Discussion on Proactive Strategies for Reward Policy and Team Building

I hope this message finds you well. With the introduction of our new reward policy, I believe it is essential for us to adopt a more proactive strategy to attract and retain technology contributors and market development contributors through equity-based incentives.

Our current roadmap can be divided into three distinct phases:

1. Pre-funding Phase: At this stage, we have very limited funding, only for some essential expense, like cover server expenses, which means we cannot offer any salaries.
2. Limited Funding Phase: We would have some revenue or initial funding, enabling us to start offering partial salaries, although these might not be on par with market standards.
3. Sufficient Funding Phase: With substantial revenue or significant external VC funding, we can provide competitive salaries, akin to the market rates in regions like Silicon Valley.

The first phase poses the greatest challenge. Within this phase, we can segment contributors into three levels based on our reward policy:

• Level 1: General contributors who can commit certain hours a week for specific function and task.
• Level 2: Contributors playing a critical role within a function, acting as function leaders.
• Level 3: Contributors who are ready to fully commit ("all in") as we transition into the second phase with limited funding.

We aim to cultivate an "all in" culture, where even if a contributor cannot fully commit initially, those at Level 3 must be prepared to dedicate all their part-time or free time. They need support from their families, as they should be ready to go full-time once we acquire the necessary funding.

In the second phase, contributors who were "all in" part-time should transition to full-time roles with partial salaries and stock options. We need to establish stock option rules for full-time members, granting them equity upon joining full-time. Those who commit to the "all in" mentality during the first phase should have their stock options activated immediately as an incentive.

Our primary objective now is to attract risk-takers willing to join BoardX early on and help achieve our initial revenue milestones. This is critical to building our team and should be a top priority. Our field is extremely complex and challenging, and despite our efforts over the years, we need to increase our pace by bringing in fully committed members.

For those contributors unable to take significant risks, they can continue participating part-time in both the first and second phases, earning equity. By the third phase, when we have ample funding, we will prioritize offering them full-time employment. However, these individuals might temporarily miss out on larger stock options available to early risk-takers.

This strategy echoes successful models from organizations like Alibaba and Huawei, where early believers contributed to the vision despite initial risks. We must establish a framework that divides our structure into three phases and utilizes our reward policy and stock options to motivate both new and existing members to engage more deeply.

Let us convene to discuss this framework and explore how we can best implement these strategies moving forward.