Part 1 - Proposal Submission
Name of Project: RAZ: Impact Finance Evolved
Which category best describes your project?
Unleash Data
Which Fundamental Metric best describes your project? Pick one.
Network Revenue
Proposal in one sentence:
RAZ simplifies ESG and investment data management while making the influence of impact on financial performance transparent and verified
Description of the project and what problem is it solving:
RAZ facilitates collaboration in order to verify investment outcomes as they are still unfolding
The network and peer-to-peer working groups manage integrated outcomes across the landscape of:
Investment | Impact | ESG | Sustainability | Revenue
Stakeholder groups verify company claims in accordance with investor themes and strategies, best practices, standards and regulations
Actions and results are recorded while unfolding, as a digital “time capsule” on the blockchain
Results from each initiative are tokenized to facilitate:
Opportunities for purpose-driven companies and projects to access capital more efficiently
Reduced risk for investors through faster and more efficient due diligence
Secure access to integrated impact and financial data
Increased investment liquidity
DeFi-based trade of datasets
Challenges: Finance, Impact and ESG speak different languages
- Investors have limited liquidity in fast-moving private markets driven by increasingly conscious consumer demand. This results in trapped value and misaligned incentives between growth and impact.
- ESG-related financial performance data is largely limited to public capital markets. Therefore, across the venture capital and private equity space, there is limited data on how impact and ESG strategies lead to financial return.
- Many investors are challenged by limited vetted, investable and impact-verified opportunities, high investment minimums, and low quality deal flow.
- Individuals, family offices and private or sovereign funds seeking to explore investing into ESG and impact-driven opportunities are hesitant and reluctant to take long term capital-intensive positions.
- Standardization of ESG and impact metrics has not yet taken place in order to allow for clear and transparent ranking of companies and investment opportunities.
RAZ Solutions
- An integrated process: from ESG, impact and financial assessments, impact and business development metrics, to financial and impact data inputs.
- Tokenization of verified data leads to increased access to capital and investment liquidity. Blockchain-enabled transactions and smart contracts can be integrated with stakeholder-verified positive impact.
- Datasets compiled by RAZ across shorter, project-based timelines, facilitate integrated impact-financial vetting and due diligence. Shorter data collection timeframes mapped to results can lead to increased capital inflows for investable companies and initiatives, while dealflow is improved through collaboration between the RAZ network and ecosystem partners.
- Platform licensing to investors enables integrated data collection and reporting related to how companies allocate capital to ESG and impact, and how their outcomes influence financial performance. Short-term results can be tracked and verified by stakeholders.
- Companies and initiatives can customize their chosen metrics and seamlessly report on integrated outcomes through a single network. Stakeholder-driven data verification is facilitated by the RAZ community.
Grant Deliverables:
Grant Deliverable 1
*** Impact, ESG and sustainability datasets traded on the Ocean Market**
We will be making data available from our first early adopter projects, including those with Roshem Impact, a Certified B Corporation, and two companies working towards B Corp certification: Maven Hemp and Shah Hemp, available on the Ocean Market.
Integration of the OCEAN Protocol as part of RAZ Finance platform business development, marketing and investor presentations. Marketing and promotion of the Ocean network via RAZ social media channels and websites. Cross-promotion of Ocean DAO participants actively measuring and managing their impact, sustainability and ESG data.
Grant Deliverable 2
- RAZ Network membership revenue generated via OCEAN
The RAZ Network https://raznetwork.net and individual data management platforms https://razfinance.io will be made available to members, asset managers and companies via OCEAN currency. We expect that approximately 30% of our expected subscription revenue can take place via OCEAN. As such, revenue from the project itself will generate 0.2% return to the Ocean DAO ecosystem.
Grant Deliverable 3
- Integrated Impact-Financial Datasets Traded on the Ocean Market
Data collected from early adopters: 3-5 impact investment funds and 8-10 mission-driven companies Verified impact and financial datasets linked to Ocean ERC20 datatokens
Datasets provided to RAZ Finance network members traded on the Ocean Marketplace in partnership with:
Roshem Impact - a Certified B Corporation on the 2021 Best for the World list in the Workers Impact category. Their work supports the growth and development of regenerative businesses that create solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.
What is the final product?:
The RAZ Finance dashboard allows companies to input data related to how they allocate investment capital, realize impact and ESG outcomes, and how their decision making influences their revenue and financial return.
A proof of concept, stakeholder-driven data management platform has been developed to track progress in accordance with customized Impact Themes.
RAZ intends to tokenize datasets and drive liquidity and incremental growth in token value based on data collected over time, allowing for decreased investment due diligence timeframes, increased opportunities for capital to be raised and investors to exit from impact investments.
The platform experience facilitates:
Data Inputs and Document Upload
Documentation related to impact-financial decision making, for example a spreadsheet that was sent to an investor about how capital was allocated, can be supplied by network participants. The document is verified by the project’s stakeholders as well as by auditors and impact/sustainability/ESG experts. Evidence of progress is digitally signed, hashed and recorded on the Tezos blockchain.
Verification
If a company compiles ESG or impact data about its own performance, or that of its partners, affiliates, and beneficiaries those action points and reports are recorded by RAZ and verified by stakeholders, auditors and experts.
Integrated Reporting
A fund manager or investor licenses the platform in order for the companies, tech solutions, farms, and impact-driven initiatives they have invested into to be able to utilize RAZ to track and manage data while integrating their reporting.
How does this project drive value to the “fundamental metric” (listed above) and the overall Ocean ecosystem? This is best expressed as Expected ROI.
Project duration:
Pilot: 90 days
Proof of Concept: 90 days
MVP: 6 months
Market launch: 1 year
An Ocean grant would facilitate the early-stage integration of Ocean technology as part of the development process.
RAZ is expected to grow to being adopted by 30-50+ investment funds and 500-700 companies by the fourth quarter of business development, and to adoption by 200+ asset managers and 1500+ companies by 2023.
As such, Ocean would gain exposure to impact investment fund managers, institutional investment managers, individual investors, companies receiving investment, and corporates as the go-to solution for dataset tokenization and trading. RAZ aims to become a “best practice” platform for integrated impact and financial data integration.
Data as a New Asset Class: Tokenization and Decentralized Finance
While RAZ collects data and associates verification events to a blockchain ledger,
token issuance amplifies the potential of integrated impact and financial data by incentivizing:
Investors, Asset Managers and Companies
Impact and Financial Data Verifiers
Proof of Stake Processes
to transform their data inputs over time into digital assets through two pathways:
Data Utility Tokens
NFTs - Non Fungible Tokens
The staking of securitized data leads to monetization, trade and liquidity opportunities. Investors can diversify their portfolios. Companies can trade digital assets to increase access to capital and facilitate more efficient investor exits.
Verification experts can be rewarded with:
ERC20 datatokens
$RAZ
By staking their data-linked tokens, RAZ Network members and Verifiers can benefit from guaranteed swap fees from subsequent staking, unstaking and data purchase activities that happen in their staked data pools.
Funding Requested: $17,600
Proposal Wallet Address: 0xf8388c804061d08b757BAef8d9bB5f9eF8BA90D1
Team Website (if applicable): RAZ Finance Network https://razfinance.io
RAZ Dashboard: News Feed - RAZ
Project lead Contact Email: miriam@roshem.com
Twitter Handle (if applicable): @razfintech
Country of Residence: Israel
Have you previously received an OceanDAO Grant (Y/N)? No
If the project includes software:
Are there any mockups or designs to date? Yes, at https://razfinance.io
An overview of the technology stack?
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The current Proof of Concept platforms utilize WordPress to facilitate community membership functionality, working groups, stakeholder engagement, and custom Impact Theme groups that track progress according to specific initiatives.
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The company is currently in the capital raising phase to create an MVP platform.
If the project includes community engagement:
Running the campaign on social media for how many weeks? Continuously for the duration of RAZ Platform development - starting at the first year, 56 weeks.
Project Deliverables - Roadmap
Any prior work completed thus far?
The RAZ Network has been developed to facilitate active collaboration between companies, investors, consultants and individuals with an interest in the overall impact, ESG and sustainable investing space. The platform offers working groups, resources, and videos while facilitating networking between members.
What is the project roadmap? That is: what are key milestones, and the target date for each milestone.
- Addition of 10 further network partners to https://razfinance.io by September 2021
- Confirmation of 3-5 early adopter investment funds and 5-10 companies managing data via the RAZ Network by September 2021
- Proof of Concept platform delivered and data integrated - initial projects onboarded in August 2021
- Engagement of stakeholders as part of impact-financial data working groups on https://razfinance.io - 30 active members by August 2021
- Minimum Viable Product Platform delivered and data integrated - by March 2022
- Impact and financial data linked to OCEAN datatokens - from 30 members, 5 investment funds and 10 or more companies by March 2022
- Publication of the project’s roadmap and value proposition, data management process to https://razfinance.io, LinkedIn, Medium and international financial media outlets.
Upon the achievement of specific goals and milestones, data is tokenized to facilitate:
Increased Investment Liquidity
Marketplace Opportunities
Financial Disruption
By tokenizing data
from the onset of investment capital being deployed to impact-driven initiatives
to financial performance and returns inclusive of Decentralized Finance
investment due diligence timeframes become more efficient and create opportunities for increased liquidity events.
The trade of RAZ tokens facilitates impact investment through backed by verified, integrated impact and financial data over time.
The global financial sector is quickly adopting blockchain and decentralized finance technology.
For banks and institutional investors
Utilization of the RAZ dashboard and pathway to tokenization can:
reduce transaction cost in the financial sector
build trust
decrease the risk and hesitancy associated with impact and ESG investment decisions.
Please include the team’s future plans and intentions.
Any maintenance? Ongoing platform maintenance and development based on further rounds of capital investment - total of $450,000 to be invested into information technology between 2021-2022, with a $2M to $7M capital raise in 2023, of which a minimum of 40% would be channeled to information technology.
Foreseen or possible additions?
Software Features
Data Collection
Impact
Environment, Social and Governance
Impact Metrics
Sustainability
Finance
Capital Deployment and Allocation
Revenue
Campaigns
Data publication events and stakeholder engagement campaigns are recorded by date and duration.
Digital Identifiers
Verifiable Claims (VCs - verifiable credentials) are associated to Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) - Linked data encoded as JSON-LD
Verification
Data is reviewed and verified. Goals and milestones are set to achieve certification and tokenization.
Data is reviewed and verified based on financial statements, compared to impact data and campaigns. Reports are attached.
Campaign data is compared to impact data, public-facing information is reviewed.
Tokenization of verified data
Mapping of the correlation between impact, finance and campaigns over time.
Team members
Miriam Davidovic - CEO and Co-Founder
Miriam is the Founder of Roshem Impact, a Certified B Corporation that provides information technology and marketing solutions to companies that are committed to realizing verifiable, positive, social and environmental impact. She leads the development of impact data, verification, certification and impact-financial integration for RAZ Finance. Her leadership expertise spans across the USA, Canada, and Israel as related to impact finance, intellectual property, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, due diligence, Environment, Social and Governance policy and practice.
Raphael Bitterman - VP of Business Development and Co-Founder
Raphael is a licensed attorney in Israel with 20 years of Intellectual Property law experience. He worked across the diamond and jewelry industry for 19 years developing market access opportunities through technology, while driving sales and operating diamond tenders. He manages business development and partnerships at RAZ Finance with a focus on opportunities across the landscape of impact and ESG investing, blockchain, impact tech, agricultural tech, sustainable and regenerative business.
Margaret Mondlane - Environment, Social and Governance Verification Expert
Margaret has over 20 years experience in environmental, social, governance (ESG), and project management consulting for private, public, and international clients for a multitude of industries.She has been a Benefit Officer and Impact Consultant with Roshem Impact since February 2020. She advises on ESG for clients and Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting and compliance. Her most recent academic achievements include a Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from the University of Colorado and Leeds Business School. She has a B.S. degree in Natural Resources Management from Colorado State University and a Master’s degree in Environmental Management from the University of Cape Town.
Advisors
Ron Goldschlager | Chairman and Managing Director of the Hermal Group | Founder of Cusp Building Solutions
Ron is a problem solver, the lead advisor at RAZ and an investor driving forward the development of the platform and network. He has an innate need and vision to improve the world for its people. His family have worked in the timber industry for more than seven consecutive generations. Ron has diversified his Hermal Group in Australia into the new world economy of sustainability. As timber has risen to the fore as a solution in the fight to tackle climate change, Ron has turned a forest-based raw material being sold as woodchips into the world’s first plantation hardwood CLT. Cusp is the realization of Ron’s vision to facilitate Australia becoming self-sufficient in timber production and to minimize waste in the timber supply chain. To this end, he is also creating a Bioenergy plant that can generate renewable electricity & heat from the biomass waste of the forest industries. Ron holds an honours degree in Chemical Engineering from Monash University. Cusp Building Solutions is just one of the many successful companies that form part of the Hermal Group, of which Ron is Chairman & Managing Director. These companies include Sullivan’s Cove Distillery, Quip$mart, Mortim, CLTP and Cusp, Solarwood International, Hermal Bioenergy & Westernport Marina.
Joshua Boles | CEO of Neo Flow Asset Management
As the CEO of Neo Flow, Joshua leads a multi-disciplinary investment management company focused on Digital Assets, Decentralized Finance, and Web 3.0 blockchain projects. The firm’s relationships and blended investment approach have led to early access to the most advanced Digital Asset protocols and next-generation technology. His career history has included being a Senior Investment Advisor, Executive Director, Chief of Staff and Business Development leader working with federal clients and the Department of Defense. He has managed a Single Family Office for 10 years, with approximately 4,000 multifamily units in five US states including a portfolio of investments across the venture capital and private equity space.
Additional Information
Any additional information, custom fields, or images you would like to add? For example: Any grants or fundraising to date? Information deck: https://razfinance.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/RAZ-Finance-Pitch-Deck-v04-July-27th-2021-General.pdf
