs of the sort now that I get what it means to contribute to the the growth of the ecosystem.